Tuscany food, wine and cookery retreat

Planet

CARBON REDUCTION

We are passionate about connecting people with the source of their food, emphasising the importance of respecting ingredients and the environment that creates them. We only promote businesses who are at minimum organic or preferably use green energy and/or sustainable innovation. Our producers not only make magnificent food, but respect nature, innovate with clean energy, and put quality and integrity above profit margins. We believe in trying to inspire our guests to move away from sourcing their food from mass produced ingredients many of which have considerable emissions.

Our courses include mozzarella farmers making biofuel from their own buffalos' waste, olive oil producers using the stones of the used olives to power their factory, and beer brewers who power themselves from the earth's geothermal energy.

We use more or less only local products for our cookery lessons and the meals we cook for the guests and stick to the seasons so as to keep food miles low. We prepare mainly vegetarian food and encourage our guests to enjoy plant based food, as we are very aware of the impact that mass production of animal products is having on climate change.

Most of our expeditions are extremely local, we want to celebrate our immediate area and all its beauty, as well as reducing the need to travel far and wide needlessly, which also has repercussions on carbon emissions. We also encourage our guests to arrive to our local train station where we meet them, via trains and local transport.

ENVIRONMENT AND WILDLIFE

Many of our artisan producer partners where we take our guests, actively reduce their environmental impact. For example we work with a number of wineries who have biodynamic principles, which include creating biodiverse conditions in the vineyards allowing many forms of life to flourish. None of our producers use fungicides and pesticides and actively condemn them.

We also work with pioneers in sustainable food and drink, like going on educational boat trips with our guests with a fisherman who has been globally recognised for his efforts to protect the marine life along the tuscan coast against damaging trawler fishing. Due to his interventions, dolphins have actually returned to the area.

Our retreats contribute to the funding of such schemes with our groups joining the tours. And as mentioned before, everyone we work with is in some way encouraging and working towards making food in a way that is harmonious with the planet rather than damaging. We discuss the idea with out guests and hopefully provide inspiration for reducing their impacts in nature when sourcing their food.

One of our guides is a qualified expert in the nature of the area and talks passionately to our groups about preserving the nature in the area. There is a maremma national park along the coast that he educates people about.

People

LOCAL ECONOMY

In our day to day operations in southern Tuscany, we provide business and exposure for small, sustainable and responsible businesses who are operating in an economically challenging environment. All the food and wine producers we work with are local and independent. We visit them for educational tours and experiences for our guests. The accommodation provider is also locally owned. In their own time, our guests also contribute to the local economy by using all the services in the village in which we re based.

Young people are abandoning this area due to a lack of opportunities, and we hope we can help combat this difficult local situation.

Our aim is that our guests have a memorable experience, while we also drive business towards people and local independent businesses who are operating in a way that is sustainable and responsible.

EMPLOYMENT, INCLUSIVITY AND DIVERSITY

100% of the people we employ are from the local area, all of whom we ensure that we pay well above the minimum wage.

All of our trips are LGBTQ+ friendly of course.