Quintessential Tuscany: Wine Tasting and Hilltowns from Rome

This was the poorest experience we have had with Walks. Generally our experiences have been very good to excellent and we have referred many friends after multiple good experiences in 2016 and 2018 in Venice, Florence, Rome, Amalfi, and Tuscany. But this tour was our first disappointment. We had a small group of 6 on day trip to Tuscany. There were several issues. Julio our host spoke poor English. Don’t expect perfect, but his scripted comments were limited and hard to understand. He was pleasant but disengaged. Had difficulty having an unscripted conversation, didn’t understand numerous questions, and generally seemed detached and just along for the ride. We have done this tour previously from Florence and had a much better guide and experience. At times I felt I k ew more about the towns and wine than he did. And he slept for much of the return trip. The other guests from Australia had the same general reactions. I would not take this tour again with Julio as host. Other issues: Rest breaks were far too long. I dont want to spend big chunk of our day at a roadside rests. Too much time in Pienza. Not really much to see there. A couple hours is way too much. Would have expected more time in Montalcino. We were matched in and out of Fortezza but given no time to walk the town or taste wine in the home of Brunello. Instead we were ushered off to an inferior winery called Innocenti. Clearly a tourist trap. It was loud, crowded, had a hostess with even poorer English skills than Julio, and were served very unappetizing bread and spreads with subpar wines. It made me want to cry after devoting a whole day to this tour that we only sampled wine from this one, very mediocre winery. Tuscany is great. But I would not recommend this tour in its current format. It is vastly inferior to the Walks experience we had in 2016 from Florence and while Julio was not rude in any way, he does not seem well-suited fit this tour. Overall the poorest Walks experience we have had. And we have done about a dozen. This itinerary needs some refining and better disclosure of what the Montalcino and tasting experience will be. Could have been salvaged if we had just stayed in Montalcino for our own tastings rather than wasting time to travel to and from Innocenti. That is simply not a worthy place to take people in my opinion. We expected better based on past experience. Overall a disappointing day.