Giuliana Tamanti links the old Tamanti family of Montalcino to one of the town’s best-known modern wine families. She married Giovanni Colombini (1906–1976), and their daughter Francesca, born in 1931, later ran Fattoria dei Barbi. Two of Giuliana’s grandchildren run the family estates today: Stefano Cinelli Colombini at Barbi and Donatella Cinelli Colombini at Il Casato.
We know less about Giuliana herself than about the generations on either side of her. Her story is mostly one of connection: the daughter of a Montalcino family of landowners and officers who married into a family that would help reshape Brunello.
Three independent witnesses to one marriage
The marriage of Giuliana Tamanti and Giovanni Colombini is one of the best-supported later links in the Tamanti story, because three separate sources agree on it:
- Lucia Carle’s published genealogy of the Tamanti records “Giuliana = Giovanni Colombini” (Carle, La patria locale, 1996, p. 292).
- Donatella Cinelli Colombini’s family recollections name Giuliana and Giovanni as her grandparents, and her 2023 account of her two wineries calls Casato the property of “grandmother Giuliana Tamanti Colombini” (Donatella Cinelli Colombini, 2023).
- Stefano Cinelli Colombini’s family history states directly that Giovanni married Giuliana Tamanti and that their daughter Francesca was born in 1931 (Stefano Cinelli Colombini, Brunello, ritratti a memoria, 2nd ed., 2021, pp. 97–103).
A published genealogy and two first-person family histories rarely agree this closely. However, the civil and parish acts of Giuliana’s birth and marriage have not yet been found, and they remain the records needed to settle her exact parentage.
Her line of descent
The family tree traces Giuliana back through four generations of the Filandro branch. Some steps rest on original records and others on published or family genealogy, so each is labelled below.
Filandro Tamanti (b. 1755)
Filandro was baptised at Sant’Egidio on 27 February 1755. He was the son of Ermenegildo Tamanti and the head of the branch that held Il Casato in the 1820 survey.
Dr Antonio Tamanti (1810–1854)
(His life is told more fully in Antonio Tamanti and a changing Tuscany.) Antonio was born on 10 January 1810, the son of Filandro and Teresa (birth act, original on Antenati). In about 1820 he appears with his brother Ermenegildo as joint owner of the 98-parcel Il Casato estate (Tavole indicative, Sparampaglia). Carle records that he served as Gonfaloniere, the town’s chief magistrate, from 1835 (Carle, 1996, p. 298). Luisa Scrivani’s reconstruction of the 1841 census lists “Tamanti Antonio 31” as a proprietario, a property owner, in Sant’Egidio.
Carle gives Antonio’s wife as “Fidalma Muzzarelli of Fano.” That is probably wrong. The April 1847 marriage entry names his bride as Giuditta, daughter of Leopoldo (marriage entry, original on Antenati). The family tree identifies her as Giuditta Ruggerelli, born in 1827.
Francesco Antonio Tamanti (b. 1852) and Maria Giuliani
Carle continues the line through Antonio’s son Francesco, born in 1852, who married Maria Giuliani in 1873 (Carle, 1996, p. 298).
Giovanni Tamanti (1881–1916) and Francesca Barluzzi
Giovanni Tamanti was born in Montalcino on 6 April 1881 to Francesco Antonio Tamanti and Maria Giuliani (birth act 91 of 1881). He volunteered as an engineer officer in the First World War and was killed while inspecting the front line at Col di Lana on 13 February 1916. He was awarded the Silver Medal for Military Valour (Fronte Dolomitico biography). The family tree names his wife as Francesca Barluzzi (1885–1922) and places Giuliana among their children.
If the tree is correct, Giuliana was a sister of Gianni Tamanti, the officer born in Aulla in 1909 who was killed at Enfidaville in 1943 and awarded the Gold Medal. The plaque on the Palazzo commemorates both Gianni and his father Giovanni, two different men (see Giovanni and Gianni Tamanti). The link from Giovanni’s father to the Francesco Antonio born in 1852 is supported by the name, the dates and the Montalcino birthplace, but it has not yet been checked against the civil registers, so it should be treated as high-confidence rather than proven.
Giuliana and Il Casato
In the twentieth century Il Casato passed through Giuliana. Donatella Cinelli Colombini writes that the estate belonged to her grandmother Giuliana, then to her mother Francesca, and now to her. She plans for it to pass next to her daughter Violante (Donatella Cinelli Colombini, 2023). This fits the 1820 survey, which places Casato with Giuliana’s great-grandfather Dr Antonio and his brother. What is still missing is the chain of deeds and successions connecting 1820 to Giuliana. The story of the estate is told on Il Casato and Fattoria dei Barbi.
“More than five centuries”
Writing about his mother Francesca’s ancestry, Stefano Cinelli Colombini says that the Colombini had held land around Montalcino since 1352, and that Giuliana’s Tamanti family had lived there for “more than five centuries” (Stefano Cinelli Colombini, 2021, pp. 97–103). The securely reconstructed Tamanti line begins later, with Cristofano “il Tempesta,” who came from Buonconvento in the later 1500s. The five-century figure is therefore a family tradition and a research lead, not an established fact. Montalcino’s parchments and its civic and tax records from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are the place to test it.
Sources on this page
- Birth of Antonio Tamanti, 10 January 1810, Nati reg. 61, act 3 (scan; Antenati)
- Marriage of Antonio Tamanti and Giuditta, daughter of Leopoldo, April 1847, S. Lorenzo in S. Pietro no. 22 (scan; Antenati)
- Birth of Giovanni Tamanti, 1881, Nati act 91 (scan)
- Catasto Generale della Toscana, Montalcino, Tavole indicative, Sparampaglia, Tomo II p. 83 (CASTORE)
- Fronte Dolomitico, “Tamanti Giovanni“
- Lucia Carle, La patria locale (1996), pp. 292 and 298
- Luisa Scrivani, Era il 1841 a Montalcino (Effigi, 2017)
- Stefano Cinelli Colombini, Brunello, ritratti a memoria, 2nd ed. (Fattoria dei Barbi, 2021), pp. 97–103
- Donatella Cinelli Colombini, “Donatella Talks About Her Two Wineries” (2023), and family recollections on “Grandma Giuliana” (Cinelli Colombini blog, 2020–21)
- Tamanti family tree, Ancestry.com GEDCOM export (August 2026), owner’s research file