A taste of Italy comes to Burnham Market... From a rural location in the heart of Tuscany, Wanda Djebbar runs a farm that produces some truly outstanding food and drink – and now she’s bringing a taste of that lifestyle to Norfolk
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rom Burnham Thorpe to living in the hill town of Montalcino in Tuscany (noted for its Brunello di Montalcino wine) and now back to Burnham Market to open the Tuscan Farm Shop, Wanda Djebbar is having an interesting time. “This area of Norfolk is very important to me as my mother’s family all originate here,” she says, “but for the last ten years I’ve also strengthened my ties with Montalcino in Tuscany. I have a farm there called Tenuta Ribusuoli, together with a restoration business that specialises in restoring the lovely old stone-built houses found at
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Montalcino and the surrounding Val d’Orcia, an area of outstanding natural beauty.” Wanda says that farming had long been an interest of hers but she’d confined herself to studying agricultural history until about five years ago, when the urge to try things out for herself became too strong. “It was one of those typically Italian moments,” she says. “My husband met up with a local friend of ours at Montalcino, and by the end of the conversation we’d agreed to talk with someone about some land he might sell. It’s not Norfolk, so you don’t go to Norwich or online to an estate agent!
Most things – certainly the best things – never appear, and everything is by word of mouth. I’ve had plenty of experience of this with my restoration company Toscana Restoration, which buys and sells property.” Within a year of the chance meeting and some bureaucracy later (“expect it and live with it,” Wanda advises), around some 55 acres of prime agricultural land had new owners. “Then life got really interesting and it’s been non-stop ever since,” says Wanda. Montalcino is 564 metres above sea level and the surrounding Val d’Orcia is noted for its rolling hills; a far cry from the flatter landscape of
KLmagazine September 2014