I should have known the sat-nav was up to no good the moment it tried to send me up what looked like a goat track outside Arezzo. Three hours from Pisa, two wrong turns, and one increasingly tense marriage later, we finally spotted the sign for Terranuova Bracciolini. Relief lasted approximately four seconds, which is how long it took me to reverse our hire car straight into a stone wall.

The wall was fine. The car was fine. My dignity, however, lay in fragments somewhere on that dusty Tuscan lane.

The owner, a wiry chap called Marco who appeared from nowhere with two dogs and absolutely no surprise at my predicament, simply handed me a glass of something red and said, "First time in Chianti?" I mumbled something about the wall being badly positioned, which he accepted with the polite tolerance of a man who has watched countless Brits arrive flustered and make excuses for their driving.

The property itself sat perched on a gentle slope, all honey-coloured stone and terracotta tiles that seemed to glow in the late afternoon sun. I had expected rustic charm, but there is something quietly disarming about a place that has clearly stood for centuries without making a fuss about it. The sort of building that has witnessed generations of families, harvests, probably a few more competent drivers than me.

Marco showed us round with the unhurried manner of someone who has never once checked a watch. The kitchen opened onto a covered terrace where a long wooden table sat waiting for meals that would stretch lazily into evenings. I ran my hand along the countertop, properly worn by actual use, and felt that peculiar pleasure of being somewhere with genuine history rather than history assembled from a catalogue.

The bedrooms upstairs were cool and simple, with shutters that smelled of lavender and wood polish. Our daughter immediately claimed the one with the window seat overlooking the olive grove, while I stood in the doorway of ours feeling an unexpected weight settle somewhere in my chest. Travel fatigue, probably. Or perhaps the particular stillness of a place where the loudest sound was a distant cockerel and the occasional clink of Marco tending something in the garden below.

I unpacked badly, as is my habit, leaving a trail of possessions that my wife navigated with the practised patience of twenty years. The bathroom had one of those showers that requires negotiation with ancient plumbing, and I emerged from my first attempt somehow both scalded and freezing, which felt appropriately humbling after the wall incident.

By evening we had migrated to that terrace with bread, cheese, and Marco's wine, which turned out to be from vines we could actually see from where we sat. The light shifted from gold to rose to something softer I cannot name, and I found myself confessing to my wife that I had been worried about this trip, about the money, about whether we had chosen rightly. She said nothing, just poured more wine, which was answer enough.

The mishap with the wall seems funnier now, sat here with the darkness gathering and fireflies beginning their performance in the olive trees. I suspect I will tell that story for years, each time making Marco more amused and the wall more forgiving. Some holidays begin with perfection. Others begin with a small collision and a stranger's kindness, and I am increasingly unsure which sort I prefer.