Upper Lake Garda and Valle di Ledro

Since ancient times, Lake Garda has been the cradle for civilisation and culture, thanks to its strategic location and its mild climate.
The slopes surrounding the “Busa”, the area between the towns of Riva del Garda, Arco and Torbole are ideally placed for olive groves. These produce an excellent extra virgin olive oil, light and fruity, almost “extreme” if you consider that the oil is produced from olives grown on the most northern olive trees in Europe. The area’s olive presses squeeze the precious oil from these olives that boasts the Garda DOP Trentino mark. Besides oil, the area offers a high quality fruit and vegetable produce, such as Torbole’s broccoli, a listed Slow Food Product and Dro plums, a local ecotype, which 7 with its unique sweet and sour taste has recently obtained the DOP mark. On the shores of the lake you can taste dishes based on freshwater fish such as perch, sardines, eels, tench, pike and carp, the best varieties that you can fish from the lake and sample in selected restaurants in Upper Lake Garda. Moving from Riva del Garda to Tenno with its lake, you can taste the carne salda (cured meat), one of the signature products of Trentino’ butchers: a very lean beef, marinated in a dry brine for a little less than three weeks. This process makes it particularly aromatic and can easily be enjoyed either cooked or raw. Continuing north, you reach Dro and then the Valley of the Lakes, or the Giudicarie through the Ledro Valley, whose cuisine has been influenced by Bohemian traditions, a historical legacy of the First World War. Ledro is renowned for its potato polenta, a re-cooked potato mash richly seasoned with meats and cheeses. Along the route are icy cold streams, whose cold waters are the perfect habitat for trout and char, to savour freshly cooked or marinated, pickled or smoked.