Tamsin Hickson moved to Italy in 2003 with two sons, a ginger cat called Tim, and the dream of creating a home for her children in the tranquillity of rural Italy, a place which would stimulate her own creativity and that of other people.

She converted an uninhabited farmhouse into a home with two apartments, built the swimming pool and started work on the olive trees. Two years later she met Aldo Montecchiari and they married in 2008, joining together the two families.

Aldo comes from a large extended family in a local town. He has a passion for the land, the trees and cooking and suffers from an insatiable desire to feed everyone he meets.

The chief cook at Oliveto is Aldo, who uses recipes passed down through generations of his family, with local ingredients, many of which we grow ourselves. We have a large chicken house ensuring fresh eggs every day, a vegetable garden and fruit trees.

Throughout the year we serve meat cooked over wood, or as it is called here "a la braccia", cooked outside the cantina. All the meat that we serve is from local producers. We serve vegetables in season, prepared in the traditional way, with at times a modern twist.

Meals are served in the cantina when it is either too hot or too cold outside, or at any of the many different seating areas in amongst the olive trees.

The local network in Le Marche runs everything. Tamsin and Aldo can between them find a solution to almost every situation, a unique advantage to anyone making Oliveto their base.

All food is prepared using our own virgin olive oil, which we produce in December every year. We can organise wine tastings and in the autumn special tastings of the newly pressed olive oil.

We serve wine bottled in our cantina, from local wine farms which have won many awards. La Murola, Il Pollenza and Alazzoni Avogadro of Montefano are our favourites.

For aperitifs we bottle a Verduzzo and leave it to mature for a year, and for after dinner wine we have Amarone and Reciotto, which we bottle six months before it is drunk.