L'Andana

Località Badiola, Castiglione della Pescaia, on a 500-hectare estate “chosen by the Grand Duke of Tuscany Leopold II of Lorraine as the site of one of his villas” and used as the headquarters of his Maremma land reclamation. The Moretti family bought the core of it in 2000 and dates the rebirth to 2004. The villa became L’Andana — twenty rooms and thirteen suites, interiors by Ettore Mocchetti — on a farm with about thirty hectares of vines.

The house

The land was drained before it was farmed. The estate places Leopold II’s reclamation of the Maremma wetlands, “abandoned to nature since the late Roman era”, at 1800 on one page and the mid-1800s on another; the Grand Duke lived at Badiola and ran the works from it. What survives is five hundred hectares, seven kilometres from Castiglione della Pescaia and the Tyrrhenian coast: woodland, Mediterranean scrub, an olive grove of hundred-year-old Leccino and Moraiolo trees picked by hand, and about thirty hectares under vine — white grapes in the western vineyard, black-skinned varieties in the eastern. The winery makes the Acquagiusta wines, and no oenologist is named.

The Moretti family bought the estate’s core, including the Acquagiusta farmyard, in 2000. Vittorio Moretti, his daughter Carmen and her husband Martino de Rosa restored the buildings: the main villa became L’Andana, the surrounding farms Casa Badiola, inaugurated in 2009 with fourteen rooms and suites. The Morettis ran the hotel in partnership with Alain Ducasse from 2004 to 2015; when it ended, Carmen Moretti and Martino de Rosa began again in 2016 with Enrico Bartolini, whose La Trattoria, in an old barn, “officially entered, in 2016” the Michelin guide with a star. The house has thirty-three keys, an ESPA spa, a golf course and membership of The Leading Hotels of the World.

What distinguishes it

The estate was a grand duke’s reclamation headquarters Leopold II of Lorraine chose Badiola as the site of one of his villas and lived there while draining the Maremma, a landscape the estate describes as having been “abandoned to nature since the late Roman era”. The five hundred hectares that remain are the shape of that project. The hotel is a model farm’s villa, not a nobleman’s pleasure house.

Thirty hectares of five hundred are vines The owner gives the estate as “cinquecento ettari” with “circa 30 gli ettari coltivati a vite” — six per cent of the land. White grapes are planted in the western vineyard, black-skinned varieties in the eastern, and the wines are sold as Acquagiusta. No appellation, no grape variety and no winemaker is named on either the resort’s or the group’s pages. For a house in this volume, the vineyard is the smallest part of the farm.

Ducasse was here eleven years and has been gone a decade The Morettis partnered with Alain Ducasse to develop the hotel business from 2004 to 2015. After it ended, Carmen Moretti and Martino de Rosa started a new project in 2016 with Enrico Bartolini. The resort’s current restaurant pages do not mention Ducasse at all; the only Michelin star on the estate was awarded in 2016, under his successor.

Two houses, and the second is newer than the first L’Andana holds twenty rooms and thirteen suites in the restored ducal villa; Casa Badiola, made from the surrounding farm buildings, was inaugurated in 2009 with fourteen rooms and suites. Accommodation is further split between La Scuderia, a villa with its own pool, and Il Granaio. Interior décor across the estate was curated by the architect Ettore Mocchetti.

It closes for the winter The resort states that it “reopens its doors on 16 April”, and La Trattoria runs “From 14th May to 30th September”. The house is a seasonal operation on a working farm, with the olive harvest running October to November after the guests have gone.

Signature rooms and dates

Competitive landscape