I was a bit wary in booking La Capanna at Il Piaggione for a week on my first trip to Italy, because I could not find any recent English language reviews.

When I arrived with my partner, our jaws dropped at the beauty. It is on an east-facing hillside with views for kilometres over the Tuscan countryside. The bedroom windows open wide to the view and stream in the morning sun.

There is a patio in the back with shade trees and exposure to the setting sun, and the swimming pool in front has a huge deck and lounge chairs which seem to hang in the air with the gorgeous view. Close up there are trees down into the valley - I was surprised how much of Tuscany is still forested.

La Capanna is of traditional brick and stone construction, but was actually built in the early 1990s, so has modern appliances, kitchen, wiring and plumbing - dishwasher, smaller front loading washer, gas range and convection oven, nice shower. The kitchen is well equipped, everything worked, and the suite and the pool were spotless. The kitchen does have a few basics like salt, sugar, pepper.

The suite has heating and air coooling, but we had want of neither in mid-May.

At night, it is completely silent - no road or industrial noise at all - just an occasional dog bark in the far distance. In the day, it's a working hobby farm, with grapes, vegetables, olive trees, chickens, goats, a pig, and my favourites are the pair of white ducks who roam the grounds. During the day in May we heaerd cuckoos and lots of other songbirds. It's a working farming area, so we heard farm tractors but no other traffic. One day there were chemicals sprayed on the vines around us, so we kept the windows closed during that.

This is a small place, so you're on your own for food, entertainment and activities. We really enjoyed the quiet here as a contrast to the crowds in Siena.

There appear to be lots of small roads and trails in the area - even one that may go into Vagliagli, but we could not find a listing of them. We left a topo map in the villa which is helpful, but you need to be a good bush navigator. That would be a great project for someone to wander around, talk to people, and find them.

There are several ways in to Vagliagli, all of them unbearably scenic, but only the route from Siena (from the south) is completely on paved roads. If you rent a car to get here, the agreement probably forbids you to drive it on 'unsealed' (gravel) roads. This part of Chianti is criss-crossed with 'white roads' - gravel - in generally good condition when we were here.

Vagliagli is a very small town, so check if you need services. There are grocery stores and banks and all the rest within a half hour drive, and this is a good location between Florence, Siena, San Gimignano, and probably lots of other sights.

I was glad to be here with a car - it's a hilly 2km walk to Vagliagli, and anything else is a lot farther. There is bus service to Vagliagli, but only a few trips per day.

The wireless Internet was hooked up just before we arrived, and worked great for us. www.speedtest.net showed 2+Mbps download, and 42ms ping, but only 0.28Mbps upload, which rules out Skype video. It worked okay for Skype audio only though, which was a lot simpler for me than the ItalCom pay phones.

The owners have a great attitude and really want to make it comfortable, without intruding. We really like them.

I don't have much to compare La Campana at Il Piaggione with, but we couldn't have been more pleased with the setting, the building, the amenities, or the management. If there wasn't so much more world to see, I'd book here again.