Welcome to Rigone in Chianti, a holiday farm in the heart of Tuscany

“…Tuscany, where our heart is” - Grandmother Mimma

The history of Rigone is the history of our family, whose roots have always been firmly planted in the clayey lands of Tuscany. Our ancestors are the Castroni Cresci, landowners in the area. The street where the historic Praetorian Palace of Montaione is located, now a city museum, bears their name.

In the second half of the 19th century, her great-grandmother Emma Castroni Cresci married a young man from Pisa, Carlo Bonsignori. As a dowry he received a successful farmstead on the edge of the town, where wheat, tobacco and vines were cultivated. In the topographic maps of the time it is referred to as ‘Rigone’. The young family could have lived comfortably on the proceeds of the Tuscan mezzadria the region’s well-known sharecropping system, as was customary at the time but the enterprising young groom, an agronomist by profession, had other plans. In 1852 he founded theMonteadorno agricultural estate, which within a few years grew to around 200 hectares, divided into 11 poderi (farmsteads). It soon became a major productive force for the area and, thanks to Carlo’s careful and forward-looking stewardship, quickly earned recognition on a national level. In 1904, in the Grand Palais des Champs Elysees at the Paris International Exhibition, great-grandfather Carlo's Monteadorno won the first prize and the international gold medal for wine.

Carlo died very young, leaving his wife a widow with a small son, Luigi, to raise. In an era and a world dominated by men, Emma didn’t hesitate to roll up her sleeves and carry on the farming business she had started with her husband, showing remarkable entrepreneurial flair and uncommon determination.

In our family, she embodies the stubborn streak of the Bonsignori women a trait that has carried through to this day and now finds its latest chapter in another Emma and her daughters. But that's another story.