In the first half of the twentieth century, the main tower of a villa on the Bellavista hill at Erbusco held a music hall with two pianos, an organ, a transverse flute, mandolins and accordions. Anna Cavalleri, a musician, kept the house open to artists from around the world, and it became a cultural meeting place for northern Italy. The villa is now L’Albereta Relais & Chateaux, a hotel among the Franciacorta vineyards a few kilometres from Lake Iseo, and it is still a house for gatherings: at a wedding here the ceremony can be held outdoors, dinner is served in the house and guests stay the night in the villa and its towers.
The Cavalleri house on the Bellavista hill
Franciacorta is the hill country between the southern shore of Lake Iseo and the city of Brescia, and many of its patrician villas were once the summer houses of families from Brescia and Bergamo. L’Albereta is a neo-Renaissance villa of the late nineteenth century. It was the private home of Giovanni Cavalleri, a lawyer, and his wife Anna, who made it a kind of academy of the arts.
After the Cavalleris the house passed to a niece, and it was later bought by Vittorio Moretti, president of the Terra Moretti group, whose companies span construction, wine and hotels. Moretti had founded the Bellavista winery in 1977, the first business in his plan to promote Franciacorta. His daughter Carmen, born in 1968, had long wanted to run a hotel built around its guests. With two mentors, the chef Gualtiero Marchesi and Antonio Marson, then manager of the Splendido in Portofino, she opened L’Albereta on 23 September 1993 with nine rooms in Casa Leone and the Torre Bellavista.
Marchesi left Milan for Franciacorta that same month and opened his restaurant in the new hotel. Over the following decade L’Albereta joined Relais & Chateaux, and in 2003 it opened the second Henri Chenot medical centre, after the first in Merano. Carmen Moretti now runs the family’s hotels, which also include L’Andana in Tuscany.
Thirteen sculptures across the Moretti land
The villa stands in a large park, several centuries old, that serves as a botanical garden, and the hill around it is under vines. Vigna Leone, the hotel’s own vineyard, is overlooked by the Torre Contadi, and an avenue leads to it in view of the ground floor garden rooms.
To mark the third millennium, Terra Moretti organised and sponsored the International Third Millennium Sculpture Award, with the support of the Ministry of Heritage, for sculptors under 30 from any country. Ten winners were chosen from the sketches submitted, and their works were installed permanently on the family’s land. Thirteen contemporary sculptures now stand across 61 hectares of parkland running from L’Albereta to the Bellavista and Contadi Castaldi wineries. First prize went to Salvatore Sava for Fiori di pietra; the park also holds Maki Nakamura’s My Inside, Ray King’s ChromOculus and Giuseppe Bergomi’s La Bagnante.
Franciacorta in the glass
Franciacorta is also the name of the sparkling wine made in these hills. The area was given DOC status in 1967 and became the first DOC to require that its sparkling wines be made by the traditional method; since 1995 the DOCG classification has applied to the sparkling wines alone. The permitted grapes are Chardonnay, Pinot Nero and Pinot Bianco. The name may come from the tax exemption, the francae curtes, that the area’s towns enjoyed in the Middle Ages.
At the hotel, Stanza 54 is the lounge, serving cocktails and a wine list that starts with the Moretti family’s own cellars before moving further afield.
A ceremony in the gardens, dinner in the house
The hotel’s wedding team arranges symbolic ceremonies outdoors, and couples who marry in church can have music arranged for the service as well as for the reception. The hotel holds indoor and outdoor licences and a civil ceremony licence, and it can be taken for exclusive use.
For the celebration there are five modular event rooms, fitted with current technology, as well as the gardens. The chef writes a menu for each couple around their own tastes, served seated or as a buffet; private catering and a corkage option are also permitted. The same team can take on the flowers, photography and film, hair and make-up for the ceremony, entertainment and babysitting for children, a limousine or a vintage car, cars and coaches for guest transfers, rooms for the guests and fireworks. The couple can spend their wedding night at the hotel, with a dedicated team on hand.
From Leone Felice to L’Aurum
Leone Felice is the casual restaurant, with a seasonal menu drawn from the vegetable gardens, the hillside orchards and the herb beds. Its panoramic terrace and large window look across the vineyards and the Pre-Alps to Lake Iseo and Monte Isola, the largest lake island in Italy and in southern and central Europe.
L’Aurum is the fine dining room, open for dinner from Thursday to Saturday, with a menu that changes often and produce from growers who share the chef’s approach. La Filiale serves Franco Pepe’s pizzas with wines from Franciacorta and beyond. Quintale, a short distance from the hotel, cooks over charcoal under chef Davide Modesti, and Ristorante Chenot serves guests who are following a Chenot programme.
Suites at the top of the towers
The rooms spread through the original villa and its towers. Each Junior Suite opens on an entrance sitting room, with the bedroom beyond and a marble bathroom. Superior rooms keep frescoes on their walls and satin and damask fabrics in warm colours. The Garden Deluxe rooms open on to private gardens on the ground floor, and the Terrace Deluxe rooms on the first floor have balconies over the vineyards.
The Suite Panorama occupies the top floor of the Torre Contadi with a view all round, Vigna Leone on one side and Lake Iseo and the Torre Bellavista on the other. The Suite Torre Bellavista is on the top floor of the Torre Bellavista, looking over the Franciacorta vineyards. In the Cabriolet Suite, a four poster bed stands beneath a roof that opens to the night sky at the press of a button.
The Chenot Espace covers 2,000 square metres, with an aqua fitness pool offering four types of massage, a current to swim against and hydro bikes, along with a sauna and a Turkish bath. There is also a Technogym gym, a tennis court, an outdoor swimming pool and routes through the grounds for jogging and Nordic walking.
Getting to Erbusco
Erbusco is a comune in the province of Brescia. The hotel is a few kilometres from Lake Iseo and a few dozen from both Brescia and Bergamo. Milan is less than an hour away by car, and Verona and Venice are also within reach. Prices are on request, and the hotel can advise which of its five event rooms suits your guest number.
Taking the whole house
L’Albereta suits couples who want a country house wedding with several restaurants, a park full of contemporary sculpture and a vineyard below the windows. The decision to make first is whether to take the hotel for exclusive use or to share it with its other guests. See the L’Albereta profile for the rooms and the gallery, read the Lombardy Wedding Atlas, or read the Edits on Villa Nascosta on Lake Como and Wa.Lab Events in Lombardy. Ready to plan? Check your date.
