OUR HISTORY
WE NAMED IT AFTER MY MOTHER: VILLA DELIA
In 1980s two women shared a hospital room. Both of them had spent their married lives on family farms. For one the vineyards she and her husband had worked so hard to maintain had been sold as a housing estate. For the other, the farm would soon suffer the same fate. They commiserated but, at some point, one of them, Delia, made a suggestion. Her son had left Tuscany but now he was coming back often. he had gone to North America and done well in the restaurant business. Perhaps he could buy this other woman’s rundown old farm and bring it to life again. It was just a dream.
I’m Delia’s son. I had left Tuscany in 1960s, eager to work hard and prove myself. Using my Tuscan traditions as a base, I celebrated Italian cuisine in restaurant after restaurant. I had a dream too. I dreamed of going back. I told my mother of my dream, she told her hospital roommate. I bought the woman’s farm, with help from investors and family, and we rebuilt its 54 acres into a gracious country inn and cooking school. My sister Marietta and her husband, Silvano, live there and manage it. Marietta and I give cooking classes together whenever I can be there. We grow olives and grapes and bottle our own oil and wine. And visitors come from all over the world to ease into the Tuscan way of life.
My mother did not live to see the day when the sale was complete and work on the inn began.
We name it after her: Villa Delia.