My fiance and I will be starting our two week Italy honeymoon in Florence and we want to do a day tour to the wine country, probably the Chianti area. Does anyone have a recommendation for a trustworthy tour guide for a day trip that won't eat a hole in our wallet?

While in Florence we did a wine tour of the Chianti area with Alessandro Cammilli, and it was a great day. He picked us up at our hotel (Hotel Silla..which I would also recommend), and we toured for the entire day. Alessandro is delightful. He is knowledgeable, interesting, and very accomodating to any requests. I would highly recommend him as a tour guide for the Tuscany region. We paid 260 euros for the four of us. His email is .... [email protected]

I would also recommend Alessandro. We hired him 2 years ago and were very pleased. We went to a few villages each day. Our favorite was Pienza. We loved the Pecorino cheese and great wine. He'll also take you to smaller vineyards and give you a private tour. You can ask him to give you a sammple itinerary or choose your own.

Another great choice is Luca Garrapa of www.hillsandroads.com. He does a wonderful job!

Another vote for Luca Garapa. We used him for 2 touring days last March and absolutely loved it. He is a young, intelligent man, extremely safe and good driver, wonderful person to spend the day with. He custom tailored our days to meet the needs of our party, i.e. one elderly woman who could not walk very much so he did more driving within the cities than he would have otherwise. His rates are very fair and he even managed to pick up the tabs for some coffees we drank along the way before we got to them. All in all, a very pleasurable day. Enjoy.

Thank you all for your recommendations. Allessandro sure comes highly recommended by many. I have already emailed him. And if he is unavailable I will contact Luca Garapa as well to see his availability.

We and others here have used Luca Garapi in Tuscany. Very good, friendly, helpful, reliable. I don't have his contact info right now, but maybe you can search on his name or do a post asking for his contact info.

Just found Luca's info (and correct name spelling "Garrapa&quot
www.hillsandroads.com
[email protected]

tel : ( 0039 ) - 0577 - 716076
mobiles : ( 0039 ) - 328 - 8379272 OR ( 0039 ) - 335 - 8336988

I used the company called Tuscan Wine Tours and did a one day wine tour with Rebecca. We had such a special day that I will never forget and I can recommend using her to anyone going to Florence. She took us to quaint wineries where we got a private tour by the owners and learnt so much about wine making and the area. Rebecca's web-site is www.tuscan-wine-tours.com. Enjoy!

Third time in Tuscany, second using Alessandro:he was great!
Compares to the first time, he has a brand new car, he took us to visit more wineries, his english is almost perfect and his rates very very fair!

Tuscan Wine Tours offers small group tours (max 8 people) in addition to private tours, if cost is an issue. Price in October was e100 per person for a full-day tour, including lunch.

We used Megan at http://www,bellavitaitalia.com for a driving tour of Chianti as well as for organizing our whole trip. It was an incredible day in an incredible trip. We highly reccommend her!

We recently hired Alessandro for a tour from Florence to the wine region and all the reviews of him on this site are correct. He was extremely polite and professional. We visited one castle, several wineries and two quaint villages. I highly recommend hiring Alessandro([email protected]).

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I just wanted to get back to this post to say how great Rebecca from tuscan-wine-tours.com was back in September 2006. We joined one of her small group tours out of Florence and down into Tuscany. The tour consisted of a nice education on italian vino while driving thru the beautiful tuscan countryside to a really great boutique winery for a tasting hosted by the really spunky owner. then it was off for a planned lunch at a small culinary school prepared by the fella who runs it. this guy is an amazing man as everything he uses for cooking and making wines/olive oils comes right from his own gardens and farm. ymmy! From there we headed to one of the many hill towns along the way for a visit before heading back to Florence. Not only was our group a super fun bunch, Rebecca's personality made the trip more like you were hanging out with a good friend for the day. My wife and I can't reccommend her enough. Her business seems to really be taking off so hopefully she won't become to busy to do her tours! www.tuscan-wine-tours.com
Cheers

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Another rave review for Rebecca -- we had two wonderful days with her and would loved to have had more!

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