Breakfast beside our inner grove in raking, early morning light. Sip a cool Vermentino poolside. Chess match under a giant holm oak. Run cross-country across our meadows. Stretch out and lose yourself in a gentle breeze. Wake from a nap and walk to dinner.
Poggiosole was passed to me by my folks, who lived into their nineties. They ran it as a fairly no-frills two-unit vacation rental and they were too old to even count, much less take care of, six hundred olive trees. When my wife Giovanna and I took over running the place in 2021 we felt called to level-up just about everything: furnishings, amenities, the pool and outdoor lighting, to revitalize and organically farm our three olive groves… To honor the gift mom and dad had left as well as the beauty of this land.
Inside, our rule was to equip Poggiosole's two lodgings as if our dearest friends were going to come live in them. Guests remark on the quality and harmony of our furnishings, the comfort of our beds, the power of the AC, the sparkle of our hi-fis. No dinky corkscrew or singed pans in our kitchens. You’ll find full tang Wüsthof knives (kept sharp), a Vitamix blender, gleaming and abundant stainless steel cookware, even a meat thermometer. Bathrooms are graced with a Dyson Supersonic and hand-made soaps. We even provide flashlights to find your way across our upper olive grove after dark, returning on foot from the outstanding Ristorante La Fattoria.
All this fancy stuff is a way of saluting a discerning clientele, sure, but also the dignity of the ridge we sit on, the grand views to the west as you approach, to the east while you're here. April and May, mid-September to end October are our favorite periods, if you can swing it. Either way we're capable hosts, as available as you need us to be to make the most of your stay. We can arrange tasting tours, private chefs, on-site yoga and Pilates classes, truffle hunts, massage practitioners, e-bikes. We will happily walk you around our upper and lower groves, wax lyrical about polyconic pruning (the basis for our very tasty EVOO). Or, we can leave you alone.
What we do here centers on taking time and taking care. That goes for us as hosts as much as for our guests. Disconnect if you dare. Stay local while here and take in the cuisine and waste-not-want-not ways of this ancient place. We add easy conversation in English or Italian and a promise to deliver you a proper, slow Tuscan holiday. Even a couple of AI voices had something to say about that.