Eating and sleeping during the harvest

Our winery hospitality column today offers a small selection around Italy, from Piedmont to Puglia via the Colli Piacentini, Collio, Crete Senesi and Abruzzo.

If you are not more than experienced, it is best to observe the harvest from the outside. Working at that time in the vineyard can be tiring and even dangerous, because you have to use tools that not everyone knows how to handle properly. Then there are the shoots that can injure those who do not pay proper attention. So it is better to be cautious and enjoy that hectic period as guests. 

There are wineries all over Italy with hospitality, and we present them in our annual guide Eating and Sleeping Among the Vineyards. Bed and Breakfasts, Relais, Resorts, placed in the middle of the vineyards and from which you can enjoy the spectacle of the grape harvest without taking risks. I try to point you to six of them, among those that are located right in the middle of the vineyards, literally surrounded, as if it were a front row seat in a play or sporting event. 

Let's start in Piedmont, where in Monforte, in the village of Sant'Anna, there is Amalia's b&b Cascina in Langa, owned by the Boffa family. Just seven rooms but right in the heart of the Barolo production area. A truly unique place. Let's head southeast and reach the Colli Piacentini, where stands the Palazzo tra le Vigne of the Romagnoli Winery in Villò di Vigolzone, easily reached from Milan, for example. There are only four rooms, so you have to book early, also so you can taste the winery's wines, especially the sparkling wines, which are called Il Pigro and evidently conciliate relaxation. 

Still further east, and here we are in Friuli, in Collio Goriziano, right on the border with Slovenia. Here is the Relais di Russiz Superiore, owned by the Felluga family, very famous for the wines they have been producing in the area for many years. Just seven rooms in a medieval hamlet. Imagine. We reach Tuscany and we are at Fattoria del Colle, on the edge of the Crete Senesi, in a hamlet that dates back to 1592. Here Donatella Cinelli Colombini, a star of Italian winemaking, has renovated twenty-four rooms literally surrounded by a panorama of vineyards and olive groves. 

Even further south, and we are in Abruzzo, in Loreto Aprutino, between Gran Sasso and Majella. The Ciavolich family's Masseria del Vino, the name alone makes the point. A restored 19th-century farmhouse and only six rooms available for lucky guests. In Crispiano, in the province of Taranto, and thus in Puglia, is the Masseria Amastuola Wine Resort, eighteen rooms set in spectacular, wave-planted vineyards and carved out of an enclosed courtyard whose origins date back to the 1400s. 

• Piemonte - Amalia Cascina in Langa, www.cascinaamalia.it
• Emilia - Palazzo tra le vigne Romagnoli, www.cantineromagnoli.it
• Friuli - Russiz Superiore, relais@russizsuperiore.it
• Toscana - Fattoria del Colle, www.cinellicolombini.it
• Abruzzo - La Masseria del Vino Ciavolich, www.ciavolich.com
• Puglia - Amastuola Wine Resort, masseria@amastuola.it