The highlight of my first winter in a farmhouse near Lucca was helping with the olive harvest and oil pressing, beating olives off the trees and accompanying them to the frantoio to catch the grass-green oil pouring out at the end of the pressing. The whole process captivated me.

I began to explore the Garfagnana, a majestic mountainous territory to the north of Lucca. Here it is, right on an old Roman route to the Brenner pass and a mediaeval pilgrims’ way to Rome, next door to Michelangelo’s Carrara marble quarries, yet the rest of the world barely notices this mountain fastness, standing proudly between the Po plain to the north, the sea to the west and the rest of Tuscany to the south.

GarfagnanaIt has retained many of its old traditions, including its own local versions of staple foods such as prosciutto crudo, salami, pecorino, farro, chestnuts and polenta. In fact, it may be the only place in the world where Neolithic emmer wheat is grown today (called farro, but not the same as the Roman spelt grown in the rest of Italy).

Discovery

I’d always been half in love with a romanticized storybook version of traditional rural life. Here I’m nose to nose with the daily reality. It’s part of almost everyone’s life — working in the woods, the water mill and the wood-fired bakery. From the butcher’s shop to the village bar, it beckons seductively from every doorway.

I start to meet some of the people and to eat their food. Piero and his wine and olive oil, Severino and Gino and their biroldo blood sausage, Bruno and his chestnuts, Rolando and his prosciutto crudo ‘Il Bazzone’, Daniela and her potato bread, Ercolano at his water mill and Andrea, king of food in the Garfagnana, at his osteria in Castelnuovo where eating and drinking slowly and well are all that matter.

Other people have to try this food, pick the olives, meet these hard-working, independent, spirited people. But not too many or we won’t all fit into Germana’s cheese parlour or Nadia’s kitchen. Eight or ten at a time will be enough. And so the Gastronomic Adventures take shape…

Flavours and Knowledge

Knowing something by experience is a whole different kettle of fish from knowing it by reading. I’ve managed some projects for Neal’s Yard Dairy where I heard a lot about cheesemaking, and I read books about it. I thought I knew how you make cheese. Then I visited Verano Bertagni at his caseificio. That’s when I found out that making cheese is a dance and you have to keep up with the rhythm of the coagulating curds, the changing acidity, the draining whey. You lose the beat at your peril.

For reading addicts breaking the habit is tough. I haven’t gone cold turkey on the cookbooks yet, but I’m working on it. The therapy goes like this. You buy the local meat, fruit and vegetables in the local shops. What’s there is what’s in season. You ask the shopkeeper how she cooks them and go home and try it. You eat in lots of family restaurants to taste how they combine ingredients to produce the flavours of the cuisine. You visit producers and find out why they spend all that time removing the inner chestnut skins by hand. You ask chef Gianluca Pardini to teach you what he learned from his mother. You stop reading while eating. Your taste buds wake up and start having fun.

Smelling Pecorino in Il Vecchio MulinoTrue, you develop a phobia for plastic-wrapped cheese and asparagus in December. But important changes require some sacrifices. That’s one you’d have to make if you come on a Gastronomic Adventure.
Traditional and Modern.

Traditional and Modern

The motto for the Garfagnana is ‘il tempo non corre’ (‘time stands still’). But this isn’t strictly true. Some traditions need propping up. Slow Food has designated the biroldo, ‘Il Bazzone’ and the potato bread as Presidium products to protect them from disappearing. Many a cheesemaker and salumi producer has stainless steel fittings, an electric sausage-skin filler, gas burners. But nonna, the grandmother, hasn’t followed the old equipment onto the rubbish heap. The taste of her cooking is still on everyone’s tongues; on Sundays the car park at my village is stuffed with the cars of the children stuffing themselves with nonna’s cooking; and even the supermarkets pay homage to nonna. Young bank clerks with university degrees give up their office jobs after a couple of years to expunge the ink from their fingers in a mountain of chopped pig’s head in the family salumeria.

Baking like ‘Nonna’

You can’t help wondering what went wrong in Britain, America and elsewhere. What did we do with granny? Why doesn’t it even occur to us to be perplexed, as the woman who taught me to bake bread in a wood-fired oven is: ‘I don’t understand young people these days. They go to the city to work for money to pay other people to live their lives for them. I bake my own bread, I prune my own apple trees, I feed my own chickens.’ She beams with pride and self-confidence. A traditional, liberated woman with plenty of time to give me lessons and philosophize about modern life. Her husband is a car mechanic. The traditional and the modern.

Maybe these Gastronomic Adventures will give us some clues about how to weave the traditional back into our modern lives. Maybe they’ll give us the courage to change our lives just a tiny bit.

The following Booking Conditions together with all information relating to your chosen holiday contained on this website form the basis of your contract with Sapori e Saperi Adventures Limited. Please read them carefully before you book.

Fitness

All Adventures include a fair degree of physical activity such as beating olives off trees, cooking and walking on uneven cobbled streets and steep hillsides. You must have a level of fitness which would not spoil other participants' enjoyment by slowing them down. If in doubt, you should consult us before booking.

Insurance

It is essential that you have insurance to cover such things as medical treatment, repatriation, loss of property and cancellation charges. You must provide the name of your insurer and number of your policy by the time your balance is due.

The Adventure fee does not include:

Your personal shopping and expenses (such as, laundry, email, fax, telephone, hotel mini-bar), lunch on a free day and tickets for the optional cultural event if there is one.

If you cancel

If you have to cancel your participation in an Adventure, there will be a cancellation charge calculated as a percentage of your fee according to the amount of notice you give. The date of cancellation is the day on which we receive written confirmation of cancellation.
More than 56 days deposit only
56 to 29 days 40%
28 to 15 days 80%
14 or less 100%

If you can provide a suitable substitute participant, no cancellation charge will be made.

If we cancel

Sometimes there has to be a minimum number of participants on an Adventure to make it viable. If this number is not reached by eight weeks before the start date, we reserve the right to cancel the Adventure. In this event you would receive a full refund of your fee. We do not accept liability for the cost of travel arrangements you have made yourself.

Cancellation due to force majeure

We would postpone or cancel an Adventure in the event of war, riot, civil unrest, industrial dispute, natural disaster and similar circumstances outside our control. If cancellation was necessary, we would refund the proportion of your fee not already irrevocably committed to our suppliers, but we are under no other liability to you in such cases.

Limit of liability

We accept responsibility for most of the ingredients of an Adventure, though there may be a failure or improper performance of some services attributable to unforeseeable circumstances beyond our control, and for these we may not be liable.

Changes to Adventures

The Adventures are usually based around agricultural products that are subject to circumstances beyond our control such as weather, pests and disease. If such forces prevent an advertised activity from taking place, we will substitute an alternative activity. You would not receive any compensation or refund.

Legal jurisdiction

This Contract shall be construed in accordance with English law and any disputes shall be referred to the jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.