Podere Patrignone is an ‘agriturismo’ in the heart of Chianti Classico country – a mix of holiday rental villas (5 apartments and a large villa) and their organic olive oil. Is it owned by close friends of Hedonistic Hiking, Simon and Verity. The oil comes from 600...
Start looking into taking a food and wine holiday in Italy and the first thing you notice is the differences in cuisine between one region and another. With culinary traditions in Italy largely shaped by a region’s geography, history and climate, a food and wine...
This month I finally had the chance to visit FICO Eataly World just outside the city of Bologna. Billed as "The World's Largest Agri-Food Park" the site has 22 hectares of fields and stables, 40 farming factories, 45 restaurants or eating stations and a market space....
The real secret to a good risotto is the stock and I recommend making your own, depending on the flavour of the risotto you have chosen. For your stock: 1 carrot1 onion2 celery sticksFlat leaf parsleyCracked pepper and sea salt For chicken stock: add chicken...
If you have not travelled in Piedmont, in north west Italy, you might not be aware of one of the region's greatest culinary treasures: the prized white truffle of Alba. This famous fungus, or tuber magnatum pico to give it its latin...
The people of Italy, along with many of their European neighbours, have long enjoyed a pre-dinner drink known as the "aperitivo". Typically these drinks are low in alcohol, which helps to stimulate the appetite, and prepare the consumer for the meal which lies ahead....
These tiny pasta parcels are a traditional dish from Piemonte and something which we learnt to make in our cooking class in Cuneo, as part of our brand new France & Italy tour. Cuneo is a wonderfully elegant city lying to the south of Turin and here we...
Whenever we are hiking on our Abruzzo tour, we spend an evening with the chef from the wonderful Locanda Sotto Gli Archi in the Sextantio hotel to learn how to make traditional Abruzzese dishes. One of these is the very special spaghetti alla...
The first stop on our new Southern Italy tour is a visit to the Barlotti cheesemaker, famous for producing buffalo mozzarella in the shadow of the ancient Greek temple at Paestum. It is well known that the most highly prized artisanal buffalo...
The Australian passion for coffee must be almost equal to the Italian, but we often notice on our tours that the differences in terminology can catch a visitor out, and lots of great coffee-drinking moments are getting lost in translation! We have designed this...
Nestled in the stunning peaks of the Majella National Park is the charming town of Sulmona, one of the prettiest in all of Abruzzo. Framed by dramatic mountain scenery Sulmona has a population of around 25,000 but has a reputation across all of Italy and...
On the final day of our Slovenian tour in June we walked through the land between the Italian and Slovenian borders which is known as Brda. The region is an agricultural paradise and many fruit trees prosper in these fertile hills. But the most...