Guicciardini Strozzi - Bolgheri - Ocra 2009

About the winery

The estate can boast over 1000 years of history; in fact the oldest document which bears testimony to the existence of Cusona is dated 994. It was amongst the green hills of Tuscany close to the famous medieval city of San Gimignano with its imposing towers (the “Medieval Manhattan”), that the Villa of Cusona rose from the ground.

The famous personalities and the political and economic influence of the Strozzi and Guicciardini families, linked at various times by blood relationships, have left their mark not only on Tuscany, but also on Italy and Europe. Francesco Guicciardini, a contemporary of Niccolò Macchiavelli, who started his career as the latter’s secretary, was a prominent politician, a Governor of the Papal States, a philosopher and historian. He gained fame in particular with his fundamental work “The History of Italy” in which he describes the events in Italy between 1494 and 1532, a champion and precursor of the Unity of Italy.

The Strozzis, powerful bankers, statesmen, 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, the supreme monumental testimony to 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.

During the seventeenth century the descendants of the Strozzi Guicciardini family were united through a marriage in London with the Marlborough family of Sir Winston Churchill. One should not fail to mention another famous ancestor, Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, better known as “La Gioconda” or “Mona Lisa”, painted by Leonardo da Vinci, and whose family is still represented by the fifteenth generation of descendants.

Around 1850 began the construction of the great wine cellar with underground galleries. At the beginning of the 1900s Francesco Guicciardini, the husband of Luisa Strozzi, Mayor of Florence, Minister of Agriculture and then of Foreign Affairs (1906 – 1909) made Cusona a model estate of national importance.

(Source: www.guicciardinistrozzi.it)

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