It is the morning of April 26th, 1478. Easter Sunday. Florence is bathed in spring light, and the great cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore is packed for High Mass. Among the congregation, two brothers, Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici, the most powerful men in the city, take their places near the altar. They do not know that the men standing closest to them have daggers beneath their robes. They do not know that this moment has been rehearsed for months, in a cold stone room inside a hilltop fortress twenty kilometres east of here, by a family who believes Florence belongs to them.
The signal comes. Blades flash. Giuliano falls stabbed nineteen times, dead before he reaches the cathedral floor. But Lorenzo fights back, draws his sword, and escapes into the sacristy. The bronze doors slam shut behind him. Within hours, the plot unravels. At that point I take another sip from my glass, while the story continues. The conspirators are hunted through the streets. More than eighty are executed, some hanged from the windows of the Palazzo della Signoria, their bodies left swinging as a warning. The family behind the plot, the Pazzi, are banished from Florence forever.
The fortress where they planned it all still stands.
Planning your own visit?Where to go →From Plot to Vineyard
Today, Castello del Trebbio rises over the Chianti Rufina hills as it has since 1184, when the Pazzi built it at the junction of three ancient roads. The conspiracy room is still there, low-ceilinged and windowless, with a trapdoor in the floor. But the castle has long since traded intrigue for something gentler. It is the headquarters of Famiglia Casadei, and instead of plotting the overthrow of Renaissance dynasties, the people inside are making wine.
I came to know this story not on a hilltop in Tuscany but through a glass, during a virtual tasting hosted by Studio Cru, guided by Anna Baj Macario, the woman who owns and runs Castello del Trebbio. Her parents bought the castle in 1968, moved in with five children, and spent the next two decades producing wine and olive oil, raising horses, and living a rural life that would imprint itself on everything the family did afterwards. When Anna and her husband, winemaker Stefano Casadei, began working together in the early nineties, they started building something larger than a single estate: a multi-territory wine project governed by a philosophy called BioIntegrale.
One Family, One Manifesto
BioIntegrale is a ten-point manifesto that Stefano created in 2013, and it reads less like a farming manual than a moral charter. It encompasses biodynamic agriculture, energy self-sufficiency through solar power, exclusive use of local labour and suppliers within a 30-kilometre radius, and the recovery of ancient winemaking practices, including terracotta amphora fermentation. Geese and sheep manage the vineyard vegetation so that tractors don't have to. The wood in the fireplaces comes from surrounding forests. The saffron, olive oil, and spelt produced on the estate go to the kitchen. Everything connects.
Today, Famiglia Casadei encompasses four estates across Italy, each expressing a different landscape but sharing the same ethical grammar. Anna walked us through three of them, and six wines, together with Cristian Ravai, the family's marketing director, who added context on each pour, over the course of a morning that moved from Sardinia's interior highlands to the Tuscan coast and back up into the Chianti hills.
An Island Start
The tasting opened far from the castle, on the island of Sardinia, with a Vermentino di Sardegna DOC 2025 from Tenuta Olianas, established in 2000 through a collaboration between Stefano and the local Olianas family. The estate was born from a friendship. Artemio Olianas, a Sardinian who had moved to Florence and built a small empire of seven restaurants, kept asking Stefano to help him make wine for his tables. Stefano's answer was always the same: you can't make good wine in a garage. Eventually they bought the land together, and Stefano insisted on keeping the local name, partly out of respect for Sardinian tradition, partly because, as Anna put it, you need a local partner if you want to build anything real on the island. The estate sits in the Sarcidano region in central Sardinia: inland, remote, between 400 and 500 metres above sea level. It is the only Demeter-certified winery on the entire island.
Single Vineyard: Murvonis
Deep clay-loam soils, contributing freshness and elegance.
Single Vineyard: Porruddu
Darker loam with sandy marl, adding complexity and weight.
The Vermentino is pure varietal, sourced from nine hectares across two vineyard sites. The Murvonis vineyard, with deep clay-loam soils, contributes freshness and elegance. The Porruddu vineyard, on darker loam with sandy marl, adds complexity and weight. Around 20% of the grapes are harvested slightly early and fermented on their skins without selected yeasts, creating a natural starter that kicks off spontaneous fermentation for the rest. Part of the wine spends five months in tonneaux, giving it a gentle roundness beneath all that citrus energy.
A Wine Named for the Conspirators
The second pour brought us to the castle itself: the De' Pazzi IGT Toscana 2020, the wine that carries the name of the family who once planned a coup d'etat between these walls. It is a Sangiovese-led blend (60%, with 20% Merlot and 20% Syrah) from vines planted in 1995 on galestro-rich clay soils. Only 20,000 bottles are made.
What makes the De' Pazzi particularly telling within the Casadei portfolio is its quiet nod to the family's amphora work: about 20% of the Sangiovese ferments in terracotta, while the international varieties go into steel and then age in French barriques for 18 months. The Sangiovese portion rests in second-passage tonneaux. It is a wine with patience built into it: the winery suggests an ageing capacity of around 15 years.
The hills around the castle were among the first anywhere to be drawn onto a wine map. In 1716, Grand Duke Cosimo III de' Medici (yes, the same family the Pazzi tried to murder) issued an edict naming Tuscany's most prestigious wine territories, one of the earliest attempts anywhere to put legal boundaries around wine. The zone he singled out in these hills was Pomino, the pocket of land that folds into today's Chianti Rufina. History here has a way of folding back on itself.
Coastal Light
The third wine shifted the landscape entirely. The Eva Rosato IGT Toscana 2025 from Tenuta Casadei comes from the medieval village of Suvereto in Alta Maremma, Tuscany's coastal wine region: luminous and open to the sea, shaped by constant Tyrrhenian breezes. The name is personal. Eva is the Casadei family's grandchild, and Anna told us they've decided to name their new wines after their grandchildren, though, as she joked, they don't yet know how many grandchildren there will be. The estate covers just 16 hectares and exists as a partnership between Stefano and Californian vintner Fred Cline, who not only imports wines from all the Casadei estates but shares their biodynamic convictions.
Eva is a blend of Syrah and Vermentino, grown on sandy soils with a significant clay presence. The vines are young, planted in 2019 and 2020, and hand-picked in the first ten days of September. There is no wood involved anywhere: the wine ages in stainless steel on its lees for six months, with periodic batonnage building texture from within. At 12.5% alcohol, it is a wine built for daylight, for the table outdoors, for the kind of afternoon that doesn't need to end.
The Interior
Back to Sardinia for the Cannonau di Sardegna DOC 2023 from Olianas. If the Vermentino showed the island's bright, mineral edge, the Cannonau reveals what lies beneath. The blend is 90% Cannonau (Grenache) with 10% Tintillu, drawn from two vineyard sites with opposing temperaments. The Sedda Sa Figu vineyard, sandy-loam, delivers elegance. The Anfiteatro vineyard, a south-facing clay valley exposed to light winds, adds that fruitiness and structural depth. A portion of the must ferments in 1,000-litre underground amphorae, a signature Olianas practice, overseen by Elena Casadei, Anna and Stefano's middle daughter, who has become the family's amphora specialist.
Single Vineyard: Sedda Sa Figu
Sandy-loam soils, worked by horse, drawn to elegance.
Single Vineyard: Anfiteatro
A south-facing clay valley open to light winds, giving fruit and structural depth.
Elena's path to the cellar was not a straight line. She began studying engineering at the University of Pisa. Strong-willed from the start, her mother says, but she left after six months. Her father, furious, told her that if she wasn't going to study, she could at least work, and sent her to the cellar. She started handling the amphora fermentations, and after a year or two, turned to Stefano and asked why he kept blending her careful amphora work back into the main cuvees. Could it not become its own project? Today, Le Anfore di Elena Casadei is exactly that: wines fermented and aged entirely in terracotta, across all the family's estates.
Across all the estates, Elena works with both Tuscan Impruneta terracotta and ancient Georgian qvevri, stripping away the flavour imprint of oak to let the terroir come through without an intermediary. With this Cannonau, the ageing is restrained: 80% stays in steel, 20% in second and third-passage barriques for eight months. The wine is meant to be youthful and lively, not barrel-heavy.
The Mediterranean Dream
The fifth pour was the Sogno Mediterraneo Syrah IGT Toscana 2023 from Tenuta Casadei: back to the Maremma coast, but this time with weight and ambition. Syrah dominates at 85%, with the remaining 15% from other Mediterranean red varieties. The vines were planted in 1999 at a remarkably dense 7,400 per hectare, nearly half again what most Tuscan estates use, and yield barely a kilogram of fruit each.
After harvest, the grapes spend 24 hours in cold storage before destemming. Fermentation happens with native yeasts in cement tanks and partly in terracotta amphorae, followed by malolactic in French barriques. The wine then ages 12 to 14 months in a mix of new and second-passage French oak. It is built for more than a decade of evolution.
Stefano believes these wines, built for elegance and finesse rather than sheer power, benefit from being served slightly cooler than convention dictates. It's a small provocation, but it fits the family's philosophy: question the default, then offer something better.
The Hill, at the End
The tasting closed where it arguably should: at the castle, with the Chianti Rufina Riserva DOCG 2021 from Castello del Trebbio. This is the estate's most direct expression of place: 90% Sangiovese with 10% Merlot and Syrah, from the highest vineyards at roughly 450 metres, on clay soils shot through with limestone. The vines were planted between 2000 and 2006. Harvest is by hand, into small 10-kilogram crates. Fermentation is spontaneous, in steel, with maceration lasting 10 to 15 days. The wine then ages partly in 20-hectolitre barrels, partly in second and third-fill tonneaux, for about 20 months, followed by at least six months in bottle before release.
The winery says it can age for over 20 years. After a decade, they suggest, it becomes a meditation wine, the kind you pour when you have nothing to prove and nowhere to be.
Rufina has always been a territory for the patient. Even in the 19th century, it was one of the first Italian wine zones to experiment with international varieties after studying Burgundian viticulture. That pioneering spirit lives on in the Casadei approach: rigorous vineyard zoning, observation over tradition, Sangiovese planted only where conditions are ideal.
The Glass Still Waiting
There is a fourth Casadei estate, and it is the one that never made it into our glasses. Terre di Romena sits high in the Casentino, the green, wooded valley where Tuscany starts climbing towards the Apennines, right across from the ruined Castello di Romena that Dante wrote into his Inferno. Stefano Casadei bought a piece of the old castle farm in 2019 and planted Pinot Noir and Chardonnay between 450 and 650 metres up, betting that this cool, high corner has an answer as the climate keeps warming.
And here is the bit nobody can settle. Local lore says the Pinot Noir in these hills was left behind by Napoleon's troops as they passed through, a French vine quietly taking root in a Tuscan valley. No one has ever proven it. No one has ever disproven it either. The first bottles only reached the world at Vinitaly in 2024, which is exactly why our tasting stopped at three estates. Romena, and its Napoleon ghost, is the glass still waiting.
- The Casadei family together: Anna and Stefano with their children Lorenzo, Laura and Elena, one family behind four estates.
- The family at the table, where the philosophy of feeding the soil and employing local people finally reaches a glass.
The Inheritance
What makes Famiglia Casadei compelling beyond any single bottle is the coherence of the whole. This is not a portfolio assembled for commercial convenience. It is a family, Anna and Stefano, joined by their children Lorenzo, Laura, and Elena, farming four distinct pieces of Italian landscape under a single ethical framework. Feed the soil, not the plant. Employ local people. Recover ancient techniques. Define wine in its purest form.
In the conspiracy room at Castello del Trebbio, the walls still carry the weight of what was planned there five and a half centuries ago. A few floors up, in the tasting room, the glasses carry something else entirely: the accumulated patience of a family who decided that the most radical thing you can do with a piece of land is simply to take care of it.
If this story has its hooks in you, the full tale of the 1478 plot runs to eight episodes worth settling into.
My final words on the wines we tasted: through all of them you can taste the different terroirs, the different locations, and yet you can taste that their personal approach to each wine, each place, is the same. The dedication, the precision. It reflects really well what they want to show the people who drink these wines.
Scores follow the 100-point wine scoring scale and reflect my own personal assessment during the tasting. This tasting was organised by Studio Cru. Wines from Famiglia Casadei are available in the Netherlands through Hanos and in Belgium through Matthias Wine Import.
My Personal Tasting Notes
Proof I did my homework
Vermentino di Sardegna DOC 2025
90/100
De' Pazzi IGT Toscana 2020
94/100
Eva Rosato IGT Toscana 2025
89/100
Cannonau di Sardegna DOC 2023
93/100
Sogno Mediterraneo Syrah IGT Toscana 2023
90/100
Chianti Rufina Riserva DOCG 2021
95/100Proof I did my homework: Vermentino di Sardegna DOC 2025 (90/100) · De' Pazzi IGT Toscana 2020 (94/100) · Eva Rosato IGT Toscana 2025 (89/100) · Cannonau di Sardegna DOC 2023 (93/100) · Sogno Mediterraneo Syrah IGT Toscana 2023 (90/100) · Chianti Rufina Riserva DOCG 2021 (95/100).
1. Vermentino di Sardegna DOC 2025, Tenuta Olianas | 13% | 90 pnt
A glass of Sardinian sunshine caught mid-morning. The nose lifts with lime zest and green apple, threaded through with herbal notes, wild grasses, a hint of Mediterranean scrub. Spice lingers at the edges. On the palate, this is no simple summer white: the mid-palate has real structure, a spine of savoury tension that holds your attention and refuses to let the wine slide by unnoticed. Fresh, exciting, and unexpectedly layered for its price point.
2. De' Pazzi IGT Toscana 2020, Castello del Trebbio | 13.5% | 94 pnt
Ripe red cherries tumble out of the glass alongside raspberry and a bright streak of cranberry, and a linear minerality. This is a wine that moves, despite being five years old. The tannins are medium-plus but soft and ripe, framing rather than gripping. Behind the fruit, gentle layers of vanilla and sweet oak, earthy undertones, a whisper of spice. What strikes me most is the freshness: a 2020 vintage with the energy of something far younger. Balanced, lively, and dangerously easy to drink.
3. Eva Rosato IGT Toscana 2025, Tenuta Casadei | 12.5% | 89 pnt
Pale pink and luminous in the glass. The first vintage of the wine, and it already feels like it belongs. Juicy red fruit fills the nose: think ripe strawberries warmed by afternoon sun. The palate has more body than you'd expect, with a rounded, almost textural quality and a hint of what seems to be residual sweetness that gives it warmth without heaviness. For a debut rose, the complexity is impressive. This isn't a wine that apologises for being pink.
4. Cannonau di Sardegna DOC 2023, Tenuta Olianas | 14% | 93 pnt
The nose announces itself with authority: ripe red fruits, a wisp of smoke, chocolate, tobacco, and something almost primal underneath. On the palate, the strength is real: drying, ripe tannins with a hint of oak structure. But the fruit pushes back with equal force, keeping the mid-palate vivid and alive. A flicker of spice on the finish, but it's the freshness that stays with you. This is inland Sardinia in a glass: warm days, cool mountain nights, wind-swept vineyards where the grapes ripen slowly and completely.
5. Sogno Mediterraneo Syrah IGT Toscana 2023, Tenuta Casadei | 14% | 90 pnt
Dark fruit from the first breath: juicy plum, blackberry, blackcurrant, the kind of fruit that stains. Then the savoury layers arrive: bay leaf, a farmyard earthiness, liquorice, a grind of black pepper. The tannins are soft and velvety, the body medium-plus, and the length keeps going. This is the Maremma coast at dusk: warm, herbal, spice-scented air, the last light on the Tyrrhenian. A Mediterranean dream that earns its name.
6. Chianti Rufina Riserva DOCG 2021, Castello del Trebbio | 13.5% | 95 pnt
Young and unapologetic about it. This wine is alive and kicking with dark cherries and forest berries up front, with vanilla and a measured touch of oak sitting behind. The tannins are firm, ripe but still slightly drying, a clear signal that this Riserva has years of development ahead of it. There's real length here, and a current of excitement running through the palate, the kind of wine that makes you lean forward rather than sit back. Give it time, and it will reward patience generously.
- Castello del Trebbio in Chianti Rufina, the family headquarters and the fortress where the Pazzi once plotted.
- Terre di Romena in the Casentino hills, the newest and highest Casadei estate.
- Tenuta Casadei at Suvereto, on the Tuscan Maremma coast.
- Tenuta Olianas inland in central Sardinia, the family's Demeter-certified estate.
Where to go
Plan your own Casadei visit
Every spot from this article, in one place.
People Also Ask
Any questions related to this topic? Maybe you can find your answer here. Click here!
Can you visit Castello del Trebbio near Florence?
Yes. Castello del Trebbio sits at Via di Santa Brigida 9 in Pontassieve, about thirty minutes east of Florence, and opens for guided castle and cellar tours with wine tastings, plus cooking and pasta-making classes. Book ahead through castellodeltrebbio.com, especially in high season.
What is the connection between the Pazzi conspiracy and Castello del Trebbio?
Castello del Trebbio was built by the Pazzi family in 1184, and the 1478 plot to murder Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici was rehearsed inside its low, windowless conspiracy room. The castle is now the headquarters of Famiglia Casadei, which makes a Sangiovese-led wine called De' Pazzi in a nod to that history.
What is BioIntegrale wine farming?
BioIntegrale is a ten-point farming charter created by Stefano Casadei in 2013. It combines biodynamic agriculture, solar energy self-sufficiency, the exclusive use of local labour and suppliers within a 30-kilometre radius, and the revival of ancient techniques such as terracotta amphora fermentation. Geese and sheep, rather than tractors, manage the vineyard vegetation.
How many estates does Famiglia Casadei own, and where are they?
Famiglia Casadei farms four Italian estates under one philosophy: Castello del Trebbio in Chianti Rufina, Tenuta Casadei on the Tuscan coast at Suvereto, Terre di Romena in the Casentino hills, and Tenuta Olianas in central Sardinia. Each expresses a different landscape while sharing the same BioIntegrale approach.
Is Tenuta Olianas organic or biodynamic?
Tenuta Olianas in Gergei is the only Demeter-certified biodynamic estate on the island of Sardinia. It ferments part of its wine in 1,000-litre underground terracotta amphorae, a practice overseen by the family's amphora specialist, Elena Casadei.
Resources
- The Pazzi conspiracy of 1478, the nineteen dagger wounds, Lorenzo's escape into the sacristy, and the executions that followed: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pazzi_conspiracy
- Castello del Trebbio, built by the Pazzi in 1184 at the junction of three ancient roads: castellodeltrebbio.com/en/castle-florence/
- Cosimo III de' Medici's 1716 edict and the historic Tuscan wine zones it delimited, including Pomino: chianticlassico.com/en/century-en/1716/
- Tenuta Olianas as the only Demeter-certified estate on Sardinia: olianas.it/en/estate/
- BioIntegrale, Stefano Casadei's ten-point farming charter: famigliacasadei.it/en/bio-integral
- Tenuta Casadei and its partnership with Californian vintner Fred Cline: tenutacasadei.it/en/
Margot van Lieshout
Wine marketeer, sales expert with over 20 years in the trade, public speaker and international wine judge. Thousands of wines scored from Steiermark to Ningxia, and a trade she knows from the inside out. Wine with Margot is where she helps wine brands tell the stories that sell them.
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