Wednesday, July 22, 2026 Nico Cirasino

From the Brunello harvest in Tuscany to the tonnare in Sicily: 8 Italian gastronomic experiences to live at least once

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The Brunello harvest in Montalcino, Tuscany
The "tonnare of Favignana" and Marzamemi, Sicily
Black truffle hunting in Umbria
Olive pressing at an Apulian oil mill
Brunello and Nobile cellar tasting in Tuscany
Sardinian pecorino and the cheese-making tradition
An apulian cooking class in a masseria
The dawn fish market in Gallipoli or Trapani

Italian food is not truly understood if consumed only in restaurants. It is understood when you enter a vineyard during harvest and pick the grapes that will become Brunello, when you walk through a tonnara's warehouses and grasp why Favignana transformed canned tuna in olive oil into one of the great inventions of modern food preservation, when you taste extra-virgin olive oil freshly pressed for the first time, still green and peppery in the throat. These are experiences that change the way you eat for the rest of your life.

The characteristic common to all eight experiences in this list is one: they are best lived from a private estate. A villa, a masseria, a farmhouse. A place that is yours for a week, where you can return in the evening after spending the afternoon in a winery, your nose full of grape marc and your head full of what you have learnt. Raro Villas has properties in the territories where these experiences are found, and this guide connects them.

1. The Brunello harvest in Montalcino, Tuscany

September and October in Montalcino are unlike any other time of year. The air smells of must, the vineyards surrounding the medieval hilltop town in the Sienese hills change colour within days, and in the Brunello cellars, one of the world's most celebrated and long-lived red wines, one of those moments is lived that producers wait 365 days to witness.

The tourist harvest in Montalcino allows participation in the picking, learning to taste the grapes to understand the real meaning of "ripe" by distinguishing skin, pulp and seeds, and witnessing the first stages of vinification. Structured experiences typically include lunch in the cellar, a visit to the barriques and a tasting of an already-released Brunello compared with the new wine. A before and after that few people forget.

Villa Ambrosini in Montalcino is the ideal base for this experience: a prestigious villa with a pool immersed in the vineyards, with the option of a professional chef in the villa and a housekeeper for meal preparation, minutes from the area's most important cellars.

2. The "tonnare of Favignana" and Marzamemi, Sicily

The tonnara is one of Sicily’s most profound cultural and architectural landmarks—and one that can only be fully appreciated in person. In Favignana, in the Egadi archipelago, the former Florio Stabilimento delle tonnare di Favignana e Formica is today a museum that narrates how Vincenzo Florio, in 1841, invented here the method of preserving tuna in olive oil, transforming an island into one of the most important industrial sites of nineteenth-century Sicily.

In Marzamemi, in the south-east of Sicily, the tonnara stands at the centre of one of the island's most photographed fishing villages. The large central square, the tonnara warehouses, the fishermen's cottages and the village’s tuna-curing tradition lives on in its local artisan food shops. Combining both tonnare in a single Sicilian itinerary allows one to understand how this tradition expressed itself in different ways in the island's north-west and south-east.

Villa Smeraldo at Verdura Resort in Sciacca, Sicily, is a private sea-front villa with three bedrooms at the heart of the Rocco Forte resort, the perfect base for exploring the tonnare and the western Sicilian coast.

3. Black truffle hunting in Umbria

Umbria is the Italian region where the black truffle of Norcia and Spoleto has its true homeland. The winter black truffle season runs from December to March, but the summer black truffle (scorzone) is available from June to September, making this experience possible even in the warm season. Truffle hunting with the dog is one of the most requested gastronomic experiences in Italian experiential tourism: you follow the truffle hunter and his truffle dog through oak and hornbeam woods, learn to recognise the signs that indicate the presence of the underground fungus, and finish with a tasting of the same truffles found, grated over fresh pasta or scrambled eggs.

Raro Villas has a selection of villas in Umbria among the hills of Perugia and Trasimeno, from which the truffle areas of Norcia, Spoleto and Cascia can be reached in under an hour. For those who want to combine black truffle, Sagrantino di Montefalco and an Umbrian country farmhouse, this is the most authentic combination that central Italy can offer.

4. Olive pressing at a Pugliese oil mill

Apulian extra-virgin olive oil is among the world's finest by both quantity produced and quality. Olive pressing, the extraction of oil from freshly harvested olives, takes place between October and December, and is one of those spectacles that permanently changes the way you use olive oil in the kitchen.

Puglia counts over 60 million olive trees, many of them centuries old. Witnessing the harvest, following the full cycle from picking to pressed oil, and tasting the "freschissimo", the oil just extracted, still greenish-hazy and with a peppery catch in the throat that disappears after a few weeks, is a sensory experience with no equivalent.

Masseria Lamagrotte in Ostuni, surrounded by ancient olive groves just 800 meters from the sea, produces its own extra-virgin olive oil and invites guests to experience the process right on site. Meanwhile, Masseria Il Frantoio producing four distinct estate extra-virgin oils from its own trees, serves as the benchmark culinary destination for an authentic olive oil experience.

5. Brunello and Nobile cellar tasting in Tuscany

Tuscany wine is not only Chianti. Montalcino, Montepulciano and the Val d'Orcia produce some of the world's most important red wines, with ageing that ranges from 5 to 25 years and international rankings that regularly place them among the world's best 100 wines.

A guided tasting by a professional sommelier in the cellar, with access to the ageing barriques and a comparison of different vintages of the same wine, is an experience that requires no more than two hours but leaves an understanding of Italian wine that no abstract course can provide. Some Montepulciano cellars also preserve Etruscan tombs in their underground chambers, transforming the visit into a journey through millennia of history. Villa Ambrosini in Montalcino is also the ideal base for these appointments.

6. Sardinian pecorino and the cheese-making tradition

Sardinia is the Italian region with the highest density of sheep farming per square kilometre, and Sardinian pecorino DOP is one of Europe's oldest and most identity-defining cheeses. Visiting a small-scale dairy in the Sardinian hinterland, seeing the processing of sheep's milk, following the ageing in natural stone caves and tasting fresh, semi-aged and aged cheese side by side is a sensory journey that tells the story of inland Sardinia better than any museum.

The area of Arzachena and the Gallura, where Raro Villas has some of its most exclusive properties, is about an hour from the Barbagia hinterland where this tradition is still alive. Villa Le Vele in Arzachena, with a private 1,500 sqm garden and panoramic terrace, is the base from which to build this kind of gastronomic excursion.

7. An apulian cooking class in a masseria

Apulian cuisine is among Italy's most replicable and satisfying to learn, because it is based on a few ingredients of absolute quality and on techniques that anyone can master in a few hours: hand-made durum wheat pasta (orecchiette, cavatelli, strascinati), Bari-style focaccia, fried pittule, pureed broad beans with wild chicory. A cooking class in a masseria, led by a local cook or a chef from the territory, is the most direct way to take something concrete home beyond the memory of the trip.

Raro Villas can arrange private in-villa cooking classes upon request, complete with a private chef and hand-selected local market ingredients. For masserias equipped with professional outdoor kitchens, such as Masseria Borgopietra in Ostuni with its panoramic terraces and 4 hectares of olive trees, the kitchen session becomes an immersive experience that involves the entire day.

8. The dawn fish market in Gallipoli or Trapani

Gallipoli and Trapani share the rarest characteristic of Italian fish markets: absolute freshness and timing. At 5:30 in the morning, as the harbour comes alive with the first boats returning from the night's fishing, the market stalls fill with what the night sea has produced: still-live sea urchins, still-moving octopus in the crates, sea bream, grouper, lobster. It is not an experience for lazy morning habits, but it is one of the most authentic that Italy offers.

In Gallipoli, the covered fish market in the heart of the old town is one of Salento's most vibrant gastronomic institutions. In Trapani, the Arab tradition of fish couscous meets the harbour market in a context where tuna fishing has left deep traces in the local food culture. For those staying in a villa in Salento or in the Trapani area with Raro Villas' Sicilian properties, this is the experience that best tells the story of the relationship between the sea and food in the Mediterranean.

To curate a stay featuring these signature experiences across Raro Villas destinations, the team is available via the contact form for a personalized proposal that seamlessly blends culinary experiences, luxury villa living, and the local region.