Deanna and Mack in Italy 2019: Day 5 - Modena Parmigiano-Reggiano, Balsamic, and driving to Tuscany

Day 5 - August 26, 2019

Our second morning in Modena I took a stroll to the local cafe to pick up some pastries and coffee for our quick breakfast. Not much English was spoken at this cafe, but I managed to get what I needed and felt it was pretty smooth. We shared a caprese sandwich, a croissant, a chocolate pastry and a cream puff. These were all pretty good. We also had some small americanos.

Bar Pasticceria Milano 2

We arranged to leave our luggage with the reception at our hotel while we went to check out a Parmigiano Reggiano farm. We drove over to Antica Latteria Ducale. The road over there was quite adventurous and often only allowed one car to pass at a time. We had to pull over to let oncoming traffic pass by on multiple occasions. I joked that we were on the "road to Hana" again like in Maui.

We did not arrange a tour of the farm but they said we could simply drop by and see their ageing room and have a tasting if we liked. So we did that. When we arrived we were greeting by an Italian cheesemaker who didn't speak much english. I said some things much too fast and he told me to stop because he couldn't keep up. I know the feeling. He gave us some tastings of some 24 month old cheese that was pretty good. Then we got to check out the huge ageing room where all the Parm comes to maturity. After that we drove over to take a quick peek at some happy cows getting down on some hay. We told them "thanks for the milk!" but they probably spoke Italian...

Lots of ageing parmigiano reggiano

Tasting Room

Bye cows!

That day we also had a reservation to go on a tour at a Balsamic Vinegar farm. We jumped back in the Renault and hit the windy roads and made our way over to the Leonardi Balsamic farm. We were just in time for our tour appointment but were made to wait by some other folks that were late. We sat and had a small glass of Lambrusco sparkling wine while we waited. We were short on time because we could not leave our luggage with the hotel beyond 12:30pm so after we let the tour host know this she began our tour in private. We learned a lot about the process of making balsamic, got to see the fermentation rooms and got to do a tasting. There is a passion in making a quality product that is very obvious when tasting the vinegar at Leonardi. We took some with us.

It smelled delicious in here. These barrels were fermenting balsamic.

Almost like a Dyson hand dryer and worked just as good

Balsamic barrels are fermenting with an opening to allow bacteria in.

After the tour we quickly arrived at our hotel in time to grab our luggage and say goodbye to Modena. We were back on the expressway for a 2 hour drive through Florence and on our way to our hotel in the Chianti region of Tuscany. The road to Tuscany was mostly an expressway through very long tunnels that made their way through tall mountain ranges and hills. We were inside of tunnels a lot. Sometimes we would come out of a tunnel to get about a 1 second glimpse of the sky before going right back into another tunnel. The speeds ranged from 130kmh to 90kmh on the drive. We saw 2 police cars during our trip but they seemed unconcerned about the traffic and what we were doing. No matter how fast I drove it always seemed like someone was going faster and I had to get out of their way often. I did try to remain in the right lane as much as possible, but sometimes that right lane goes very slowly.

We pulled into Salvadonica's gravel road around 3pm in the afternoon. We were immediately impressed by the rolling vineyards and hills on the horizon. Tuscany lives up to the hype when you see it in person. We quickly checked in, made reservations for dinner at the on site restaurant and went to our room to rest and freshen up.

Our Hotel in Tuscany

Yet another rain shower. I'm happy.

As an aside: I always takes pictures of bathrooms when traveling because they vary so much in function and style. So that is why you may see some toilet shots here and there. :)

Dinner at the restaurant was pretty close to perfect with the amazing view, great tasting food and delicious wine. Deanna had the stewed spinach along with pasta with butter and shaved truffles. I had the gnocchi with squid ink and cuttlefish along with a smoked trout 2nd course. We shared some bruschetta appetizers as well. To drink we tried the hotel's own Chianti Classico red wine which we both really liked. For dessert we shared a tiramisu in a cup that was more creamy than we were expecting and also had nuts instead of ladyfingers soaked in coffee liqueur, but it was good.