Sting's Other Passion: 350 Hectares of Organic Farming in Tuscany

When Sting and Trudie Styler moved into Il Palagio, their villa in the Tuscan hills, something was missing.

It took them a while to work out what. Birds.

Styler told Decanter in 2021 that the first few months were wonderful, but the mornings were eerily quiet. No birdsong. No bees. Nothing humming. The land had been farmed intensively and conventionally, she said, and it was parched.

Odd thing to inherit with a 16th-century villa. It's also where this story starts.

A duke, a lunch and a bad bottle

The couple bought Il Palagio in 1997. It sits above the town of Figline Valdarno, south of Florence. According to Decanter, it came with about 350 hectares, mostly forest, along with vineyards, olive trees and lakes.

Sting has told the story of how he was sold on it. Over lunch, the duke who owned the place poured him a red so good that Sting asked where it came from. The duke said it was the estate's own. Sting bought the property.

The wine was actually a Bordeaux first growth. Two years later the couple opened bottles of the estate's real wine at a party. Styler says she spotted guests tipping full glasses into the flower beds.

So the vineyard needed work. So did the soil under it.

Getting the birds back

Styler went looking for help. A Californian osteopath who also owned a vineyard told her to get in touch with Alan York, an expert in biodynamic farming. York was then making wine at Benziger in Sonoma, one of the first Californian estates to go biodynamic.

York encouraged the couple to set up bee colonies and to look after the vines with ecologically sound practices. Styler says the birds, bees and butterflies slowly came back.

York guided the restoration of the vineyards, Wine Review Online reported in 2019.

If that name sounds familiar, it's the same Alan York who guided John and Molly Chester in The Biggest Little Farm. He died in 2014.

In 2009, Sting summed up the approach for a local TV station. As The Drinks Business reported, he said they went back to traditional farming methods: "we got rid of pesticides, we shunned monoculture."

He had his own reasons. Sting grew up in industrial Newcastle in the 1960s. "I think I must have been well out of my teens before I had even eaten anything that wasn't from a tin," he told Decanter.

In 2013, consulting winemaker Daniel O'Donnell moved the vineyards from biodynamic to organic farming to lift production.

What the farm makes now

Il Palagio has made its own wine since the mid-1500s, the estate says. Sting and Styler have replanted 15 hectares of vines using organic methods.

The first vintage of Sister Moon was 2007, made only from grapes grown on the estate. It's a blend of Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Several of the other wines carry Sting song titles: Message in a Bottle, Sacred Love, When We Dance.

The first release was planned at about 30,000 bottles, The Drinks Business reported in 2009. By 2021, Decanter reported, the couple were making about 150,000 bottles a year.

Alongside the wine, the estate lists olive oil, honey, cherries, apricots and peaches among what it produces. It also makes seasonal vegetables and handmade preserves.

The salami is made from Cinta Senese, a Tuscan pig breed, Decanter reported in 2009.

In 2019, Wine Review Online reported that all of Il Palagio's wines were certified organic by BioAgricert. The estate's own website describes organic methods, but on the pages I read it doesn't name a certifier.

100 litres

The olive oil is where it gets scarce.

In 2022, Il Palagio's extra virgin olive oil won the Tre Foglie (Three Leaves) award in Gambero Rosso's guide to Italy's best olive oils, ANSA reported.

The estate said 2021 had been a particularly hard year. It made just 100 litres.

People have paid to be part of it. In 2014, the estate offered visitors a day helping with the olive harvest for €262, Olive Oil Times reported. Yes, you paid them. The same report said a percentage of the estate's profits went to organisations including the Soil Association, which promotes organic farming in the UK.

Before the farm shop opened, Il Palagio sold its produce through outlets in Britain and the United States, including Harrods. That's according to a Daily Telegraph report republished on Sting's website.

Going there

That same Telegraph report says the farm shop opened in 2010.

The estate says the shop sells its own fruit, vegetables, olive oil, honey and wine, plus local salami, and has a wine tasting area. In 2021 the couple opened a pizzeria beside it, which runs from April to October. In August 2024 they added La Taverna dei Lupi, a pop-up street food and live music venue up in the hills of the estate. (The estate's restaurants page has current hours.)

Odds and ends

• Sting has written five albums at Il Palagio. His recording studio sits just above the winery. "If I need a pick-me-up, I can just pop downstairs to take a sip of wine," he told Decanter.
• He didn't start out a wine man. Tour promoters used to leave bottles in his dressing room, and his road manager took them home. Years later the road manager showed Sting a cellar of great Bordeaux and Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and told him they were all his.
• The couple's date wine, back when they were young, was Mateus Rosé.
• Their first white, Baci sulla Bocca ("kisses on the lips"), came out on Valentine's Day 2021. Styler said the name was a call for romance to return after a year of masks.
• In 2002, estate manager Paolo Rossi went to an auction to buy the farm next door on Sting's behalf. Nobody else turned up to bid, so he only had to raise the bid by 5%, Decanter reported.

The couple weren't the only ones going organic that year. Styler told Decanter that their friend Lady Carole Bamford, founder of Daylesford Organic Farmshops, bought Château Léoube in Provence in 1997. "We both resolved to work organically," she said.

We've also written about Sam Neill's organic winery and the king who chose organic.

And the duke? Sting told Decanter he now sends him bottles of Il Palagio wine. He reckons they're having the last laugh.

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