Mugnanesi is a very small hamlet set in the municipality of Castiglione del Lago. There are maybe 10 houses and one church. There is no bar, but one restaurant: Osteria di Mugnanese. Osteria di Mugnanese is only open when you've made a reservation in the weekend,...
Pasta alla Norcina is a typical Umbrian pasta dish. The name derives from the small village Norcia. Norcia is in the Sibillini mountains and famous for its sausages, cheeses and cold cuts. People here are quite proud of their local kitchen and rightly so! Umbria also...
Il Vecchio Mulino has a name in Tuoro sul Trasimeno, where I live. This pizzeria already exists from the late seventies and it is some years now that the current owners Luciana and Raffaele took over. We regularly eat here but it never occurred to me to dedicate a...
Olive harvest in Umbria Every year in October and November is the time to harvest the olives in Umbria. In 2014 we had a terrible harvest: a combination of bad weather (a mild winter and rain in summer) led to Italy's most disastrous olive harvest. The olive fruit fly...
Chiusi is one of these typical hilltop towns in the South Tuscany, on the Umbria/Tuscany border. It used to be an Etruscan city. Chiusi overlooks the valley of Valdichiana. Chiana used to be a side river of the Tiber. Lake Chiusi and Lake Montepulciano are two...
Funghi porcini, or Boletus Edulis, is a wild mushroom which is not too difficult to find in the forests in Italy. Many go out to find these precious mushrooms, often just after the summer season in September and October. Once I accompanied a friend into the forest in...
Last week I was invited to come to Montefalco where the owners of La Vigna, an agriturismo near Saragano in Umbria, were to expose their wines at Enologica. This is a wine tasting event to celebrate the grape harvest and the production of yet again new top wines in...
Sara is a well know dachshund in Castiglione del Lago, Umbria. The owners of Sara have an Italian delicacy shop in the city centre, called La Dispensa del Lago. Every day you find the dachshund in the shop, hidden under a cupboard. But when somebody passes by to hug...
At the beginning of September I enjoyed a week's holiday in Puglia. More precisely in the Gargano, the peninsula just above Italy's heel in the north of Puglia. The spur of the boot, so to say. This is the province of Foggia where there also is the sanctuarium of...
Last weekend we organized a spontaneous wine tasting for a group of Belgian guests. Five families and friends who were in Italy for the first time. Every year they go on holiday together and this time they decided to come to Umbria to Montone Rental. They contacted us...
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