Forget Summer! THIS Is Italy.

Travel

Audio By Carbonatix

Italy in summer is wonderful.

It is also hot, crowded and occasionally requires standing shoulder-to-shoulder with several thousand of your closest new friends while attempting to admire the Trevi Fountain.

So I’m going to suggest something slightly radical.

Forget summer.

Go to Italy when Italy is eating.

Because from late September through November, something wonderful happens. The beaches empty. The evenings cool. The vineyards turn gold. And towns across the country begin celebrating the things they’ve spent the year growing.

This isn’t shoulder season.

It’s dinner season.

Start With the Rice

Right now, in Isola della Scala, south of Verona, they’re holding the annual Fiera del Riso, running through October 11.

This isn’t somebody putting three risottos on folding tables in the town square.

The festival traces its roots to 1967 and celebrates Riso Nano Vialone Veronese IGP, the local rice particularly prized for risotto. There are cooking demonstrations, tastings, competitions and plate after plate built around one of northern Italy’s great ingredients.

Order the risotto.

Actually, order two.

You’re doing research.

Then Tuscany Drinks the Harvest

On September 27, Impruneta, just south of Florence, celebrates the 100th edition of its Festa dell’Uva.

Four neighborhoods compete in the town’s main piazza with enormous theatrical presentations built around grapes, wine, costumes, music and elaborate floats.

It has been happening since 1926. This year marks a century.

And that’s precisely why I love stories like this.

Florence is magnificent. Go see David.

But twenty minutes down the road, an Italian town is throwing a party because the grapes came in.

That’s Italy too.

And Then Comes the Truffle

Now point the car northwest.

Beginning October 10, Alba becomes one of the world’s great food destinations as the International Alba White Truffle Fair returns for its 96th edition through December 6.

The white truffle is the star, but Alba is merely the front door.

You’re in the Langhe.

Barolo country.

Rolling vineyards, medieval villages, hazelnuts, tajarin pasta and wines that make lingering over lunch seem less like indulgence and more like a civic responsibility.

At the fair’s World Truffle Market, you can smell—and buy—the prized tubers while meeting the people who hunt them.

And yes, you will smell them.

Probably before you see them.

Doors Open, Too

Here’s one more reason to time the trip carefully.

On October 10–11, FAI—the Italian National Trust—holds its annual Autumn Days, opening hundreds of extraordinary places around Italy, including villas, palaces, gardens, churches and historic sites that are normally difficult or impossible for the public to enter.

Think about that itinerary.

Risotto near Verona.

The grape harvest in Tuscany.

White truffles and Barolo in Piedmont.

And historic Italian doors opening specifically because you happened to arrive at the right moment.

Summer Italy gives you Italy at its most famous.

Autumn gives you something different.

You begin noticing that Italians aren’t staging these seasons for us.

The rice needed harvesting.

The grapes needed picking.

The truffles were hiding beneath the ground long before we booked the flight.

These traditions would continue whether we showed up or not.

And perhaps that’s precisely the reason to go.

Not merely to see Italy.

But to arrive when Italy is busy being Italy.

Pack a sweater.

Bring an appetite.

Forget summer. This is Italy.