On a recent trip to Lucca, Italy, we decided to visit local wineries one day for a tasting and lunch. We debated how far we would want to drive, and in an Internet search, discovered a number of wineries in the area. After reading the reviews we finally settled on two that were fairly close to each other, La Badiola and Colle Verde.
The reviews indicated that either could serve a lunch, but the array of wines at La Badiola made our choice easy as to where to begin. The day we visited also happened to be the thirty-sixth anniversary of Laura and Brian, who were part of our group. Karen and Robin, who helped Karen with the arrangements, asked the winery to provide an anniversary cake to complete the lunch.
While the winery was about a half hour drive from our villa, what we did not realize the last part was on a narrow and winding road and the last mile on a dirt and gravel farm road. In fact, we missed the turn, not believing it to be the road from the Waze map. As a result, when Waze started recalculating, we tried to do a K-turn to go back. This created chaos as a group of bikers came down and stopped at a store right where we were trying to make the maneuver. Then, we had two other cars behind us, of our group, who also now needed to turn around. When a non-related driver came up behind our group, and still another down the street we thought we were supposed to go up we became deadlocked.
The result is we finally found the winery, but waited nearly a half hour for the others to find us. The winery sent someone down to bring up Gil and Robin who were completely lost.
What we discovered, when the tour started, is that La Badiola was part of Villa Real, a huge estate next door. The Villa was built and owned by Napolean’s sister when he was emperor of Italy. In fact, there is an ancient painting of Napolean hanging in the dining area where we had lunch, which looked very close to known paintings of him.
The new owners of the former Villa Real winery needed a new name. They had seen the 1976 film The Innocent, by an Italian film maker shot at this location. La Badiola, was the name of the villa in the film. The term means ‘shovel’ but no one could tell us the significance of the term in the film.
The property is relatively small with only about 30 acres under vines. They produce six different varietals and blends including a champaign method sparkling wine. Their primary white is a chardonnay – pinot grigio blend and primary red a merlot. Most of our group liked some of the wines and not others. We bought a Sangiovese blend without tasting it, to drink later, which I thought was the best of their wines. Others disagreed.
The lunch was a rigatoni pasta with a fresh cherry tomato sauce. We asked for parmesan cheese to finish it. The winery staff would not provide it, as they said it would affect the taste of the wines. They also served thin slices of beef with an interesting sauce, but they would not tell us what it was.
The winery has a very old chapel and event space and recently started performing weddings, but we joked they would need a helicopter service to get the guests in and out unless they came and left by convoy. Colle Verde was about four miles away on better roads. We sampled three wines, but none stood out as exceptional. It was a good contrast to the history and intrigue we found at La Badiola. Again, an unexpected day, learning about Napolean’s sister, another film to watch that will have special meaning for us as a result of this trip. Several of our group also decided to visit Villa Real, next door, to see the rest of the historic estate.
