Magnificent retreat ticks every box in your Tuscan holiday fantasy
By Ute Junker
Cypress trees lining the drive? Check. Stone farmhouse with terracotta roof, gorgeous views over rolling vineyards? Check and check.
Borgo Santo Pietro may tick every box in your Tuscan holiday fantasy but at this beautiful retreat, 35 kilometres from Siena, it’s the things that you’re not expecting that are worth paying attention to.
Take breakfast. You might order some eggs and learn the answer to the question you have never asked before: do eggs taste better when the chickens that laid them live in style? At Borgo Santo Pietro, the chickens live in pastel-coloured coops that are the avian equivalent of Positano’s pretty houses – and yes, their eggs taste utterly delicious.
Villas are the ultimate treat.
Not in the mood for a hot breakfast? Try the yoghurt: it’s home-made. The seasonal veggies – served raw, in an omelette or on a crepe – are also homegrown, and the honey is sourced on the estate too.
Beginning to get the picture? With its cosy 800-year-old farmhouse, its expansive villas set amid lush greenery and its 300-hectare estate that includes fields and forests, Borgo Santo Pietro doesn’t just look like a farming hub – it has become one. Owners Jeanette and Claus Thottrupp are turning this 120-hectare Tuscan estate into a self-sustaining community step-by-step, and reinventing what low-impact luxury is along the way.
The retreat has been built around an 800 year-old- stone farmhouse.
It wasn’t meant to go this way. When the Thottrupps bought the estate, with its derelict old farmhouse, back in 2001, they planned it as a home for themselves. Their first priority, apart from rebuilding walls, was to introduce mod cons such as electricity and water. As the building slowly came back to life under the hands of local craftsmen using traditional methods, they saw that this project could become a boutique retreat with a difference.
Growing their own food was a no-brainer, and guests are encouraged to visit the organic gardens that supply so much of what ends up on the table. Those exquisite chocolate pralines in your room? They are handmade made on the estate, as is the gelato served in the restaurant.
Exquisite degustations are served at the fine-dining restaurant, Saporium.
Chef Ariel Hagen serves up exquisite degustations at the fine diner, Saporium, like Casentino trout served with roe, cucumbers, peppermint and sour butter, or barbecued pin squid served with tagliolini and fennel. More traditional fare is available in the gorgeous Trattoria Sul’Albero, where trailing plants hang from the ceiling and an aged oak tree grows right through the middle of the restaurant. Then there is the outstanding cooking school, led by a genuine nonna who makes some of the best pasta around.
After adding a cheese-making dairy and a fermenting lab, the next step was the launch of an organic skincare line used in Borgo’s romantic spa, where massages take place by candlelight. Jeanette Thottrup, who has a longstanding interest in natural medicine, teamed up with pharmacist and cosmetologist Anna Buonocore to produce an all-natural, holistic skincare line. Apart from estate-grown plant materials – you can visit the vast shed where marigolds, roses and nine different kinds of lavender are dried before being distilled – ingredients include fresh sheep’s milk and raw honey, also drawn from the estate.
In Borgo’s romantic spa, massages take place by candlelight.
If you aren’t that interested in sustainability, Borgo remains a magnificent luxury retreat. There are seven suites in the main house but it is the 15 villas that are the ultimate treat. Beautifully styled by Jeanette, a designer by trade, they have beamed roofs, eau de nil colour schemes, antique fireplaces and frescoes on the walls, vases of flowers picked from the garden and gorgeous painted bathtubs.
It is tempting to stay holed up in your villa, but take a stroll along one of the flower-lined pathways that wend their way through the estate and you are bound to make some happy discoveries. It could be a sun-drenched piazza with comfortable seating, a duck-filled pond, the plants lining its shore allowed to grow wild, or the natural swimming hole in the River Merse where you can take a dip in the crystal-clear waters.
Pizzas at Trattoria Sul’Albero.
My happiest discovery lies much closer to home. After my final dinner at Trattoria Sul’Albero, where we share platters of pizza and a mighty Florentine steak, I return to my villa to find the candles lit and the bath drawn, its surface completely covered with flowers gathered from the garden. It’s another glorious Borgo moment.
Guests are encouraged to visit the gardens.
The details
Borgo Santo Pietro is just over an hour’s drive from Florence airport, or under two hours from Pisa airport. The hotel can arrange a pick-up or a hire car.
Borgo Santo Pietro has 22 rooms, with room rates from €875 ($1460) a night twin share, including breakfast. The season runs from late March to early November. See borgosantopietro.com
The writer was a guest of Borgo Santo Pietro.
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