On to Lago Iseo – the lake no one has ever heard of. Lakeside view from our suite (it was an upgrade); spectacular. Wine tours of franciacorta wineries. First winery Bersi Selini, have a thirteen century estate where the monks used to live, 700 year old frescoes. The winery is surrounded by natural wetlands. Beautiful day, and only two of us at the winery having a personalised tour. The girl opened three bottles of wine for us. Plus charcuterie; €14 each. What??
Home for a nap before onto our first two Michelin star restaurant indulgence. Our only regret – we couldn’t fit all the food in. I suspect that my body was still on Melbourne time and couldn’t really face such a large meal; and then to add insult to injury they were incredibly generous in everything. Want more? Have more! Fourth course was cheese. They brought out two large trolleys covered in cheese. First estimate at say $10 a small block of say soft cheese; quick calculation, there would have to be at least $1,000 worth of cheese on this table. Did a bit more thinking about it, most of the blocks were 1 kilo each or more – there was probably $4,000 to $5,000 worth of cheese on these trolleys – beautiful Italian cheese, soft, hard, blue, smoked, goat, sheep, cow, you name it, they had it … and I could hardly touch it! I’m a bad person. And dessert – cream ice cream. That was the flavour of the ice cream. Cream. OMG! Far and away the best ice cream ever!
Montenisa winery. Sixteenth century frescoes adorn the great hall of the villa. Wines were spectacular. They are in the middle of harvest so taking time to show us around was incredibly generous. Then we wanted to buy a bottle. The lady was almost apologetic that it was €15 a bottle! Even with the exchange rate, that was incredibly cheap. It would be like buying a top French champagne like Krug at supermarket prices. And she’s apologetic. The few places that sell these wines in Australia start at $50 and go to $150. Of course those bastards at the tax department throw a whopping 30% tax on all imported wines. Time for a revolution, I say.
