Borgo Mulino a Vento

Borgo Mulino a Vento, Puglia: Review

Location: just outside the small village of Uggiano la Chiesa, a ten minute drive from Otranto on the coast, or five minutes from Port Badisco. Uggiano offers a couple of supermarkets, and a handful of casual restaurants and bars. The centre of the village is based around its beautiful church.

Overview: this family owned and run resort offers easy access to the coast and surrounding attractions for those with a car (or by using local taxis: e.g. €20 to historic Otranto and its beaches). The resort offers a lovely, large pool with multiple sunbeds and five daybeds. The resort was 90% occupied while we were there but there were always sunbeds available.

The beauty of the resort (apart from excellent food and drinks) is the people and the service. The owner, Giuseppe and his son Ricardo, are on site every day, every meal, interacting with guests and setting the tone for a team of local staff who are super friendly and efficient.

Rooms: spacious mini-studio apartments, comfortable, tastefully decorated, with lots of storage space. All with their own outside sitting area.

Facilities: the resort offers a bar (outside tables in shade) serving light lunches and drinks and a restaurant serving a buffet breakfast and a la carte dinner. Most people - including us - were on the excellent value half board plan. The food was uniformly excellent. Wine by the glass was just €6 (all excellent Puglian wines, several award winning) and bottles of wine started at €25. All the vegetables and fruits used in the restaurant are from their own farm.

The resort also offers a range of free activities. A tour of the farm followed by pasta making classes, a tour of an historic underground olive oil press (used to hide the precious substance from the Turks) on their grounds followed by olive oil tasting. An exhibition of local pizzica music and dancing.

There is also an onsite massage therapist (small massage studio), and a lovely shop with local artisan crafts and the owners olive oil and orange version of limoncello.

Top tip: I highly recommend half board. The quality of the food is excellent and most guests staying there were on this basis. The resort offers free bike rental (or electric bike rental for a nominal amount) and it’s only a ten minute cycle to Port Badisco where you can swim in the crystal clear waters of the inlet.