I should have known the sat nav was up to no good the moment it tried to send me down what looked like a goat track outside Viterbo. Three hours from Rome Fiumicino, two wrong turns, and one spectacularly misjudged gap between a Fiat 500 and a stone wall later, I finally crawled into Montefiascone with the sort of relief usually reserved for marathon finishers.

The mishap came during the final approach. I'd stopped for supplies in the town centre, feeling terribly organised with my bags of pasta and local wine, only to discover upon reaching the property that I'd left the entire lot on the roof of the hire car. Not my finest hour. I found the lot still sitting there twenty minutes later, miraculously untouched, though a small crowd of locals had gathered to watch me retrieve it with the slow dignity of a man who knows he is being judged. One gentleman offered a slow clap. I deserved it.

The property itself sits on the outskirts of Montefiascone, perched where the Bolsena lake basin opens up below you like something from a postcard you'd dismiss as exaggerated. My first impression, once I'd stopped sweating and swearing, was how quietly the place announces itself. No grand driveway or fussy reception, just a solid stone house with terracotta roof tiles that have clearly weathered a few decades of Italian summers, and a garden that looks as though someone actually tends it rather than merely maintains it for photographs.

The key was where they'd said it would be, which felt like a small miracle given my track record that afternoon. Pushing open the front door, I was struck by that particular coolness of thick old walls that no air conditioning can quite replicate. The interior smelled faintly of wood polish and dried lavender, the sort of scent that makes you immediately slower in your movements, more deliberate. The kitchen opened directly onto a covered terrace, and I understood instantly that this would become the centre of operations. A long wooden table, slightly weathered, positioned to catch the evening light across the lake. I put the wine down carefully, very carefully, and allowed myself the first proper breath of the holiday.

The pool area sits a level below, surrounded by olive trees that must be ancient judging by their gnarled trunks. I dipped a toe in, found it surprisingly brisk for late afternoon, and decided that particular pleasure could wait until I'd properly arrived. Which meant opening that bottle I'd nearly sacrificed to the cobblestones, and sitting on that terrace with nothing more demanding than working out which distant village across the water was which.

What struck me most, I think, was the particular quality of the silence. Not empty silence, but the sort filled with distant church bells, cicadas, and occasionally a dog announcing someone's arrival three houses away. I found myself thinking about how rarely I stop long enough to notice such things, how the journey had frazzled me into someone I don't much like being, and how perhaps that was rather the point of coming. The wine helped this reflection along considerably.

By the time the sun had dropped behind the hills, painting everything in that particular amber light that makes amateur photographers of us all, I'd already decided that tomorrow could wait. There would be time to explore Montefiascone proper, to find the cathedral and the local shops, to work out if the town really does deserve its reputation for excellent wine. For now, I had a terrace, a nearly full bottle, and the satisfied exhaustion of someone who had finally, despite his own best efforts, arrived exactly where he needed to be.