3 hours · €120 per person
Pici by hand
The thick hand-rolled pasta of the Val d’Orcia, two sauces to go with it, and lunch with a glass of the house wine.
Graziella’s kitchenand the long table.
Graziella has cooked in the Val d’Orcia for thirty years. She bakes the bread for breakfast, rolls the pici by hand and knows which neighbour has the best pecorino this month. Breakfast and a welcome dinner come with every stay; the rest is up to you.
01Every morning
Breakfastunder the olives.
Served from eight until half past ten, on the loggia or under the old olive trees when it is warm enough. Warm schiacciata from the wood oven, ricotta and chestnut honey from Monticchiello, young pecorino, figs from the garden in September, and eggs from the farm next door, cooked the way you like them.
There is fresh orange juice, coffee roasted in Siena and, if you ask, a breakfast basket for an early balloon flight or a long day out.
02In the evening
Dinner at home,as often as you like.
Tell Chiara which evenings you would like to eat in when you book, and Graziella plans the menus around the season and around you.
The welcome dinner
Four courses on your first evening, with wine from the cellar, so nobody has to think about shopping on the day you arrive.
Included with every stayDinner by Graziella
Four courses served on the loggia or by the fire in the library, cleared away while you finish the wine.
€95 per person · wine extraPizza from the wood oven
Graziella fires the oven at six and the children make their own. A favourite on the first Saturday of a summer week.
€45 per personLunch in the vines
In harvest weeks in September, a long table among the Sangiovese, with the pickers if you joined them in the morning.
€65 per person · September only03The cooking
What the valleygrows that week.
Graziella cooks the food of southern Tuscany: pici and pappardelle made that morning, Cinta Senese pork, guinea fowl from the wood oven, beans and cavolo nero in winter and tomatoes from the kitchen garden in summer. The menu is written each day and left on the kitchen table.
Vegetarian, vegan or gluten-free guests eat as well as everyone else. Tell Chiara about allergies when you book, and Graziella plans around them.
04The cellar
Three wine townswithin forty minutes.
The cellar under the casale holds about two hundred bottles from the valley, chosen with the families who make them. Take what you like and settle up at the end, at cellar prices.
| Wine | Where it comes from | With |
|---|---|---|
| Brunello di Montalcino | Sangiovese from the hill of Montalcino, aged at least five years | Wild boar, peposo, a long Sunday lunch |
| Vino Nobile di Montepulciano | The other side of the valley, from the cellars under the town | Pici, roast meats, pecorino stagionato |
| Orcia Rosso | The valley’s own denomination, including the house wine from our south slope | Almost everything Graziella cooks |
| Vin Santo and Moscadello | Sweet wines from Montepulciano and Montalcino | Cantucci, chestnut cake, the last hour of the evening |
The house wine comes from a hectare and a half of Sangiovese below the pool, made into about three thousand bottles of Orcia DOC a year by our neighbour in Castelmuzio.
05The estate’s oil
Picked in November,green and peppery.
Eight hundred trees of Frantoio, Moraiolo, Leccino and Correggiolo grow below the house. From late October we pick by hand and take the olives to a mill in the valley the same day, so the oil keeps its colour and its bite.
Every guest goes home with a bottle. Guests who stay in harvest weeks can pick with us in the morning and follow the olives to the mill.
Join the olive harvest
06Cook with Graziella
Flour on the table,lunch at the end.
Classes are for the house only, at the long kitchen table, in English or Italian. Children are welcome and usually the best at pici.
5 hours · €160 per person
A Sunday lunch, start to finish
The market in Pienza in the morning, then antipasti, pasta, a roast and a dolce, cooked together and eaten slowly on the loggia.
Arriving late, or would rather cook yourselves? We can fill the kitchen before you arrive, at cost plus €50, from the shops and farms Graziella uses.
Dinner is at eight
Bring your appetite.We will do the rest.
Tell us the dates and how often you would like to eat in.