Book Now

Ferruccio Biondi Santi and Brunello

Maria Tamanti’s grandson never carried the Tamanti name. Yet the land, the household and the habits of mind he inherited ran back through his mother and grandmother to the marriages of 1819 and 1844. This page follows Ferruccio and the generations after him, from the first historic bottles of Brunello to a family still studying Sangiovese today.

Ferruccio: soldier, farmer, experimenter

Ferruccio Biondi was born in Montalcino in 1848, the son of the physician Jacopo Biondi and Caterina Santi (their marriage entry of 22 January 1844). He was Clemente Santi’s grandson, not his nephew, as some accounts have it. At eighteen he fought with Garibaldi’s volunteers at Bezzecca. He then came home to manage the family lands (Cinelli Colombini, Brunello, ritratti a memoria, 2021, pp. 74–75).

Cinelli Colombini also records that Ferruccio inherited the Fattoria del Greppo, Le Chiuse and lands at Pienza through his mother. Greppo may lead back to the farm centre of his great-grandmother Petronilla Canali, and Le Chiuse to the Chiusa house of his great-uncle Gaetano Tamanti. The transfer records that would prove each link have yet to be traced (see Le Chiuse: the inheritance story).

His farming was serious and public. In 1887 he was recognised for a rosso fino from the 1883 and 1884 harvests. In 1888 and 1891 he made wine from Sangiovese alone. In 1899 he helped found a circle for agricultural improvement and paid for a travelling agricultural lectureship that later became a public institution in Montalcino. When phylloxera forced the replanting of vineyards on American rootstock, he rebuilt about ten hectares and selected the vines that Cinelli Colombini links to the later BBS11 clone. In 1902 he won a gold medal for his vineyard at “Scarnacuoia” (Cinelli Colombini, 2021, pp. 74–75). The same place-name appears in the cadastral section where the Tamanti held land in 1820.

1888 and 1891: the bottles that named a wine

The estate identifies its 1888 Riserva as the first Brunello di Montalcino in history, and the 1891 Riserva as the second. What mattered was not volume but proof. The bottles that survived, decades later, showed that Montalcino Sangiovese could make a red wine of great longevity with a character that belonged to its place. Also in 1888, Ferruccio opened the Fiaschetteria Italiana on the town’s main square as a showcase for the family wine. Ferruccio died in 1917.

A name that grew over time

“Biondi Santi” was not Ferruccio’s birth name. In a note to the owner in August 2026, Stefano Cinelli Colombini explained that the family’s legal surname was Biondi. The family began using the combined form, adding Caterina’s Santi, only after about 1890. They received legal authorisation to use “Biondi Santi” in 1980. This is family testimony, and the 1980 decree itself has not yet been inspected. These pages use the familiar name for the wine dynasty, but not as Ferruccio’s surname at birth.

Tancredi and Franco

Ferruccio’s son Tancredi, remembered as Tancredi Biondi Santi, carried the work through war, economic depression and the rebuilding of Montalcino farming. Cinelli Colombini counts him among Tuscany’s leading oenologists of the early twentieth century. In 1926 Tancredi organised the Cantina Sociale Biondi Santi & C., a cooperative housed on the ground floor of the old Spedale di Santa Maria della Croce, and served as its technical director. The cooperative helped launch the first substantial Brunello exports to the United States in the 1930s. Franco Biondi Santi dated the first shipments to 1932 (Civiltà del Bere, 2011).

In 1944, with the front close to Montalcino, Tancredi, his son Franco and a trusted worker walled up the room holding the oldest Riservas, saving hundreds of bottles, including the nineteenth-century vintages. Tancredi also helped shape the production rules for Brunello’s DOC in 1966. The Consorzio followed in 1967, and in 1980 Brunello became Italy’s first DOCG wine (Consorzio del Vino Brunello di Montalcino).

Franco took Ferruccio’s vine selection into a more formal scientific age. The 1955 Riserva became one of the celebrated wines of the century. The clone BBS11, “Brunello Biondi Santi”, plant number 11 in the selection vineyard, was officially registered in 1975 according to Cinelli Colombini, or in 1978 according to other estate material. The official registration record has not yet been checked.

The family today

In a 2025 interview, Tancredi Biondi Santi is described as the seventh generation. He and his father, Jacopo Biondi Santi, now focus on Castello di Montepò in the Maremma. There they continue research on Sangiovese Grosso BBS11 and on how grape, soil, slope and altitude interact (TABLE Magazine, 2025). Jacopo’s children are Tancredi, Clemente and Clio (Vin Finesse; Pebble Beach Food & Wine, 2026). The historic Biondi-Santi label and Tenuta Greppo are now separate from the family’s Montepò project. Palazzo Tamanti has no part in the Biondi-Santi wine business. The connection is one of ancestry: through Maria Tamanti, one Tamanti branch stands among the forebears of this family.

A Tamanti in the Biondi-Santi cooperative

The Tamanti name reappears in Tancredi’s cooperative. A 1933 University of Siena wine handbook, in an English translation published online, names Biondi-Santi, Cocchi Brothers, Padelletti and Tamanti among the cooperative’s leading farming companies. It dates the cooperative to 1926 (Do Bianchi, 2012). In 2011 Franco Biondi Santi recalled that his father had invited landowning friends, including Tamanti, Angelini, Crocchi and Padelletti, to join. He dated the start to 1927 (Civiltà del Bere, 2011). Cinelli Colombini’s list of founders does not include a Tamanti.

The safest reading is that a Tamanti landowner took part in the cooperative between the wars. It is not yet known which Tamanti, or whether the family was among the original founders. The founding act, statutes and membership lists should answer both questions.

Sources on this page