By the time it gets to October, the mist lingers in the valleys most mornings, there is a gentle bite in the air and we know it’s time to begin looking after ourselves over the winter months. It is a glorious time of the year in Italy: the colours are at their finest, the autumnal food gives earthy flavours our palates had almost forgotten and it is cool enough to take longer walks and enjoy this incredible land.
There are questions for which there is no sensible answer: which is the most beautiful Italian city, whether lunch should include primo and secondo, and which gelato flavour is the best.
The last, of course, is the most important.READ MORE
I’ve always been a bit of a dreamer, one of life’s true enthusiasts with an appetite to take sometimes too much on but only ever if I believe in it fully. And so, Frantoi was born 10 years ago. A business built on the foundation that life is better with great olive oil in your kitchen.READ MORE
Ask any Italian which ingredient they miss most when they are abroad or can’t live without and the chances are they will tell you extra virgin olive oil. In Italy, olive oil is not a condiment, it is an essential part of each and every day. READ MORE
A couple of recent trips to Alto Adige have left me super impressed by the local restaurant scene.
Few nations have treated design as both mirror and manifesto quite like Italy. Across the twentieth century, it became a laboratory where aesthetics and ideology collided – first under the disciplined gaze of Rationalism in the 1920s and ’30s, then in the unruly, colour-saturated rebellions of the 1960s and ’70s.READ MORE
The story of Mozzarella di Bufala Campana begins with the arrival of water buffalo in southern Italy, most likely during the Norman period. Brought from Sicily where they had landed at the end of the 10th century, following the Saracen invasions, the animals found an ideal home in the lowlands of Campania.READ MORE
Everyone knows Naples — the exuberant city in the shadows of Vesuvius, where espresso, noise, gestures and genius are found in equal measure. READ MORE
When most people think of fusilli, they think of the short, spiral-shaped pasta found wherever you look – incidentally the third most popular pasta shape in circulation. But in the Cilento hills of Campania, fusilli di Felitto are more than just a pasta shape – they have a deep cultural imprint. READ MORE
Back in the Middle Ages, the journey to Rome along the Via Francigena was one of three major pilgrimages (the other two being the Camino di Santiago and the pilgrimage to the Holy land). It is a route that ends at the tomb of Peter the Apostle in Rome and it is a journey that I travelled personally in 2000, cementing my love and cultural interest in fine wine and a lifelong passion for slow travel.READ MORE
Whether you’re a first timer or a seasoned Romaphile, there is always something to discover from the historical and cultural treasure trove of this city and this is part of what makes it so insanely compelling. Life just seems to happen in Rome it feels spontaneous as you stumble from coffee to the market, to lunch and on to a passeggiata. READ MORE
This spring we travelled to the Adriatic to the wild and wonderful region of Abruzzo to visit Tommaso Masciantonio and his family, caretakers of the most beautiful piece of terroir that they dedicate their lives to.READ MORE
In the autumn of 2018, a storm named Vaia tore through the alpine forests of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. For hours, hurricane-force winds howled across the mountains, and when they passed, they left behind a graveyard of trees — millions of them felled, roots exposed to the sky. For the people of this northeastern corner of Italy, the question was not only how to recover, but how to honor what was lost.READ MORE
A visit to Mt Etna is never without excitement, not least if you are there when she is brooding. This extraordinary stratovolcano offers many wonders, and nearby Catania is a great city to explore as is the more glamorous Taormina to the north, where I was last courtesy of a dear friend who showed us the very best of her city!READ MORE
In his 1624 poem La Secchia Rapita (The Stolen Bucket), Modenese poet Alessandro Tassoni recounts a tale from the 1325 battle in which Venus, Bacchus, and Mars stopped at La Corona, an inn in Castelfranco Emilia that still operates today.READ MORE
In a world that seems to spin ever faster, the quiet rituals of food are becoming harder to hold onto. Flavors once rooted in memory, in landscape, in lineage, are slipping away—swept aside by uniform supermarket shelves, the ease of prepackaged meals, and the steady pressures of a changing climate. When those flavors vanish, they take with them more than just taste—they take stories, knowledge, and the people who have borne them.READ MORE
As we celebrate everything ghoulish and otherworldly over Halloween and the days of Saints and Souls, we take you to two places in Northern Lazio that are full of mystery and magic: I Giardini di Bomarzo for all things wicked and scary, and Civita di Bagnoregio, a town straight out of a fairy tale.
The Grancia of Montisi stands as a key example of Tuscany’s medieval agricultural heritage, embodying the history of the grancias—a network of fortified farms established by Siena’s Santa Maria della Scala hospital in the 14th century.READ MORE
When we think of pasta, often the images of bustling Italian kitchens and the fragrant aroma of simmering sauces come to mind. Beyond the familiar grocery store pasta lies a world of artisanal pasta, crafted with dedication, tradition, and an array of unique grains. Let us share with you what we’ve learned about the artisanal approach to pasta making and the diverse grains that transform this staple into a culinary delight.READ MORE
My favourite scent of the season is of the frugal Helichrysum that lives in sunny climes from the coast to high peaks without asking for much. READ MORE
Anyone planning to come to Tuscany on holiday and wishing to taste some great wine?
I could give you a list as long as my arm of wineries to visit where you will have an incredible experience (feel free to contact me for recommendations) but if you are looking for a more general experience, perhaps somewhere you can turn up early evening and sample a few different wines, then here are some of my favourites:READ MORE
The majestic grey green giants that dominate the Adriatic and Ionian coasts along the heel of Puglia are a vital part of the region’s identity dating back to at least 5,000BC. The first traces of olive consumption were discovered thanks to fossilized olive pips in neolithic rock during excavations of the Torre Canne.READ MORE
It feels as if we haven’t visited the coast in Tuscany enough this year. We tend to love it more out of season than in the heat of the summer when everywhere is pretty crowded and it’s hard to find space to enjoy it fully, so we are now heading in to our perfect beach season. READ MORE
I’m often asked how to best spend your time in Venice when travelling with kids. It’s not the easiest of asks because there is a lot of walking in any Venetian itinerary, made so much better by regular cicchetti stops. None of which is appreciated by small children.READ MORE
Our nearest big city is Florence and whilst we never spend enough time there, the time we do often revolves around a good restaurant. Here are some suggestions of places that we enjoy and hope you might too.
24 hours is no way to treat a city of such vibrancy and cacophony that is Naples. But if you are short of time and you have to chose just one or two things to do, eating is always top of our list. And Naples is dream for the gastro-tourist!READ MORE
Both for business and for pleasure, we have travelled a good deal this year, frankly more than we should have. I am always curious to see how olive oil is represented in top restaurants outside of Italy because like all fine ingredients, it’s a critical choice for a chef.READ MORE
Just a few weeks ago, the pace of life had decelerated significantly in Italy as the languid summer heat became nothing short of an exaggeration. Lack of rainfall for a sustained period of time had taken the shine out of agricultural expectations for this season.READ MORE
The Etruscans once ruled over a very large portion of Italy, south of Naples all the way up to Padova, but the area between modern day Northern Lazio and Southern Tuscany was their heartland, know today as Etruscan Maremma. Today the area that surrounds Monte Amiata (Frantoi Franci lies on the western slopes of this former volcano) is dotted with Etruscan sites and tombs, natural beauty, hot springs and towns that feel as ancient as the old faces that inhabit this scarcely populated area.READ MORE
As we delight in the fungi that present themselves on our table at this time of the year, it is only right to give thought to those that are subterraneous. It is quite incredible to think that many of the world’s most sensational events are as a result of fungal activity and that according to many of this planet’s most capable minds, as much as ninety percent of plants depend on mycorrhizal fungi (stemming from the Greek words for fungus mykes and root rhiza), linking trees in a labyrinth of shared networks aptly known as the ‘wood wide web’.READ MORE
Gone are the days when the disturbing pace at which our climate is evolving was an elephant in the room that we didn’t wish to mention. The past, strange 24 months have surely brought even the most sceptical out of obscurity with constant alarms of flash flooding, wild fires, extreme droughts and excessive temperatures.READ MORE
One of the greatest freedoms in life is to be able to cross borders, experience and live within different cultures and surround ourselves by a multitude of difference. It expands our senses, our sentiments and our capacity to appreciate diversity in an unbound manner.READ MORE
One of the things that most people have had in common during these last very complicated 12 months is the incredible amount of cooking we’ve all had to take on. Particularly when schools were closed, three meals a day, plus lots of merende were being executed, with very little respite. READ MORE
In 2021, Italy marks its 160th Anniversary as a unified independent country. On the 17th of March 1861 Victor Emanuel II was crowned King of Italy. But why “Italy”? Like any such research, much is lost to myth and hear-say, but we know that it was Emperor Augustus who formally gave the land we know as Italy its name in 42AD, and some time later, in 292AD, Emperor Diocletian made it an actual administrative union (also including the islands), and the name stuck for a couple of thousand years and counting.READ MORE
Years back, before Frantoi was even an idea, we must have passed hours on lazy Sunday afternoons reading about and discussing the dream of owning a trullo, the quaint rural dwellings with conical roofs that dot the Puglia countryside.
“Natale con i tuoi, Pasqua con chi vuoi” is a famous refrain in Italy. “Christmas is spent with yours (family), Easter with whom you want.”
Not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Italians. Perhaps they are better know for their exuberance, style, quality of life and very extrovert love of la mamma, but the current Coronavirus crisis has shown this lesser know quality of inhabitants of Il Bel Paese.
Verona tends to be underrated as a destination, which is a grave mistake. It’s both a lovely city full of character and things to do, and a great base from which to visit Venice, the Palladian villas and the lakes.
Italians are incredibly superstitious people. If you go to Naples you will see many little red horns hanging from the rear view mirror of cars and a black cat will literary stop all traffic until someone gormlessly passes the invisible line traced by the feline absorbing all the bad luck. Yet a spider in the house is a sign of good luck – ragno porta guadagno (spider brings earnings). We try to codify some of this Italian feng-shui
Living in Italy we eat very seasonally: it’s taken us a while to fully get used to the fact that you just can’t eat tomatoes in the winter or broccoli in the summer, but because of this, when the season changes we look forward to the arrival of new flavours hugely. Naturally the most highly anticipated autumn ingredient is new season freshly pressed olio nuovo, which brings life to the pumpkin, cavolo nero, root vegetables and mushrooms that we are currently enjoying.READ MORE
Liguria is the land where dramatic jagged mountains meet the turquoise sea. This moon-shaped Italian province is a real delight as we discovered this summer whilst visiting Paolo Cassini and his family at their frantoio just outside Isolabona near to the French border.
Italy is full of quirks, there are many untold rules and etiquettes and you often get the feeling there is a strong national ‘way to do things’. This applies to food with some serious rigour as you might imagine – food is not flippant for Italians. Here we codify what it is to Eat like an Italian.
As the heat swells from the south, blurring the view of the Med with the Sahara sand, we realise we are at more than 700m above sea level, crossing the Monti Iblei on our way to visit Frantoi Cutrera on a very hot summer’s day. The altitude is something the local olive cultivar, Tonda Iblea really seems to appreciate – it’s cold and often misty in the winter, while the summer heat swells the fruit and gives it a stupendous lusciousness and importantly, there is typically a big day to night temperature range and this preserves the aromas in the fruit. All of this culminates in Primo, one of our benchmark oils from the Cutrera family. READ MORE
Few headlines allow you to dream quite like the announcement of ownership of a house in an Italian village for just 1 Euro. Is it too good to be true? READ MORE
Alto Modigliana, located in Emilia Romagna, less than an hour south east of Bologna, is largely off the tourist trail and is stunningly beautiful with verdant valleys and beautifully unpolluted craggy panoramas. It seems a world away from the rich Emiliana plains that lie to the north and the polished landscapes of Tuscany to the south – it feels refreshing to arrive somewhere less manicured, wilder and somehow less sure of itself. READ MORE
Traditional Balsamic Vinegar is an ancient condiment that was used as far back as Roman times and has little more than the name in common with the Balsamic Vinegar found on the table of Italian restaurants around the world.
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Part of a January re-set is some good mental energy for the year ahead, and little gives more pleasure than planning a trip away (or a few).
From past experience, there’s nothing better than a visit to an area where you have a superb local guide. A friend to take you to their favourite restaurants, to point out the most interesting things to do, the best places to watch the sunset and to see it through their eyes. For us, this is profound travelling. Somehow you don’t feel like a visitor. And so 2019 will be more about this we hope.
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We were absolutely blown away by the coverage we received in the press this year. This article in the Daily Mail just knocked us off our feet.
There is something deeply gratifying about setting off on an adventure in search of new flavours. It is one of our main reasons for living in this wildly complicated country and we are regularly dumbstruck by the regional diversity and quality that Italy has to offer.
For any observer of Italy, the new political landscape might seem more of the same – just a new coalition government of the many that have succeeded each other.
Very few debates in Italy provoke more division than which pizza people prefer: Neapolitan or Roman. There are naturally other types of pizza in Italy, but these tend to be a variation of focaccia with toppings – but pizza, real Pizza, is round delicious and either comes from Rome or from Naples.
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November in Italy is the time of the Saffron harvest. This luxurious and highly prized ingredient is an essential part of the Italian larder, used particularly for its spice and colour. This week we visited the organic farm Poggio Alloro just outside San Gimignano to discover more about it.
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Venice is bit of a dream, with the canals, the richness, colours, opulence, the food, people and boats. It’s at once incredibly busy, but very serene. Despite all the published imagery, first time visitors will be overwhelmed from the moment they step foot on their first boat on the canals, for repeat visitors it’s a journey of continuous discovery and memories.
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One of the joys of living in Italy is coffee. You can stop in any town or even petrol stations across the country and find extremely high quality, consistency and at a very affordable price. Compared to the various international chains littering the highstreets across the globe, a coffee in Italy costs between 1 and 2 euros and you will never be disappointed.
At Frantoi we love cookbooks – we own more than 50 and had a specially reinforced shelf to keep most of them at hand in our kitchen. Here we want to share a few words on books that we published in 2016 and that we really loved.
You know it is autumn in Italy when the puffer jackets come out – an essential part of the Italian wardrobe. It’s a sort of uniform if you like, everybody has one and from what I understand, the key selling point is that it keeps your neck warm… ahh, the neck, the key to so many seasonal troubles!
It’s been over a year since I visited Massimiliano and his team at Frantoio di Riva on the northern shore of Lake Garda and I had forgotten how much I like this place and the people behind the Riva operation.
Firenze is a city that continues to amaze and surprise us. Like quite a few Italian cities, its heart is pedestrianized so it’s a wonderful opportunity to get rid of your car and take to the streets on foot.
It’s gorgeous in Italy in late November. If you blinker yourselves from the obvious toyshops you will still see it’s just late autumn everywhere and Christmas isn’t yet the central feature. This will change over the next couple of weeks and the 8th December, the day that the immaculate conception is celebrated here with a national holiday, Christmas begins in earnest. READ MORE
Our first visit to Puglia for Olive Oil purposes took place at Easter, a wonderful time of the year to travel in Italy – not too hot and an opportunity to take in the wonders of the local culture and seasonal rituals.
The Palio is not a race, it’s a game.
This ancient, somewhat furious horse race around the Piazza del Campo in Siena dates back to the middle of the 1500s and is held twice a year (2nd July and 16th August) between the 17 contrade of this beautiful city.
Since moving to Italy in 2013, we’ve been amazed by how attached people are to their olive oil. The relationship is totally different to ours with oil in the UK – it’s extremely personal.