La Storia

The History

Vico d'Elsa

Vico d'Elsa is one of the many small towns that grew up to service the intense traffic that in mediaeval times passed through the Val d'Elsa, a crossroads between the road systems coming down from northern Europe to Rome (the Francigene) and the routes linking Florence to the salt mines in Volterra (the Volterrane).
Originally, the complex of buildings that today houses the Estate's headquarters was the village inn, or rather the hospital, a place for travellers to recover and for curing the sick. One credible theory of the origin of the Estate's premises, consisting of five separate buildings, is that they were bequests to the monks who ran the hospital.
In the course of time the hospital was transferred to other buildings in Vico, while in 1500 ours became a private residence for a succession of Sienese and Florentine families, each of which left its mark in the form of a conversion, extension, fresco, cellar or granary.
Our family has owned it since 1870, when the Guicciardini bought it to merge it with the Cusona estate, a stone's throw across the valley. Francesco Guicciardini had seven estates. He belonged to an important Florentine family, was a politician (also a minister under Sonnino), and had seven children. In the early twentieth century the Vico estate came into the hands of his daughter, Marcella.
A few years later she married Massimiliano Majnoni, and went on to create many of the Estate's facilities still in use today. She built the granaries and cellars under the main threshing floor which overlooks San Gimignano, the house and Avanella cellar, and extended many tenants' farmhouses and their outbuildings, such as sheds and hay barns.
Marcella and Massimiliano's children, Stefano and Francesco Majnoni, had to face the complex issues arising out of the disappearance of share-cropping - when it was up to the tenant farmers to take decisions about crops and manage the countryside, coordinated by the steward and the land warden - and the introduction of direct management by the landowners. This transition lasted some twenty years, from 1965 to 1985, during which the foundations were laid for the Estate's production today.
In 1985, after the last steward left, Pietro - son of Francesco Majnoni - took over the management of the Estate. His professional background is outside farming and he spent the first few years learning the job. Since 1992 he has been responsible for managing the Estate's farming and winegrowing.