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Cooking & Amarone Wine Tour: Pre & Post Mediterranean Cruise Tours to/from Venice Cruise Ship Port
Before or after your Mediterranean cruise out of Venice, go west of Venice to discover the beautiful Vapolicella wine country hills (home to Amarone wine), magnificent Lake Garda and plains where high quality rice grows.
If you love Amarone wine (one of Italy’s top reds) and its relatives, Valpolicella, Ripasso and Recioto, this is the Italian cooking school and wine tour for you! Drink these and other wines with three quite different producers in wineries small and big and learn first hand how they make them.
Cook Veneto and Italian dishes with one great home cook and one chef. Examples: variety of risotto (ex. with radicchio), pasta with finferli mushrooms, variety of breads, braised veal with Amarone sauce, lake trout with sour sauce of onions, raisins and pine nuts. At Lake Garda, where they make excellent olive oil, visit an olive oil museum.
Meet a delightful variety of Veneto locals like: a delightful woman and bread maker in her country home with amazing views of Lake Garda, a world famous risotto chef/promoter, winery owners/experts. You’ll feel part of real Italian life in the Veneto!
Your well travelled, multi-lingual guide, also a sommelier, was born in Verona and loves showing people her region. You visit her family’s beautiful wine estate where she lives and they make Soave, rose Dindarella, Valpolicella and Amarone. They also produce olive oil. You feel like a local friend is taking you to her favourite people and places!
Read about our “Italians you will meet” on this Italian cooking school tour.
Included:
- 3 nights at a 5 star villa hotel in the Valpolicella wine country with breakfast
- Private transport from/to Venice cruise ship port
- Local minivan driver throughout, except in free time
- Local bilingual guide with you throughout, except in free time
- 2 hands-on, private cooking classes
- 1 dinner
- 3 lunches
- 3 private visits at a variety of wineries with tours and tastings
- Lake Garda guided walk
- Rice mill tour
- Olive oil museum tour
Not included:
- Wines with meals so you can choose the wines you want
- 2 dinners
3 Night Italian Cooking School Tour Itinerary
Day 1
Pre-cruise tour: Private transfer from Venice (central place TBA)
Post cruise tour: Disembark ship after breakfast in Venice.
Private transfer from Venice to Valpolicella wine country. Drive from Venice to Valpolicella wine country. Check into exquisite, historic, family run 5 star villa hotel in the Valpolicella wine country near Verona.
Light lunch in a typical restaurant. Tour & tasting at your guide’s family’s winery including Amarone wines (and see Amarone grapes drying with a heavenly perfume all around you) with optional walk among vineyards and olive trees up a slight slope.
Drive to picturesque little hill town, San Giorgio in the Valpolicella wine country hills, with views all the way to Lake Garda. Guided walk in the village. Dinner in an excellent restaurant in San Giorgio.
Day 2
Drive to Lake Garda. Hands-on cooking class on many kinds of Italian breads with a great home cook in her home in the hills with stunning lake & Bardolino views. Lunch there. Optional forest walk.
Drive to a large, well known winery in the same family for five generations and near Bardolino, overlooking Lake Garda. Taste their Bardolino, Valpolicella, Amarone, Bianco di Custoza wines and more. Tour their informative wine museum with their excellent guide before your private tasting in their elegant tasting room in their cellars.
Near Bardolino visit an interesting olive oil museum to learn all about the light Lake Garda olive oil.
6:00 pm stroll along Lake Garda, stopping at local bar for aperitifs and wines. Dinner on your own at your hotel.
Day 3
Drive to the town of Isola della Scala on the flat plain south of Verona, world famous for its fine rice and risottos and the ancient rice mill in operation since the 1650s. The rice producing Ferron family has owned it since 1921. You’ll learn how they make rice, see their rice mill and learn more in their rice museum.
Gabriele Ferron is world renowned as the enthusiastic ambassador of the Vialone Nano Veronese rice and travels the world giving cooking classes and seminars. You’ll learn the secrets of making the perfect risotto from Gabriele or one of his outstanding chefs in a hands-on, private class. Afterwards, dine on an appetizer, three risottos and a dessert.
Relax for a bit in the Ferron park, before driving to the famous Allegrini winery estate and villa. Visit the villa and its beautiful formal gardens with the Allegrini guide. In their well appointed tasting room, their guide takes you through a tasting of a range of their fine wines including Amarones, of course.
Return to your hotel for a light dinner on your own.
Day 4
Pre cruise tour: After breakfast, private transfer to Venice cruise dock.
Post cruise tour: After breakfast, private transfer to Venice airport or Verona train station.
View itinerary for 8-14 people split into two groups.
