Masseria Amastuola wedding

Amastuola is a fifteenth-century farmhouse on a ridge in the Parco delle Gravine, above the ravines between Crispiano and Massafra, looking north over a plain that runs to the horizon. It has been restored into a wine resort: stone vaulted rooms, panoramic terraces, a wine bar, tasting rooms and a barrel cellar, all of it quiet, pale and contemporary in feel.

The vineyard is the reason to come. A hundred hectares of organic vines were laid out by Fernando Caruncho, the Spanish landscape architect, in long waves that roll across the slope, with 1,500 ancient olive trees standing among them. It is a piece of landscape design rather than a field of vines, and from the terrace it reads as a green sea.

The estate has more room than anywhere else in this set, and the choice is mostly between the scale of the courtyard and the view from the lawn.

The reception space, and it takes 350. It is enclosed by the masseria on all sides, which makes a large party feel contained rather than scattered, and it is where the dinner and the dancing go.

In front of the main entrance, holding 180 for a ceremony with the vineyard behind the couple. This is where the wooden chairs and the flowers in the photographs are.

Two smaller ceremony settings for a party that wants one: the olive grove is set up at an extra charge, and the chapel is a room rather than a church.

The two indoor rooms, 140 each, and the only wet-weather answers the estate has. Between them a wedding of 140 is safe whatever the sky does, and a wedding of 300 is not.

A long panoramic pool on the edge of the ridge, with the plain below it, used for a pool party or a pizza night from the wood oven on the days either side.

A Masseria Amastuola wedding starts from €100,000 and lands near €200,000 all-in for 100 to 200 guests.

There is no hire fee. Three package menus run from €160 a head for the simplest to €200 for the fullest, with the VAT and the wine included, and each rate falls as the guest list grows: a party of 130 pays less per head than a party of 50. The fullest menu, Centosassi, puts a cheesemaker pulling burrata and a cook frying panzerotti in front of the guests, then a seated dinner and unlimited wine and beer.

A ceremony package is charged per head on top and covers the space, the wooden cross-backed chairs and a welcome drink of flavoured waters.

All eighteen rooms and suites, charged by the night over a minimum of three, with breakfast and housekeeping, and the use of every area including the panoramic pool and the garden courtyards. The masseria is explicit that there are no extra fees inside it. Rates move by season and by whether the nights fall midweek or at the weekend, and a deposit of €5,000 holds the date.

The open bar and the cocktail service, both priced by the hour or by the drink; the extra food corners, from a raw seafood station to an ice cream cart; the flowers; the music and its licence; the photography; and the transfers.

Eighteen rooms and suites sleeping thirty-six, with seven extra beds available. Six Deluxe doubles sit on the ground floor and eight more above them; the Master Suite has a designer bath and a private terrace, the Ovili Suite and a Double Suite each have a jacuzzi, and there is a Superior Suite on the ground floor.

They are pale, vaulted and modern inside the old stone, with air conditioning, wifi and the quiet of a ridge with nothing else on it.

Thirty-six beds against a guest list of 200 means most guests sleep elsewhere. Taranto is 19 minutes and Martina Franca and Massafra are closer still, so the hotel block is straightforward, but it is a coach operation rather than a walk across a courtyard.

The masseria is inland, between Crispiano and Massafra, on the edge of the Parco delle Gravine and about as far from both coasts as Puglia allows.

Taranto and the Ionian are 19 minutes, Alberobello and the trulli 49, Ostuni 57 and Monopoli 63. This is the least coastal venue in this set, which is either the point or the problem depending on what a couple wants from the days either side.

Bari is an hour and thirteen and Brindisi an hour and nineteen, so neither airport is close and both are usable. Transfers here are a real line in the budget rather than a short hop.

The civil ceremony is the first reason to look at this venue. The guide sets out both rites properly, names the comune of Crispiano as the authority and explains that the ceremony is conducted in Italian, which is the answer of a venue that has done it rather than one that hopes to. It removes the convoy into a town hall on the wedding morning that most Puglian weddings have to absorb.

The eight hours is the second, and it is a different kind of limit.

Nearly every venue in Puglia sells you a clock time, midnight or two or three. Amastuola sells you a duration: eight hours from the first drink, extendable by the hour if it is agreed in advance rather than asked for on the night. We always fix the ceremony time first here and work the eight hours forward from it, because a four o’clock ceremony and a midnight finish are the same decision.

The third thing is the weather. The courtyard takes 350 and the indoor rooms take 140, so a wedding above that number has no room to retreat into. At 150 guests this is one of the safest venues on the list; at 300 it is a calculated risk that should be priced as a marquee rather than hoped away.

Magic Day plans weddings at Masseria Amastuola from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the date and the buyout nights, the civil ceremony and the paperwork the comune of Crispiano requires, the menu package and where the guest count puts the per-head rate, the eight hours and how the day is built inside them, the wet-weather plan if the party is larger than the rooms, the hotels in Taranto and Martina Franca, and the transfers from Bari and Brindisi.

We have worked across Puglia since the Bari office opened in 2014, and the Gravine are a quieter part of it than the coast. Tell us the dates and how many people, and we will tell you what the kitchen and the rooms come to.