While some properties offer escape, Fontanelle Estate brand, with its two hotels in the rolling hills of Chianti Classico, offers a way of life. Here, the idea of Chianti Living isn’t just a marketing phrase; it’s an immersion into a landscape where vineyards spill toward the horizon, cypress trees stand like sentinels, and time seems to linger a little longer between meals and glasses of fine wine.
Your Tuscan Home
The two hotels of the Fontanelle Estate brand occupy a prime perch in Castelnuovo Berardenga, about twenty minutes from Siena and a little over an hour from Florence. The location is quintessential Tuscany: gently sloping hills quilted with vines, medieval hamlets scattered like storybook markers, and a specific sense of calm. Guests might find themselves arriving with an itinerary in hand, as did I. Yet the idea of day trips to Florence, or a stop in Siena’s Piazza del Campo quickly fades once on property. The estate itself is the destination.
Hotel Le Fontanelle: Heart of the Estate
The centerpiece of the property is Hotel Le Fontanelle, a five-star retreat housed in two lovingly restored establishments. The main structure, once a medieval country building, carries its history gracefully, with stone walls, vaulted ceilings, and windows framing vineyard views. Across the way, down a cypress-lined path, is an annex, Villa Il Mandorlo, with spacious suites that feel like Tuscan cottages. Many come with private gardens or terraces, a simple luxury that transforms a morning espresso into a sunrise ritual.
The accommodations are warm, with terracotta floors, exposed beams, and handcrafted details in Tuscan tradition. Yet modern comforts (from air conditioning, to Nespresso machines, to indulgent bathrooms with luxury bath amenities) ensure nothing feels antiquated. What stands out most is the sense of residential intimacy, as in Villa Il Mandorlo’s own communal living room, with book lined shelves, the tomes available for the taking. You don’t so much check in as move in, as though you’ve been given keys to your own countryside retreat.
Amenities With a Tuscan Soul
Hotel Le Fontanelle’s amenities mirror the landscape it inhabits: restorative, grounded, and unhurried. The outdoor pool is tucked into a terrace with sweeping views of the vineyards, an irresistible perch for an afternoon swim or a sunset aperitivo. An indoor pool and wellness area extend the invitation year-round.
Dining is another highlight, with the estate’s flagship restaurant La Colonna offering seasonal menus that turn the bounty of Chianti into refined, elegant plates. Ingredients come directly from the surrounding land—vegetables from the estate’s gardens, olive oil pressed on site, wines from onsite winery Vallepicciola. The effect is celebratory, especially when weather allows for candlelit, al fresco dining (and it almost always does.) Dining here is a reminder that in Tuscany, food and wine are not indulgences but essentials of daily life.
For those who want to move beyond relaxation, the estate offers cycling through vineyard-lined roads, truffle hunting excursions, and hands-on cooking classes that demystify the art of Tuscan pasta. My husband and I learned how to make tagliatelle, gnocchi, and almond biscotti under the tutelage of Chef Sergio Longo, whose technique emphasizes simplicity and heart. The recipes he taught us can easily be replicated at home. Each activity at Hotel Le Fontanelle is tied back to the land, reinforcing the notion that Chianti Living is not just about seeing; it’s about doing, tasting, and participating.
The Club House: A Contemporary Counterpoint
A short drive from Hotel Le Fontanelle lies The Club House, the estate’s second hospitality hub. While it shares the same DNA of understated luxury, it’s an adults-only sanctuary where guests enjoy access to a spa, an outdoor infinity pool, and two stylish restaurants. For those staying at Hotel Le Fontanelle, The Club House can function as an elegant extension, enjoying a different dining experience at Osteria Il Tuscanico or the Michelin 1-star restaurant, Il Visibilio.
Vallepicciola: The Estate’s Liquid Signature
No story of Fontanelle Estate brand is complete without mention of Vallepicciola, the on-site winery that sprawls across 265 hectares of vineyards (the vineyards of which make up 100 hectares.) The winery has rapidly established itself as one of Chianti Classico’s rising stars, producing everything from elegant Sangiovese-based Chianti Classico to bold Cabernet Franc and Merlot bottlings. Guests at the two hotels can visit the winery for private tastings, cellar tours, or simply sample the latest vintages over dinner.
Vallepicciola’s wines have already earned international acclaim—including a spot in Wine Spectator’s Top 100—and yet there is something wonderfully grounded about drinking them here, a few hills away from where the grapes were harvested. For many guests, it becomes the defining memory: sipping a Gran Selezione as the sun dips below the vineyards, the wine itself another expression of the land they’ve been living in for days.
Living the Chianti Way
What distinguishes Fontanelle Estate from other five-star luxury brands is not just its setting and two hotels, or its architecture, or even its wines. It’s the feeling of living here, if only temporarily. Guests quickly find themselves adopting Tuscan rhythms: lingering over long breakfasts, walking the grounds at dusk, slipping into conversations about vintages and olive harvests. It is life unfolding in its natural cadence, shaped by the land, the food, and the wine.
At Hotel Le Fontanelle and The Club House you wake to birdsong instead of traffic, where your “commute” is a stroll among towering cypress, and where your suite—with its garden or terrace—blurs the line between private retreat and panoramic lookout. Some hotels transport; these transform you into a temporary resident of Tuscany.
Bringing Tuscany Home
For American travelers reluctant to leave Chianti behind, Vallepicciola offers a bridge: its wines are available through select distributors and fine wine shops in the United States. A bottle of Chianti Classico Riserva or Cabernet Franc Mordese poured back home carries with it more than flavor—it recalls the villa, the view, and the feeling of living, however briefly, as part of the Tuscan countryside.
In the end, Fontanelle Estate brand offers an invitation to slow down, to inhabit a landscape rather than pass through it, and to let the Tuscan way of life become, if only for a while, your own. For those in search of more than just a stay, Hotel Le Fontanelle and The Club House provide something enduring: the experience of Chianti Living.
Photos courtesy of Fontanelle Estate brand