How to tell real gelato from industrial confection

These days gelato is quite expensive in most towns in Italy - sometimes as much as 7 euros for a big cone or cup. It's therefore important that you buy real gelato, meaning gelato made in-house from fresh fruit and other pure natural ingredients, and not some kind of confection produced in a factory. Here are some tips on what to avoid.

Ignore the word "artigianale" on the signs and labels. This word has no legal standing in Italy so anyone can use it, even for factory produced products vaguely resembling gelato.

Industrial gelato

• Unnatural colours: If the colours are bright, almost fluorescent, you're looking at a confection. Genuine banana gelato is more or less beige, almost grey. It is NOT bright yellow. Lemon sorbet is white. The chocolate gelato should be a deep chocolate colour, not a brownish colour of artificial caramel. Frutti del bosco will have a deep blackberry colour.
  
  
• Mountainscape display: If the gelato is piled up high, it's being held together using emulsifiers and hydrogenated fats, often palm oil. Genuine gelato cannot stand up in heaps, especially whipped up or in heaps of round "scoops". It will lie flat in the container ("pozzetto"). Unless there's a queue of customers, the gelato containers will usually be covered with a metal lid to maintain the correct temperature. The gelato will not be decorated with fruit, biscuits etc.
  
  
• Too many flavours:   Depending on the size and popularity of the gelataria, there will be only between 6 and 10 flavours on any given day. A real gelataio makes a small batch of gelato in the morning, sells what is there and starts again the next day.
  
  
• Out of season fruit: This one is obvious. If the fruit used to make the gelato is fresh, it has to be in season. Bright red strawberry ("fragola") gelato displayed in December is made from strawberry essence and artificial syrup, like those strawberry daiquiris sold in New Orleans.
  
  
• Unnatural names: "Bubblegum" is not a flavour of real gelato. Too many or, in fact, any labels like this scream factory-made confection and suggest that everything on display is composed mostly of artificial ingredients.
  
  
• Ingredients list: Every Italian gelateria is legally obliged to display lists of the ingredients. A short list with milk, cream, sugar, fruit and egg yolks is good. A list including "olio vegetale" and numbered colour codes - "E" this and "E" that, "aromi," and emulsifiers again screams factory-made confection. 

 Real gelato

Try to find a place with a short queue of buyers who look as if they live nearby. That's a sure indicator of the real thing!

Best gelato in Tuscany.

Don't forget to visit my Tuscany Travel Guide! Up-to-date news on what to see and where to stay in Chianti and all of Tuscany. Tuscany Travel Guide

Author: Anna Maria Baldini

All content copyright © ammonet Italian Web Site Promotion 2013 - 2026. All rights reserved.

Stay in Fiesole when you visit Florence

The most popular months to visit Florence are also tend to be hot and unfortunately visitors experience that heat not just while staggering around the sights of Florence, but also when they're trying to sleep. There is a solution. Find your vacation accommodations in Fiesole!

View of Fiesole above Florence

A bit of history. The Etruscans lived where Fiesole is now - they called it Vipsul - in large part because they were hedonists who enjoyed the good life, especially cool breezes during mid-summer. The Romans were made of sterner stuff. They built their colony down below in the stifling Arno valley where they could tax north-south traffic that crossed the river over the bridge they built there. This was Florentia, founded around 59 BC, most likely under Julius Caesar, to settle veterans in the Arno valley. Needless to say, the better classes of Roman society migrated to their country houses up in Fiesole during summer. They even built themselves a nice theatre up there.

Roman theatre in Fiesole.

You should consider a stay in Fiesole when you visit Florence. Forget the humid heat at midnight, forget the tour group on the doorstep at 7am, forget the queue at your favorite restaurant, forget a street full of drunk twenty-year-olds below the window until 2am. Instead, after a cool, quiet night of sleep, you walk out of your hotel or B&B and onto a quiet piazza where old men are playing cards outside the bar.  A three-star hotel in Fiesole with a view over Florence costs what a two-star in the centro storico of Florence costs without the view. An agriturismo on the slopes between Fiesole and the city often costs less than a standard hotel room in the historic centre of Florence. From the terrace behind the Fiesole cathedral, Florence unfolds below - the Duomo, the Campanile, the Arno, the hills on the far side.

 View of Florence from Fiesole

What about getting from Fiesole to Florence and back? 

Don't take your car, if you have one. You don't need to grapple with traffic, one way streets and ZTLs. Take the line 7 bus from Piazza Mino in Fiesole to Ponte Rosso and then take the T2 tram to Piazza San Marco in central Florence. Buy a single ATAF ticket from the ticket-dispensing machine (cash or touch your credit card to the machine) or from any tabaccheria before you board, or a day pass if you plan to come and go twice. Don't forget to validate your ticket as you enter the bus. Sit on the left side going down for the view. You can even walk down, starting on Via Vecchia Fiesolana, all the way to Florence in about 90 minutes. The fastest way to get from Fiesole to Florence is to taxi which takes 13 min and costs €12 - €15.

Note that I don't recommend that you try to return to Fiesole on foot! The line 7 bus from Ponte Rosso to Fiesole Piazza Mino takes 18 min and departs every 20 minutes.

 Tuscany Quintessence eBike tour of Fiesole from Florence

HOWEVER I can and do highly recommend the Tuscany Quintessence eBike guided tour from Florence to Fiesole and back.

More about the Tuscany Quintessence eBike tour of Fiesole from Florence.

What to see and do in Fiesole.

Don't forget to visit my Tuscany Travel Guide! Up-to-date news on what to see and where to stay in Chianti and all of Tuscany. Tuscany Travel Guide

Author: Anna Maria Baldini

All content copyright © ammonet Italian Web Site Promotion 2013 - 2026. All rights reserved.

Upcoming Chianti wine festivals

The Chianti Classico wine zone of Tuscany is the home to several really good wine festivals where you can taste a wide range of Chianti Classico wines and talk directly to the producers. On 23 and 24 May 2026, in the attractive village of Radda in Chianti there is a wine tasting event, Radda nel Bichiere, taking place that is well worth a visit if you are in the area. A bit later in the year, on the first weekend of June (6th and 7th) 2026, there is another wine festival taking place in Lamole in Chianti, I Profumi di Lamole. And the Chianti wine festival takes place in Montespertoli from 30 May to 7 June 2026. To take in some or all of these wine tasting occasions, you could find a place to stay on the Panzano in Chianti website.and for the Montespertoli Chianti wine festival on the Montespertoli website.

At Radda nel Bichiere

For September 2026, there are two upcoming Chianti wine festivals to note in your agenda.

Chronologically, the first is the Chianti Classico wine fair taking place in Greve in Chianti, 45-60 minutes south of Florence and reachable by bus from Florence. The official name is the Il Rassegna del Chianti Classico (54th Expo of Chianti Classico wines). In 2026, this wine festival takes place from the 10th to the 13th September 2026 in Piazza Matteotti, the main piazza of Greve in Chianti. Note that you might have to park some distance from the venue due to heavy traffic - this fair is very popular. If you also plan to drink some wine, that's just one more reason to take the bus.

The Terre di Melazzano booth at the Rassegna del Chianti Classico

 

The way it works is that you buy a wine glass from the Cassa and Informazioni booth and this allows you to try a certain number of the wines displayed. You can both buy and order wine and olive oil at the booths. In addition to the wine tasting, a variety of events is offered during the four days, but I wouldn't over-estimate their intrinsic interest. Click here for the 2026 programme. The Greve Chianti wine fair has a good number of Tuscan wineries represented, each offering all of the wines that they produce - mainly Chianti Classico, of course. My only objection to this fair is that when the weather is hot, few of the exhibitors take any steps to keep their wines cool. Some of them are left in direct sunlight and are distinctly warm when you taste them.

The second wine tasting event is Vino al Vino, taking place one week later in Panzano in Chianti, 10 minutes drive in the direction of Sienna from Greve and also accessible by bus from Florence. Vino al Vino takes place from 17 to the 20 of September 2026. To some extent, I prefer Vino al Vino over the Chianti Classico Expo if only because it is smaller, with about 21 wineries presenting their wines and olive oil, and has a more intimate atmosphere. I also find the food on sale better than in Greve. There's live Jazz on Saturday & Sunday from 6 until 8 pm.

Vino al Vino Panzano Chianti wine festival

For accommodation nearby the venues:

Greve in Chianti accommodation.

Panzano in Chianti accommodation.

Villa hotels.

Chianti wine festivals on Facebook.

Don't forget to visit my Tuscany Travel Guide! Up-to-date news on what to see and where to stay in Chianti and all of Tuscany. Tuscany Travel Guide

Author: Anna Maria Baldini

All content copyright © ammonet Italian Web Site Promotion 2013 - 2026. All rights reserved.