A taste of luxury farm life in Chianti with foraging, sketching and cooking
A stay at two of Oliver’s Travels’ villas Casa Vedetta and Bosco Ai Frati allows clients to lose themselves in Tuscan traditions and laid-back living.
Tuscany is a region for romantics, food lovers and history buffs. It’s quintessentially Italian, a destination where clients can escape the noise and switch off.
For me, Tuscany conjures up images of charming hilltop towns, sloping landscapes dotted with cypress trees, indulging in world-famous cuisine and drinking the region’s much-revered wine.
So I wasn’t disappointed on a recent Oliver’s Travels trip, when I spent the first two nights in a villa close to Castellina in Chianti.
Sleeping up to 14 people in seven bedrooms, Casa Vedetta is an authentic Tuscan farmhouse set in 800 acres of a privately owned estate dating back thousands of years. Inside, rooms are spacious and thoughtfully decorated with a large living room, open fireplace, generous dining room and calming guest bedrooms.
But it’s outside where guests can really immerse themselves in the Tuscan idyll, with endless views of neatly planted vineyards accompanied by a soundtrack of cicadas. There’s also peaceful gardens with shaded seating areas, as well as a swimming pool, sauna, spa and dedicated yoga area.
As you’d expect in Tuscany, food featured highly on my agenda. From a pizza party hosted outside around the villa’s wood fired oven for our group, to a private dining experience with local chef Amerigo, we were treated to Italian classics including bruschetta, meatballs, homemade pasta and locally sourced roasted meat served with organic potatoes.
And it’s not just the foodie experiences that are here for the taking. Guests can explore the Tuscan countryside by e-bikes, go in search of medieval hilltop villages on foot or master the art of doing absolutely nothing. This is Italy after all - a country where the locals seem to embody laid-back living.
Farm favourite
Also in the Oliver’s Travels collection is Bosco Ai Frati, a family-owned farmhouse in the grounds of organic farm Schifanoia. Passed down through three generations of the Medici family, the property is today one of the largest producers of sunflowers in Italy and boasts 50,000 acres of land planted with chickpeas, wheat and spelt. Landscapes here are less Tuscan and more rural with a transfer time to Florence airport of around 45 minutes.
The villa provides a full hotel experience: that means housekeeping, concierge service and breakfast, lunch and dinner cooked daily by the resident chef. Food is local and lovingly prepared, showcasing Tuscan specialities paired with excellent regional wines. Interiors are more rustic Italian here, with six bedrooms sleeping up to 12 people, six bathrooms, a pool, outdoor terrace, two lounge areas and full-sized pool table.
Among the activities offered is a sketching class with a local artist. Forced inside due to the thundering summer storms, I huddled with our group in the villa’s traditional farmhouse kitchen where we lost ourselves for a couple of hours drawing a still life.
The next morning it was time to go truffle hunting on the farm’s extensive grounds, accompanied by a local truffle guide and his enthusiastic dogs. Fetching anywhere between €2,000 and €6,000 per kilo, we were keen to find the elusive white truffles, but sadly, to no avail.
We did come away with plenty of black truffles that were used during our afternoon cooking class, where we learnt to make pasta laced with our locally foraged umami delicacies. It may have been raining outside, but such a delicious Tuscan meal to tuck into, we couldn’t have been happier.
Villas range from affordable luxury starting at £2,500 per week, to super-luxe averaging £80,000 per week.
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