Venice: Evening Wine Tasting & Cicchetti Food Tour Dorsoduro

4.93

(145 reviews)

What’s the experience like?

I almost missed the meeting spot at Campo Santa Margherita because I got distracted by a group of old men arguing (or maybe just talking loudly?) over tiny glasses of something golden. Our guide, Giulia, waved me over with a grin — she didn’t seem bothered that I was five minutes late. “You’re here for the wine tour, right?” she asked, and I nodded, still catching my breath. The square smelled like coffee and rain on stone, even though it hadn’t rained in hours.

We ducked into the first bacaro — honestly, I’d never have found it alone — where Giulia explained cicchetti is basically Venetian tapas. She ordered in rapid-fire Italian; I tried to repeat one of the names (“baccalà mantecato”) and made her laugh. The cod spread was creamy and salty on toasted bread, and the prosecco tasted almost floral. There was this moment when everyone at the bar cheered at something on TV, but none of us understood what it was about. Didn’t matter.

Walking through Dorsoduro as dusk settled felt different from other parts of Venice — quieter, with laundry flapping above our heads and a dog barking somewhere down an alley. We stopped to look at Banksy’s graffiti (it’s smaller than you’d think), then slipped into another bar for natural wine and these fried artichoke things that I still think about sometimes. At one point Giulia pointed up at a ceiling covered in faded frescoes; she said if we were lucky they’d let us peek inside. We were — just for a minute.

The last glass was a dessert wine that tasted like honey and apricots. My feet hurt but I didn’t want to leave yet. The locals kept coming in for their usual drinks, nodding hello to Giulia like she belonged there (she does). It wasn’t fancy or anything — just warm light, good food, a little chaos in Italian. So yeah, if you’re looking for the real Venice… this felt pretty close.