The Tuscan summer is justifiably famous. Rolling green fields of perfectly tended vines heavy with wine grapes stretch as far as the eye can see. The sun shines brightly and long, and the evenings are gentle and warm. But as with any blessing, fame comes with a few drawbacks; as a holiday destination, Tuscany in summer is far from a well-kept secret. Some of the Tuscan cities can be quite full of tourists in the summer months, and the shops and restaurants in those cities cater more and more to them, making authenticity a little more challenging to find.

This is not to say that Tuscany in the summer isn’t still magical. It is. But for me, winter is when I find myself most aware of what made me fall in love with Tuscany in the first place.

Especially in the countryside, where Villa Ardore is, much of daily life is in tune with the seasons. In the summer, in part because extended daylight allows for a longer workday and in part because farming—the principal occupation here—is at its peak, everyone is very busy. The sheep that make Tuscany’s famous pecorino cheeses possible must be milked; the grapes, tomatoes, zucchini, melanzane (eggplant), and scores of other crops must be tended to daily; and enormous wine-making barrels must be cleaned so they are ready for the fall harvest. The spring and fall are no less busy either, as in spring the sheep must be shorn, the vines and olive trees pruned and the fields prepared, and in fall the harvests must be brought in.

There is still, of course, work to be done in winter. There are always fences to mend, winter crops to tend and harvest, and of course animals to be cared for. But the workdays are shorter, there less to be done, and there is more time to spend with family and friends. Because they are less busy in winter, people are freer with their time. A few weeks ago, we had family visiting just after the holidays and I visited our local butcher in Castellina-in-Chianti to buy some pork for a roast. I wound up talking with the butcher, Riccardo, and his wife for nearly a half hour. I don’t now remember all that we talked about, but what I do remember is leaving with the warm feeling that comes from being part of a community. That would be much less likely to happen in summer, when Riccardo, or any other shopkeeper in the historic town of Castellina, would be busy with other customers and pressed for time.

Last week, we took a different group of our family to visit our friends at Poggio Amorelli. Because it was their first time in the area, we asked to have the full experience that guests of Villa Ardore would have there. It was a chilly, gray January day—proprio inverno (“proper winter”), as our neighbors here say—and  we were among the only people at the winery, other than those working there.  We spent the entire afternoon over a long, leisurely lunch next to a crackling fireplace, lingering over course after delicious course paired with a different one of the Mazzini family’s delicious reds. The entire experience was bookended by a sparkling rosé at the beginning and a sparkling vermentino and the end. In truth, the tour of the winemaking facility, the lunch, and the wines themselves were no different than Poggio Amorelli provide all year round, including in the summer. But the length of time that we lingered over it, the long goodbye between our family and the Mazzerinis, which was so heartfelt after being able to spend so much time together, was facilitated by the slow pace of winter life here in the Chianti zone.

In fact, it is unusual for us to pass more than a week without a lunch or dinner with friends, whether at our house or theirs, that extends for hours of conversation and laughter. But it is not only the leisure of time that makes winter in Tuscany so beautiful to me; it is also the season itself. The valley below the villa is often shrouded in fog in the morning while we are bathed in orange-yellow morning sunlight, making it feel like we are floating on cloud. There is a beauty even in the dormant vineyards, denuded of leaves in neat rows above deep brown soil and backed by hills of green pine. The smell of wood smoke curling from chimneys feels like a call to return home.

And the Tuscan winter food—where to begin to describe how comforting it is. From October through January is the season for hunting cinghiali—wild boar—and boar meat is absolutely a part of the Tuscan winter diet. Hunting is necessary to keep the boar population stable, as their only natural predator is the wolf, and the wolf population is too small to keep the boar population in balance. But the regional government is careful to limit hunting to specific days in specific parts of the forest, to ensure that the boar population isn’t made smaller, but instead remains more or less constant throughout its habitat. But while chinghiali may be king of the Tuscan forest as well as the Tuscan table, the traditional regional diet is largely vegetarian—or at least vegetarian adjacent; it’s not uncommon to enhance the flavor of a bean stew or soup with a cut of pancetta.

Among the most common foods on the Tuscan winter table are beans, followed by pastas and risotto made with winter vegetables like cavalo nero (dark kale), porri (leeks), and a variety of tubers and winter cabbages and lettuces. One of my favorite winter meals is maltagliati fresci con fagioli borlotti—a wide, thin, roughly-cut fresh pasta made from the scaps left over from making more refined pasta shapes—cooked with cranberry beans in a savoury stew. When I make it at home, I invariably follow it with a light, pallet-cleansing salad made from one of my favorite vegetables growing in the villa’s organic garden during the winter: fennel. Like so much of the Tuscan cuisine, fennel salad is straightforward to make and has only a few ingredients. But unlike many other winter foods, it is light and bright, allowing one to savour winter’s calm even more deeply, knowing that spring isn’t far away.

I also love the abundance of chestnuts that appears just before and during the festive season, but we can only eat so many chestnuts at a time. So I always find that, by late January into early February, we still have a small basket or two of them left, and there is nothing more comforting during a winter lunch than a chestnut risotto—though it’s a close contest between it and risotto with a winter kale pesto.

After any of this delicious food, we love to go for a drive to one of the nearby medieval cities, like Monteriggioni or Arezzo, which, while less lively than in summer, are occupied mostly by locals so that one can more easily feel what it must be like to live there, and to immerse oneself in local culture.

I don’t mean by any of this to suggest that Tuscany is better in winter than in summer. As I wrote previously, the Tuscan summer has its own magic. But winter in Tuscany is makes the entire region feel like a hidden gem. If you want to experience it like few people do, especially if you have already experienced the region in the summer, I invite you to visit in the winter, for an opportunity to see Tuscany’s beauty from a new perspective.