The oldest document discovered about the village of Fugnano is from 1254, the year in which three people from the Casolare di Fugnano were registered among the wood sellers of the San Gimignano countryside. In this period Fugnano was considered one of the 44 villas in the San Gimignano countryside. Fugnano was a cottage of ancient origin and a small community worthy of having a small church which was dedicated to San Bartolomeo. This church, as dependent on the church of Santa Maria Assunta di Cellole, was included in the diocese of Volterra, under which it remained until the end of the 1800s. On the decline of this century the church was deconsecrated.
In 1348 with the outbreak of the plague, the village of Fugnano remained empty and deserted. Many crops were abandoned, houses vacated and consequently the entire village dispersed. This is certainly the period of its greatest decline, one in which even the buildings transformed their appearance and undoubtedly the time when all the ancient castle structures vanished. Fugnano was diminished to an almost completely uninhabited village until 1475, the year in which, a century and a half after the emergence of the plague, it began to repopulate.
Around 1745, the village of Fugnano returns to its prosperous state reaching its maximum peak of 66 residents. From this point on until the end of the Second World War, Fugnano was a village inhabited mainly by sharecroppers unified by more or less, one or two vast properties. With dire living conditions in the aftermath of the war, the depopulation and the abandonment of the lands began again, until the farms surrounding the village were finally purchased by Commendatore Andrea Pensabene, who, having left his native Sicily, came to Fugnano to regenerate the ancient village and to rebuild and to renovate the culture of the ancient farm of Fugnano.
Upon the death of the Commendatore, in 1997 his granddaughter Laura, at the age of 23, quit her studies of law in Sicily to follow in his footsteps and to continue his legacy and his love for this special piece of land in the heart of Tuscany.
Today Laura has realized and transformed the vision of her grandfather’s dream into a vinicultural estate deeply linked to its territory, ancient identity and projected future. Her purpose and passion emerges in her determination to share her history, her story and the tradition deeply rooted in her and in this village.