ESSSSHHHH. I’m sitting at a table in a room that wouldn’t look out of place on an interiors shoot – making noises I wouldn’t normally make in public.
Outside, the Umbrian hills roll into Lake Trasimeno, creating the kind of vista that makes you want to pen a poem (or an Instagram caption). But the view can wait.
Taking another sip, I let the liquid coat my tongue before bringing my top set of teeth to meet the bottom, opening wide and sucking in air until the liquid hits my tonsils.
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I look like I’m in a wind tunnel and sound like a vacuum cleaner. But it’s nothing the staff at Rastrello haven’t seen a hundred times before.
Nikki Osman
Room with a view: Nikki gets acquainted with the Umbrian landscape
I’m here to do a tasting – one that doesn’t require a bucket. The Extra Virgin Olive Oil in my glass began life in the groves surrounding the medieval hilltop town of Panicale – and it’s embedded into the Rastrello experience like the roots of an olive tree into Umbrian earth.
During the 48 hours I spend here I’ll sip an olive oil martini, see off a bowl of olive oil ice cream and scrub an olive oil exfoliant into my skin – each experience more enchanting than the last.
But first I’ll drink it as it comes – and becoming a human Dyson is all part of the experience.
‘The technique of aerating your mouth is similar to the technique when tasting wine,’ Christiane Wassmann, Rastrello’s owner and an olive oil sommelier, tells me.
‘It disperses the oil throughout your mouth and the introduced oxygen helps your taste buds experience the olive oil flavours, characteristics, and tones’.
Unlike a wine tasting – where swallowing can be an occupational hazard – it’s a crucial part of the olive oil tasting process.
‘It’s essential to identify the pungency, which tells you if it is high in polyphenols,’ says Wassmann, of the antioxidant plant compounds.
Umbrian vineyards in Autumn
The earlier the olives are harvested, she explains, the higher the polyphenols – and the more pungent the EVOO will taste.
That the time between picking and pressing a bottle of Rastrello EVOO is a matter of hours is why their produce packs so much punch – and why they’ve been hosting tastings since opening their doors in 2020.
But over the past 18 months, interest has grown like a well-tended grove. ‘Five years ago, an EVOO tasting at Rastrello would have been our guests’ first experience.
‘Now an increasing number have taken part before and want to continue expanding their knowledge.’
Mattia Aquila
Rastrello in the afternoon sun
And yet, a healthier approach to meal prepping isn’t the only thing drawing increasing numbers of tourists to this Italian hilltop town.
This season marks the harvest – an event that sees locals come together to pick the fresh crop.
For a week in October, the town rises with the sun, take their tools out to the groves and rake the olives from their branches.
‘Under the olive trees, a magic happens’
Come lunchtime, they’ll dine on long tables in the groves, returning to the work with full stomachs and hearts.
In the three decades that the Wassmann family have been making EVOO, the annual harvest has become increasingly popular – with first family, then friends travelling to Panicale to take part.
So embedded is the harvest in the hotel’s brand that they even named it for this moment (‘rastrello’ means ‘rake’ in Italian – a nod to the tool used to pick the olives).
A farmer using a rake during the olive harvest
For Wassmann, what separates this week from any other in the calendar year is that it’s a potent source of connection.
‘Under the trees while picking, a magic happens,’ she explains. ‘Everyone’s having conversations while you hear the olives dropping to the nets.
‘There’s a unity and camaraderie that leaves everyone feeling so proud. I believe we need more of these slow and relaxed moments to enjoy and connect with each other.’
‘We need more of these slow moments to enjoy and connect with each other’
That tourists participate in this annual ritual too is, she believes, symptomatic of a wider trend: travelling not for privacy, but for community.
‘Most definitely,’ she tells me, when I asked if this desire is something she’s observed among her guests.
‘The other day, I saw a guest who’d been staying with us a week, walking around the perimeter of the village with a group of ladies from Panicale.
‘I asked her if she knew them from before, and she said, “no, they just asked me to join them on their walk.” She walked with them every day during her stay.’
The town square in Panicale, Umbria
It was in response to this shift that the hotel’s monthly Spaghettata event was born. ‘A spaghettata is a one-dish, quintessential pasta meal that a family enjoys together,’ Wassmann explains.
‘It’s normal to overhear how different types of pastas are acceptable or not with certain ingredients [and] rules are passed down from generation to generation.
‘We have so many grandparents in the village and I wanted to honour the fact that our menu is based on the traditions of Umbria and Panicale and, therefore, them.’
On the last Sunday of every month, the hotel opens its doors to the town for a dinner attended by locals and guests alike.
Like everything cooked up in the kitchen by Umbrian-born head chef Nicola Fanfano, ingredients are grown in the hotel garden or sourced locally, with food served on tables designed with mingling in mind.
I missed Spaghettata by a day – I flew home on the last Saturday in August – and leafing through the Spaghettata cookbook on the plane only added to the calendar regret.
‘We wanted to honour the grandparents of the village’
‘With the pandemic, I thought about all the elderly in the village who were alone and had no one to talk to,’ Wassmann recalls, of the project for which she invited the grandparents of the town to contribute a recipe.
‘We began the interviews early in 2021 to help them reconnect with the community.’
What started as a lockdown project evolved into a labour of love. ‘Each interview lasted hours, while they cooked for us and told us the stories of how they learned their recipes and what motivates them to create a big meal.’
I may not have made it to the spaghettata, but every night I spent dining in the fairy-lit courtyard that separates the main building from the newly-renovated annex felt like a communal experience.
There was the husband-and-wife-to-be, a few days out from their wedding, dining with their respective families; the squad of Swedish women on a girl’s trip; the Scouse couple in their sixties.
And us – a journalist and a teacher, him sipping the last of the summer wine, me dipping my bread into the olive oil on my plate, and making a noise like a vacuum cleaner. When near Rome…
The best of the restThe rooms
Mattia Aquila
A bedroom at Rastrello
The interiors are every bit as exquisite as you’d expect from a restored 14th-century palazzo hotel and the calm contained with the stone walls makes it difficult to leave.
Every corner has been curated with care, from the Objet D’art perched on plinths to the book nooks designed with doing nothing in mind. But it’s the rooms where the Quiet Luxury comes into its own.
The new Garden Annex has doubled the capacity, with all sixteen rooms boasting a view of the Umbrian landscape. Expect stone floors, wooden beams and a bath so cavernous you’ll struggle to clamber out of it .
The food
From the courtyard lit with fairylights to the Umbrian sky painted with watercolour, eating at Rastrello is a fine dining experience long before you’ve had your first bite. And the home-grown ingredients elevate it from memorable to unforgettable.
Tomato arancini that melt on your tongue, the creamiest Mozzarella I’ve ever tasted and the finest proscutto I tried during a week on Umbrian soil.
Panicale is known for its food and you’ll struggle to eat a bad meal in this town. (An artichoke flan I order one lunchtime makes it on to my death row dinner menu).
But that the courtyard was populated each evening by a mix hotel guests and Italians is testament to its reputation in this tiny town. Don’t leave without ordering the olive oil ice cream.
The wellness
Deep in the bowels of the Garden Annex is a dedicated wellness space – complete with a sauna, a shower and a massage table for treatments. And if the exposed brickwork and the arched ceiling provide the ambiance, the practitioner does the rest.
The Umbrian Bliss Journey is both analgesic and a trip; over the course of two hours I’m exfoliated in an intoxicating blend of olive oil and lavender, then massaged all over before a facial that features some of the most interesting touch therapy I’ve ever encountered.
The bliss the experience delivers is so profound that I can hardly string a sentence together over lunch and after my husband gives up on me as a conversational companion I head to the meditation room – resplendent with cushions and calm – to make the most of my quiet mind.
Mattia Aquila
The meditation room at Rastrello
The town
Nikki Osman
Nikki exploring Panicale
When you’re not consuming olive oil you’ll be taking passagata through the enchanting streets of Panicale.
The ritual – introduced to me by an Italian friend, who was born in nearby Assisi – involves the taking of a walk after a meal in order to ease the stomach-bursting feeling that accompanies putting away a primi, secondi and dolci thrice daily.
Since arriving in this country a week ago, it’s become a daily habit – and there are few places better suited to the brief of an after-dinner stroll than this one.
The cobbled streets spiral upwards towards the centre of the town – and every street has something to be discovered.
But it’s the square that’s the beating heart of this town and where we were drawn to after every meal for an espresso and an earwig.
Go there!
Rooms at Rastrello start from £242 in the low season and £279 in the high season for a standard double BOOK NOW.
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