COOKERY COURSES IN TUSCANY

'World on a plate', cooking and restaurant consultants, invite you to an exclusive house party in the hills above Lucca, Tuscany.

Casa Berti (pictures here) is a delightfully restored country house, once home to Senora Rosina, a nun well known for her healing powers; her heritage to us is the little private chapel in the villa. As well as the elegant drawing room and bedrooms, there is a billiard room, library and open plan artists studio. The garden consists of a series of informal terraces and walled enclosures, one of which contains the swimming pool. There is an eighteenth century grotto with a mineral spring, still believed in the locality to have therapeutic properties.

Here at Casa Berti you will be part of a small group of like-minded people, lovers of cuisine and wine, nature and culture. Imagine the fun of a morning spent learning new skills and exchanging ideas, the joy of cooking with the spicy olive oil of the area and all the other wonderful local ingredients, lunch on the terrace, then an afternoon spent relaxing in a quiet corner of the garden or beside the pool, walking on one of the old mule trails through the woods, or a trip to the lovely old Tuscan towns of Lucca, Pisa or Florence. The evening spent chatting over dinner and around the piano, playing billiards or cards, or simply savouring the evening air with another delicious glass of local wine in your hand.

We have five elegant spacious bedrooms, three with en suite bathrooms and two which share one bathroom. The atmosphere is that of a small private house party, hosted by Don and Irene Canning. Irene Canning was for twenty five years the chef proprietor for some of the most successful restaurants in Wales, all of which have featured in leading national and international guides. Barbara Hayward has lived in Italy for nine years and has become an expert in Cucina Casalinga - until you have tasted her amazing pesto lasagne you haven't lived! The eighteen months that she spent learning this style in a family run restaurant in the Garfagnana was the most enjoyable time of her life.

Click here for some pictures of Casa Berti.

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The World on a Plate