If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR402.73), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
Surrounded by spectacular greenery, Roncolo 1888 serves all the charms of Emilia-Romagna in delizioso style. The region’s first ‘wine and balsamic relais’, located in the organic winery Tenuta Venturini Baldini, it’s a tasting menu of a stay, whether you’re dipping rustic bread into variously flavoured vinegars, sipping lambrusco reds and rosés, tucking into tortelli in an aged-parmesan fondue in the restaurant, or taking your taste-buds on a tour of local producers. And the decadence is kicked into high gear with breathtaking turns in the region’s famous sports cars (after all, you're in Italy's 'motor valley'), plus modern art and Renaissance architecture to feast your eyes on. Add a historic villa and ‘borgo’ with elegantly modernised rooms, and much like its enticing MOs, this is a tasty Italian treat.
11am, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 3pm.
Prices
Double rooms from £379.38 (€443), including tax at 10 per cent.
More details
Rates include a hearty breakfast of hams and cheeses, breads, eggs as you like them, fruit and homemade cakes and biscuits; welcome refreshments and a balsamic-vinegar tasting.
Also
There’s one wheelchair-accessible room at the hotel; however, to reach it, you’ll need to cross some areas with loose-pebble flooring.
Hotel closed
The property opens from March till November.
At the hotel
Vineyards, gardens, gym (with treadmills and weights), bikes to hire, free WiFi. In rooms: TV, Nespresso coffee machine, tea-making kit, minibar, bathrobes, air-conditioning, free bottled water, and Davines bath products.
Our favourite rooms
Villa Manodori, the historic residence central to the estate, may have been around since 1670 (evolving into its current form in the 19th century), but – aside from charmingly wood-beamed ceilings – Roncolo 1888’s rooms embrace modernity. There are pops of coral, seafoam and teal; mid-century furnishings; patterned fabrics; and iron four-poster beds. The simpler-in-style rooms are set in the Dimora Ancini and Acetaia buildings (part of the borgo developed here); so for that more typical Italian romance, book the villa’s Senior Suite, which has a frescoed ceiling.
Poolside
The pool is a short walk away from the hotel’s sleeping quarters, in an idyllic leafy setting. There’s a solarium for sunbathing and a bar to keep the estate's organic wines coming.
Packing tips
Play the packing game right and you could keep yourself in fine Italian produce for months; check a bag for bottles of balsamic and wine, and we’re pretty sure a wheel of parmesan will fit under an airline seat… Otherwise, bring your snazziest driving gloves and headscarves for whipping through the countryside in a sports car.
Also
Roncolo 1888 makes a scenic, romantic spot for weddings, birthday celebrations and private dinners.
Children can stay, but activities are skewed towards adult interests (have you tried fitting a booster seat in a Maserati?) There’s a dedicated Family Suite that sleeps up to four comfortably.
Sustainability efforts
Roncolo 1888 is as green as the Emilia-Romagna countryside with fully organic gardens, groves and vines, solar panels, water-saving devices, timed boilers, affiliation with the WWF’s protected-area scheme, and an aim to become a B-Corp. The historic house has been beautifully restored, and there’s a huge respect for the land here, with hyperlocal products and links with local small producers.
Meals taste so much better when you can actually see where they come from, so offer thanks to the organic grounds as you take in the panoramic view from the terrace.
Dress Code
Like the hotel’s talented chefs, ensure your outfit is serving – think refined rustic chic.
Hotel restaurant
For Ristorante Limonaia, a greenhouse (with more Crittall glass and chic industrial spareness than your average backyard pottering spot) feels like a suitable setting. After all, you’re served straight from the hotel’s organic garden, groves and vineyards, and all-glass walls give you glimpses of that fertile green. At its base, the menu digs into Emilia-Romagna’s centuries-honed cuisine, but served with modern attitude: colourful swoops of sauce, sprinklings of edible flowers and artful assemblages. Dishes change seasonally, but expect the likes of duck terrine with balsamic chard and grapefruit; pappardelle stuffed with veal ragù and béchamel mousse; cappelletti in parmesan cream; or suckling pig with agretti and wholegrain mustard.
Hotel bar
Ristorante Limonaia has a few stools to pull up for an apéritif or for honouring aperitivo hour, and there’s a bar by the pool for spritzes between swims. The hotel’s billed as a ‘wine and balsamic relais’ and guess which one of those you’ll be glugging with abandon (clue: probably the former, although the latter is tasty…) Wines come straight from the estate’s vineyard Tenuta Venturini Baldini, which specialises in lambrusco grapes for gently sparkling reds and rosés.
Last orders
At Ristorante Limonaia, lunch is served from 12.30pm till 2pm, and dinner from 7.30pm till 10pm.
Roncolo 1888 is grounded, like the vines and olive trees surrounding it, in the rich fertile terroir of the foodiest of Italy’s famously tasty regions, Emilia-Romagna, a 30-minute drive from Reggio-Emilia and an hour from Modena.
Planes
Bologna’s Guglielmo Marconi Airport is just over an hour’s drive from the hotel, and Milan Linate is a two-hour drive away. Transfers can be arranged in a limousine or minivan for €200 to €400 one-way.
Trains
The train station in Reggio-Emilia has high-speed direct links to Bologna, Parma and Milan; it’s a 30-minute drive from the hotel, and transfers can be arranged for €50 one-way.
Automobiles
Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini, Bugatti… You’re in the birthplace of the flashest motors here, so maybe get yourself a sporty little number (or something a bit more classic) to zip around in (the hotel has two cars available for hire onsite). There are plenty of cinematic settings to zoom through, and parking spaces in the hotel grounds.
Other
There’s a helipad in Scandiano about a half-hour drive from the hotel, if you want to chopper in.
Worth getting out of bed for
To praise the gastronomic excellence of any region of Italy is like saying the pope is Catholic – the whole country’s a feast – but Emilia-Romagna is the final boss of paisan cuisine. It’s at the DOP of its game, bearing Parmigiano Reggiano, Parma ham, balsamic vinegar, provolone, tagliatelle, tortellini… The estate itself has vineyards sown with lambrusco grapes and produces balsamic in the Acetaia di Canossa (a tasting is included free as part of your stay), so eating and drinking will play a big part in how you spend your time here. Taste house wines in Dimora Ancini’s 17th-century cellar, get a knack for regional dishes at a cookery class, and get your cheeses and country hams straight from the source, visiting neighbourhood producers. Or, ask the kitchen team to prep a picnic hamper for you to enjoy in a scenic spot in the gardens. Should all this eating and drinking start to weigh on you, there are 350 acres of the Parco di Roncolo to hike through (guided on request) and the Apennine mountains beyond that, plus bikes or e-bikes to hire (for a charge). The hotel can also arrange tennis and horse-riding, and there are glorious golf greens at Matilde di Canossa and the Modena Golf & Country Club. Or maybe that’s a bit sedate for you – rev things up with E–R’s other passion: fast cars. You're here in Motor Valley, where Ferrari, Maserati and more originated, and you can take a private tour of the factories, visit collectors to see their fleet, and even get behind the wheel. Staff can hook you up with a classic ride for the day (or a sporty Fiat Abarth) or set up a race at a nearby track. And, a guide can walk you through Bologna, Ravenna, Modena and the region’s other historic hotspots (say, tiny village Votigno di Canossa with its giant chessboard), or the artworks of Collezione Maramotti, Palazzo Magnani, the Labirinto della Masone, or the Pilotta Palace.
Local restaurants
From humble trattorias to starry destination diners, Emilia-Romagna will serve you well. Corte Ruspecchio (closed Mondays and Tuesdays) falls in the former camp, with simple yet sublime dishes such as nettle caplettoni in gorgonzola fondue, Chianina tartare with petals of white truffle, purple-potato gnocchi with bacon, taleggio and walnuts. Ca Matilde’s tasting menus have flower-y conceits, from the ‘timeless’ with more traditional local dishes, to the ‘feet on the ground’ garden-gleaned experience and the enigmatic ‘sky’. Ristorante Bosco’s hearty authentic fare starts with cured meats and parmigiano, before Cantabrian anchovies on brioche, green tortelli in butter, pork cheek with porcini, before finishing with a number of creamy desserts or calvados-sloshed sorbet. Herbe in Reggio-Emilia might eschew the porkier delights of the region, but you won’t feel like you’re missing out, with a vegetarian menu of aubergine in spiced almond cream, sweet-potato gnocchi in chicory pesto with hazelnut crumble, and teriyaki-glazed mushrooms on a ginger-y salad. And Massimo Bottura's Osteria Francescana in Modena is haute, haute, haute with three Michelin stars to its name and a menu littered with lobster, caviar, truffle and aged cheeses; dishes are given curious monikers such as ‘a potato that wants to become a truffle’ and ‘this little piggy went to the market’, so be prepared for some culinary quirkiness.
Local cafés
Locanda La Concia in Reggio-Emilia is a laidback bistro, ideal for casual lunching, with lighter plates such as shrimp tacos, artichoke au gratin, and breads topped with cheeses, lard or anchovies. Wash down with a glass of natural wine.
Local bars
If you’re feeling fatigued with wine after wine, then Guascone in Reggio-Emilia offers an alternative – yes, there is a selection of bottles, but it’s also a vermuteria, and has cans of craft beer.
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this delicious in all ways hotel in Emilia-Romagna and unpacked their haunch of prosciutto and leagues of lambrusco, a full account of their nourishing break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Roncolo 1888…
In intensely food-focused region Emilia-Romagna, any hotel that doesn’t step up to the plate, fill it with hunks of aged Parmigiano Reggiano, fresh-sliced Parma ham or handmade tortelli, and pair it with a secco lambrusco, should say a few hail Marys. But, Roncolo 1888 needn’t be concerned – as the first ‘wine and balsamic relais’ in the area, with fully organic vineyards, groves and kitchen gardens, it has impeccable taste(s). Smith guests get a free tasting each of the variously flavoured barrels in the vinegar-ageing Acetaia di Canossa, and the softly sparkling reds and rosés from the Tenuta Venturini Baldini winery’s cellars; but that’s just the start of Pac Man-esque pursuits through local farms, and the modern takes on trad local dishes in Ristorante Limonaia. And dining finely isn’t the only decadent who indulged here – speeding round a local racetrack, taking the wheel of a Ferrari, and threading through the Apennine mountains in a vintage speedster breathtakingly celebrate the region’s motoring culture; while contemporary art and rich Renaissance architecture is there to be devoured. There’s also a hefty helping of history, with the restored Villa Manodori at the heart of the estate’s ‘borgo’, whose heritage stretches back to the 17th century, and equally antique outbuildings, now reimagined with rooms in contemporary Italian style. In a region full of foodie hotspots, this might be the dishiest…
