Gaddo Della Gherardesca narrates the history of his family, among the most important in Italy

The first cypress of Viale di Bolgheri, where “tall and straight, they go from San Guido in a double row”, was planted by Count Guido Alberto della Gherardesca, who was considered a landscape designer. But, in reality, the choice was motivated by the fact that buffaloes, also depicted in the beautiful paintings of the Tuscan Macchiaioli artists, would eat all other plants, such as poplars and plane trees, except for cypresses. The planting began around the early 1820s, when the reconstruction of the Via Pisana, then called Via Regia, was completed, and perpendicular roads were created to connect it with the inland villages, including Stradone di San Guido. The work started precisely from San Guido to Le Capanne, while the final stretch to Bolgheri was completed by other members of the Gherardesca family in the early 1900s. But, the interesting thing is that Guido Alberto not only created an extraordinary work, immortalized by great poet Giosuè Carducci in the poem “In Front of San Guido”, but he was also a forerunner of Bolgheri wine success, as he began shipping wine across Europe during those same years. This is just one of the many stories by Gaddo Della Gherardesca, a descendant of the noble Tuscan family (and of Count Ugolino, the protagonist of Canto 33 in “Hell” in “The Divine Comedy” by Dante), which has been present in Bolgheri for twelve centuries, first making it a place of modern agriculture and later the “cradle” of great wines - the uncle of Gaddo, Mario Incisa della Rocchetta, “inventor” of Sassicaia, and Niccolò Antinori, his brother-in-law from the historic Italian wine family that shaped the region’s legacy - both were married to a Della Gherardesca, ed  - he recalled to WineNews, who, now, as a writer, decided to collect in a book: “Al tempo di una volta. Tracce di una vita” - “In Times Gone By. Traces of a Life”, available in bookstores starting today.
In the volume (Rizzoli Editore, October 2025, 208 pages, cover price 29.90 euros), Gaddo Della Gherardesca, a successful entrepreneur active in various sectors, from pharmaceuticals to advertising, who also filled the gap of not having a wine produced by his historic family (which is also featured in the Treccani Encyclopedia), became a winemaker himself. He narrates his life with passion and introspection, shaped by a noble heritage and a deep bond with the family castle in Castagneto Carducci. “Al tempo di una volta” is a journey through the memories of his childhood spent between Florence and the Tuscan hills, a distant era when the Della Gherardesca family lived according to traditions that now seem lost. With a language that feels ancient yet rooted in the dynamism of the present, the author alternates introspection and irony, exploring and sharing his life, lived intensely thanks to - and despite - his important surname. The narration is not only a tribute to the people he met along the way and the opportunities life offered him, but also an intimate reflection on everything the Castle of Castagneto holds within its walls. The author relives family traditions, values passed down through generations, and the sense of community that surrounded this historic residence.
Thanks to the creativity of its author, who was president of the Association of Historic Residences in Italy and a member of its European Board, chaired the Sipari Foundation in the Abruzzi, served on the board of the Strozzi Foundation in Florence, and currently presides over the Clubino, an exclusive gentlemen’s club in Milan, the work intertwines past and present, in which the castle is not just a physical place, but the symbol of a world that, although partly vanished, continues to live on in memory. And in a glass of wine.