Castello di Brolio

Documents from the tenth century indicate that the castle and district of Brolio were held by a marquis named Bonifazio, son of a count Alberto; in 1009 he granted the estate, together with patronage of the parish church of San Regolo, to the Badia di Firenze, a gift confirmed by the emperors Henry II in 1012 and Henry IV in 1074. The land and castle then passed to the Florentine Ricasoli family, and the earliest surviving deed drawn up at their court of Brolio, dated February 1141, records Rodolfino di Rolando and his son Renuccino ceding land to the abbey of Coltibuono. Brolio has remained Ricasoli property ever since.

Once absorbed into Florentine territory, Brolio was heavily fortified with bastions and watchtowers as the Florentine Republic's outermost post on the frontier with Siena, and it was attacked repeatedly. The Sienese took the castle in 1252, returning it to the Ricasoli only the following year under the truce between the two cities. In 1434 Antonio Petrucci of Siena seized it by trickery and held the Ricasoli captive until the Florentine Signoria sent Neri Capponi, who forced Petrucci's surrender. In 1452 Aragonese troops allied with Siena besieged Brolio and Cacchiano without taking either.

The heaviest assault came on 27 August 1478: Florence sent the condottiere known as l'Anghiarino to defend the castle, but Sienese bombards and mortar fire brought down part of the walls. Bongianni Gianfigliazzi marched an army into Chianti to lift the siege but arrived too late — Brolio surrendered on 14 September, and the Sienese sacked it, honouring none of the promises made to those inside, burning many houses and tearing down walls, as they had already done at nearby Radda.

The castle was rebuilt around 1500, following further destruction by the Sienese. Once Florence had conquered Siena, Brolio was remodelled, to a design by Giuliano da Sangallo, into a noble residence and a working wine estate. A notarial act of 1696 records a shipment of its fine wines from Livorno to Amsterdam, and by 1722 the Duke of Norfolk was writing to Brolio's agent in London seeking a monthly delivery of "fifty or more cases of true Chianti." In 1773 Pietro Leopoldo described it in his travel notes as an old, large and handsome fortress whose cellars produced 1,000 barrels of wine a year.

Bettino Ricasoli, later Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Italy, began personally managing Brolio in 1829, aged twenty, dividing his life between politics and viticulture. In 1835 he commissioned the architect Pietro Marchetti to remodel the castle in the Gothic Revival taste then fashionable in England, replacing its fortress character with an English-manor brick façade of Tudor-style windows and castellated turrets foreign to local building tradition. In 1874, after years of trial with grape varieties from Pinot to Cabernet, Ricasoli fixed a blend of 70% Sangiovese, 15% Canaiolo and 15% Malvasia bianca that would inspire, nearly a century later, the production rules for Chianti Classico.

Brolio is listed as Italian national heritage and remains Ricasoli property. The wine business, however, spent three decades in foreign hands before Francesco Ricasoli, the 32nd Baron of Brolio, took over its direction in 1993 and led its revival. The estate is known chiefly today for that wine, and the castle is open for guided tours.