Blackberry Farm

In the 1930s a Chicago couple, Florida and Dave Lasier, bought a hillside at Walland, Tennessee, and built a stone-and-timber house with a view across the foothills to the Great Smoky Mountains. Mrs Lasier snagged her stockings on the brambles while walking the land and named the place Blackberry Farm. The house still stands at the centre of the estate.

History

Kreis and Sandy Beall, the founder of the Ruby Tuesday restaurant chain, bought the property in 1976 as a family home and opened it as a small inn with six rooms. Over the following decades they added land until the estate reached about 4,200 acres, and their son Sam Beall, trained in restaurant kitchens in California, took over the running of it in the early 2000s. He built the farm's identity around what it called Foothills Cuisine, a kitchen fed by the estate's own gardens, creamery, bakery, butchery and brewery. Sam Beall died in a skiing accident in February 2016, and his wife Mary Celeste Beall has been proprietor since. In 2019 the family opened Blackberry Mountain, a separate resort on 5,200 acres of ridge three miles away.

Architecture and design

The original Lasier house is the Main House, with the reception rooms and a handful of bedrooms. Around it the estate is laid out as a working farm: a white clapboard Barn moved from a neighbouring valley and rebuilt as the main restaurant, a boathouse on the lake, a creamery, a farmhouse, a kitchen garden and greenhouses, stables, and cottages scattered along the hillside with porches and rocking chairs. Interiors are country-house American, with antiques, quilts and stone fireplaces rather than anything polished.

Rooms and suites

Blackberry Farm has 68 accommodations, from rooms in the Main House and the Guest House to Hill Cottages, Holly Glade Cottages, Singing Brook Cottages and a group of multi-bedroom private homes for families or house parties. Cottages have fireplaces, screened porches and deep bathtubs. Rates cover three meals a day, and children are welcome throughout the estate, with their own activity programme.

Dining

The Barn is the fine-dining room, with a set menu built from the estate's produce and a cellar that has grown past 100,000 bottles, long holding Wine Spectator's Grand Award. The Dogwood is the second restaurant, more relaxed, serving breakfast and dinner. The Blackberry Farm Brewery makes Belgian-style ales sold across the region, and the creamery's cheeses and the bakery's bread are sold under the farm's name. Cooking classes, foraging walks with the farm's forager and tastings with the sommeliers are part of the programme.

Wellness

The Wellhouse is the spa, with treatment rooms, a yoga studio, a fitness centre and a programme of guided hikes and runs on the estate's trails. Beyond it the farm offers fly fishing on its own streams and ponds, horse riding, clay shooting, paddle boarding on the lake and cycling.

Weddings and events

Blackberry Farm hosts weddings on the estate, from small ceremonies to multi-day celebrations that take over cottages and houses for the wedding party. Meetings and corporate retreats use the private homes and the farm's gathering rooms, with cooking, fishing and tasting sessions as group activities. Whole-estate buyouts are arranged for the largest events.

Location

Walland is in Blount County, eastern Tennessee, about 30 minutes from Knoxville's McGhee Tyson Airport and under an hour from the entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park at Townsend. The estate borders national park land along its southern edge. As a luxury hotel in the Smokies, it is reached by car rather than by any public transport.