bicycle / food / wine

Twice, I bicycled the length of Italy (once 34 days, the second, 31). And 9 times I bicycled from Marsala to Lecce (from 6 to 10 weeks).

There is no better way to learn about the food and wine of a place quite like bicycling the terrain between the vineyards, restaurants and olive groves. The only downside? All of the hours of daily travel logistics. Rooms to find and rent. Which roads to take. Packing, unpacking and repacking, every day.

This is why we developed our Cucina / Vino / Bici class they way we did, to give you the essence of traveling Southern Italian food and wine, just leaving out all the worrisome, boring bits.

To avoid all the unpacking, repacking every day we stay in one location, a castle in the centre of a small Southern Italian town. You’ll have one room, one bed, one bathroom and one place for your toothbrush, all week long. You’ll develop new and very pleasant daily habits and routines, rather than starting every morning trying to figure out where you are.

You’ll cook every day. You’ll learn about the history, the culture of a the places you’re cycling, not only by seeing them but by cooking the local food. See that older woman carrying the basket home from the market? You’ll learn to cook like her too, in one of the most beautiful kitchens in all of Italy.

You’ll quadruple your knowledge of wine. From tasting critically, to how to read an Italian label to finding your next favorite grape. More good news: the wines from here are extraordinary and still very much undervalued. More more good news: we’ll help you locate where they are already being imported into your local community.

But the real value will be learning to see food and wine as the product of a specific place, all of it local, all of it excellent. And how often does that happen in modern life?