The morning air is full of scents, and the pollen is dancing through it.

I rub my eyes and start sneezing. Good to see that my allergy has arrived right on time. We meet up with our friends in the town square, a happy mix of young and old(er). The usual stragglers eventually arrive, and then we’re off on our route, which starts with a climbing dirt track that has been around since the time of the Etruscans. Our destination isn’t far: it’s a large, sunny clearing at the foot of a ...

È primavera svegliatevi bambine…. sang the great Alberto Rabagliati in the mid-twentieth century. Spring: the season of reawakening. After the long, dark winter, where the dominant shades are the washed-out grays of the cloudy skies and the leafless trees, spring injects everything with color and puts something in the air that really lifts the spirits.

Now that we’re into our second year of restrictions, everything is mitigated to some degree; everything is complicated. But one ...

We can’t tell you which ten dishes Luca Cesari discusses in his book. And we’re not going to tell you why "everything you know – or thought you knew – about traditional dishes is false". We’re not going to open a new Pandora’s box as far as the origins of carbonara are concerned, or go into the mysterious new lease of life that Fettuccine Alfredo is currently enjoying, believed by many to be an American invention when it is in fact perhaps one of the most authentic and storied ...

Bruschetta del Poggio

Oven-baked ricotta with grilled eggplant and smoked eggplant salsa

Aqua di Venus bianco Toscana Igt 2020

Monte Santa Marie semi-wholewheat pappardelle pasta with duck sauce

Santedame Chianti Classico Docg 2018

Valle del Sasso beef sirloin with onions and Tuscan prosciutto

Modus Toscana Igt 2017

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For a thousand years, Consonno slumbered on the slope above Olginate, near Lecco, as did its 250 inhabitants. The Second World War reduced that number to 50: just 50 souls. So perhaps Consonno cannot be counted as one of those “happy hill towns” that we tend to obsess over, but that doesn’t mean it has fewer stories to tell. And here we add one more, hard though it is to believe.

At the height of the postwar economic boom, the Count of Villa ...