Roll Out the Barrels! It's Wine Harvest Time in Tuscany

Here in Northern Tuscany, the corn for polenta has been harvested and the cannons that fire day and night to keep the wild boar out of the corn fields have ceased. Folks are now pulling the wine barrels out of storage and filling them with water to make the wood swell so that the joints get sealed and non of their homemade wine is lost. It's getting to be wine harvest time, and that means there will be festivals we'll be forced to attend. Darn. Travel journalism is a bear sometimes.

Temperatures have been on the cool side late in September, barely reaching into the 70 degree Fahrenheit range during the day. These are great days for walking the wine roads of Tuscany. Some vines here in the Apennines are even beginning to show fall colors . Locals are celebrating autumn's waning light with motocross enduros and cross country foot races on the weekends.

So, where are you? It's been almost a month since I've heard English spoken in the streets of Italy and Germany.

This week Martha is off to explore Sardinia, while I'll be hitting the road to check out the hidden gem of a Tuscan city: Pistoia.