Fattoria l'Amorosa

The location in the vineyards is truly gorgeous. Even though it is easy to access by car (5 minutes from belinzona), it feels a million miles away which is lovely. Some of the staff is very helpful (although others feel as if you are doing you a favour just by being there, and feel constantly stressed). The main dishes at the restaurant are good value for Switzerland, with very large portions of pasta / risotto, all of which were very tasty.

Overall, the size of the rooms and the quality of the service corresponds more to a simple B&B than to the expensive "agro-tourism" brand they label themselves as. There is nothing particularly wrong with the rooms, which are clean and charming enough, just not nearly nice enough to justify the price. Although the main dishes were good value at dinner, the add-ons were ridiculous. CHF50 for a bottle of wine grown in the vineyard you are sitting in and CHF8 for 0.5 litre of water from a filter just feels like they are trying to take "the most they can get" from every customer. Breakfast is not included in the booking.com rate, and we felt pressured to paying for it upfront. We felt this shows you are being overcharged in comparison to booking directly and also is really not acceptable at the style/price range this place is going for. When we did have breakfast, it was extremely simple (no eggs, 1 type of cheese / ham, cereal in a box etc). To be fair, when we didn't have breakfast one day (because it had been so unimpressive) they refunded us the extra charge for it, after a bit of back and forth. A little more service-orientation would take this place a long way from a very transactional experience to a really lovely place. Overall perfectly nice, but we will not be coming back at this price point.