Organic Italian food has never been so delicious thanks to pioneering biodynamic farm La Vialla
How often do you sit down with a great bowl of pasta and a fine glass of wine and know precisely what you’re eating? Knowing where your food comes from and exactly what’s in it is a luxury that’s largely been wiped out by mass production. Fattoria La Vialla offers a (wonderful) way back to products and ingredients that are big on taste, small on waste and come from an ethical, family-run company.
This farm and wine estate in the Chianti area of Tuscany is run by three brothers, Antonio, Bandino and Gianni Lo Franco. Fattoria La Vialla is a role model for biodynamic farming on a large scale: its 1,600 hectares are home to vineyards, olive groves, vegetable gardens and pastures, as well as crop fields. Around half of the site is preserved as forest that helps to offset the farm’s already low CO2 output, making La Vialla carbon neutral. As a pioneering enterprise that marries sustainability with preserving cultural heritage, the farm is a focus for various university research projects.
Ethical credentials, however, do not a nice bowl of pasta make. Luckily, the proof of La Vialla’s methods is in the tasting. You can buy La Vialla’s wines, sauces, pasta, extra virgin olive oil, pecorino cheese and honey online direct from the farm. Wines are low in sulphites; sauces have few ingredients and no added preservatives, and its oils, vinegars and pastas are reassuringly – and deliciously – rustic.
To find out more, visit lavialla.it/uk.
WIN A HAMPER
Now, La Vialla is offering readers of The Simple Things the chance to win one of their hampers, chock full of delicious organic Tuscan food and drink. The competition is online at thesimplethings.com/blog/lavialla.
