Food Tours · Tour

Oltrarno Sunset Food and Wine Walk: Wine Windows and Gnudi

The Arno divides Florence into the half the day-trippers see and the half that the people who live here never left. This walk crosses into the second one at sunset and spends three and a half hours there. It opens with prosecco in Piazza Santo Spirito, then goes into a cellar dating to the twelfth century for charcuterie and wine served through a wine window. Wine windows are the thing the Oltrarno is quietly famous for: small hatches cut into palazzo walls so wine could be sold without anyone touching, built during the plague years and reopened in the last few years. A second stop covers their history, over bruschetta with stracciatella. In between there is a family deli whose owner the neighbourhood calls the King of Cheese, and who will make the case for the title while you work through two pecorini and a parmigiano. At a trattoria run by a mother and son, gnudi, the filling of a ravioli without the pasta, are tossed and plated in front of you with a glass of Chianti Classico. Then a fiaschetteria that has supplied the restaurants around it since the 1950s, where you learn to build a Negroni properly and eat wild boar stew with a Super Tuscan. The night ends on gelato, from the shop Florentines themselves voted the best in the city, after a short lesson in telling the real thing from the neon tubs on the tourist streets. Nine or ten bites, four wines, six or seven stops. Up to thirteen people, two minimum, guided in English. Under-fours come free without food. Stops and tastings vary with the day and the season.