Bardolino, a town with a wine named after it, is a pretty and popular town on the shores of Lake Garda, in northern Italy. One of the southern Alpine lakes, Lake Garda and Bardolino are especially crowded in the summer. But in October, it is much quieter, and the weather is cooler, yet still sunny. In other words, ideal for hiking.
East of the built up stretch along the waterfront, the land rises, and grape vines begin. The town of Costermano, set in an area of rolling ridges, was previously drive by territory for me, as I headed to the lakeside towns. Big mistake! Costermano, beyond its main street, has timeless farm villas set in quiet scenery, nice restaurants, and beautiful vistas of Alps and lake, if you know where to go. Costermano also has a trail for wine enthusiasts that provides the perfect opportunity to explore this area beyond the waterfront, where the landscape retains its bucolic setting, and grapes for Bardolino wine grow as they have here for centuries, if not millennia.
What I Learned
The DOC Bardolino zone centers around the small town of Bardolino, east of the shores of Lake Garda, in northern Italy.
This zone produces both DOC Bardolino, and Doc Chiaretto wines. These wines come from the Corvina Veronese grape, also known simply as Corvina. Some Rondinella, and sometimes Molinara, also the main grapes of the adjoining Valpolicella region may be found in blends of Bardolino or Chiaretto wines.
Trail Name: Giro dei Vigneti
Trail Type: Medium distance circuit; well-maintained and almost all hard surface (either paved or hard packed earth); Marking on the trail is rather good.
Length:
Total – 10 kilometers/ 6 miles
Convenient to: Bardolino, Italy
Marking: Stylized black hiker on white background, on brown signs with trail name in white letters
Slow Collio, “un Paesaggio da Bere” (Slow Collio, a Terrain to Drink). Upon reading the inviting name of this cycling itinerary, two contradictory thoughts came to mind.
First: What a great concept, combining the territory and the wine, all the while promoting the slow enjoyment of both; and then, in my experience hills and drinking wine could present a cycling challenge.
Then: the fact that the word “Collio” implies hills, which gave me, a not-so-fit wine enthusiast, a moment of sober reflection, before my enthusiasm for being outdoors, and visiting wineries to taste local wines kicked back in.
What I Learned
In the far northeast corner of Italy, bordered on the north and east by Slovenia, lies Italy’s wine paradise of the Collio. Not to be confused with its northern and western wine region neighbor, the Colli Orientale di Friuli, the Collio region likewise falls within the Italian region of Friuli. The Collio wine region, which has its own Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC) status, is a relatively small enclave of approximately 1600 hectares (about 4000 acres), running south to north from Gorizia to Dolegna. Cormons, a town larger in fame within wine circles than in size, is at its spiritual, if not geographical, center.
Trail Name: Gorizia a Cormons (AKA: Slow Collio, Un Paesaggio da Bere)
Trail Type: Short distance cycling circuit (with a short tail from Gorizia); about half on lightly travelled paved roads through and between towns, and half on improved earthen trails through countryside, mostly in a protected nature zone; well maintained, but the route itself is well-marked in places, but not in others.
Length: 23 kilometers/ 14.3 miles
Convenient to: Udine, Gorizia, Italy
Marking: FVG3 and Slow Collio.
Prosecco is a wonderful sparkling wine from northern Italy. So, when passing through Valdobbiadene, famed for its Prosecco, I decided to complete the eponymous circuit, which incidentally, touched on some of the finest vineyards known in the world of Prosecco.
I must confess though, both this circuit, the towns, and even the famous vines of the Cartizze, are a bit remote, and relatively unknown to most wine hikers. What a shame! This is primarily an agricultural area, rather rural and a bit wild, backing onto some of Italy’s most rugged mountains outside the Dolomites. This creates in part an atmosphere of isolation, but for those determined to visit, it is only about 90 minutes from Venice, in a district known as the Marca Trevigiana, today practically identical with the Province of Treviso.
