Each month, Power Tasting features a Place to Visit when someone is on a wine tasting trip. These are not wine-related locations, but interesting spots in some region of Wine Country that deserve a visit when in the area. Many are fairly obvious, like Paris, Porto or Vienna. Others are popular with tourists who come into that area. But there are a few that are forgotten; actually, it is more that they are overlooked.
These places are never destinations. We just happened to be in them and found them charming and welcoming. There were no buses; no crammed parking lots and virtually no visitors other than ourselves. San Gimignano in Tuscany was like that the first time we stopped there; now it is as crowed as Times Square. We can even remember when it was difficult to find lunch in Healdsburg. The kind of places we are talking about are still unspoiled.
A Buonconvento street scene. Photo courtesy of castellotoscani.com.
When you’re wine tasting in Tuscany you may find yourself on the road from Siena, on your way to Montalcino. There will be a sign pointing to Buonconvento, literally meaning the “good convento” but interpreted by the locals as “a happy place”. We once pulled off the road and found ourselves at a standup cappuccino bar, with a few older folks staring at us. They were friendly but curious, wondering “why are you people here?” In fractured Italian we explained that we just wanted some coffee and a rest stop. They, in broken English, urged us to take a look around the town.
The streets were clean; children were playing; and the local church was quite pretty with some interesting frescoes. We have read since that it is considered to be one of the most beautiful villages in Tuscany. We can’t speak to that, but it was very typical of what we expected a Tuscan village to look like and were glad to have stopped.
Peniches along the Canal du Midi in Poilhes.
Another such village is Poilhes in southern France. There is some dispute how to pronounce it, but the closest we can get is “poo-yeh”. There are vineyards surrounding the commune extend as far as the eye can see, so the surrounding area is a great destination for learning about Languedoc wines.
You can drive from one end of Poilhes to the other in about two minutes. If you don’t blink, you’ll see the Canal du Midi and rental boats called péniches moored there at the end of the day. There’s a chic restaurant we found overrated, but the boating tourists flock to it. We preferred a simple café nestled under a spreading platane tree, run by a couple of British emigrants. Even more so, we loved wine store-cum-hotel called Vinauberge, which we have profiled previously. There is a huge selection of local wines that can be sampled by the pour.
There’s nothing much going on in Poilhes. You can walk along the canal or visit the cemetery with its poignant memorials to wartime dead. That’s about it. And that’s the point. It’s a great place to do nothing.