Fair Verona

I spent most of last week in Verona. Lucky me... Verona is one of my favourite cities in Italy. Unlike nearby Venice, lots of Italians live and work in the city, which means it isn't such a tourist ghetto. (Which is not to denigrate Venice itself, which is a wonderful place to be, especially once you're off the main tourist drag.)

There are a few touristy things to gawp at in Verona, including the Roman arena (left), which is the location for splendid open-air opera concerts in summer (or so I'm told – I haven't yet been lucky enough to go). There's a marble-paved shopping street lined with glitzy boutiques, quiet little side streets with tranquil-looking restaurants and bars, a delightful main piazza with a stunning clock tower and a couple of delis groaning with Italian cheeses and exotic salumi and hams. The historic centre is easy to get round on foot, yet large enough for you to get lost enough to make some serendipitous discoveries while you're wandering around.

We (the group was a veritable United Nations of wine hacks, with representatives from Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Canada and the US, as well as a British contingent consisting of me and one of my colleagues, Patricia Langton) also got to spend a couple of days outside the town centre in the wine-growing valleys that lie within a half-hour's drive from Verona. Most of the vines here are trained along high pergolas, a very traditional way to grow grapes (to the right are some pictures of pergola vines in winter – you have to imagine them in their full summertime splendour to get the full effect). The countryside – like that of many wine-growing regions around the world – is stunning. There are four valleys nestled between hills that extend upwards into the Dolomites. In late spring and summer, the vineyards that cover much of the land are green and leafy, while in autumn the leaves of each of the five or so main grape varieties cultivated in the region each turn a different colour. This, though, was winter, and although the vineyards look rather sparse, the majestic snow-capped mountains help to frame them rather beautifully.

Needless to say, like any Italian town, Verona has some fab restaurants. The Italians take their food very seriously, and as long as you stay away from places whose menus are too complicated and fiddly, you can eat very well indeed.

As I'm beginning to realise, when I'm travelling, the best way for me to deal with my diet is to revert to portion control and an attempt to guesstimate my calorie intake. There's absolutely no way I can dictate a GI-friendly plate-load, with its idealised 50% veg, 25% complex carbs and 25% protein. A case in point was the lunch provided for us on Saturday, the day of the big Amarone tasting.

The Amarone tasting was the reason I was there in the first place. A quick aside for those of you unfamiliar with Amarone: this is a dense, richly alcoholic red wine made from partially dried grapes that would otherwise be used to produce Valpolicella, a much-maligned wine that can provide an awful lot of bang for your buck. Amarone's have Valpolicella's tell-tale cherry flavours, but these are often layered with notes of dark chocolate and flowers, particularly violets and roses. Not wines for the faint-hearted, but utterly delicious when paired with big, hearty dishes like beef stew or roast duck.

Anyway, I digress. I'd been invited to Verona to taste the newly released 2004 vintage of Amarones, and after a quick press conference, we were let loose on a tasting room that must have contained some 70 big, bold young wines. Inevitably, we got hungry, and all that was on offer was cheese and charcuterie. Sigh...

Ah well. The dinners over the four days attempted to make up for this shortfall by providing us with ravioli with a variety of stuffing (there was one filled with brocolli that was absolutely delicious, as well as a heavenly truffled version the previous night), polenta with wild mushrooms, beef braised in Amarone and risotto, also cooked in Amarone (which turns it a wonderful purple colour). There was loads of cheese to enjoy, too – especially the local cheese, Monte Veronese, which comes in a number of incarnations, from mild-flavoured and daisy-fresh to a slightly aged version whose skin had been turned purple with (you've guessed it) Amarone and an aged, nutty cheese that tasted like a very tangy Parmesan.

Although I found myself tempted to eat all that was put in front of me, I resisted the urge and found an unexpected benefit. By the time we rolled back to the hotel it was easy for me to fall asleep – most of my colleagues, nursing full bellies, had a tougher time of it.