- Todd Bolton guiding wine tasting - Todd Bolton
Tell us a bit about your wine tour company based out of Florence.
I started the company roughly 6 years ago. My wine tours are small and intimate, both private and semi-private, and visit Tuscany ’s most important wine regions including Chianti, Montalcino, Montepulciano, and Bolgheri. I offer my guests wine and oil tastings at lesser known, top-quality boutique wine producers, in the historic splendor of the villas and castles, which are still home to the producers themselves. I have always tried to seek out lesser known producers that offer something new and different from the mainstream. During every aspect of the tour I am trying to share my passion, understanding and interest in the Tuscan region and her wines.
Any specific inspirations?
The writer Paul Bowles, one of my literary idols, once distinguished between the traveler and the tourist, stating the “…difference was partly one of time, …the tourist hurries back home at the end of a few weeks [whereas] …the traveler, belonging no more to one place than the next, moves slowly, over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another.” I created Tuscan Trails to give my guests the “traveler’s” experience of Tuscany, yet in the confines of today’s modern schedule.
Tuscan Trails specializes in liberating travelers from typical tourist experiences. The company offers single-day wine tours in the heart of Tuscany , giving my guests the chance to savor the true warmth and beauty of Tuscany in a way other tourist experiences cannot. The tours take travelers beyond Italy ’s crowded cities, away from lines around churches and museums, and into the heart of the Tuscan countryside.
Tell us a bit about who you are and your background.
I am a pretty easy going, flexible and adventurous person. I love learning new things, seeing new places and sharing time and experiences with people that make me laugh. I love being outdoors and being active. I grew up mostly in California, but have had the fortune to live in several different US states and even a couple of different countries. This bit of moving around helped shape my sense of curiosity, opened my mind and allows me to feel comfortable in just about any environment and setting.
I think my general curiosity and interest in new places and in peoples’ different ways of doing things led me to study anthropology. It was a natural fit. I received both my BA and MA in Cultural Anthropology. Professionally, however, I have had a very mixed bag. I have worked in the private sector, government sector, in education and for non-profits. Positions I have fulfilled range from anthropologist, educator, forestry conservation manager, carpenter and even sales and marketing representative for a larger media company. I have in some ways combined lots of the experiences together to do what I am doing today.
So how did you get interested in wine though?
Wine has always been around in my family, but my real interest most likely started a little over 15 years ago. In short, I was in college and a friend of mine came back from her travels to France. When she came back she was kind enough to share few bottles she brought back with her, and I was hooked. Over time my interest grew and my tastes changed. Before moving to Italy, I was living in San Francisco and this is where my interest really spiked. I found that I loved the wines and the wine industry because there was always something new to learn. There were always new tastes to explore.
And why Tuscany?
In San Francisco, aside from falling in love with the wines, I also fell in love with my future wife, who was/is from Florence, Italy. She is the main reason I find myself here today.
When we first came to Italy, our initial plan was that we’d stay about 4-6 months. That was nearly 9 years ago today. After I arrived (besides exploring every part of Tuscany and Italy that I could) I really got passionate about the wines. After doing some really intense language courses, I began studying and was eventually certified with the Associazione Italiana Sommeliers (AIS) (Italy’s premier school for sommeliers.) This education opened my eyes to how vast the world of wine truly is, but it also gave me a much broader foundation of and approach to wine.
So with this new foundation of knowledge you decided to open a company?
After a couple of years of study, I decided I wanted to share this knowledge with as many people as I could and I started Tuscan Trails. I started it mainly for the travelers who might be passionate about wines, want to learn more about them and understand them better, but who maybe on a tight travel schedule and don’t have time to do the research and plan out a trip in the countryside. They just want to come out and taste and learn about Italian wines in one of the most beautiful settings in the world! We give them an incredibly authentic Italian experience, with the food, the wine and the countryside. In a sense we act as a cultural broker for them to get their foot, mind and spirit a little deeper into Tuscany.
What other goals did have with Tuscan Trails?
Beyond creating a product for people that is authentic, entertaining and educational, one last thing I wanted to do was make certain that Tuscan Trails broke down some of the stereotypes and misinformation that exist in the wine world. In North America, we have put wine up on a pedestal, when here in Europe I see that it is often common knowledge. Wine doesn’t have to be for high society or “cultured” people . Here it permeates every aspect of culture from bankers to simple farmers, from art collectors to plumbers. There isn't an air of regality surrounding wine nearly as much as I found when I was in living in Napa, California.
What have been the biggest obstacles thus far?
I can honestly say the biggest obstacle has been the Italian government. Italy has a very protectorate economy, and the country creates laws and rules to protect different business sectors and keep competition to a minimum. Often these rules are established by the different business sectors themselves, only after the main players have already created a nice niche. This made starting the company more of a challenge than in a place like the United States. Talk to many American ex-pats living in Italy, and many will at times seem a little jaded about their experiences here. Yet they are still here. However if you talked to most Italians they too are a little jaded with their day to day lives here. There are a lot of things that don’t work in Italy. It is really nothing that the average tourist would notice because it affects the day-to-day aspect of practical living. But it can be a challenge.
And finally, what about wine and oenology do you love the most?
What I love the most about wine and wine making is its diversity. There is too much complexity to create monotony. I once read somewhere that if you include all of the clonal variations of different grape varietals here in Tuscany there are nearly 10,000 grape species in this small region of Italy. Then take into account the fact that if you put the same grape species in different environments, you create vastly different wines. We can complicate this further and mention the diversity in the wine making styles, where there are literally 100's of different ways to do the right thing. What this means, is in this little corner of the world I live there is always something new to discover. Add the rest of the world’s wines to the mix, and you have a lifetime of learning and a lifetime of new flavors to enjoy.
Tuscan Trails Contact Info:
You can find us Tuscan Ttrails online or on facebook. Email Todd at info@tuscantrails.com Skype: toddbolton or call: 011-39-340-930-1794
Cristina Pinton - American artist, writer, teacher having lived in Italy for 8 years, narrating, commenting on, observing and challenging life around her.
