Why Autumn is My Favorite Season in Tuscany

The mornings are growing crisp and the leaves are turning yellow. In the markets, sweet plums and peaches are replaced by earthy squashes. It’s darker in the afternoons, bringing a sense of hurry-up to the hours after school and before bedtime. It must be autumn.

I’ve always been a big fan of this time of year, even before I began traveling to Tuscany in my adult years. I’m not sure why I like it, since in general I prefer long, leisurely, sunlit days and warmer weather. Maybe it’s the way the air smells. It makes me want to turn on a football game and make some butternut squash soup.

Since I began traveling with some frequency to Tuscany, my love for autumn has blossomed, maybe even surpassing my strong feelings for summer. It’s a close contest anyway. One thing is for certain: Autumn is my favorite time to visit Tuscany.

During the five years since we began writing this blog, we have posted numerous articles about this, our favorite Tuscan season.

Last year, we told our readers about some of our favorite happenings around Tuscany in fall. Beautiful, delicious things are in bloom, such as chestnuts and truffles. Tuscans ring in their arrival in proper fashion with festivals. Grapes are being harvested for wine, and the Tuscans cherish that phenomenon as well.

Autumn is when mushrooms of all varieties begin to emerge at the base of trees. I’m a big fan of them all, but have a particular fondness for truffles, which are as ugly and pungent as they are expensive and decadent.

Autumn is also harvest time for the vineyards across Tuscany. If you’ve followed our blog over the years, you will not be surprised to hear that we enjoy Tuscan wine. We have traveled across Tuscany and tried many different varietals, and our clear favorite is the Brunello di Montalcino. The Sangiovese grapes harvested for Brunello wines grow on the steep slopes of southern Tuscany, where the soil receives the perfect amount of sunlight and water to create the distinctive flavor we love. We recently hosted an Italian cooking class at Brandy’s home, and it’s amazing how fast the Brunello bottles drained. So, we aren’t the only fans.

To cap off our roundup of fall blog posts, I include my personal favorite post that I wrote before leaving Florence after an incredible 3-month experience. It seeks to make the argument that not only is fall the best time in Tuscany, but even late fall, well into November. The post also describes the day-to-day of my last weeks in Florence. I remember the emotion I felt when writing the post, and it all comes back as I read it now, 3 years later. I’m so grateful for the blog medium that allowed me to capture the feelings of that fleeting time. It also may answer the question posed at the beginning of this post – Why is autumn my favorite season of the year? Maybe because it was fall when I wrote that post 3 years ago, completely immersed and reveling in the the beauty and emotion of that moment in my life.