Our work? It is our life and our passion
Italian food products from Farmhouse La Bruciata
The passion for hospitality, the passion for good Tuscan cuisine made with natural ingredients, the passion for good products and their conservation: this is our gift to you, an unequaled experience handed down from generation to generation.
The love of our land and the care of its products is the result of a family tradition that has persisted over time and that has incorporated ancient secrets and sacrifices to obtain the best from nature.
Cooking has always been our passion, a tradition of spending evenings in the company of family and neighbors during the harvests of our grapes or our olives. Each stage of the cultivation was a time of effort and hard work, but also of joy, a chance to be together and celebrate the love of the bounty of the land. And now by spending your holiday on our farm, you will become a part of our family and our traditions, enjoying an authentic Tuscan experience and tasting the agricultural products that we produce and tasting our recipes made with the best ingredients that the nature has to offer. An opportunity to experience the best in Tuscan quality!
Nowadays we are cultivating and producing:
• THE SANGIOVESE, the grape that gives us the wonderful Vino Nobile and Rosso di Montepulciano. Usually, the harvest takes place in late September / early October, depending on the ripeness of the grapes, and it’s really a special event – especially exciting for guests lucky enough to be here during this time, in which our whole family gathers together to work with joy
• THE FRUIT: we have a lot of fruit that flourishes throughout the year and provides our guests with fresh apples, pears, cherries, strawberries, apricots peaches, melons, grapes , figs, and the typical wild plums of Montepulciano. Since we have fruit in large quantities, some is harvested to make homemade jams like the ones your grandmother made, without preservatives, with lots of fruit and very little sugar. You may have forgotten it, but it will be a pleasure for your palate to remember the taste. Or to try the fruit syrup that we serve at breakfast to be enjoyed with yogurt all year round or our sour cherries on top of our homemade ice cream.
• THE VEGETABLES: we love to work in our garden to ensure the authenticity of the products that we eat and, knowing that it is not possible to taste them all at the harvest-time, we also preserve them to maintain them even when they aren’t in season. For example you can try our “timbale” with artichokes, zucchini, green beans, cauliflower, or asparagus–it’s really a pleasure to recognize the authentic flavor of the vegetables all year round. Or we invite you to taste our salads, our luscious tomatoes that we preserve in many ways, so you can always taste the freshness of this product, an ingredient that makes the difference when we cook a good sauce, or when we add a sweet tomato sauce to the “pici all’aglione” or our pizzas at breakfast.
• THE OLIVE OIL: Tuscan olive oil, like wine, is becoming more and more popular in the world thanks to farmers who believe in what they do to get the highest quality from their products. In fact, lot of experience and care is needed to produce a good extra virgin olive oil because there are so many factors that weigh on the quality, including the kind of olives, the pruning, the fertilization, the climate that influences the maturation, the harvest-time, and the conservation.
On our farm we have more than 500 olive trees of local Tuscan varieties like Moraiolo, Pendolino, Leccino and Frantoio. It is our tradition to mix these different varieties to obtain an extra-virgin olive oil, that has a well-balanced taste and a fruity aroma, with intense green / gold color, which make it ideal for all dishes. Each variety is contributing something special to create the Tuscan olive oil: Pendolino is used to facilitate pollination for the other varieties; Moraiolo is highly resistant to wind, less to cold and gives a high quality oil that is harmonious and fruity, green in color with golden reflections; Leccino is highly resistant to adverse weather conditions and has a slightly fruity taste, which is sweeter than the others, and finally the Frantoio resists the cold and gives a high quality fruity oil.
Extra-virgin olive oil is unique because it is the only kind of oil extracted from a fruit, the olive, while all the others are extracted from the seeds. So it is inevitable that we must take care of the tree: pruning it every year, fertilizing the ground at the right time when there is no danger of cold because nitrogen stimulates vegetation, but not too late because if it is hot, the olive tree with too much vegetation has more need of water.
Since the olive tree is Mediterranean, it is more resistant to drought, but doensn’t like the cold because it is an evergreen plant. So, the best time for the harvesting is from late October to mid-December, when the oil is inside the olive the olives change color, this is called “invaiatura”, from this moment if we wait too much, as time passes the olives will be exposed to many dangers, it could be attacked from frost and insects. We must understand that the olive is a fruit and as such after the ripening, the fruit deteriorates and the acidity increases. The olives, after the harvesting, must be kept in boxes with holes to allow ventilation and to prevent the increase of the temperature, so in about 2-3 days we bring them to the oil press for processing.
The correct conservation of the oil is also important–the extra virgin olive oil dislikes the air, light and heat, so it must be kept closed, protected from light and inside containers of stainless steel, the better to make stable the temperature and to transfer the oil decanting naturally, without mechanical filtrations. Once upon a time, large terracotta containers called “orci” were used to keep the oil, but as time passed they were replaced with stainless steel containers because the clay forms microcracks that allow the entrance of the air.
Come and experience the genuineness of our extra virgin olive oil on many delicious dishes and smell its freshness!
• OUR ANIMALS: on our farm we also have a space dedicated to our animals such as chickens, rabbits, geese, ducks, pigeons, turkeys, a paradise for children who visit us to see what it means to live on a Tuscan farm. Ada and Marisa are very attentive to their animals and they might even let you touch some small chick or newborn rabbit!
Treat yourself to a relaxing holiday in total harmony with nature!
Tuscan Kitchen
Rediscover the typical flavors of products that are born and grow according to nature!<br /> The recipes of our cuisine are the basis of our Tuscan culture, knowledge and tradition, and have passed through the generations from mothers to daughters, bringing with them the secret of a local natural diet, linked to our land, to seasonal cycles, in short a peasant cuisine tested for centuries.<br /> Each event related to the cultivation or harvesting of agricultural products was a festive occasion to invite relatives and friends, to be together helping each other.
