 This extremely unique 5 day / 4 night interactive vacation will be a memory you carry for the rest of your life. You won't just see the olive harvest, you will be fully involved in the process from picking them off the tree, all the way to watching your own olive oil fill your own bottles to take home! You will have your own olive tree, harvest it yourself, and bring your olives to an ancient cold-press olive mill and fill two one-liter bottles of olive oil directly from the mill for you to take home. Your bottles will even be personally labeled... this is your olive oil.
While you are with us, it isn't just about olives. We'll also have a full five-course cooking class, a visit to the ancient city of Orvieto, The Papal City of Viterbo, and tastings at four different wineries, including a full day of wineries and cheese in Tuscany.
When your vacation is over, you will have experienced the real Italy that few tourists have ever experienced. You will have made new friends, and you will have learned why Italian culture is so amazing... because you will have lived it.
Cities Visited
Lazio: Soriano nel Cimino, Viterbo, Castiglione in Teverina
Umbria: Orvieto
Tuscany:
Montalcino, Montepulciano, Pienza
Cooking Classes
(1 Class) - Homemade Lasagna, Tomato-Olive Bruschetta, Olive Salad, Chicken Cacciatore, Tiramisu, Seasoned Olives
Factories/Wineries/Mills
Madonna delle Macchie Winery & Olive Mill in Castiglione, Casanova di Neri Winery & Croce di Mezzo Winery (Brunello di Montalcino), Cantina del Redi Winery (Vino Nobile di Montepulciano)
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Our Tour begins at the Orte Train Station in the afternoon, or at Soriano nel Cimino if you have a car. If you are taking the train from Rome, it is a 35 minute train ride from Rome's central station. If you are coming from Florence, it is about an hour and forty-five minute train ride. If you are coming from the Rome airport, it is roughly 90 minutes by train. Before your trip, we will help you with train schedules or driving directions. If you require a private driver to bring you to Soriano, we can arrange this at an additional charge (The drive is under an hour from Rome, and about 90 minutes from Florence).
Once in Soriano we will help you to your home for the week and give you some time to get settled in, unpack and rest up. You will find some snacks and drinks waiting for you when you get to your home.
At around 5PM, we will meet with those that are up to it for a little shopping for tomorrow’s cooking class. We will stop in a local fruit vegetable shop, a grocer, and local butcher as we meet some of the shopkeepers in this adorbable hilltop village.
Next we will do casual walking tour of Soriano’s medieval quarter. We’ll have a walk around the narrow streets of this beautiful area. During our walk we’ll stop in the studio of the extremely talented local artist, Riccardo Sanna and have a look at what he is working on.
For dinner tonight we will dine in an ancient monastery in Soriano that has been converted to a wonderful restaurant. Here we will sample many local specialties as we dive head first in Italian culinary culture. The menu for tonight’s dinner is:
Appetizer:
A sampling of Local Salame, Prosciutto, Porcini Bruschetta, Olive Bruschetta, Ascoline Olives (fried sausage-stuffed olives), and Sutrini (a local crepe with romano cheese)
First Course
For our first course tonight, we will have samplings of two local pasta dishes: Gnocchi col Ferro (a local specialty eggless pasta that is hand rolled in an Arrabiata sauce) and Ciuffetti Sorianesi (hand made pasta purses, stuffed with radicchio and speck in a parmesan cream sauce).
Second Course
After our pasta dishes we will sample local grilled sausages and tagliata al aceto balsamico (A grilled steak, marinated in balsamic vinegar atop a bed of rucola salad)
Dessert
Finally we will be brought a lemon sorbet dessert and end our evening with a glass of Limoncello
As always, wine is provided with all dinners, and we favor small local wineries wherever we dine. Tonight's wine will be a local red from Castiglione in Tevernia.. |
| Places |
Soriano nel Cimino |
| Classes |
None |
| Meals |
Dinner at Taverna dei Frati |
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This morning we will all meet in a local coffee bar and pastry shop that is in Soriano’s main Piazza. Here we will have our traditional Italian breakfast of freshly baked pastries and cappuccino.
After breakfast, we’ll take a short drive around Soriano during which we’ll get a little history of this medieval village, stop for a few picture opportunities, and see some of the more prominent local monuments.
Next we will take the short drive down to our 18th century villa in the countryside below Soriano where our classes will take place. While we do the shopping for most classes together, all of the shops are closed on Sunday, so we will have done all of the shopping for today’s class the day before.
Since this is an olive harvest week, we have prepared a special class that focuses mostly on olive-based dishes. We'll start with our appetizer, which is a bruschetta with a chopped olive, onion and tomato topping. Our first course is one of our most popular dishes: Lasagna made completely from scratch. Our second course will be true Chicken Cacciatore, and as a side we will make a classic Ittalian salad with chopped olives and tomatoes. For dessert, we will make our local recipe for Tiramisu, certain to be the best you have ever had.
In addition, we will learn to make seasoned olives together from our local orchards, and each couple will bottle some to take home with them.
After lunch, we will rest a bit over an espresso before we go on our first excursion to the nearby Umbrian city of Orvieto which is the home to one of Italy’s most magnificent cathedrals, as well as the world-renowned white Orvieto Classico wine and beautiful ceramics shops.. Here we will give you the afternoon free to explore this wonderful cliff-top town.
When we leave Orvieto, we will head to the city of Popes, Viterbo. We will visit the Papal Palace, the ‘unofficial’ Vatican during a time when life in Rome was considered too dangerous for the Popes and Cardinals. In fact, this is where the first papal conclave occurred, and where the tradition of white and black smoke began in the choosing of a new pope.
In addition to the Papal Palace, Viterbo holds the distinction of having what is considered to be the best preserved medieval quarter in the whole of Europe.
We’ll stroll the streets of the medieval quarter before having dinner in a local restaurant that creates extremely unique dishes based on recipes from Etruscan history.
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| Places |
Soriano nel Cimino, Orvieto, Viterbo |
| Classes |
Homemade Fettuccine, Tuscan Roasted Chicken, Tuscan Roasted Potatoes, Pancetta-Wrapped Pineapple, Tiramisu |
| Meals |
| Breakfast |
| Cappuccino & Pastries |
| Lunch |
| The meal we prepare in class |
| Dinner |
| Osteria San Pellegrino |
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Today you will want to dress in those old throw-away jeans, as you are going to get filthy! We'll start the day with our traditional breakfast before we head down to the olive orchard to get you suited up. Each person will be assigned an olive tree and a basket, and we will spend about an hour this morning picking our olives from our respective trees. Once finished, we will load our baskets in the van and wash up before we head out to the small family-run Madonna delle Macchie Winery and Olive mill.
This is one of the very few remaining mills in the that still uses ancient millstones in its mill, and still uses ancient techniques for cold-pressing its olives. What this means is that the oil produced here is of the absolute best quality you can possibly make. Pressing freshly picked olives with this mill guarantees extremely low acidity and an extremely flavorful olive oil that is likely to be unlike anything you have ever experienced.
When we arrive at the mill, we will leave our olives at the press as we are given a tour of the Madonna delle Macchie Winery. After the tour, we will be treated to a lunch at the winery & mill, served by the owners.
After lunch, we will walk over to the mill and get a complete explaination of the process, from the moment the olives are harvested, to the moment the oil is bottled. We'll then each fill our own bottle directly from the mill, and finally label them with our own perrsonal labels.
FInally we will head back to Soriano and take some time to get cleaned up and changed before having dinner together in a local trattoria. |
| Places |
Soriano nel Cimino, Castiglione in Teverina |
| Classes |
Olive Harvest & Olive Mill |
| Meals |
| Breakfast |
| Cappuccino & Pastries |
| Lunch |
| At the Olive Mill |
| Dinner |
| Trattoria Tre Scalini |
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After our morning breakfast we will head out for a day full of wine and cheese in beautiful Southern Tuscany.
We’ll start be heading up to Montepulicano, then driving the Orcia Valley Wine route through this picturesque wine region which evokes the classic image of Tuscan rolling hills. Our first stop will be at the small family run Casanova di Neri winery in Montalcino, which is widely considered the best of the Brunello wines... So much so that their 2001 Brunello was rated as the #1 wine of the year by Wine Spectator Magazine in 2006. Here we will have a private tasting with the owners of the winery.
Next we will proceed a few miles to the stunning St. Antimo Abbey, a beautiful Romanesque church that dates back to the 9th century. It sits in a valley just outside of Montalcino, surrounded by fields and olive groves. Here we will witness the monks in the Gregorian Chant during the brief service.
After the service, we will visit the Croce di Mezzo winery in Montalcino, where we will have a winery tour and a tasting of their fantastic Brunello wines, followed by lunch at the winery.
After lunch, we’ll take the short drive to beautiful Pienza, known for its incredible Pecorino cheese. You will have a some time to walk around this charming village, do some Pecorino cheese tastings and some shopping before we leave for the town of Montepulciano, where we will do our final tasting and tour of the day.
Montepulciano is known for its Vino Nobile wine, a competitor for the Brunellos. Here we will tour the town’s ancient 14th century cellar that was built underneath the Palace of Cardinal Ricci and is widely considered to be the most beautiful wine cellar in the world. After the cellar tour, we will participate in a complete tasting of Montepulciano’s fantastic wines.
After this long day, we will drive back to Soriano for dinner. |
| Places |
Montepulciano, Montalcino, Pienza |
| Classes |
None |
| Meals |
| Breakfast |
| Cappuccino & Pastries |
| Lunch |
| Croce di Mezzo Winery |
| Dinner |
| In Soriano |
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Unfortunately our time comes to a close this morning. For those that arrived by train, we will take you to the Orte train station in the morning. If you have an early morning flight out of Rome, we will be happy to arrange a private car to the airport for an extra charge. |
Itinerary Subject to Change
This is a draft itinerary, which is subject to minor changes before the tour begins.
Menu Variations
The menus listed on the itineraries are subject to change depending on season. This is a summer itinerary. We use only fresh ingredients wherever possible, so if we are unable to prepare a certain dish, it will be substituted. In case of expected rain, Pizza night will be replaced with Lasagna class. Between November and April, Pizza night will be replaced with an evening of Italian Grill at the fireplace.
Flexibility
Our tours are designed to be quite flexible. In fact, itineraries rarely go exactly as designed. As we get to know each other, there may be special requests, or a group 'vibe' develops. As long as the whole group agrees, we can almost always make substitutions, and often do.
Weather
Many places on our itineraries don't work well with rain. When we do get rain, we try to rearrange the schedule to make the best of it, but substitutions may be made.
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2009 - The Chocolate Festival, Rome, & The Wine Roads of Tuscany 
