Getting Found in the Details

Just before Villa Ardore opened for its first season, we had a social visit from one of the founders of what is probably the world’s most exclusive hotel group. After walking through the property, he said, “You’ve really thought of everything. Well done.” We were of course delighted by such high praise coming from someone in his position, but we were also relieved. Never having operated a hospitality business before, we weren’t always sure that we knew what we were doing.

But, when we opened, we found that nearly everyone who came to the villa said the same thing: “You’ve thought of everything!” Naturally, we were delighted to hear it, but we didn’t know exactly what to make of it. We know that we will never have thought of literally everything, as each year we make adjustments, updates, and improvements. But by now people have told us so many times that we’ve thought of everything that it’s caused us to wonder: what are people responding to when they say that?

It turns out that it is not, in fact, the devil who lurks in the details.

Restoring a historic Tuscan property and making it a luxury home-away-from-home for sophisticated travelers from around the world was a new adventure for us, filled with unknowns. What do people want? What do people need? Should we use an interior decorator? With the nearly blank canvas of a 500-year-old farmhouse, there were literally thousands of details to attend to, and a thousand different directions we could head off in.  We consulted supposed experts, who gave us conflicting advice: You absolutely must do this! You absolutely must not do that! Hire us to create a 90-page plan detailing everything from tissue holders to air conditioning systems because only we know the secrets to success!  The expression “the devil is in the details” seemed to float in the air before us, daring us to make the wrong choices.

But as we began to formulate more concrete plans on our own and in consultation with our architect, “the devil is in the details” was very quickly (and mercifully) supplanted by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s dictum “God is in the details.” We went from fearing that the overall project could be derailed by a wrong choice to falling so in love with the details that any fear about the outcome disappeared entirely.

A Labor of Love

When we spent our first night at the villa, we understood right away that it needed more lights, placed in such a way as to highlight the building’s fundamental beauty. We went to a small factory and showroom in a nearby town to pick out exactly the right size, shape, and material for the villa’s outdoor sconces and indoor accent lighting.  When the exactly right thing didn’t yet exist, they custom made it for us.  Before we knew it, the stress that comes from uncertainty dissipated and we relaxed into the understanding that our knowledge of the property would guide us.

And we loved the details that that knowledge led us into, as well as the connection with local craftspeople who helped us turn our ideas into reality.  Next, we found a mattress manufacturer just outside Florence that could custom make mattresses to exactly our specifications. We personally touched every material that the mattresses were made from and made adjustments until we had something that we knew we could be proud of. We spent hours at a local fabric specialist choosing just the right texture and pattern for each room’s bedcover to ensure that it was harmonious with the room’s overall character. We went personally to the manufacturer of bed and bath fabrics to find bathrobes of the feel, weight, fit, and quality that met our high standards. And, in the dead of winter at the height of the pandemic, we went to the quarries near the Tuscan coast to find exactly the right marble and travertine to suit the individual personality of each bathroom. All of this became such a labor of love that, at a certain point, we stopped asking ourselves what a theoretical guest would expect, and we asked ourselves instead what a particular place in the villa calls for, what feels absolutely right in that place.

We were especially guided by this idea during our year-long quest to create the perfect scent for the villa’s bedrooms. We knew from our own experience that we had to find a scent to capture the villa’s essence. Nearly thirty years ago we went on our first vacation together and stayed in a wonderful cottage that had a scent that seemed to emanate from the nature surrounding it. That precious scent memory has never left us, and we wanted our guests to have that same indelible impression left with them after their time at Villa Ardore.

The Scent of Ardore

To find that perfect scent, we went to our friends at Adage, a Tuscany-based boutique perfumery. The owners, Robert and Chris (like us, transplants from other countries), came to the villa twice; once to walk the grounds and the interior, and once to stay overnight in order to understand the place and what scent could be created to reflect its spirit.

The process was longer and more challenging than we thought, in part because we are blessed with so many wonderful scents that are native to the property and its surrounding countryside, and in part because not all of those scents feel right when experienced indoors. We have the most exuberant lavender and roses, for example, but those scents, while wonderful on the plants, are too flowery to work as room scents. The blossoms of our lemon and orange trees fill the piazza between the villa and spa suites with their delicate scent in the spring but aren’t characteristic of the property during the rest of the year. We tried various permutations and combinations of basil and lemon peel and rosemary and bergamot and scores of other plants until, late this past winter, we knew that we were getting closer to our goal. Finally, after months of experimentation, Chris and Robert called us to say that they had found a combination that they think might work.

Off we went in late February to the heart of the Bolgheri wine region to meet the Adage owners in their Riparbella studio. They brought out three small vials of scent that they had created using the criteria that we had all decided upon, all with the same ingredients but in different proportions. We smelled the evolution from the first scent to the second to the third, each one getting closer to our ideal. And then finally the fourth. But no. We were still not there, and Chris and Robert went back to the drawing board.

After months of further experimentation, Adage called us back. And we are delighted to say that this time … perfection; a mixture of citrus, bergamot, and subtler under notes that so captures the spirit of Ardore that one is barely conscious of why one can feel the spirit of the landscape outside from indoors.

This adventure of finding the perfect scent is only the most recent example of our not getting lost in the details, but finding Ardore within them. We could write pages about literally every object found in the villa and every design choice made as we restored it, from the long shop table that fits perfectly against the wall to the left of the living room fireplace (found serendipitously at an antique shop in Umbria), to the dining room chairs (found after months of searching with an exact idea in mind), to the handmade rugs (chosen after multiple trips to the villa by a rug seller who patiently hefted one rug after another from his truck until we found the right ones). We individually selected each piece of the villa’s original art collection, a collaborated with a master ceramicist for the creation of the villa’s hand painted tableware. There is nothing that you can see or touch at Villa Ardore that doesn’t have its own story of how and why it came to be there.

We think that this is why people say that we thought of everything. Looking only at the villa as it exists today—as home that combines comfort with luxury without feeling stuffy, a home that embraces you—it probably seems as though we had a master plan filled with thousands of details. But that’s not what happened and, in all honesty, we doubt that we could have done it that way. Instead, we (albeit unintentionally) followed Mies van der Rohe’s good advice to start with the details and trust that the whole will be beautiful.

And we think that it has been.

Recipe of the month: Fettuccine with Pesto, Potatoes, and green beans

As it does at this time every year, basil has sprouted full and bushy in a large terra cotta pot next to the Villa Ardore herb garden. Although basil didn’t find its way into the Villa Ardore room scent, it has of course made it onto our table.

With its delicate but distinctive flavor, the variety of recipes that it can work with is limited only by one’s imagination. So far this year, we have combined its torn leaves with those of mint from our herb garden to garnish a farro, watermelon, and goat cheese salad; had its leaves crisped in brown butter tossed together with lemon and gnocchi; and used its chopped leaves in marinades and dressings. But this month’s recipe features basil in what must be basil’s most classic use, pesto. This simple but delicious combination of pesto with pasta, potatoes, and green beans has long been one of our summer favorites.

Fettuccini with Pesto, Potatoes, and Green Beans (serves 6)

To make the pesto:

Ingredients:

• A full bouquet of basil (roughly enough to fill 2 well-packed cups)
• ½ cup (120 ml) of extra virgin olive oil
• 3 Tablespoons of pine nuts
• 1 large or two small cloves of garlic, finely chopped.
• Salt (a generous pinch)
• 2/3 cup of freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
• 1/3 cup of freshly grated Romano cheese.

Method:

1. Either wipe the basil leaves clean with a clean damp cloth or briefly submerge them in a bowl of cold water and gently pat them dry with a clean dry cloth or paper towels.
2. Put the basil, olive oil, pine nuts, chopped garlic, and pinch of salt into a food processer and process to a uniform, creamy consistency.
3. Transfer the basil mixture from the food processer to a bowl and mix in the two grated cheeses by hand.

To make the remainder of the dish:

Ingredients:

• 3 small new potatoes, scrubbed clean
• ½ lb. (225 g.) of young green beans, ends snapped off and washed in cold water
• 5 lbs (680 g.) of dried fettuccini
• Pesto

Method:

1. Boil the potatoes with the skins on. When they are fork tender, remove them from the boiling water and cool them by soaking them briefly in cold water. Peel off their skins and cut them into about ¼ inch (a bit more than a half centimeter) slices.
2. Bring a saucepan of salted water to a boil and drop in the green beans. Cook them until they are just fork tender—no longer crunchy, but not overcooked.
3. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and add the fettuccini. When the pasta is cooked al dente, drain it , but reserving 2 Tablespoons of the salted pasta water (This is most easily done by draining the pasta over a large bowl to reserve its water and use what is required).
4. Add the 2 tablespoons of the pasta water to the pesto.
5. Toss the fettuccini with the potatoes, green beans, and pesto and serve immediately.