We live here.
That's the whole idea.
Most guides to Chianti are written from somewhere else, once, and then left alone for five years. This one is written from inside the valley and edited every week, because the useful facts about this place — what's open, what's on, what shuts on Monday — go stale faster than the scenery does.
What we actually do
We keep a database of every place in Chianti Classico we think is worth your time, and we keep it current. Each entry carries the things you need and nobody publishes properly: which day it shuts, whether it takes walk-ins, what a tasting costs, where you can legally park, and whether the village centre is a camera-enforced ZTL at the hour you plan to arrive.
On top of that sits a planner that turns your constraints into a real day — two cellars at most, a proper ninety-minute lunch, and somewhere with a roof for when it's raining or it's thirty-seven degrees.
Who's writing this
I'm Tom. From 2014 to 2019 I produced Great Italian Chefs — the Italian sister site to Great British Chefs — from Italy: finding the chefs, getting the access, and making the shoots happen. Thirty-one of them, 45 Michelin stars between them, and seven months on the road before the site published a word.
Which is to say I've spent years persuading Italian kitchens to open their doors to a camera. This is the first time I've done it for the valley I live in. Twelve years in Chianti, and the guides to it were still thinner than anything I'd have shipped — that, and I kept writing the same email to friends about where to eat in Panzano.
The database is a long way ahead of the photography. I know. That's the next thing.
How a place gets listed
- Someone goes. We don't list from a press release.
- Nobody pays to be here. There is no sponsored listing and no paid placement. We may earn a commission when we book something for you, and that never decides whether a place is here or where it sits — someone going does. If that ever changes we'll label it on the page, clearly, and you'll be able to tell.
- We leave things out. Roughly forty places we visited aren't here. When a place isn't worth it, our policy is to say nothing rather than something — these are our neighbours, and a paragraph of scorn costs a family more than it's worth to us.
What we are hard on is the category, not the business: the ninety-euro sunset tasting, the coach-tour circuit, the medieval banquet, the car park with a view and a gift shop.
Where the facts come from
We'd rather show our work than claim authority. Venue details are ours, gathered on the ground. ZTL rules are taken from the comuni and labelled by how well we verified them — official, secondary or unverified — because a wrong restricted-zone claim costs you a fine and costs us your trust. Parking comes from OpenStreetMap and our own eyes. Photographs are licensed from Wikimedia Commons contributors and credited beside each one, until we can afford to shoot the valley ourselves.
The planner is automated, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. It arranges our venues, our timings and our opinions — it doesn't invent restaurants and it isn't allowed to invent a ZTL rule. The judgement in it is human. The arranging is not.
How we pay for it
The guide is free and stays free. Nothing on it is for sale to you.
Where the money will come from: when we book something for you — a tasting, a table, a cooking class — the place pays us a small commission on that booking. You pay nothing extra, and the commission never decides whether a place is listed or where it sits. Listing is earned by someone going. Booking is a service on top. If that ever changes, we'll say so on the page.
Say hello
Corrections are genuinely welcome — a changed closing day is more useful to us than a compliment. If we've got something wrong, or you run a place you think we've missed, email ciao@chiantivivo.com.