About

My name is Steve and I gave up my London life of twenty-five years plus and a long career in the hospitality and property sectors to begin a new life in the north west region of Piedmont.

Together with my partner Nick, we now call home a mid-size renovation project in the heart of the stunning UNESCO Monferrato region.  

Being a hotelier at heart with experience managing hotels and holiday homes for all my working life, I’m delighted to be able to create a place for guests to stay in this wonderful region of Italy and to help you explore and discover Piedmont for yourselves.

So how did two English guys and a cat end up in Piedmont?

It begins a little further south...

I'd been visiting the South of France for over twenty-five years and whilst my budget would never stretch to a little pad on the Cote d'Azur, I’d long dreamt of being able to spend more and more time either in France or Italy, but always felt it was out of my reach.  Then in 2012, an error in travel plans meant having an extra day to fill and so Nick and I took the train over the border into Italy, for a visit to the market at Ventimiglia and stayed a night in Sanremo.  After a chance glance in an estate agent’s window and many research trips later, we bought a little house in the beautiful village of Apricale, 30 minutes up the hill from Sanremo. 

Fast-forward four years and our trips to Apricale became monthly and we had seriously begun to think about whether we could make a permanent move to Italy. By 2015 work for me had now changed as I'd stepped back from a full-time conventional career and was now running my own hotel consultancy business and spending more time travelling. Nick had also left full time employment and moved into consultancy, so now seemed the ideal time to revisit the dream and really see it we could make it work. Nick had also always been passionate about Italy, so it very much felt like the stars were aligning – we just needed to take a leap of faith!

Even the EU Referendum wasn't stopping us

With my background, opening a hotel or B&B in Italy seemed the logical thing to do.  Liguria just wasn’t feasible due to budget, so I started exploring neighbouring Piedmont again. We'd been to the region a few times before so knew it well, and with property prices and sizes more favourable, I shifted our plans here and the more we visited, the more we fell in love with the region.

June 2016 came and the result of the EU referendum started to knock our plans a bit. The exchange rate and house prices started to tumble, but it only made us more determined to press ahead with our plans. We decided to change plans slightly yet still pursue a move with a different agenda: a change of life.  

And so to Piedmont...

By now we'd fallen in love with Piedmont. Not only the beautiful scenery, food, and of course the wine, but also the chance to experience proper seasons - long hot summers and cold snowy winters - something we'd seen neither of living in London all those years. Now, I agree that winter particularly is probably never high up on a list of desires when you move "south" from the UK, but having spent more than enough years in London and mostly having wet damp Christmases, the chance of snow and crisp clear days in winter months just added a tick to my "yes" column for Piedmont. How much I may have over-estimated the love of snow I'll come to another time...

My searches took us all over Piedmont initially, but the core focus came down to what we nicknamed the 'triangle of desire': the area between Alba and Barolo in the west, Asti to the north and Acqui Terme to the south.  This put four airports within a maximum 2 hour drive, with Genoa and Turin closest at 80-90 minutes - ideal as our work at that time still meant frequent trips back to the UK in the months ahead for both of us.  We’d be surrounded by vineyards and hilltop villages, have a good selection of local towns within easy reach and of course, the UNESCO-protected area ran through the middle. 

…and Villa Menaluna…

After two years of renovating our own house -the “Cascina” of Tenuta (Estate) Menaluna - the owner of the villa next door approached us in March 2019 and asked if we were interested in buying it. “Villa” Menaluna was the home of the land owner of both plots which was originally one estate but split in the 1960s to aid the sale of both properties as its use as an agricultural and farming base fell into decline. It took until August 2021 to complete the purchase due in part to the delays caused by the Covid-19 lockdowns. But, complete we did, and work started on the house in January 2022. With good bones and a basic renovation thirty years prior, we’ve been lucky that a cosmetic renovation was mostly all that was needed to turn Villa Menluna into a warm and inviting home once again.

It’s not been all apertivo and sunshine!

So, here I am, five years since uprooting myself, my partner Nick and our cat Perry from the UK and putting down roots in Piedmont and we have never looked back since.

Such a move is never easy.  We're not fluent Italian speakers and trying our best to learn. Our primary goal for the language at this point is to be able to be polite, courteous and cover the basics. We feel our usual ability in English to be chatty, charming and witty will have to wait a bit longer.

We've also had our fair share of disasters too, such as three weeks without electricity in the height of summer and a car down a ditch in the middle of winter to name but two, as well as a host of other challenges along the way that we just could not have planned for, despite our best efforts.  It's been hard at times, but no move of this scale for anyone is without risk or potential challenges.

For us it has been worth it and now, with Villa Menaluna scheduled to welcome guests for 2023, we hope to welcome you to discover Piedmont for yourself.

Thinking of opening a hotel or B&B and need help?

Hotel & B&B Business Consultancy service - www.stevethorneconsulting.com