The Brunello estate that never left the Tamanti family
Le Chiuse, on the northern slopes below Montalcino, is the modern winery whose core can most precisely be placed under a named Tamanti in an original record. It stands on the Chiusa farm, a Tamanti property since at least the seventeenth century, and it is the one estate where Tamanti land is still held by Tamanti descendants.
The Tamanti years
The name is old. Chiusa is one of the six Tamanti farms in the Sienese fiscal survey of 1692, held by a “Tamanti Dr.”, very probably Dr. Jacomo Cosimo Tamanti, and the San Lorenzo tithe book of 1700 lists “Chiusa Tamanti”. In the 1820 cadastre of the Scarnaquoja section, the owner register gives the Chiusa farmhouse (parcel 59) and the fields around it (parcels 60, 61 and 62, about 7.8 hectares) to Gaetano di Francesco Tamanti. Further down the same sheet he also held a chestnut grove, the “marroneto” of parcel 170.
On 2 October 1840 Gaetano asked the bishop for leave to build a chapel on “his podere Chiusa”, dedicated to Saint Francis of Assisi, for the burial of members of the family. The chapel was built, and it still stands: Italy’s national heritage catalogue records the ‘Cappella di San Francesco d’Assisi e dei Santi Gaetano e Apollonio’ on the Strada vicinale la Chiusa, dated 1840 and raised ‘su progetto del proprietario e progettista Gaetano Tamanti’, to the design of its owner (catalogue no. 0900385607). The present estate dates its historic residence to 1840 and keeps a small deconsecrated chapel. Laid over today’s aerial photograph, Gaetano’s farmhouse falls under the present Le Chiuse buildings, about 16 metres from the estate’s published position.
How it passed from the Tamanti name
Chiusa was never sold. Gaetano died unmarried in 1861 and the farm very probably passed then, by inheritance, into the line of his sister Maria Tamanti, who had married Clemente Santi in 1819. By every indication it reached the Biondi Santi family through their daughter Caterina, wife of Dr. Jacopo Biondi, and her son Ferruccio. The estate’s own history remembers it as Maria Tamanti’s dowry, but that cannot be so: Maria and Gaetano were full sister and brother, and Gaetano still owned the Chiusa in 1820 and 1840, two decades after her wedding. Whether it passed by Gaetano’s will or in the division among his heirs is still to be proved from the will and the transfer records, which have not yet been found.
By 1945 Tancredi Biondi Santi was using the Chiusa grapes for his Riserva. In 1970 his daughter Fiorella Biondi Santi inherited the farm and leased it to her brother Franco, who worked it until 1990. On Fiorella’s death in 1986 it passed to her three daughters, and in 1989 Simonetta Valiani became sole owner. With her husband Nicolò Magnelli she restored the farmhouse and chapel and bottled the first Le Chiuse Brunello in 1992. Their son Lorenzo Magnelli has run the vineyards and cellar since 2006.
Timeline
- 1692 “Tamanti Dr.” holds the Chiusa farm in the Sienese fiscal survey.
- 1820 Gaetano di Francesco Tamanti, parcels 59–62, and a chestnut grove at parcel 170.
- 1840 Gaetano asks leave to build a family burial chapel at Chiusa.
- 1861 On Gaetano’s death the farm very probably passes by inheritance into the line of his sister Maria, and so to the Santi–Biondi Santi.
- 1945 Tancredi Biondi Santi uses the Chiusa grapes for his Riserva.
- 1970 Fiorella Biondi Santi inherits; her brother Franco works the farm until 1990.
- 1989–1992 Simonetta Valiani becomes sole owner; the first Le Chiuse Brunello is bottled in 1992.
- 2006 Lorenzo Magnelli takes over the vineyards and cellar.
What may survive
Because the land has never left the family, Le Chiuse is the likeliest place for papers, letters and objects from Gaetano’s time.
Gaetano’s chapel identified (October 2026). The heritage ministry’s survey photographs of 1995 for catalogue no. 0900385607 match the building the estate now calls “La Cappella”, a guest apartment of about 73 square metres made from a deconsecrated nineteenth-century church. The two agree point by point: the rear gable with its two triangular brick-lattice openings and a central pier, the tall side doorway with its lunette, the narrow rectangular body and roof, the small annex at the back and the farmhouse beside it. The building Gaetano designed in 1840 for his family’s burials therefore still stands at Le Chiuse. What remains open is when it was deconsecrated and converted, whether anyone was ever buried there, whether any inscription survives, and how the chapel passed from Gaetano to the Santi.
More on this story: Le Chiuse: The Inheritance Story, Chiusa and Le Chiuse, and Gaetano Tamanti (1801–1861).
Sources
Lucia Bonelli Conenna, Il contado senese alla fine del XVII secolo (1990), 1692 table; Don Antonio Brandi, Studi e Trascrizioni; Catasto Generale della Toscana (1820), Montalcino, Scarnaquoja owner register, parcels 59–62 and 170; Campione of Gaetano di Francesco Tamanti; Regione Toscana and Agenzia delle Entrate map services; Le Chiuse, “La nostra storia” and “La Cappella” (lechiuse.com); Catalogo generale dei Beni Culturali no. 0900385607, survey photographs of 1995; historical land-register extract, Foglio 64, particella 12; marriage of Clemente Santi and Maria Tamanti, daughter of Francesco Tamanti and Appollonia Bardi, 12 February 1819, S. Egidio act 8 (Portale Antenati); Lucia Carle, La patria locale (1996), pp. 292, 296.
This page is independent family-history research by Palazzo Tamanti, drawn from the Palazzo Tamanti storybook (October 2026). It is not written or endorsed by the winery. All Montalcino winery origin stories · Tamanti family history.