Masseria Potenti: A 16th-Century Farm Near Manduria Where the Owner Does the Cooking
A 16th-century masseria in the primitivo country near Manduria, run by Maria Grazia Di Lauro and her family. She cooks the daily menu, styles the long communal table, and turns twenty rooms of guests into something closer to houseguests.
At Masseria Potenti the owner does the cooking. Maria Grazia Di Lauro runs this sixteenth-century farm near Manduria with her family — Paolo, Chiara and Walter — and she is the reason to come: she sets the menu each morning from the kitchen garden, bakes the bread and the cakes, and styles the long communal table so carefully that guests tend to photograph it before they sit down.
The masseria once belonged to the powerful Imperiali family, and its whitewashed farm buildings have been kept much as they were — the twenty rooms converted from old sheepfolds and outbuildings, most with a fireplace and a private patch of garden, furnished simply with antiques and the ceramics of the region. The estate runs to some hundred and thirty hectares of olive grove and primitivo vineyard — this is Manduria, the home of the wine — and it makes its own red and its own oil.
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Dinner is the event: one long table, the family's wine, food that changes with the day, and now and then a band playing pizzica, the fast tarantella of the Salento. Maria Grazia teaches the cooking too — orecchiette pulled by hand, the bread and taralli and friselle that hold a Pugliese kitchen together — and there are quieter pleasures, yoga and a massage, for the mornings after.
The Ionian dune beaches are a few kilometers south, the ceramics town of Grottaglie about half an hour north, Brindisi's airport an hour off. This is not branded luxury, and it doesn't try to be; it's a family's house with very good rooms and a remarkable cook. Come hungry, take whichever room has a fireplace, and let Maria Grazia look after you.
PROPERTY DNA
Ownership | Independent; a private home that takes a few guests, created by Lord Alistair McAlpine and his wife Athena, who runs it still |
Era & Design | A former Franciscan monastery, roughly 500 years old (14th–15th century); restored by the McAlpines from the early 2000s |
Setting | An unmarked door in a stone wall on the edge of Marittima di Diso, ~2 km from the Adriatic, near the bottom of the Salento |
Rooms | 8 bedrooms — the monks' original cells; sleeps ~15, and can be taken whole |
Designs & Makers | The McAlpines' lived-in collection of folk and tribal art from four continents; in the kitchen, the chef Pierluigi and his mother Cecilia |