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For a Chianti wine tour with lunch, book the morning or the full-day departure of our Chianti Wine Safari. Both stop at a winery restaurant for a sit-down Tuscan meal of local appetizers and handmade pasta, with the wines poured alongside. The afternoon departure is different. It has no lunch and ends instead with an open-air dinner, after a glass of wine at a viewpoint at sunset.
All three versions leave from Florence in an air-conditioned 4WD, with the same guide from start to finish. Over the day you taste nine wines, plus an extra virgin olive oil tasting and a board of local cheese and salumi, with a long sit-down lunch in the middle.
Morning or Full Day?
The morning tour lasts about seven hours. It visits one family-owned estate that farms organically, and the tasting there comes with cured meats and regional cheeses before you sit down to eat. Lunch is paired with wine too, so you get a second look at the same bottles with food in front of you.
Organic farming in Chianti mostly shows up in the vineyard: no synthetic herbicides or fertilisers, grass often left between the rows, copper and sulphur for disease. On the tour the family that works the vines explains how that plays out on their own land.
The full day runs to nine hours and covers two wineries, both in historic Tuscan villas, with a visit down into their old cellars. Between stops the 4WD leaves the tarmac and follows tracks through private vineyards, pulling over wherever the view opens up. Lunch is at a winery restaurant.
Our view: if this is your one day out of Florence and you like wine more than casually, take the full day. Two estates let you compare how two producers handle the same grape, and a large villa estate and a small family producer can feel very different. If you'd like a few hours back in the city before dinner, or you're travelling with someone who likes the idea of Chianti more than the wine itself, the morning is plenty.
What's on the Table?
The tour page promises local appetizers and handmade pasta, and that's an honest description. The exact dishes depend on the estate's kitchen and on the season.
The dishes below are examples of Chianti cooking, not a list of what you'll be served. A local antipasto often means crostini, often topped with chicken liver pâté, next to cured meats like finocchiona, the soft fennel salami, and a few slices of pecorino. Pasta tends to be tagliatelle or pappardelle with a meat ragù. In autumn and winter, wild boar turns up on a lot of menus around here.
The wines are Chianti Classico DOCG, the bottles with the black rooster on the neck. Every one is at least 80 percent Sangiovese. The rest of the blend can be other red grapes, local ones like Canaiolo and Colorino or international ones like Merlot.
The olive oil tasting is worth paying attention to. Olives in Chianti are picked and pressed from late October into November, and oil that has just been pressed is bright green, grassy and peppery enough to catch at the back of your throat. Later in the year it mellows. Either way, taste it on plain bread first, before anything else goes on top.
One thing to know before you book: the lunch can't be adapted. Vegetarian meals, lactose-free dishes and other alternative diets aren't available on this tour. With cured meats, cheese and meat sauces at the centre of the meal, it isn't a good fit for anyone who skips meat or dairy.
Is Nine Wines a Lot?
It sounds like more than it is. These are tasting pours, not full glasses, and they're spread across the whole day with food at almost every stop. Nobody expects you to finish everything in front of you. Leaving half a glass, or asking for water between wines, is completely normal at a Tuscan estate. A spittoon is usually somewhere on the table too, and using it isn't rude. Spitting is normal at a tasting, as we explain in our notes on wine tasting etiquette in Tuscany.
Lunch is also where the wine makes most sense. Chianti Classico is made to go with food, and drinking it next to a plate of pasta tells you more about it than another tasting glass on its own. It's part of the experience, not a way to offset the wine, so pace yourself and skip a pour whenever you like.
Off the Tarmac
The 4WD is the point of the safari. It's customised for unpaved vineyard roads, and long stretches of the route run along farm tracks a minibus couldn't use. The guide stops at viewpoints along the way for photos, and some of the best views over the Chianti hills are from tracks you wouldn't find on a road map. The longest single drive is about an hour. There's no toilet on board, but the stops are spaced so one is never far away. There's more on the route itself in our off-road wine tour in Tuscany article.
Before You Book a Chianti Wine Tour with Lunch
The meeting point is Piazza della Stazione, at the taxi stand outside Santa Maria Novella station, across from the McDonald's. Your guide will be holding a Walkabout Tours sign. There's no hotel pickup. If you're staying near the station it's a short walk, and otherwise your hotel can book you a taxi.
Luggage can't be stored on the vehicle. That rules the tour out as a check-out day with a train to catch straight afterwards, so plan it for a day when your bags can stay at the hotel.
The tour is for adults only, with a minimum age of 18. It isn't wheelchair accessible and isn't suitable for anyone who has trouble walking, because the ground at the estates is uneven and in places steep. Cellars, vineyard edges and villa paths in Chianti rarely sit on flat ground.
Dress for the season and for the hills. Casual to smart-casual is right for lunch, with comfortable shoes that cope with gravel. Departures can fill up, so book ahead if your dates are fixed.
And the Afternoon Tour?
It's built around the evening. You leave Florence in the early afternoon, drive the vineyards in the 4WD and taste at a small boutique winery, with local cheese and cured meats alongside the Chianti. Then you stop at a panoramic spot for a glass as the sun goes down. Dinner is served outdoors, with appetizers, handmade pasta and dessert, all paired with local wines.
If you'd rather spend the morning in a museum and eat late, it's a good swap. It just isn't lunch, so if a Chianti wine tour with lunch is what you had in mind, stick with the morning or the full day.
For a couple or a small group who want the vehicle and the guide to themselves, there is also a private version of the off-road safari. It visits Villa Le Corti, Rignana and Poggio Torselli, with a three-course Tuscan lunch at Rignana, where the restaurant looks out over the vineyards, and a blind olive oil tasting at the same stop.
