I wanted to love Il Borro. The Ferragamo-owned estate in the Tuscan countryside has all the ingredients for a legendary luxury stay: a centuries-old borgo, an on-site winery, horseback riding through vineyards, and multiple restaurants including ones that carry serious culinary pedigree. Unfortunately, our stay revealed a property that is stunning to look at but inconsistent — sometimes badly so — where it actually counts: the rooms, the service infrastructure, and the small details that justify a rate north of €1,200 a night.
The Room Situation: A Rocky Start
We checked into Room 403 first, and it should have been a highlight — but the air conditioning simply would not cool the room below 20°C. In late Tuscan summer heat, that's not a minor inconvenience, it's a sleep-quality problem. When we called maintenance, the technician who came out didn't bring any kind of thermometer or heat-measurement tool, and instead tried to insist the unit was working fine, essentially arguing with us about a temperature he had no way of actually verifying. The hotel's proposed fix was almost comedic for a property at this price point: a noisy floor fan. At a resort charging over a thousand euros a night, "here's a fan" is not a solution — it's a stopgap that shouldn't be necessary in the first place.
To their credit, the hotel did move us to Room 101, which was a clear upgrade in terms of space and layout, and the air conditioning there worked as it should. But the win was short-lived: the outdoor area right outside the room was nearly unusable because of mosquitoes. Not "a few bites here and there" — genuinely bad enough that spending time on what should have been a lovely private outdoor space wasn't realistic. For an estate surrounded by vineyards and greenery, the absence of any visible mosquito management program is a real oversight. This is a solvable problem, and a property in this tier should have solved it already.
Getting Around: Plan on Waiting or Walking
Getting around the property itself was its own source of frustration. Il Borro is spread out enough that you genuinely need help getting from place to place, but that help isn't readily available — you're constantly waiting on a staff member to come pick you up and drive you around. The alternative is walking, a lot, often in the summer heat. For a resort at this price point, there should be a far more seamless way to move between the rooms, restaurants, and grounds without it becoming a logistical exercise every time you want to go somewhere.
No Groceries, No Snacks, and a Minibar in Name Only
One of the more surprising frustrations was just how isolated Il Borro is, combined with how little the hotel does to compensate for that isolation. There's no nearby shop for basics — cheese, fruit, chips, anything you'd want for an afternoon snack or a quiet evening in. That wouldn't be an issue if the in-room offerings picked up the slack, but the minibar barely deserves the name. It was stocked with organic drinks and little else — no snacks, nothing indulgent, nothing that felt curated for the kind of guest paying this rate.
This felt like a particularly odd miss given that Il Borro has its own winery on the property. A minibar or in-room selection featuring the estate's own wines seems like the most obvious value-add imaginable — not necessarily complimentary, just *available* for purchase. Guests aren't expecting freebies; they're expecting the option to buy the wine that's literally made a few hundred meters away. That it wasn't there felt like a missed opportunity more than anything.
Dining: Bright Spots, but Not Michelin-Caliber
Food is where the estate's reputation and the actual experience diverged most. The property houses multiple restaurants, including ones associated with real culinary prestige, and the results were mixed at best.
**In-room dining** was genuinely limited — only three items were available on the room service menu at any given time, which felt thin for a resort of this scale. Pomario pizza wasn't even an option through in-room dining; if you wanted it, you had to go pick it up yourself. It says something that a pizza we had to fetch ourselves was still a more satisfying option than most of what was on the official room-service menu.
**The wine bar** was actually a highlight. Ms. Hess, who worked there, was consistently polite, attentive, and went out of her way to help — she even personally delivered food we'd ordered from the wine bar up to our room, which is the kind of small gesture that leaves a real impression.
**The Tuscan Grill** had strong leadership on the floor — the manager clearly ran a tight, professional operation, and the service there was genuinely top-notch. Unfortunately, the food itself didn't match the effort behind the service; it was fine, but not memorable, and certainly not what I'd associate with a two-Michelin-star property.
**The Borro Bar** deserves a mention too — the bartender there was excellent, attentive, and clearly took pride in the job.
**Pomario**, despite serving genuinely great pizza, was noticeably understaffed. The staff on duty seemed to need real retraining on basic service fundamentals — guests shouldn't have to flag someone down for a menu, water, or the check. At a resort like this, servers should be proactively checking in without being prompted. This wasn't a one-off; it was a consistent pattern during our visits.
Horseback Riding: Good, Not Great
We did the horseback riding excursion with a picnic lunch, priced around €500. The riding itself was enjoyable and well run, but the picnic lunch that came with it was ordinary — nothing that matched the price or the setting. In practice, "picnic lunch" meant cold cut sandwiches on hard bread, water served in paper cups, and a bottle of wine. That's it. This is exactly the kind of experience where a genuinely elevated, thoughtfully composed gourmet spread would turn a nice afternoon into an unforgettable one. Guests paying €500 for this experience would very likely pay another €200 without blinking if it meant the food matched the setting. As it stood, it felt like a missed chance to create a signature moment.
Final Take
Il Borro has the bones of an exceptional luxury property: gorgeous grounds, an on-site winery, varied dining concepts, and horseback excursions through the Tuscan countryside. But bones aren't enough at this price point. A malfunctioning AC unit met with denial instead of a fix, mosquito-infested outdoor spaces, an underwhelming minibar with no estate wine available for purchase, understaffed restaurants, and food that didn't live up to its Michelin-starred billing all added up to an experience that fell well short of expectations.
Based on this stay, I can't recommend Il Borro to other travelers — not at these prices, and not with these gaps between reputation and reality.
