The satnav had been promising we'd arrive in twenty minutes for the best part of an hour, which I suppose is what happens when you trust a device that thinks a tractor track through a hazelnut grove counts as a road. We'd flown into Turin, collected a hire car with suspiciously squeaky brakes, and spent the afternoon winding through the Langhe hills with growing desperation and an empty crisp packet. My partner was navigating, a task she performs with the confidence of someone who once got us lost in a multi-storey car park.

The mishap came at the final bend. A sign for San Cristoforo pointed left, down what appeared to be a gravel driveway designed for mountain goats. I turned, braked, and immediately heard the unmistakable crunch of our bumper kissing a low stone wall. Not hard, mind you. More of a polite introduction. But enough that I had to get out, inspect the damage with theatrical nonchalance, and pretend I hadn't just introduced myself to rural Piedmont by assaulting its infrastructure. The wall, naturally, was entirely unharmed. Italian stonework has survived earthquakes, wars, and centuries of agricultural life. It was not about to yield to a Fiat Panda driven by a man who struggles with parallel parking in Tesco car parks.

We crept the final hundred metres with the caution of learners, emerging into a clearing where the house sat bathed in late afternoon light. And I must say, whatever embarrassment lingered evaporated rather quickly. San Cristoforo occupies one of those positions that makes you wonder how people ever found these spots without modern technology, yet simultaneously grateful they bothered. The views rolled away in successive waves of vineyard and woodland, the kind of landscape that makes you reach for your phone before remembering that no photograph has ever captured the particular quality of light that hangs over this corner of Italy at six o'clock on an autumn evening.

The house itself is a restored farmhouse, stone-built and reassuringly solid, with that slightly weathered appearance that suggests it has witnessed several centuries of human endeavour without feeling the need to comment. A covered terrace ran along one side, furnished with a long table that immediately suggested prolonged lunches. I could picture it already: the local wine, the inevitable cheese course, the argument about whether we really needed to visit that castle tomorrow or whether we might just sit here instead.

Inside, the rooms were cool and spacious, with beamed ceilings and tiled floors that echoed pleasantly underfoot. The kitchen smelled faintly of woodsmoke and rosemary, though whether this was deliberate staging or simply the accumulated atmosphere of a well-used house, I couldn't determine. Either way, it worked. My partner disappeared upstairs to investigate the bedrooms while I stood in the doorway between kitchen and terrace, caught in that peculiar holiday moment where the journey finally releases you and the place itself takes hold.

I thought about the wall, the satnav, the squeaky brakes. I thought about how I would describe this drive to friends back home, and how I would definitely omit certain details. Then I opened the wine we'd bought at a service station near Alba, poured two glasses with the satisfaction of someone who had absolutely earned them, and stepped out onto that terrace to watch the last light fade across the hills.