Customer Reviews

Touring In Wine Country: Tuscany

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Touring In Wine Country: Tuscany provides a richly illustrated overview for anyone considering a tour of the towns and vineyards of Tuscany. It is disappointing, however, in its lack of detail. It would be easier to navigate your way by following the author's narrative than by attempting to read the maps, which are almost completely useless. There are recommendations for shopping and restaurants, but this information also is quite condensed, written in small pale type, and rather vague as to price range.

A far more useful book is A Traveller's Wine Guide To Italy, by Stephen Hobley.

This is a very helpful book. We have similar guides in the series for Burgundy, Alsace and Rhone. I highly recommend them. Our experience in Italy is that wine tourism per se is much less formal than France, Germany and US. That means the traveller must be a lot more curious and self sufficient. Bring along a fullscale Michelin road atlas and be prepared to ask a lot of questions. Try to learn an little Italian. It goes a long way. People were uniformly friendly and went way out of their way to draw local maps, add add'l restaurants to your list and even call wine makers for tours (on your behalf). Wine makers (such as Tenuta dell'Ornellaia) who otherwise don't open their doors to the public. Buy the book if you plan to tour wine regions in Tuscany!

Just returned from Tuscany and used the book extensively. Here's what I found. THE GOOD POINTS: The hotel and restaurant recommendations were excellent (although one particular hotel in which I stayed based on the book, which was called a "Haven" was just ok). Each city and chapter was broken down nicely with fine points and attractions that I used extensively. THE BAD POINTS: Although there were many, many wineries, and their phone numbers, and maps detailing the countryside in which they were located, the SPECIFICS were horrible. Never on any of the highlighted routes on the maps does it POINT OUT where these wineries are actually LOCATED, and on several occasions I was lost beyond belief trying to find them (even though I had made appointments). That made for a very frustrating wine tour, and considering this is a wine tour book, it needed to be more specific.

Over all I enjoyed this book but did have a few problems that I feel that people should be made aware of before deciding if they wish to purchase this book. The description of the wine roads does not include all of the wineries that she suggests visiting and includes some that are not in her book. The maps are utterly useless, with a black dot indicating that there is either a restaurant, winery or shop in that spot but doesn't indicate what it is. Many of these places indeed have fax numbers which I found on my own searches that she doesn't list. A better description of where each place is located and how to get there from a major landmark would be very helpful. Also some of the listings have letters such as E,F,G after the winery (one said "B" available in 2000) but I can not find anywhere in the book what these mean. I really did enjoy this book, the details of each winery is helpful as well as the restaurants but feel that you will need a companion book to go along with it.

We found the book in our rented hous in Toscany. We were located in the middle of the Chianti Classico area. We follewed one of the trips in the book and we saw one of the best castellos in the Chianti: Castello di Brolio. Absolutely fantastic.

We used this on our last trip to tuscany and it took us to locations that turned into treasures.

a wondweful book for wine and food lovers, traveling in Toscana. Very useful information about roads, hotels, restaurants, and of course - wine producers and their wines. This book is a must!