Start the Day with an Italian CoffeeEat Your Way around Livorno!

If you are a lover of Italian food, or just food in general, you can easily spend a day or a weekend in Livorno making your way around a selection of the many cafés, bars, restaurants and market stalls sampling some of the local gourmet specialities.  After all, Italian life rotates around food, so you cannot leave without trying at least a few of the great things to eat and drink.

Just some of the Ice Cream flavours on offer at Gelateria Fior di Latte in Via RomaIf there's one thing you have to do when you're in Livorno, it's have an ice cream! At least one. I don't think Italian ice cream can be bettered, and there are many ice cream shops, or gelaterias, where you can put my theory to the test.

Delicious Torta di Ceci, a Livornese specialityNo visit to Livorno is complete without trying one of the city’s local specialities. Perhaps the most obvious of these, Livorno being a port with lots of fishing activity, is the fish stew known as “Cacciucco”. This rich dish with a tomato base contains five different kinds of fish and served in a soup dish on a thick slice of bread rubbed with garlic. These days the dish has become a symbol of Livorno.

If you would like to taste some of Tuscany's fine wines, there are several places in Livorno that can arrange wine-tasting sessions by prior arrangement. Some are wine sellers, some wine bars. They are:

Cantina Nardi 
Choco and Wine

Enoteca Faraoni

La Botte e il Tappo

Bottles of Tuscan WineAn Introduction to Tuscan Wine

Italian wines are some of the most famous in the world,  and Tuscan wines include some of the best wines in Italy. The aim of this article is to provide a simple guide to Tuscan wines. Although I like wine, I am not an expert, so I do not intend here to give detailed descriptions of individual wines.  Instead I would like to provide readers with an outline of the different wines available in Tuscany, the grape varieties indigenous to Tuscany, and the ‘wine roads’ (Strade del Vino) around the many Tuscan vineyards.

Not just Chianti

Most of the wine produced in Tuscany is red wine, made above all from the Sangiovese grape. The best-known name is undoubtedly Chianti, but this is only one of the many types of wine produced in the region of Tuscany and there are actually 8 different areas of Chianti itself. But Tuscan wine is not about Chianti alone. Far from it. Below you can consult a list of the most popular and well-known Tuscan wines, including the few whites that the region produces using mainly the Trebbiano grape (except for Vernaccia). Vin Santo ('holy wine'), made from dried grapes, is also widely produced. It can be dry or sweet and is drunk as a dessert wine with special almond biscuits (cantuccini).