After dinner, we ambled back to the terrace for more music, coffee, digestives and grappa.
The dinners began 11 years ago, Ms. Shea said, when a high-end tour operator asked if they could host a small group for private dining in a vineyard. “We had actually never done anything like that before,” she said. They put a table out in the white-wine vineyard, shared a few pictures on social media and, Ms. Shea said, “got a really amazing response.”
They hosted the first public dinner in 2016, which Ms. Shea remembers as “kind of begging people to come.” The dinners now average between 80 to 90 guests and are frequently sold out. (The next one, on Aug. 8, is fully booked, but there’s still room at the Sept. 5 dinner. )
When they started, there weren’t many such events in the area, Ms. Shea said. But the idea has grown in popularity. The recently opened Auberge Collection hotel, Collegio alla Querce in Florence, offers what it calls “Il Bosco Social Table”: Every Friday and Saturday night starting in June through the end of August, people gather under the olive trees, near the pool.