Pasta pomodoro is a simple dish. You usually take spaghetti, and lightly coat it in tomato sauce, and garnish with basil. Simple, delicious, oddly hard to do it justice (go to tourist trap restaurants, you'll see how easy it us to make bad pasta). What I fail to mention is the pasta has to be cooked right (lightly al dente). This aids in digestion, and makes it far easier to twirl around a fork. The sauce is naturally acidic and needs to be balanced to get the sweetness in the tomatoes to speak. Olive oil is used to coat the pasta before it sticks together. Enough to coat, and have the flavor add to the tomato. Lightly salt the pasta to enhance the flavor of everything. Add just enough basil to highlight and freshen the fruit flavors in the sauce.
The wines are no different. To you oenophiles, this is the Brunello, Chianti and Rosso territory. A stop at a winery will show you just how much subtlety and difference there is between 2, 5, and 10 year old bottles. Not to mention how a single type of grape can yield three different wines with completely different profiles.
The land is yet another UNESCO site. The rolling hills have been cultivated for thousands of years. It has managed the unique balance of natural beauty sculpted and curated by man. A birds eye view shows nothing more than a hilly agricultural landscape, but dive through the winding roads, across carefully built stone bridges, and you realize how specific and intentional every man made object is intended to compliment the natural curve and crevice if the land.
I write this sitting on a hill top, in a stucco, rock and clay villa. An ancient fortress look out from when the city-states of Montelchino were resisting Spanish invasion. This is my home for the next three weeks.
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