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Where To Eat And Drink Around Northern Italy's Lake Garda

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A major trio of Lakes—Como, Garda and Iseo—cluster around the city of Milan and Italy’s Northern Veneto region. They are home to rich Milan residents’ country homes, Southern Germans' second houses and a wonderful space and place to spend some time if you have a quick trip planned to Milan or Verona.

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I recently spoke to Angelo Peretti, the executive director of the Bardolino Consortium, about what he loves about Lake Garda, where he lives part of the time. He can otherwise be found down in Rome reporting for the Italian magazine The Internet Gourmet. He started his writing career three decades ago and has focused on both Medieval and ancient Roman cuisines.

Getting to and From Lake Garda

The town of Verona, and its airport, are an easy taxi ride away from many places on the southern part of this magical lake. Trains run regularly from the main station in Milan that can also be accessed from Malpensa airport, although it is a bit of a slog from the airport with an hour-long train to Milano Centrale where you need to change for the trains headed towards the lake.

Desenzano del Garda and Pescheria del Garda are the two main stations on the train line from Milan. Both are quite small so there may not be many taxis. Ubers are few and far between here so asking your hotel for a pickup is not a bad idea.

In and Around Lake Garda

There are many excellent wine-growing regions that surround this lake. The town of Bardolino—which takes its name from its namesake wine—is one of the most beautiful and home to both great reds and whites.

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The Veneto side of the lake—to the East—has long been known for its soft, supple Bardolinos as well as bigger and more structured Amarones and Valpolicellas when you move inland. It is also the birthplace of one of Northern Italy’s most delicious, affordable and food-friendly rosé wines.

The local rosé Chiaretto, which means clear or pale, may not be easy to say but it is a joy to drink. Current versions of this dry and pleasingly salty rosé run from pale to intense in color. It is made from primarily Corvina grapes with a little Rondinella mixed in.

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Perretti noted that Chiaretto wines express the characters of the soils that face the lake. He added that Chiaretto is the name of both the rosés made in the Lake Garda region: Chiaretto di Bardolino on the Eastern shore and Valtènesi Chiaretto on the Western shore. Other important wines of the region are Lugana, which is produced in the Southern part of the lake, and Custoza.

They are both generally underappreciated, well-priced whites that guests are lucky to find on a wine list. Custoza, Peretti noted, is mainly made with the Garganega, which is the same grape used in the better-known Soave appellation.

These wines tend to be unique because of the region’s soil. He added that the region's wines and its grapes tell the story of the ancient glaciers that molded Lake Garda, bringing lots of stones and minerals from the Alps to the area. These types of soils, he notes, along with the intense winds blowing from the lake—there have been a number of sailing mishaps on this lakeand from the nearby mountains tend to lend the typical fresh minerality found in the region’s wine.

He added, that as a historian, he thinks it is most likely that most of the region’s wine back in the old days was rosé. He shared that, "The most ancient document that I found dealing with Chiaretto in our region dates back to 1806: it’s the edition printed in Verona of the Vocabolario della Crusca, which is considered to be the most important Italian dictionary."

What Sets Garda Apart and Getting Around

Nowadays, he added, Lake Garda is divided into three Italian regions: Veneto, Lombardy and Trentino, which occupies the lake's small Northern shore. The lake, overall, attracts 12 million tourists a year.

Bikes are readily available at most hotels and are a great way to see the region. Restaurants, both with water views and more low-key inland locations are abundant in almost all these small towns on the lake. Do your research as not all of them are stellar.

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Peretti advises visitors to eat in the handful of restaurants that make local cuisine with lake fish or local food. He also recommends the tortellini di Valeggio, which are very small tortellini as well as the minestra di castagne or chestnut soup.

Guests can also change it up with a beer as the region is home to some great breweries. Peretti likes Birra Monte Baldo, a small brewery in Caprino. In terms of local olive oil he says that Paolo Bonomelli, in Torri del Benaco, is one of the best Italian producers of high quality olive oil.

The region is also home to a number of food and wine festivals. The Chiaretto festival in March in Lazise, the wine festival in Bardolino in October and the Palio del Chiaretto in May in Bardolino. There is also a special tortellini dinner for more than 1,000 people on the ancient bridge of Valeggio sul Mincio in June.

He added that recently Bardolino was voted the happiest village in Italy by the Italian financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. Let’s toast to that.