The current owners are Count Robert Guicciardini and Prince Girolamo Strozzi, assisted by the latter’s wife and by his daughters Natalia and Irina.
For decades Prince Strozzi has been President of the Syndicate of Vernaccia, as well as the tireless promoter of this DOCG, the first white wine in Italy to obtain this recognition. He pursues with equal energy the long tradition of a family whose name is intrinsically linked to San Gimignano, in particular to Cusona.
The two branches of the Guicciardini Strozzi family were united at various times by blood links over the course of the centuries, up to the marriage of Princess Luisa Strozzi to Count Francesco Guicciardini at the end of the 1800s. The famous figures and the political and economic influence of the two families have left their mark not only on Tuscany but also on Italy and on Europe itself.
Francesco Guicciardini, a contemporary of Niccolò Macchiavelli and who commenced his career as his secretary, was himself a prominent politician, a Governor of the Papal States, philosopher and an historian. He attracted fame, in particular, for his fundamental History of Italy, in which he describes the events in Italian history during the years 1494-1532, a champion and precursor of the Unity of Italy.
The Strozzis, powerful bankers, Statemen, mercenary commanders, were the great rivals of the Medici: exiled from Florence following the rise to power of Cosimo dei Medici, they built their huge fortune abroad Naples, Rome), which then paved the way for Filippo Strozzi, having returned from exile, to construct the magnificent Palazzo Strozzi (Strozzi Palace), the supreme monumental testimony of the Florentine Renaissance. Piero Strozzi was Marshal of France and Commander of the French Armed Forces; his bust is to be found in the Gallery of Battles in the castle at Versailles.