TUSCAN TAKEOVER
in the 12th century, only four names have been associated with the ownership of Castello Del Nero, a 300-hectare estate in the Chianti hills of Tuscany roughly midway between Florence and Siena. The first was Del Nero, a high-ranking family that built the estate’s ocher-hued castle as their country residence in the early days of the Florentine Republic. In 1825, the property passed through marriage to the Torrigiani clan, which owned it until Robert Trotta, an American real estate developer of Italian descent, bought the crumbling old manor and its surrounding olive groves and vineyards in
