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Small Group Private Tour Specialist

Plan your Italy adventure with the small group private tour specialist. Escape overtourism and discover the back roads and authentic small towns with us. Kathy and Vernon create your perfect trip, with off-the-beaten path destinations, activities from walks and bike rides to city tours and shopping, and expert-led culinary adventures.

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Food and Wine

Any tour of Italy is incomplete without indulging in the amazing food and wine. But to truly appreciate It requires an understanding of the regional history, culture and geography. All become part of your adventure with Kathy, chef, food blogger, and Certified Italian Wine Professional, and Vernon, mountain guide, MS in European Literature and avid history enthusiast.

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Your Unique Adventure

Not all private trips are custom. Most tour companies don't have the flexibility to deviate from their set itineraries, so there are always compromises. With Kathy and Vernon, your adventure will be as unique as you are, and your itinerary will be personally designed us to meet the desires and varied interests of your group.

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The ItaliaOutdoors Difference


Truly Personalized Service and a Custom Plan for Every Trip

Kathy and Vernon

NO MIDDLEMEN

You communicate directly with Vernon and Kathy. We know your dreams for an Italy adventure, we’ll have it ready for you when you arrive.

No Group Too Small

SMALL FOOTPRINT

Our small footprint allows us to travel like locals and enjoy spontaneous adventures as we explore the path less traveled.

 

Custom Plan

UNIQUE ITINERARY

Each tour itinerary is unique and serves as a framework for an exceptional journey, where a thoughtful plan adjusts to your pace.

 

Authenticity

KNOWLEDGE

We focus on just a few select tours to provide an exceptional level of regional knowledge and an unforgettable authentic experience.

Travel after COVID-19: How do you wish to travel in Italy when we are able to return? In a small private group of your family and friends? Plenty of outdoor explorations? Off the beaten track destinations far from tourist crowds? Private cooking classes, wine tours, small intimate hotels? That's how we've been traveling for ten years. Plan your adventure in Italy with Italiaoutdoors Food and Wine, the custom tour specialist.

Customize Your Adventure - Food - Wine - Walk - Hike - Bike

With Italy's "Best Local Guide 2013"

Read about our tours in Adventure Cyclist August 2015

Our passion is creating intimate, personalized active food and wine adventures that explore an authentic Italy
- its outdoor beauty, its hidden back roads, its small family producers, its traditional wines, at your preferred pace.
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The most famous, and most popular, after dinner drink in Northeastern Italy is grappa. It is primarily served as a digestivo, to aid in the digestion of a heavy meal. It can be served by itself, or added to espresso “caffe corretto”, an “ammazzacaffe”, where a few ounces of grappa are served after you finish your espresso, or a “resentin” (little rinser), where you rinse out your espresso cup with a few drops of grappa. However you choose to enjoy it, you will find a vast variety of grappa to taste on your visit.

grappa veneto wine tours italy custom
Grappa at Poli


Grappa is similar to other distilled liquors, but is unique in that it is the only spirit made from distilling the skins, pulp, seeds and stems (called vinaccia) leftover from the winemaking process. Legend has it that a Roman solider first distilled grappa in Bassano del Grappa using equipment he stole from Egypt, but this is not the case, as the distillation techniques in use then could not produce grappa. According to Ove Boudin, in his book Grappa: Italy bottled, in ancient times the royalty would drink the wine, and the poor would make their own makeshift wine by adding water to the leftovers - nothing went to waste - calling it vinello. Around 1600, the Jesuits formalized and perfected distillation techniques, making it possible to distill vinaccia, and grappa was born.

friuli grappa culinary tours italy
Grappa from Friuli


For many years, grappa was distilled with whatever vinaccia the producers would have available. Nowadays, as with most distilled liquors, modern producers have introduced refinements to the production process, greatly improving the final quality, and resulting in many diverse varieties. Today, the use of varietal grapes and aging in casks of various types of woods allows the producers to offer magnificent grappas that reflect the  high quality and the unique nature of the original grapes. At the forefront here is Nonino, a Friuli based producer that was the first to introduce a single varietal grappa, made from Picolit, in 1973.

Grappa is now a name protected by the European Union. To be called grappa, the liquor must be produced in Italy, or certain parts of Switzerland or San Marino, be produced from vinaccia (also known as pomace), and fermentation and distillation must occur on  the pomace, with no added water.

grappa tasting wine tours italy bike walk
Grappa tasting on our Italy tours


We visit Bassano del Grappa on our tours in Italy, and have the opportunity to visit two very well known producers that are right across the street from each other. Nardini is located at the end of the famous Ponte degli Alpini in Bassano, and is popular with the locales; you will see quite a crowd there, spilling out onto the bridge itself in the late afternoon. Poli is located here as well, and has a very interesting museum that leads you through the production process. Many small antique bottles are on display, and a ‘sniffing’ room, where you can explore the aromas of about 20 or so different grappas.