Early summer, full of promise — the milk is perfect for cheese making and the creamy drooping acacia flowers attract the bees. Spend seven illuminating days exploring the mysteries of cheese: tasting it, making it, visiting cheese makers and cooking with it. Stroll in wildflower meadows and acacia woods, and discover the variety and intensity of the pure flavours of single-flower honey. Activities include:

• Dinner and cheese-tasting comparing British and Italian sheep’s milk cheeses hosted by Slow Food Lucca and presented  by Neal’s Yard Dairy (London)
• Make your own farmer’s cheese
• Visit Signora Gonella and watch her make pecorino and ricotta with milk from her own flocks
• Visit the small family-owned Caseificio Bertagni (dairy) where tradition and modernity meet
• Learn to cook local dishes based on cheese and spring vegetables and herbs with Lucchese chef Gianluca Pardini
• Cheese, salumi and wine tasting at Andrea Bertucci’s parallel gastronomic universe, the Osteria ‘Il Vecchio Mulino’, beneath the 12th-century fortress in Castelnuovo di Garfagnana
• Visit the mediaeval walled town of Barga, its duomo and 17th-century baroque theatre
• Guided tour of the Villa Torrigiani, a feast of baroque loggias, stairways, and statues
• Walk in the early summer woods full of flowering acacia and wildflowers
• Watch Armando Scaramucci and his wife process acacia honey and sample the intense and varied flavours of honey produced on the Forci estate
• Free day in the walled town of Lucca for sightseeing and shopping, or rent a bicycle and tour the tops of the 17th-century walls
• Tour sculpture studio beneath famous Carrara marble quarries
• Grand finale: dinner at Michelin-starred restaurant La Mora
• Optional concert or other cultural event
• 6 nights at Villa Volpi

Accommodation: Hotel Villa Volpi, Mastiano (Lucca, Tuscany)
An elegantly restored, 18th-century, traditional farmhouse with 4* amenities including en-suite bathrooms, air-conditioning/central heating, swimming pool. Some events take place at the adjacent Villa Volpi restaurant which is run by Piero Morelli, leader of the Serchio di Lucca Slow Food Convivium.

Land Cost:

Price: Euro 2150 per person base on two sharing
Single supplement: Euro 190