Fattoria San Donato

While planning our vacation in Tuscany, I had hoped to go on a winery tour, but since we were travelling with our kids, I wasn't sure if that would be a family friendly activity.  I asked one of the agriturismo owners where we were staying (Il Borghetto Tuscan Holidays) if she had any recommendations, and she pointed us toward Fattoria San Donato.

This organic farm is another agriturismo outside San Gimignano, and was much more of a working farm than the agriturismo where we were staying.  We signed up for a tour followed by lunch.  I was a bit disappointed by the 'tour' as it was only a showing of one of the wine cellars, and a brief history of the farm.  At least we had a good photo-op in front of the wine casks. 

After the 'tour', we were led into a beautiful stone farm house, where lunch was waiting for us.  Everything served was from the farm, and included salami and prosciutto, cheese plates, a variety of marinated vegetables, olives, faro salad, and toasted Tuscan-style bread.

My disappointment in the brevity of the wine tour was quickly assuaged by the two large carafes of wine waiting for me- um, I mean waiting for us at lunch.  Of course both wines were from the farm, the red wine was Chianti, and the white was Vernaccia Di San Gimignano.  Of course, the kids were served juice :-)

Needless to say we chowed down like there was no tomorrow.  As I have mentioned before, my kids are adventurous eaters, especially when we are on vacation.  My son Ryan is normally an avid tomato-hater, and when he asked to try a sun-dried tomato I almost fell on the floor.  I was even more astounded when he declared that he loved them! 

 

Since we were enjoying the meal so much, we lingered for almost 2 hours at the table.  My kids have gotten used to European-style long meals in restaurants, and it was nice that they could play a bit since we had the room to ourselves.  Dan and I were served some Vin Santo at the end of the meal, which is a dessert wine that you dip biscotti in, then eat the wine soaked biscotti. 

 

The only other people there for lunch were two groups who came in after us, one group were Americans from Texas (of course I had to chat with them a bit since I don't get to talk to many Americans anymore), and the other group was European.  We found it interesting that the group of Americans that came in to eat an hour after us left before we did, but the European tour group stayed longer than we did.   

 

The kids really enjoyed visiting this farm because they had a couple of friendly dogs, and a few farm animals (pigs, chickens, and goats).  We took a stroll down one of the dirt roads and let the kids explore and pick flowers, which they later fed to the goat!

Dan and the kids played foosball under the wisteria while I shopped at the small store where they sold wine, faro, honey, and other items produced on the farm.  We got to try a few more wine samples and learned about how their wines are named after the women in the family.  I picked out three bottles of Chianti Riserva and three bottles of Vernaccia Di San Gimignano Riserva to take home as a souvenir, and Dan picked out a bottle of grappa. 

We loved our visit to Fattoria San Donato, and it was one of my favorite parts of our trip.  Even though I didn't learn too much about wine making, the good food, beautiful atmosphere, and hospitality of the owners more than made up for it!