Cook, Live And Experience Today’s Italy With A Personalized Trip To Tuscany
By Tom Crosby

Wearing maroon aprons, eight of us huddled eagerly about the marble counter as Guilietta Giovannoni, the owner of a charming 12th century Tuscany farmhouse in whose kitchen we were standing, began the process of preparing, with our participation, a quintessential Italian dinner.

It would be 90 minutes of fun before we sat down to savor the results of our hands-on, group cooking experience with new-found friends - instant friendship being helped along by a bottomless wine decanter continuously refilled by Guilietta with wine she produces annually from grapevines surrounding her villa.

My wife, daughter and her college Ultimate Frisbee teammate were enjoying one of the benefits of exploring the Tuscany region of Italy as part of a unique travel experience that blends scheduled activities and independent adventure.

Avanti, a company aligned with AAA Carolinas, took care of arranging for a rental car, accommodations in the 14-room, 18th Century Villa Fattoria Valle, reservations for our hands-on cooking experience and a wine-tasting tour another day, maps of local areas and an evening meal in a garden surrounded by stately cypress trees.

It was a perfect combination of freedom and obligation.

Villa Fagiolari
Giovannoni, 58, owns the Villa Fagiolari in Panzano, a five-bedroom farmhouse on a 24-acre estate near Tuscany’s town of Greve, that was originally constructed in the 1200s and opened for overnight guests and Italian cooking classes in 1996 after a renovation and expansion.

Our kitchen camaraderie began almost immediately. A honeymooning couple from Toronto, Canada, and a pair of doctors from New Orleans were guests at the Villa.

First we chopped apples, broke eggs, mixed batter and put into the oven to bake an apple cake that would be ready three hours later - in time for desert.

A 30-ounce pork roll wrapped in string was poked in four places and the holes filled with pepper, salt and a garlic glove, eventually ending up in a large pot where it was browned in olive oil, then slow cooked in pre-heated milk for about an hour.

Vegetable preparation included slicing sweet peppers, celery, carrots, onions and huge, succulent red tomatoes rarely duplicated in American gardens. Key seasoning ingredients were again salt, pepper, olive oil and garlic cloves.

Pastas
Two pastas were prepared from scratch and cycled numerous times through a hand-cranked pasta machine to get a perfect consistency to our spaghetti and fettuccini. (A pesto sauce includes basil leaves, pine nuts, percoinco, Parmesan cheese and again, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper.)

Our final preparation was our appetizer - bruschetta. Lightly toasted bread rubbed while hot with a clove of garlic, sprinkled with salt and pepper and covered with olive oil was topped with freshly sliced tomatoes with seeds removed and crushed garlic.

“It was a lot more fun than I imagined,” said Dr. Marie Vencre, 26. “We got to meet new people and Guilietta is a patient and wonderful cook.”

“While the meal was a simple one - nothing complicated - it was delicious and a superior experience,” said Kathy Crosby, 61.

The honeymoon couple raved: “I never expected anything like this,” said new bride Christina Doering, 30. “I was pleasantly and happily surprised. I’ll remember this for the rest of my life.”

And Guilietta, who charges $100 US for the cooking lessons, said her guests, “Are usually happy when they arrive. It doesn’t take them long to begin communicating but it’s more difficult for the Italians than the Americans.”

Wine Tasting
Our wine tasting was at the Dievole Winery located in the Tuscan hill country eight miles north of Siena (where bareback horse races are held in the square twice a year), and sits on a 411-hectare estate jointly owned by 16 families, each working their multi-generations-old vineyard.

Each family has its own vintner and since the area has been producing wine for more than 900 years, the wines are unique. Once a monastery, Dievole now also functions as a resort, with two swimming pools and two buildings with rooms and suites (Casa Olivo and Residenza Colombaio).

One of the largest vineyards in the Chianti Classico region, Dievole bottles up to 700,000 wines a year and visitors can taste a variety of reds and whites and also visit the estate’s chapel, with three wine bottles perched on the altar, including one with a seal dated 1080.

Our wine tasting was scheduled in advance and we followed it up with a meal at Osteria Nonna Luisa, about 3 kilometers away, in a dining room located under an arched brick ceiling to combat soaring spikes in the summer heat.

Villa Fattoria Valle
Our “anchor” home for the 4-days in Tuscany was the Villa Fattoria Valle, an 18th-century, four-story stone mansion with marble staircases, 10-foot high ceilings, public rooms used for the Internet, billiards, dining, bar, reading, etc., and 14 bedrooms to rent. A continental breakfast was included.

Behind this stately building, a small courtyard with tables for outdoor dining is surrounded by soaring cypress trees. Nearby a swimming pool sits next to an olive grove beneath a stone patio overlooking oddly shaped geometric fields of grapes, grains, fruit and olive trees.

Scattered across the landscape are centuries-old villas and farmhouses with red terracotta roof tiles atop yellowed brick or aged gray stone walls, often reachable only by traveling winding dirt roads.
An outside evening meal, arranged by Avanti, letting us choose from typical Italian menu options, was delicious and augmented by local wine choices.  Adding to the ambiance was a breathtaking red, yellow and pink sunset and after dark views of the valleys peppered with blinking lights like a Christmas tree.

Florence, Rome and Greve
With our rental car, we were able to make daytrips to nearby Greve, a small town with a triangular-shaped city square with outdoor restaurants, cafes and shops under a shaded portico.

To visit Florence, the cradle of the Renaissance, we took the local bus (about a 45-minute trip each way) and visited the famous wooden bridge (Ponte Vecchio) and the Giotto’s Belltower (495 steps, no elevator). Michelangelo’s statue of David is located in the Academy Gallery behind the city cathedral.
Rome was a driving adventure but our one day there allowed us to visit half of the dozen most popular tourist sites, like the Forum, Spanish Steps, Piazza Navona, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Colosseum and the Pantheon