This week’s travel dream: The Tuscany no one knows

Any travel guide who promises to show you the hidden Tuscany is lying, said Danielle Pergament in The New York Times. When “a place has been attracting admirers for more than a thousand years, no square inch is undiscovered.” I have been to Tuscany a dozen times, and over the years I’ve learned that finding the real Tuscany isn’t a matter of “where” you go but rather “when” you come. The picturesque Tuscany—with its empty, winding roads; rolling hills; and rows of verdant cypress trees—only peeks out in winter and the first quiet months of spring.

That’s what brought me back to the Tuscan region of Val d’Orcia on a chilly day. Bordered by the hills of Siena to the north and the “imposing arc of Monte Amiata” to the south, this is Tuscany at its most iconic. Though the “steely gray” fog and hushed silence “suggested a landscape that had gone into hibernation,” that was hardly the case. In fact, the hills of the Val d’Orcia were rife with wild boars, hares, and pheasants, all of which typically hide when the high tourist season arrives. Even the region’s famous pecorino cheese is creamier because the sheep are fed grass, not hay, this time of year. In Montepulciano, the medieval fortress town “synonymous with Tuscany,” schoolchildren ran through the piazzas and the smell of wood fires poured onto slender cobblestone streets.

Yet “if there really is an undiscovered Tuscany,” the place to find it must be Monte Amiata. Climbing the hills to the “ancient volcano that dominates the region’s vistas” took me into a strange and different world. “Fascist-era chalets from the 1930s and working-class villages” were tucked into the pockets of its rocky sides. By the time we reached the top, the “light dusting of snow at the base had turned into a thick white blanket.” Here we discovered, of all things, a ski resort—which is like finding a “vineyard in Jackson Hole, Wyo.” Though it felt surreal, I grabbed a hot chocolate from a vendor and smiled, knowing I had outsmarted the travel guides once again.

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Contact: Discovertuscany.com