Tatler

La Bastide – owned by the most glamorous hotelier family, the Sibuets – is an enticingly rustic affair with painted blue shutters. The farmhouse, rooms and suites are filled with antiques and treasures from around the globe, dripping in pretty chandeliers and draped in Indienne fabrics chosen by the elegant Jocelyne Sibuet, whose taste and style is wonderfully sexy in that insouciant French way – a seductive synergy of the luxurious and laidback. The hotel’s sprawling romantic garden abounds in wild roses and secret arbours, and is home to a gypsy caravan, La Roulotte, made just for two. This retreat is all about revelling in the gastronomic glory of simple yet refined Provençal cuisine, where you can savour a daily menu that celebrates summer with platters of crudités and tapenade, gazpacho, lamb cutlets and ratatouille, and lavender crème brûlée. Diet before and after, but not during, and siesta on your four-poster bed, following a deeply relaxing treatment of a hot beeswax massage performed in the cavernous candle-lit spa. This hotel is a model of what a glamorous bucolic bolthole should be: beautiful, incredibly comfortable, with fabulous service, delicious food and the palest rosé wine imaginable from its own 57-acre vineyard, the Domaine de Marie. La vie en rose indeed.