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By Andrew Sessa Fields Photography by jaime travezan of Gold At her 900-acre estate in Italy, Trudie Styler, together with her pop-star husband, , has revitalized an ancient hunting lodge’s agricultural output, creating a top-shelf organic extra-virgin olive oil, five varieties of honey, and a range of organic wines.

you didn’t know better, you might think the expression “I don’t know how she does it” was coined for Trudie Styler. True, as Styler admits, she leads a free and fabulous life, funded in large part by Ifthe fortune of her pop-star husband, Sting, to whom she’s been married for decades and whose new al- bum, — his first full-length recording of original music in 10 years — comes out September 24. With this fortune come certain comforts and conveniences: multiple homes with their gardens and staffs, an entourage of assistants and minders, fabulous frocks and fabulous furniture, and fabu- lous, well, pretty much everything. All this could make for a life of languid leisure. But that’s just the sort of life Trudie Styler seems to want nothing to do with — or, at least, almost noth- ing to do with. “I don’t have to work; I don’t have to do anything,” Styler tells me over a recent late-afternoon lunch. “I TOASTING THE GOOD LIFE: Grapes grown on the grounds of Il Palagio, the 16th-century Italian estate of Trudie Styler and Sting (pictured above), are harvested for the estate’s organic wines.

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have a gilded life and a beautifully generous husband. But I think Sting will tell you that whenever and wherever I can find some- thing to construct, I will.” And so construct things she has: She recently founded the production company Maven Pictures, whose first feature, the vehicle , opened this summer, and whose next two — including the musical Black Nativity, starring , Angela Bassett, and Jennifer Hudson — will premiere in the fall. Then there’s her ongoing work as a UNICEF ambassador, fundraising and participating in initiatives to improve the lives of children around the world, and her role as a co-founder and deputy chair of the Rainforest Fund, which has helped indig- enous peoples preserve their environments and protect their rights for some 25 years. And did I mention that she’s also produced and starred in a line of yoga DVDs? Or that she’s mom to three 20-somethings? And president of the annual Ischia Film & Music Global Fest?

Even with all this competition, Styler’s passion for constructing things can perhaps best be seen these days at Il Palagio, the 16th-century Italian estate that she and Sting have spent more than a decade restoring, refurbishing both its main house and myriad outbuildings, as well as its 900 acres of fields and forests, gardens and orchards, vineyards, and olive groves. Set amid gently sloping hills about two hours north of Rome, in a rela- tively quiet corner of Chianti, Il Palagio (Italian for “the palace”) has become what Styler describes as the couple’s “spiritual home.” as Eli’s in New York, as well as through Styler — and, by extension, the appeal of its and would someday be again. architect Lady Arabella Lennox-Boyd pieces, overstuffed upholstered furniture, The project began as a holiday hideaway Il Palagio’s own website. powerfully delicious products for others. Originally built as a hunting lodge for and interior designer Alain Mertens, with and Tuscan landscape paintings. — and it remains that, to some extent — but For Styler, Il Palagio seems to combine Florentine aristocrats, and later inhabited whom she’d worked on her Wiltshire home, Through the French doors of one of the it has evolved into much more, too. Like two disparate impulses, a duality many of In some ways, Styler gave birth by a line of local dukes and their progeny, Styler brought the place back, creating ter- sitting rooms, an Italian Renaissance-style the couple’s 60-acre, Jacobean-style Lake us face daily: the desire to always be doing to Il Palagio by literally having a baby. She the property’s yellow stucco, terracotta raced gardens that extend from the house’s garden opens up on the highest and most House in England’s Wiltshire, Il Palagio is along with a devotion to downtime. “I love and Sting spent the last few months of her tile-roofed main house — which Styler facade out to the woodlands just beyond formal of the terraces, filled with lavender also a living, breathing agricultural enter- working, and I love being creative,” Styler pregnancy with their third child, Coco, in describes as “big, stout, and friendly,” in and decorating the interiors casually and and punctuated with eight soaring cypress prise, one that produces such an abundant says early in our conversation. “But I also Tuscany, and it was during this time that contrast to the cavernous, grandly frescoed comfortably, with a mix of local antique trees, a gurgling stone fountain that once array of organic fruits and vegetables, olive really love dropping down into the good she fell in love with “the tranquility and villas and show houses she and Sting oil, and honey, plus a range of organic Wine life, eating well, feeling well, laughing a lot, celebration of the earth” she says she found had looked at in more touristed parts of Spectator-approved wines, that Styler and being with my friends and loved ones, and there. The couple began hunting for a home Tuscany — had gone largely to wrack and FRUITS OF THE VILLA: Sting now sell much of the estate’s bounty celebrating the present.” All of which ex- nearby and eventually found Il Palagio, or, ruin, as had its grounds and surrounding Il Palagio is a living, breathing agricultural enterprise, producing 12,000 bottles of olive oil and more than 4,000 cases of wine a year. through such elite gourmet purveyors plains Il Palagio’s appeal for the super-busy at least, the near-ruin of what it had been structures. But with the help of landscape

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belonged to Sophia Loren sitting at its cen- ter. Back through the light-filled house, one reaches a courtyard surrounded by a loggia where fragrant vines of jasmine climb the columns and trellises, and ancient olive trees extend their gnarled limbs skyward. Just a bit farther, past the oversize carved- wood chess set, one encounters “Sting’s Café” — plush cushioned couches and tables shaded by an Indian wedding tent — and then a stone balustrade overlooking the pool and the hills beyond. “In the winter,” Styler tell me, “the air is so clear you can see as far as Arezzo,” nearly 30 miles away. (As for where a casual visitor might most likely find Styler on a typical day, that would be in the home’s former chapel, now a yoga studio and meditation room.)

though she refers to il palagio as her spiritual home, Trudie Styler — she of the perfect coif and the ageless mien, the yoga-toned body, and the urban-chic ward- robe — doesn’t immediately strike one as the agrarian type. Fashion plate, jetsetter, spend more and more time on the property, Today, these trees, combined with the organic as soon as they arrived, something they knew how to grow with ‘companions’ personal chef, with whom Styler wrote charity-gala fixture, maybe. But, farmer? with Sting writing music there during the 900 acres of vineyards, produce some they’d first done on their land in the Eng- — using a plant or a flower to distract the so- 1999’s The Lake House Cookbook. The duo Surely not. off-season, and, says Styler, “I really began 12,000 bottles of olive oil and 4,000 cases lish countryside. called pests. He gave us lots of tips and was may, in fact, soon collaborate on a follow-up As it turns out, however, the glam trap- to look at the land.” of three different red wines annually, plus very much around in the first years. But it volume devoted to Il Palagio’s version of pings are all just a front. “I have British another 1,200 bottles of white wine and “Prince Charles was a great was a real learning curve for me to get to Tuscan cuisine, focusing on simple recipes farming in my DNA,” she says, laughing, Looking at the land led to 4,400 bottles of rosé, the first vintages of role model for me,” says Styler, explaining grips with agriculture, and that was a labor made with a minimum of high-quality, when I ask her about her agricultural thinking about olive oil and wine, both of which Styler released earlier in 2013, keep- her organic awakening. Many years ago, of love, really.” easy-to-source ingredients. For Styler, it roots. Her uncle managed a small farm in which the estate had historically produced, ing them largely for the Italian market, for along with Paul and Linda McCartney, she Styler says that the agrarian life has would represent yet another way to share Worcestershire, and Styler grew up spend- and that eventually led to a massive land- now, and for the family’s own private con- visited the Prince’s organic and sustain- taught her much — about the land, about the joy she takes in the property — the ing weekends there. “So I got to milk the restoration project. Styler ripped out spent sumption. (A slight allergy keeps her from able gardens at Highgrove, His Royal her family, about herself. “I learned the art peace she finds there, even amid the go-go- cows, collect the eggs, ride the local nags,” old vines and planted new ones: the classic drinking red.) Next year, reports Styler, the Highness’s home in Gloucestershire, and of patience: It’s not going to be overnight. go of her eminently hectic life. she recalls. “I had this sort of idyllic life.” regional varietals of sangiovese, canaiolo, estate’s wine output will double. she found herself impressed with how You have to wait and work with nature, not “This land is so energizing that you just Even during the week, living at her parents’ and colorino, as well as merlot and cabernet From the super-Tuscan Sister Moon, robust everything looked there. “He was in defiance of it, not pushing it, because sort of drop down into this very good heart home in Bromsgrove, England, she proved sauvignon. And she set about doubling the which is aged in French oak barrels, and really able to get those plants thriving,” it has its own rhythm. I learned to drop space, where you feel you’re having a good herself “quite green-fingered” as she put it. property’s already substantial count of the easy-drinking table wine When We Styler recalls. “I thought it was incredible, into being human: You’re a part of nature; time,” Styler says of being at Il Palagio. “We grew all the vegetables for our house. olive trees from 3,000 to more than 6,000, Dance to the light and lovely rosé called because at that time, when we first bought you’re a part of the environment; you’re a “I think Italians just epitomize how to be I had my own carrot patch, my own cabbage transplanting mature specimens that Beppe (whose namesake has worked in Il Lake House, quite frankly, it was really, part of the planet. I learned to never lose spontaneously happy and how to celebrate patch. I loved planting things, raising them would immediately bear fruit. (Styler didn’t Palagio’s vineyards for nearly 60 years), really tough to not have your lettuces that connection.” the ritualization of eating. It’s something from little seeds.” do all this by herself, of course: Brother- all the estate wines are produced with filled with slug holes — and I don’t mean that reminds us that we’re human beings Even with this background, to say and-sister estate managers, Paolo and Bina biodynamic methods, meaning they use slugs like bullets, I mean those little black As for what’s next for Styler and that the company of others is high com- nothing of the organic farm she and Sting Rossi — both of whom were born and raised holistic agricultural techniques that com- critters. It wasn’t happening as success- and Il Palagio, there’s that doubling of its pany indeed. We’re meant to be with each had started at Lake House, Styler didn’t on Il Palagio — winemaker Paolo Caciorgna, bine largely organic fundamentals with a fully as I had imagined.” Her own father, wine production next year, with plans for other. It reminds us of who we are. immediately plan to move Il Palagio in that and biodynamic consultant Alan York all set of principles and practices based on the who was still alive when Styler and Sting an all-merlot bottling and the wider release “Italians have made a virtue of it. But we direction. But then the couple started to played, and continue to play, major roles.) earth’s natural rhythms. Il Palagio’s pep- started farming at Lake House, also played of the white and rosé. She and Sting have all gravitate toward it because we recog- pery, green-tasting olive oil, meanwhile, as a role in her organic coming of age. He also recently opened the villa for private nize ourselves in it. We say, ‘Yes, this is us. well as its five varieties of honey — “sort of brought to the project expertise in a sort of events and holiday rentals, including This is how it should be.’ What isn’t good AT HOME IN THE COUNTRY: my baby,” Styler says of that project — are natural, pesticide-free farming he called culinary classes with the estate’s Italian about that life? It’s just the best.” Styler calls the lovingly restored Il Palagio her “spiritual home;” two of the wines made at all certified organic. She and Sting, in fact, “extensive.” “As opposed to ‘intensive,’” she chef, the always-smiling Alba Papi, and And who would argue with Trudie Styler the villa, including Sister Moon, are named after Sting’s songs. converted all production at Il Palagio to explains. “They never used sprays, and with Joseph Sponzo, the couple’s longtime about what constitutes the good life?

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