La Bastide de Marie, Ménerbes

Every big city has its share of people who quietly dream of giving it all up for a few hectares of vines in Provence. Very few actually do it, because a vineyard also means spring frosts and bank loans. La Bastide de Marie, a working wine estate just outside Ménerbes, offers the part of the dream worth having. For a few nights, the farming is left to others, and the guest gets to be the gentleman farmer.

Plenty of hotels in the Luberon look out over vineyards. This one owns them: some thirty hectares of vines and olive groves with an eighteenth-century farmhouse at their heart. Inside, it could be the owner's own house, all dry-stone walls and whitewashed beams, with antiques chosen for character rather than pedigree. The dozen or so rooms and suites even take their names from the land, from Gris de Sauge to Mauve d'Aster. Some are on the small side, but several have a terrace of their own, and others a working fireplace for cool autumn evenings.

Any landowner's day begins with a tour of the property. A walk through the vines leads past the olive trees to the cellar, where Domaine de Marie makes wine in every colour from four distinct terroirs on the estate. Tasting it there is the closest thing to inspecting one's own harvest. Bicycles wait for anyone curious to see how the neighbours on the hilltops are getting on.

Lunch and dinner are laid out on the terrace under a great linden tree. The estate's own garden supplies the kitchen, and the chef fills in at the market and with small farms nearby, so the menu follows the season, from tomatoes in olive oil to Mediterranean sea bass. The wine on the table comes from the estate itself, which is the oldest privilege of owning land.

Even the pool has a farming past. One of the two was made from an old stone basin overlooking the rows, so every length comes with a view across the estate. The Pure Altitude spa is small, with a single treatment room, and when the evenings cool, the fireside lounges and the library feel like the study of a country house.

Ownership, even borrowed, has its practical side. Ménerbes is a few kilometres away and the wider Luberon further still, so a car is essential, and nightlife amounts to the terrace. The season follows the vine, from the first green shoots in spring until well after the harvest, in October. It belongs to city couples with a vineyard fantasy, and to wine lovers who like to drink a bottle where it was grown. Families and friends can play landowner on a bigger scale in the villas, such as Villa Grenache, a house of its own for up to ten with a heated pool.

Real winegrowers spend September among the vines, worrying about the weather. Here, the grapes are picked in the rows below the pool, and the only decision left to the gentleman farmer is which colour to open at dinner.