CDV in Italy
Italy
Where CDV began. We have been operating in Italy for over twenty years — not as visitors, but as people who know the families, the estates, and the back roads. This is not the Italy of tour buses and set menus. It is the Italy of private cellars, grandmother cooks, and harvest tables.
Why Italy for Your Team
Italy is where CDV was born, and it remains the country where our network runs deepest. Over twenty years we have built direct relationships with truffle hunters in Umbria, vineyard families in Chianti, cheese shepherds in the Apennines, and olive oil producers on the Amalfi hillsides. When we bring your team here, they are not tourists. They are guests.
For corporate groups, Italy offers something no conference venue can replicate: the lived experience of craft, place, and hospitality as a single thing. A morning spent making pasta with a Bolognese family teaches your team more about trust and patience than any workshop. A harvest dinner under the Tuscan vines, with the family who grows the wine you are drinking, is the kind of shared memory that survives long after the agenda is forgotten.
From north to south, Italy's regions each offer a distinct character. A program that moves from the intellectual energy of Bologna to the sensory world of Sicily is not a tour — it is an education. We design programs that use the country's diversity deliberately, matching each leg to the outcomes your group needs.
Where We Work
Regions of Italy
Tuscany
Our home base. Rolling hills, Chianti estates, truffle country around San Miniato, and the art cities of Florence and Siena. The most versatile region for MICE programs of any size.
Sicily
The island that surprises every group. Baroque Palermo, the volcanic slopes of Etna, ancient Greek temples at Agrigento, and a food culture that rivals anywhere in Italy. Outstanding for incentive travel.
Amalfi Coast
Vertiginous beauty, lemon groves, and the thermal energy of the Campania coast. Ravello for concerts and retreats, Positano for sea-level glamour, and Paestum for ancient Greek temples without the crowds.
Bologna & Emilia-Romagna
Italy's food capital. Mortadella, tagliatelle al ragù, Parmigiano-Reggiano, Prosciutto di Parma — all within a morning's drive. Exceptional for culinary programs and executive dining events.
Piedmont
Barolo and Barbaresco country. The Langhe hills around Alba are among the most beautiful wine landscapes in Europe. White truffle season (October–December) transforms this region into something extraordinary.
What You'll Do
What Your Team Will Do in Italy
Cooking with Local Families
Not a cooking class — a meal in someone's home. We place small groups with Italian families who cook for you while you cook alongside them. The pasta, the sauce, the wine — all theirs. The conversation, all yours.
Grape Harvest
Available in September and October across Tuscany, Piedmont, and Sicily. Your team works a real harvest — cutting, carrying, sorting — then sits down to lunch with the family who owns the vines. The most physically honest team-building experience we offer.
Truffle Hunting
A licensed trifolao and his dog at dawn in the woods of San Miniato or the Langhe. One of the few experiences that is genuinely impossible to replicate anywhere else in the world. Ends with a truffle-forward lunch at a local trattoria.
Olive Oil Pressing
The November harvest at a working frantoio — olive pressing mill — in Tuscany or Umbria. Cold-press the oil, taste it straight from the stone, take bottles home. A sensory experience that frames the economics of local agriculture unforgettably.
Cheese Making
A morning with a shepherd and his flock in the Apennines or the pastures around Siena. Watch and participate in the production of pecorino from milk to wheel. Lunch under the oaks with wine from the next valley.
Private Cellar Dinners
Dinner in a wine cellar that has been in the same family for four generations. These are not restaurant experiences — they are private events hosted by the families themselves. Tables set among the barrels, food cooked to match the estate's bottles.
Sample Program
A day-by-day look at Italy
Where You'll Stay
Boutique Properties We Trust
Working Wine Estate
Tenuta Bellavista
Chianti, Tuscany · Up to 40
A 16th-century Chianti farmhouse on a working estate with 40 hectares of vines. Private terraces, a converted barn for plenary sessions, eight rooms for residential programs, and a kitchen staffed by the family cook.
Fortified Masseria
Masseria Torre Coccaro
Puglia · Up to 35
A 17th-century fortified farmhouse in the olive groves of Puglia. Whitewashed trulli accommodation, a kitchen garden that feeds every meal, a swimming pool carved from the rock, and a chef who has cooked here for thirty years.
Hilltop Estate
Villa Santa Caterina
Amalfi Coast · Exclusive buyout
A private villa above the Amalfi Coast with panoramic sea views, a lemon grove, and five suites. Available for exclusive group buyout. The most dramatic setting in our Italy portfolio.
The People Behind the Experience
The People Who Make Italy Ours
Giulia Marchetti
Family Cook, San Casciano
Giulia has been hosting CDV groups in her farmhouse kitchen for fourteen years. Her pasta is the standard against which your team will measure every pasta they eat for the rest of their lives. She speaks no English. It doesn't matter.
Marco & Lucia Ferrini
Vineyard Family, Greve in Chianti
Fourth-generation winemakers on 40 hectares in the Chianti Classico zone. Marco leads the harvest with your group every September. Lucia manages the cellar dinners. Their Sangiovese is not exported — the only way to drink it is to come here.
Aldo Conti
Trifolao (Truffle Hunter), San Miniato
Aldo has been hunting truffles in the hills around San Miniato for forty years. He has three dogs and no GPS. He finds truffles when technology cannot. A morning with Aldo resets your relationship with patience.
“We have done incentive programs in twelve countries. The week CDV put together in Tuscany and Sicily was the first one where our top performers said they wanted to earn it again. The truffle hunt, the family dinner, the Etna vineyard — these aren't things you can book on a website. CDV is the difference between a trip and a story.”— VP of Sales, Global Financial Services Firm, Italy Incentive Program, 2023
Here's where your money goes in Italy
We work directly with estate owners, family cooks, local guides, and artisan producers — not with hotel chains or DMC intermediaries. When your group spends a week in Italy with CDV, the economic impact stays in the communities you visit.
70%+
Stays Local
Of every program dollar goes directly to local families, producers, and small businesses.
0
DMC Layers
We are the local operator. No destination management company taking a cut between you and the experience.
20yrs
Direct Relationships
Two decades of direct partnerships with the same families, estates, and artisans across Italy.
Italy — Common Questions
Plan Your Italy Program
Tell us who's coming and what you need to happen. We'll build an Italy program around the outcomes — not the itinerary.