Lupaia

The wolves came first: Lupaia's hilltop is named after the lupi that roamed it about a thousand years ago. The farmers who built on it in 1622 put up stone stables along its paths all the same, kept their goats on the ground floor and lived upstairs, which on a hill named for wolves took some nerve. Heidi and Christopher Mueller looked at more than sixty properties before this one, and have made five of those farmhouses into twelve rooms and suites, still standing apart, each with a garden or terrace of its own. In one, striped curtains frame an open door, with a deckchair on the grass outside and the hills going hazy beyond. The infinity pool looks west across the valley to Montepulciano, and the jacuzzi beside it is heated all year, which is more than the pool can say.

Recommended for couples who want the Val d'Orcia slowly, and have a car, which every town round here needs. Montepulciano is ten minutes' drive; the estate's e-bikes go out on guided tours into the wine country around it. Or stay on the hill, where light lunches and homemade gelato come whenever anyone asks, and at sunset a barman can be booked to stir Negronis in the pergola facing the town. Dinner is from Luca's open kitchen, on a menu that changes daily and arrives by the basket from Giampaolo's gardens. Truffles are the exception. Pierpaolo hunts them through the estate's woods with three dogs, guests can go along, and the kitchen cooks whatever turns up: the one ingredient on the menu found by a dog.