Palmina

When we bought our Italian house we found some photos that had been taken by the previous owners when they bought it in 1972. These photos – 1972 on the lower right hand side, and today on the upper left hand side – are taken as far as I can manage it from the same spot (there are too many trees for it to be exactly the same spot – it’s a similar angle to my blip on 11th August). You can see how barren and rough it looked in 1972.
The lady in the 1972 photo was an Italian from Salerno called Palmina. At the end of WWII she was 17 years old and keen to escape from the desolation of war-torn Italy. Help arrived in the shape of an older English officer who told her that if she married him, he would take her to England, give her a good standard of living, and when she met the man of her dreams, he would divorce her. He was as good as his word, and several years later she fell in love with a young Englishman, got a divorce from the officer, and remarried.

After two sons and successful careers, she and her English husband decided to retire to Italy and bought this near-derelict farmhouse, which over the next 20 years they turned into one of the leading boutique wineries of Chianti (we bought the house – not the winery – enough farming in England!)