{"id":3034,"date":"2025-06-29T15:18:45","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T15:18:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=3034"},"modified":"2025-06-29T15:18:45","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T15:18:45","slug":"overlooked-places","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=3034","title":{"rendered":"Overlooked Places"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Each month, Power Tasting features a Place to Visit when someone is on a wine tasting trip.\u00a0 These are not wine-related locations, but interesting spots in some region of Wine Country that deserve a visit when in the area.\u00a0 Many are fairly obvious, like Paris<\/a>, Porto<\/a> or Vienna<\/a>.\u00a0 Others are popular with tourists who come into that area.\u00a0 But there are a few that are forgotten; actually, it is more that they are overlooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These places are never destinations.\u00a0 We just happened to be in them and found them charming and welcoming.\u00a0 There were no buses; no crammed parking lots and virtually no visitors other than ourselves.\u00a0 San Gimignano in Tuscany was like that the first time we stopped there; now it is as crowed as Times Square.\u00a0 We can even remember when it was difficult to find lunch in Healdsburg<\/a>.\u00a0 The kind of places we are talking about are still unspoiled.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A Buonconvento street scene.  Photo courtesy of castellotoscani.com.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you\u2019re 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 \u201cgood convento\u201d but interpreted by the locals as \u201ca happy place\u201d.  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 \u201cwhy are you people here?\u201d  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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t speak to that, but it was very typical of what we expected a Tuscan village to look like and were glad to have stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Peniches along the Canal du Midi in Poilhes.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another such village is Poilhes in southern France.  There is some dispute how to pronounce it, but the closest we can get is \u201cpoo-yeh\u201d.  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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can drive from one end of Poilhes to the other in about two minutes.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t blink, you\u2019ll see the Canal du Midi and rental boats called p\u00e9niches<\/em> moored there at the end of the day.\u00a0 There\u2019s a chic restaurant we found overrated, but the boating tourists flock to it.\u00a0 We preferred a simple caf\u00e9 nestled under a spreading platane tree, run by a couple of British emigrants.\u00a0 Even more so, we loved wine store-cum-hotel called Vinauberge<\/a>, which we have profiled previously.\u00a0 There is a huge selection of local wines that can be sampled by the pour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s nothing much going on in Poilhes.  You can walk along the canal or visit the cemetery with its poignant memorials to wartime dead.  That\u2019s about it.  And that\u2019s the point.  It\u2019s a great place to do nothing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Each month, Power Tasting features a Place to Visit when someone is on a wine tasting trip.\u00a0 These are not wine-related locations, but interesting spots in some region of Wine Country that deserve a visit when in the area.\u00a0 Many are fairly obvious, like Paris, Porto or Vienna.\u00a0 Others are popular with tourists who come … Continue reading Overlooked Places<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3034"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3034"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3037,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3034\/revisions\/3037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}