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Biondi-Santi: Tamanti Land Between Marriages

Brunello di Montalcino took shape in the experiments of one nineteenth-century family. Part of that family’s inheritance, in land and in blood, came from the Tamanti. This section follows the thread across three generations. It runs from a young landowner named Maria Tamanti, through her daughter Caterina, to her grandson Ferruccio, the man the wine world remembers as Ferruccio Biondi Santi.

The story turns on two marriages, in 1819 and 1844. Each joined a new surname to the line, and each carried property with it. Only part of that property can yet be traced record by record.

Diagram: the Tamanti connection to the Santi-Biondi family
Diagram: the Tamanti connection to the Santi-Biondi family. Owner diagram, Palazzo Tamanti storybook (2026). Evidence D01.

The first marriage: Tamanti to Santi, 1819

On 12 February 1819, Maria Tamanti, a landowner aged twenty, married Clemente Santi in Montalcino. The marriage act of 12 February 1819 (original on Antenati) names her parents as Francesco Tamanti and Appollonia Bardi. That places her in the branch of Dr Francesco Tamanti, alongside her brother Gaetano (Carle, La patria locale, 1996, p. 292).

Marriage of Clemente Santi and Maria Tamanti (dau. of Francesco and Appollonia Bardi)
Marriage of Clemente Santi and Maria Tamanti (dau. of Francesco and Appollonia Bardi). Restoration civil register, S. Egidio, act 8. Evidence E09. Original online.

Clemente was a trained pharmacist, a pupil of the naturalist Giorgio Santi, and an early experimenter with the wines of his Montalcino farms. His mother, Petronilla Canali, held one of the largest Santi-family estates in the commune. It included a farm centre with a chapel at Greppo, the name later carried by the Biondi-Santi estate. Clemente’s own fame as a wine-maker began with a sparkling sweet Moscadello, shown at Florence in 1850 and London in 1851; the name Brunello appears first for a grape, in 1865, and only by 1870 on wines of his and of other Montalcino growers. Read about Maria, Clemente and the Santi lands.

The second marriage: Santi to Biondi, 1844

On 22 January 1844 Maria and Clemente’s daughter Caterina Santi married Jacopo Biondi, a physician. The marriage entry of 22 January 1844 (original on Antenati) names her parents as Clemente Santi and Maria Tamanti. Together with the 1819 act, it anchors the whole Tamanti–Santi–Biondi connection in the civil registers.

These two records also correct a long-standing error. Lucia Carle’s published Tamanti genealogy swaps the husbands’ surnames, making Maria the wife of a “Biondi” and Caterina the wife of a “Santi” (Carle, La patria locale, 1996, pp. 292, 296). The originals give the opposite order. Read about Caterina, Jacopo and the corrected record.

The grandson: Ferruccio and the birth of Brunello

Ferruccio Biondi was born in Montalcino in 1848. He added his mother’s surname to his father’s in public family use, and under the combined name he turned the family’s experiments into a recognised wine. His 1888 and 1891 Riservas are counted among the first historic Brunellos. According to Stefano Cinelli Colombini, it was through Caterina that Ferruccio inherited the Fattoria del Greppo, Le Chiuse and lands at Pienza (Cinelli Colombini, Brunello, ritratti a memoria, 2021, pp. 74–75). His son Tancredi, his grandson Franco and today’s family at Castello di Montepò carried the work forward. Read about Ferruccio, the Biondi Santi name and the generations after him.

Le Chiuse: where the Tamanti land can be seen

The clearest physical link between the Tamanti and the Biondi-Santi inheritance is Le Chiuse, a farm in the Montalcino countryside that is now a Brunello estate. In the Leopoldine cadastre of about 1820, the house at parcel 59 and the fields, vines and olives of parcels 60–62 are registered to “Tamanti Gaetano di Francesco”, Maria’s brother (CASTORE, Tavole indicative, Montalcino). In 1840 Gaetano asked the bishop’s permission to build a family burial chapel on his podere Chiusa, according to the transcriptions of Don Antonio Brandi. The estate’s own history says Le Chiuse entered the Santi family as part of Maria’s dowry, but that cannot be so: Maria and Gaetano were full sister and brother, and Gaetano still owned the Chiusa in 1840. It very probably reached her line by inheritance after Gaetano died unmarried in 1861, and by every indication came down to Ferruccio through his grandmother Maria and his mother Caterina; the will and transfers that would show the exact steps have not yet been found. Read the Le Chiuse inheritance story.

The Greppo, a Canali house

The Greppo itself came to the Santi through a woman. On 21 September 1722 “il Dott. Tullio Canali, proprietario del Greppo” asked leave to build a chapel in his villa there, dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, Saint Nicholas of Bari and Saint Francis Xavier; it later became the burial chapel of the owning family (Brandi). This was very probably the chronicler Tullio Canali, who as rector of the hospital entrusted the piazza pharmacy to the young Clemente di Livio Santi in 1745. Lucia Carle notes that some Montalcino houses, dying out in the female line, were grafted onto others, “as with the Canali, who flowed into the Santi” (La patria locale, p. 303). Petronilla Canali, daughter of the late Niccolò, carried the Canali inheritance to her son Clemente, and by about 1820 she owned the Greppo farm and chapel in her own name. How the estate passed from Tullio to Niccolò and Petronilla is not yet documented.

The Santi in fact married the Canali twice: Luigi Santi’s own death act of 1841 names his mother as Caterina Canali, and his wife Petronilla’s death act calls her “vedova del fu Sig.r Luigi Santi”, the widow of the late Luigi Santi. Petronilla died at Montalcino on the evening of 3 December 1848, aged about eighty-four, more than seven years after her husband. How the Greppo passed from her to Clemente after 1848 is not yet documented, but it was at the Greppo, “nella casa posta in Villa del Greppo”, that Clemente died on 22 April 1885, aged ninety: the villa where Ferruccio made Brunello was a woman’s inheritance before it was a man’s.

Clemente’s brother, Avv. Tullio Santi, who also used the name Santi Canali, was alive in June 1872, when he and his daughter Petronilla, married to a Palanca, asked to build the chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows on their farm of Renaio, blessed in October 1873. Printed lists and the official gazette fill in his public life. “Santi Tullio, Montalcino” took his degree in law at the University of Siena in the academic year 1819–20. In March 1851 the Almanacco Toscano lists “Santi Sig. Avv. Tullio” as gonfaloniere of Montalcino, the office Ermenegildo, Gaetano and Dr Antonio Tamanti had held before him, and on 20 February 1860 he signed sixth, and his brother Clemente twelfth, among the 120 signatories of the town’s farewell to the departing government delegate. In a united Italy a royal decree of 9 February 1868 named “Santi Canali avv. Tullio” sindaco of Montalcino for the three years 1868–70. The brothers also gave the town its library: when the Biblioteca comunale opened to the public in 1874, its 5,500 volumes had been given partly by Dr Clemente Santi and Avv. Tullio Santi Canali. Tullio did not enjoy it long. The state pension list of 1875 grants his widow, Carolina Brizzi, a pension from 29 October 1874, so he died in the autumn of 1874, very probably at the end of October. In May 1886 L’Elce reported her death and called him the founder of the town library. Her civil death act adds that she died on 19 May 1886, aged seventy-seven, a native of Bagno di Romagna, and calls her “vedova del defunto Avvocato Tullio Santi Canali”, widow of the late lawyer Tullio Santi Canali.

The women after Maria

The published histories of Brunello are a line of men: Clemente, Ferruccio, Tancredi, Franco. Yet the land came down through women, and the wives and daughters of the following generations are visible in the civil registers and, above all, in the town paper, Il Progresso.

What is proven, and what is not

The marriages, the parentage and the 1820 ownership of the Chiusa core are documented. What remains open is the legal mechanism that moved land between them. Maria’s dowry settlement has not been found, and she does not appear as an owner anywhere in the cadastral owner tables. Her full brother Gaetano still owned the Chiusa core in 1820 and in 1840, after her marriage, so the Chiusa at least cannot have been her dowry: it very probably reached her line by inheritance after Gaetano died unmarried in 1861, by his will or in the division among his heirs. Which farms, if any, Maria did bring in 1819 is not yet proved. Gaetano’s will, his 1847 petition about leaving his estate to the town, and the transfers recorded against his cadastral account (Campione and volture) are the records that will settle the question.

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