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In the Media
International Press: The Huffington Post
Susan Owens, Fashion and culture commentator
Posted: December 6, 2010 03:10 PM
Italy's Secret Concierge
Ever had extreme travel envy? It's that condition symptomatic of homogenized luxury, when you've been to the coalface of hotels throbbing with bling and all you want is quiet glamour
Step forward John Bird. His world centres on southern Italy, where he opens doors to tiptop private villas and journeys that stir the blood - isn't that a given in Italy? Australian-born, he's achingly well-connected, he's the insider's concierge.
His world is the new definition of luxury. Nothing is more glamorous in the 21st century than being personally greeted at your airport, driven through ordered umbrella pines to your villa, which in Bird's address book will be one of the grand dames of Italy. The glass of Prosecco softens your journey on arrival. This is low-chic living (the oligarchs are all out of sight in Forte dei Marni), where your day is punctuated with the pleasure of having a live-in host to organise whatever your heart desires.
Bird's Italy is a 17th century-meets-21st. Where the Duchess of Palma (with whom you might stay) will take you shopping in her local market and teach you to whiz up the perfect Sicilian Caponata, or a lighter-than-air Almond Semifreddo (a century old family secret).
Or it might the Marchese di San Giuliano's 12th century compound, which was restored to splendour, by his late wife, Fiamma Ferragamo. She was responsible for the brand's famous pump with a grosgrain bow and, simultaneously, the planting of dreamy outlying citrus groves and ten acres of gardens. Guests enjoy a resident butler, two cooks and three maids all in a row. It's a bonus that the estate provides own your wine, olive oil, biscuits and breakfast marmalade.
If you have food and a cooking school at the front of your mind, you can stay with the Regaleali-Tasca d'Almerita family in Sicily, where a flock of Testa Rossa (isn't that a Ferrari?) sheep provide milk for estate-made artisan cheeses (tuma and ricotta, pecorino); where the garden is dedicated vanishing species of cherries and quinces. Long before the birth of the modern day travel writer, Homer slept here and described the cheese making in his Odyssey.
Yet another patrician family, the Ravida's, open up their neo-classical villa (their Ravida Extra Virgin Olive Oil is sold in Australia at Fratelli Fresh) to food lovers. The current generation is headed by Natalia, who opted out of a TV presenter's job in London, to oversee cooking classes. Their own brand of sea salt is scooped up from the low waters of Sicilian shores.
Bird has a benchmark of excellence and food-focused holidays are only a blip on his radar. He distils a kind of quite sophistication, for those who want to turn up the Pavarotti and settle into a library, or escape to a beach raked with white sands, to museums or concerts, cycling or golf. He will whistle up a masseur or drive you to hot springs and thermal baths. He can toss in side trips to Tuscan hill towns, the Como lakes, the Veneto and Sicily. His black book of lesser-known restaurants is unrivalled and he'll have you in an Italian outlet shop as fast as you can shout "bellissimo." Finally, if you can't move from that library, as a trained chef, he'll deliver the perfect spaghetti vongole, on your dreamy terrace.
"I'm just a contemporary custodian, I love sharing the Italy I know," he says, in a charming manner. But Bird (multi-lingual, with French and Italian) knows jewel-box glamour, because he's taken care of that for red-carpet clients in New York, LA, Paris and Rome. These days, he much prefers sharing his Italy.
www.johnbird.org
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