Farm experiences

August holiday at Fattoria del Colle

As a family, as a couple, with children and with dogs, in the most beautiful and intact countryside in Italy Fattoria del Colle organizes visits to wineries in the Chianti and Brunello regions, wine and oil tastings, brief cookery lessons, visits to small cities of art and to Siena ….  [caption id="attachment_8234" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Fattoria del Colle country inn in Tuscany"][/caption] Upon request massages and a SPA experience in the Fattoria del Colle specially dedicated area, with a Turkish bath, sauna, Jacuzzi, sensorial showers, relaxation room, a massage rooms. Compete relax or a program rich in activities for a solid in the midst...

I wish to give you a wild flower to put on your table

Platters, tureens, coasters which capture in resin ears of wheat, fruit, and leaves all bring into your home nature. You can find them in the Toscana Lovers shop in Siena

handicraft from Tuscany - salad bowl

Riccardo Marzi is son and grand son of sculptors, he too has studied art and has worked in several art studios in Florence until he created his own laboratory. He has designed a range of objects made in resin where nature has been “captured”. So you have corn, ears of wheat, leaves, fruit portions all arrive on the table with a touch of nature and class. Class, because the artistic imprinting is present in each of these objects which are all different one from the other and all characterized with extreme compositive elegance. Colourful, unbreakable, lightweight casual and elegant at the same time.

Shabby chic a pretend poor style that is very fashionable

History, character and trends of the shabby chic style including some advice for shopping and fro a wedding banquet

Wedding backstage - Fattoria del Colle - flowers

Its guru is the interior designer from the US Rachel Ashwell who has made elegant scruffiness a philosophy of life. The beginning of it all has strong ethic values; recycling, renovating, accepting the film left on things that have been lived as an element able to reveal the soul of things, because the use of objects entraps humanity into them and the story of those who have used them. New objects do not have these stories. So here was born the passion for vintage, market stalls and the new cloche style and most of all furnishings based on hap hazard combinations of thing that are elegant but different. So here come unpaired chairs around a table, where the table setting is made with period porcelains and silver cutlery, unpaired, and playing in a creative way with the contrasts.

A new recipe book: Stories and Recipes from Fattoria del Colle

A new booklet by Donatella Cinelli Colombini with 16 traditional recipes from the Sienese countryside, some revisited and some unheard of. [caption id="attachment_8049" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="A new booklet with recipes and stories from Tuscany"][/caption] Other than for stimulating the appetite, this recipe book opens a window on the Tuscan modern civilization where tradition and novelty are blended using the same ingredients. In the Italian countryside with the highest density of foreign VIP guests, old recipes are no longer enough, and so we delve into our memories of the past to find recipes that are today unknown, at the same time there is...

If it’s to be in Italy then yes I’ll marry you

Top of the list of preferences for foreign wedding couplet are Tuscany (43% ) and villas, such as Fattoria del Colle, to celebrate their Vip weddings

Wedding at Fattoria del Colle

A small army of 6.000 couples arriving from the UK, USA, Russia, Japan and Saudi Arabia. With them are guests and families who create more than 1 million nights stay and business in total of about 300 million Euros.
Italy is the Romantic nation where getting married here means framing the most beautiful day of your life with works of art, splendid landscapes but also celebrating it by dining with delicious food. Top of the preferences is Tuscany (43%) followed by the Amalfi coast, Umbria and Veneto (all below 10%).While regarding locations, the Hotel is still the preferred, followed by villas and castles.
The marriage of a foreign wedding couple in Italy is consequently the crowning of a romantic dream (25%) which often is very expensive. According to Massimo Feruzzi JFC, author of a study regarding this new type of tourism, the average cost is 51.000€.

Let me introduce you to Michela the new chef at Fattoria del Colle

Michela Amori is a 36 year old brunette, with a lovely face and lissom movements. In the kitchen she is fierce, she is competent, refined, and has great imagination.

Donatella Cinelli Colombini new chef

What she loves most is fresh pasta. When she was a child she used to go and sat with her grandmother, who was cook for a very important Roman journalist. Every Monday morning they would roll out the pasta together, and even today when she makes fresh pasta following her grandmother’s teachings, Michela thinks of her. In fact when she is alone, Michela likes to eat pasta with a revisited Carbonara dressing which she invented herself, starting with the cinta senese “gotino” (meat from the cheek) and the onions from Certaldo.

If this is her professional sweetest memory, then her worst one is the dinner for the “prova generale” for the Contrada del Drago with 650 people seated and 3 people in the kitchen to help her. A nightmare.

No tripe left for the cats – Tuscan recipe

This recipe from Buonconvento, a village on the road that connects Casato Prime Donne in Montalcino (10 km) and Fattoria del Colle di Trequanda (25km)

Recipe coming from Tuscany with tripe

This comes from a small booklet hand written by housewives, where all the domestic knowledge learnt from their grandmothers is recorded. The recipes are easy, quick and very tasty.

Buonconvento is along the Roman Via which in Medieval times became the Via Francigena. It was a fortified village with spectacular wall where one stopped, for armies, merchants, pilgrims and even kings. In 1313 the Imperatore Arrigo VII died here, and, according to the legend, he was poisoned in the convent with a consecrated host from here the saying <<Buonconvento e cattivi frati>> ( Good convent bad friars) which has pursued the Buonconvento inhabitants– buonconventini, also called granocchiai or nebbiaioli – to this day and age

Ingredients for the tripe

Boiled mixed tripe, grated rind of half a lemon, an onion, pureed peeled tomatoes, grated Parmigiano, extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper

Sweet Easter bread from Montalcino

It is called schiacciata, which means flat, but it is anything but flat. In Montalcino and in Siena it is a typical cake for Easter to make at home.

by Donatella Cinelli Colombini

Easter time ingredients for "schiacciata di Pasqua"

Be careful though, in the eastern part of the Siena province the schiacciata di Pasqua is savory, enriched with cheese and prosciutto. It is used to interrupt the fasting period on the Sunday morning before going to high Mass.

I remember that for my first Easter Sunday at Fattoria del Colle in Trequanda I had prepared a wonderful menu for that day in the restaurant I had just opened. Half way through the lunch the Maitre Walter Marconi, from Montalcino like me, ran to tell me that the schiacciate, instead of being sweet, as we were used to were savoury, so we could not use them as a dessert. We remedies somehow but it was a real shock, because I was sure I knew the territory well but instead I learnt that the Val d’Orcia and the Valdichiana are two separate worlds, both fascinating, rich in stories, but to know one does not mean you know the other.

Easter eggs decorated by Jana

Different nations have different cultures and at Easter the tradition of painting eggs is particularly common in Eastern Europe. Here is how to do it

by Donatella Cinelli Colombini

Decoranting eggs, how to do it

At Fattoria del Colle we have a young girl from Chomutov, an industrial city with 50.000 inhabitants not far form Prague doing some work-experience. Her name is Jana Kurucova and she’s a beautiful multilingual girl who is learning the ins and outs of the front office sector in tourism.
Jana learnt from her mother who in turn saw her grandmother paint Easter eggs. This is a very old tradition and originated from the countryside that still today is carried on in all homes. The decorated eggs are then attached to the blooming laburnum branches, as the eggs originate the joyful symbol of Resurrection and the rebirth of nature connected to springtime.

In the Easter weekend at Fattoria del Colle we have programmed a workshop on painted Easter eggs with Jana as teacher. All the guests will take home a splendid painted egg.

Here for you is the procedure to make at home some wonderful eggs to embellish your Easter table.