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PROTAGONIST / SEDUCTION IN THE VINEYARD

LADIES
OF WINE

They are young, they have illustrious surnames, and they
bring a new sensitivity to the winery.

The businesswomen of Italian wine look to the future.
With culture and professionalism

BY STEFANO ZURLO
PHOTOS BY MALENA MAZZA

P ack your cribs and fables away in the attic. The of the Middle Ages, which may hint at the wall the two princesses
ladies of wine have no time to embroider the past: have scaled. Irina says: “I started with ballet, then at 14 I was just
they are in the cellar or among the vines, and being about to go to the Bolshoi when something clicked. I had my first
photographed together at a convention in Milan. wine tasting, knew that my place was in the winery, and began to
An image that defines a season that has just begun, a get ready”. And here she is, aiming to bring Vernaccia and other

pioneering one, because only a few years ago, this snapshot would noble varieties abroad. Of course, Irina Guicciardini Strozzi speaks

have been impossible. This is the first female generation to come to five or six languages, including Russian, English and German. Of

the fore, to take risks and responsibilities, no longer just decorating the fable, if you like, the happy end remains, but everything has

a male picture. No; they fill it with substance, with decisions, with changed. Irina spends most of her time on planes and in hotels,

strategic choices and marketing. There is wonderful get-up-and- discussing prices and degrees proof around the world, and keeping

go: the problem is eliminating prejudice without an eye on the bottom line.

trampling all over history and traditions. It seems } I danced for 17 Just like her sister Natalia. “I danced too”, she
easy, but this smiling disruption can make you years, including says, “for 17 years, including four at the Mariinski
dizzy. Irina Guicciardini Strozzi, from a family four with Nureyev. in St Petersburg with Nureyev. Then I did a
that features resplendent in history books and Then I attended sommelier course in Rome and that experience
relates the superb tale of Florence, tells us: “One a sommelier course... steered me home, and to the world of wine”. Now
day, at a fair in Germany, a lady asked me: ‘excuse she, too, is experiencing the globalization of the

me, you are a princess - why do you work?’” Her business: “I speak five languages, too, and I travel.

sister Natalia, whose business card bears the English word ‘princess’, We often leave together and then Irina and I share out the tasks,

adds another chapter: “I don’t know how many times someone meetings, and appointments”. The family tree has to be updated:

whispered to me: ‘what is a noblewoman doing in jeans?’” Perhaps climbing up the branches and leaves of the Strozzi, powerful

a superficial objection, but it expresses the discomfort at the choice bankers and great rivals of the Medici, we find no less a personage

of the two ladies, young and aristocratic, to put their profile outside than Lisa Gherardini; that is, Leonardo’s Mona Lisa. Those days

the frame of a centuries-old canvas depicting endless repetitions are gone: “Of my past”, adds Natalia, “I retained my passion for

of a male model. But no. Different paths, but a common landing theatre. Theatre is my second job, not a hobby. I am not an actress,

place in the Guicciardini Strozzi estates, a company that has been I go abroad to act. It’s just that after I have gone over the script,

around since 994. In short, over a thousand years, since the heart maybe I answer the emails. And then, if I am away for an opera,

Left, Natalia Guicciardini Strozzi, older sister of Irina, and like her, involved in the winery of the same name and the family estates
(www.guicciardinistrozzi.it). The two sisters are direct descendants of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco
di Bartolomeo del Giocondo, who was the celebrated Mona Lisa painted by Leonardo da Vinci, with a smile that bewitched the world.

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