As you approach it, the place looks like a conventional Italian country house...one that's been renovated and added-on to over the years.
But what's inside is not at all conventional.
Running beneath the building shown above is this small stream. This stream turns...as it has every year since 1696...millstones that grind faro (Italian wheat) into flour.
Unlike the old water-driven mills in the United States, the water wheel for this mill does not stand vertically, but lays on its side under the building.
There's plenty of evidence that this mill has been operating for a long time...
...from the stack of worn-out stones behind the mill...
...to the hundred year old (or more?) photo of the mill operating way back when.
Just as it did in the photo above, today the wheat drops down a chute to be crushed by the water-driven grindstone.
Then a Rube Goldberg device moves the rough ground flour into a machine as elegantly brilliant as it is simple...the buratto.
(By the way, the buratto was invented by...who else... Leonardo DiVinci.)
The burrato is nothing more than a series of sieves that separates the flour by grades...everything from Type 0 (used for pastry) to Type 2 (for bread) to Crusta (used for animal feed).
The differences are all pretty obvious.
Guiseppe Grifoni is the twelfth generation of family running the Molino Grifoni.
Grifoni flour gets shipped to panificii (bread bakeries) and pasticerie (pastry shops).
Every day, customers line up outside the mill for the chance to buy original stone-ground flour.
Even someone we know...
And as the old cliche goes, "The proof of the pudding..."
This blog post...and so much else...would not have been possible without our hosts Sergio Guerrini and his wife Lorella Vannucci. Over four days, they showed us things in the Montemagnaio area that a tourist could never have found.
They were wonderful and gracious hosts, who shared their time and their home with us. We are very fortunate to call them friends.
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