It's a sunny autumn morning in Florence. The students and the AEF team get ready to leave: ready to experience a day different from the others! The Accademia has organized a day in the Chianti Classico wine region, to learn about the history of olive oil and Tuscan wine. A shuttle comes to pick everyone up: the dome of the Duomo and the traffic slowly fade away leaving room for green hills and tall cypress trees. Autumn colors characterize the landscape: yellow, orange, green, many shades of brown... it is a succession of colors.
Some of the students have only recently arrived in Italy, others have already become familiar with Italian culture. Everyone's enthusiasm is sky-high: it's a Friday that tastes like a holiday. Once at Tenuta San Vito, on the hills of the Florentine Chianti Colli, students and professors are welcomed by the owners of the estate. Wine and oil of the highest quality have been produced here for generations, following the organic cultivation method, which excludes the use of any type of fertilizer or chemical herbicide. We begin with the guided tour to discover the vineyards and, soon after, the visit to the cellars and the oil mill. The route unfolds onto the paths of the estate, in the typical sweetness of the Tuscan landscape, where harmony is the result of the positive collaboration between man and nature.
You cannot say that you know the Tuscan culture if you do not know the two fundamental products that are grown in this land with passion and ancient wisdom: wine and oil. Drinking a glass of wine tells stories, memories are shared; oil is the main ingredient of all Italian cuisine, through which recipes and flavors are handed down. The cold temperature does not influence the mood, on the contrary: laughter and the chirping of the birds are the only background sounds in the Chianti countryside.
At the end of the tour, we all gather around the table. AEF reserved the entire restaurant for its students. For the occasion, the chef prepared a typical Tuscan lunch: pasta, meat, organic vegetables and, of course, oil and wine from Tenuta San Vito!
The day flies by, between an abundance of conversation, laughter and good food. The banquet table has allowed people to become familiar with each other, to get to know one another, to tell their stories: all coming from different places, with different cultures but in the end, all so similar.
