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Umbrian Appetites
Staying in Montefalco. Visiting Foligno, Spello, Deruta, Perugia, Norcia, as well as private homes, farms,
vineyards & olive oil mills, traditional Umbrian family kitchens, fabulous local restaurants and exclusive
villas.
Our selection of local cooking classes are based on a variety of recipes rooted in ancient tradition and some of the finest natural produce in
Italy with the accent always on genuine flavours. Events often include seasonal ventures into food foraging, truffle hunting, cheese or wine
making or oil pressing according to the time of year.
We have cellar wine tastings of Montefalco's award winning Sagrantino wines. The Sagrantino dry red won Italy's award for the best wine of
1998. This unusual grape grows only between Medieval Montefalco and the ancient Roman town of Bevagna. Its production in local
monasteries can be traced back to the early middle ages, and a sweet version produced from Sagrantino raisins was the favourite of the
Vatican for the holy wine of their mass
LIVING Ita l y
Detailed itinerary
1
Montefalco Day 1 Sunday (L D)
Meet at Foligno railway station at 11.30 am. Transfer to your accommodation near Montefalco. After lunch we travel up to the medieval town of Montefalco where you will be introduced to the food, wine and artisan traditions of the town including a wine tasting at a family run enoteca in the town's delightful piazza. Montefalco reds have won prestigious awards for the best red wine in Italy. Dinner is at the accommodation every evening.
Cooking at Villa Pambuffetti & Foligno Day 2 Monday (B L D)
Our first cooking class is at the lovely Villa Pambufetti just outside Montefalco's town walls, so enjoy a morning stroll through the town before emrging on the other side of the walls and meeting at Villa Pambuffetti for our hands on cooking. Alessandra the elegant cooking school chef is a daughter of a contessa, and the lessons are in their villa.
Villa Pambufetti is just outside the medieval walls of Montefalco. Their restaurant is one of the best in the area, and is the main venue for weddings and ceremonies. It is very stylish, and cosmopolitan but still uses traditional Umbrian recipes. You can learn to cook traditional pasta and how to cook with prosciutto or truffles. Pasta is made with eggs and flour, for the famous Umbrian Strangozzi, or with water and flour for the umbricelli, a kind of big and long spaghetti. First courses are usually garnished with a rich tomato ragu', made using carrots, onion soffritto in olive oil with goose meat or beef stock. There are also soups like pasta e fagioli with pasta, beans and pork skins, and scafata soup with lentils from Norcia.
Following the cooking class, participants get to sit down and enjoy a pleasant lunch in their historic garden accompanied by the family's own Sciaccadiavoli wine. In the afternoon we visit Foligno to stroll the streets for a passeggiata, sit in the piazza with a campari or take in an Italian shopping experience.
Montefalco Wine Cellars & Cooking at Camiano Day 3 Tuesday (B L D)
The morning is taken up with a cooking class at the accommodation followed by lunch. In the afternoon we visit a range of local wine cellars for tastings of Montefalco's award winning Sagrantino wine. The visits may include large producers such as Caprai, Pardi, Sciaccadiavoli or Novelli as well as middle sized producers like Perticaia and family run vineyards such as Fongoli or Saraceno. We include a visit to local oil mill for a tasting of "the verdant elixir, the base of all Umbrian cuisine.
“Trevi is the olive oil capital of Umbria. Olive groves strewn alongside Trevi’s rocky hillside must persevere to grow. It is said the heartiness of the olives is a trait shared by the Umbrian people. They are a people of the land and they are more than happy to share it. Many of them do so by transforming their family homes into agriturism or licensed tourist farms. Here visitors can eat and drink off the land and taste some of the best produced olive oil in the country. We are treated to a professional taste-‐testing of this liquid magic. Just like fine wine, olive oil has distinct characteristics. As the sweet thickness oozes over our tongues we learn to search for positive tastes of green grass, mature tomato and fresh almond. We swirl our glasses, smack our lips and come away with a new appreciation for the complexities of one of Italy's greatest treasures." (text by Anna Ceraldi, a Canadian Journalist).
Home cooking in the countryside & Spello Day 4 Wednesday (B L D)
Today is market day in Spello which warrants a visit in itself. There is a walk around the labyrinth of floral decorated streets to take in the atmosphere and visit the local traditional art and artisans shops which populate the town. We travel on to a house in the hills above Bevagna for a gorgeous cooking class with Lucia on her country estate.
" Served on green-‐rimmed plates, our pasta course is as striking as a Botticelli painting.
Aesthetics aren't the only thing Luciana excels at. She has also mastered the fine art of la dolce vita, leading us through the most relaxed cooking class I have ever experienced. Although we work hard -‐ whisking custard, kneading pasta dough, stuffing zucchinis -‐ each activity is interspersed with a pause to savour the sunny day.
We start our day with a coffee in the garden, surrounded by fragrant flowering shrubs. During our next break, we retire to the terrace for a glass of chilled wine and some mortadella. It's a reminder that life is to be savoured -‐ and that 11am is a reasonable hour for a quick pick-‐me-‐up." (Ute Junker SMH 02/08/2014)
Deruta & Perugia Day 5 Thursday (B D)
Deruta has been a major ceramics center since medieval times. No culinary exploration would be complete without a venture into eating's decorative accessories. Here you will be shown through a selection of some of the 300 outlets selling plates, bowls and anything else that might be made of terracotta. We then travel on to Perugia to a workshop of traditional fabric weavers still using ancient hand built wooden looms in a beautifully restored gothic church. The afternoon in the town is free for shopping or individual sightseeing.
Mary Rossi Travel Suite 205, 40 Yeo Street, Neutral Bay
Tel +61 2 9957 4511
Email: [email protected]
2
Cooking at a farmhouse & Norcia Day 6 Friday (B L D)
In the morning we visit a local cheesemaker then drive through the Valley of the river Nera to the walled roman town of Norcia, the prosciutto, sausage and salami capitol of Italy.
Norcia's butchers are famous all over Italy and here you can find superb salami, proscuitto made from wild boar as well as pecorino cheese. Norcia prosciutto meat is rather consistent in texture, extremely flavoursome and a rich dark-‐red in colour. In order to fully appreciate its fragrance, prosciutto is served in the traditional way: the joint is clamped into a special prosciutto vice and using a long, thin, very sharp knife is sliced into almost transparent strips.
We have a cooking class followed by a delicious lunch at a local farmhouse belonging to Ettore and his lovely wife Lorella, where we explore the ancient estate, its traditions and its biological grain farm, cooking dinner in the original family kitchen using produce from the fields outside.
Read the SMH article on our cooking classes at this link
"That sense of history, of rituals repeated over centuries, hangs heavy in our work room. We are cooking in the old farmhouse kitchen, a huge room with an old-‐fashioned stove, a table large enough to seat three generations, and a central fireplace large enough to roast a pig." (Ute Junker . SMH 02/08/2014)
Truffle hunt & Spoleto Day 7 Saturday (B L D)
An extraordinary and exhilarating day where we travel high in the hills up to a mountain forest where we first watch them making cheese ( in season) and then accompany a professional truffle hunter on his wanderings through his own private forest on his daily quest for truffles or ‘black gold’ as it is know in these parts.
We enjoy a simple meal of wine, bruschetta, pasta and truffles in the hunter's home in the mountain village. On the way home there is some free time in the town of Spoleto.
Foligno
Departure Day 8 (B)
On the last day of the tour you will be transferred to Foligno Station leaving the accommodation at 8.30am, in time for the 9.18 train to Rome. Independent transfers can be arranged on request.
Please note: The program is always subject to variation in order to accommodate seasonal variations and activities, including local festivals. The essential content of the itinerary will remain the same. B L D means that breakfast, lunch and/or dinner will be included that day.
THE ACCOMMODATION While in Umbria you will return every night to the tranquillity and comfort of the Fabrizi family Agriturismo, a sixteenth century farmhouse nestling high on the hillside just outside the walls of Montefalco, with spectacular scenery stretching across the valley to the Apennines. The term 'agriturismo' applies to a category of family run hotels in a rural setting. The property is the home of a distinguished Italian family with a basis in agriculture, who have been in residence here since the 16th century. Four of the farm buildings have been converted into high quality accommodation, with a swimming pool. The complex is surrounded by fruit trees, olive groves and vineyards. There are twenty rooms, all with their own bathroom and private entrance. The rooms are not air conditioned but the thick walls, the window shutters and the shady trees keep the temperature pleasant even on hotter days. The swimming pool in the garden is wonderful for fresh morning swims or a soothing dip on hot afternoons. The accommodation is ideally situated for visits to the nearby hilltowns that are such a feature of this region. Whether relaxing in the shady garden or by the pool, or strolling past vineyards and olive groves, you will appreciate the serenity of the country setting. Montefalco has a long history of being one of the best producers of olive oil in the central Umbrian region and one of Montefalco’s Sagrantino red wines is officially listed as the best in Italy.