Thursday. Nice summer day. Getting warmer after weeks of cool weather.

Today we planned to visit a winery and to go to a restaurant in Montefalco. The restaurant is called L’Alchemiste. We had been there on our Umbria trip with the Gang o Six about 3 years ago. Susan and Gary had not been there yet so we invited them to come too.

We went to a winery that Luther picked out on the road to Montefalco. It was quite a ways off of the highway on a long dirt driveway. The name of it is Milziade Antano Fattoria Colleallodole. Quite a mouthful. They specialize in Sagrantino wines. These are big reds and an interesting fact is that this grape grows on only 250 acres in the entire world! And it is in only 3 towns in this area.

We tasted a white, a rose and 4 reds. They progressed from an extremely tannic young Sagrantino through to an aged and lovely DOCG wine. These were pretty expensive wines as Italian wines go. Here are some pictures of the winery (to include tomatoes and a demi-john outside and then inside with the wines.

We drove from there to Montefalco and walked up into the pretty hill town. It isn’t very big and centers around a pretty central piazza where they were ambitiously setting up bleachers and a stage for a big concert.

We ate outside and it was pleasant. The food is not your predictable Italian food. We had squash blossoms stuffed with ricotta on sliced pears to share among the four of us. Next most of us had a melted cheese with radicchio wrapped in crisp phyllo. When you cut it the cheese oozed out onto the plate. After that we all had pastas. Susan and I had the house lasagna. Oh my! It was exquisite. It was vegetarian. Mushrooms came through in the smooth bechamel and it had no pasta in it. Rather it had crepes on top. Here are pictures:

Looks like tonight they are putting on a play in Umbertide in the piazza. Should be interesting. Here is the stage in progress from our window (sorry about the screen).