It was November 20, 1947, when Elizabeth II of England married Prince Philip of Edinburgh in Westminster Abbey, and at the sumptuous wedding banquet the Biondi-Santi’s Brunello di Montalcino was served.
The same brand she found again in 1969 at the Italian Embassy in London, when at a dinner in honor of the Queen, Italian President Giuseppe Saragat personally chose Brunello Riserva 1955, the bottle that “Wine Spectator” listed as the only Italian wine among the best of the 20th century.
These are just a few of the most famous anecdotes retraced by WineNews, which tell of the Queen’s passion that, in 70 years of reign celebrated this year, also passes through Italian wines.
Among all the Italian regions the Queen surely loved, Sicily has a prominent role, almost a tradition for the British royal family, whose love for this island is really lost in the mists of time, such as that trip to Palermo, where the “timballo del Gattopardo,” a tribute to Luchino Visconti, was prepared for the occasion, with swordfish, melon frost and Marsala.

Over the years official and other trips followed, favorite destinations included the cities of Naples, Florence, Turin, Sardinia, but also the island of Vulcano in the Aeolian Islands, where they had lunch with a menu based on spaghetti, eggplant parmigiana and the inevitable cassata, all flavored with wine from Etna and Malvasia of Lipari.
And again in Italy in 2000, with a solemn banquet organized in her honor at the “Salone delle Feste” of the Quirinale in Rome by President Carlo Azelio Ciampi, based once again on Brunello di Montalcino, but also on Ferrari’s Cuvée 2000 as the final toast after dessert with “Babà al Rhum”, and also based on the Trentino bubbles so appreciated by His Majesty.
Until the last visit in 2014 when they were guests of President Giorgio Napolitano, with a basket of food and drink from all the royal estates as a gift for Pope Francis, but if in the future there will still be numerous trips to Italy by the younger and older members of the British royal family, the one who will no longer cross the Alps will be her, Elizabeth II, who has always loved and will always love our country.

King Charles III of England, a ruler with a passion for wine
Agricultural entrepreneur, wine producer, Italian wine lover (thanks to his family’s historic connection with the Frescobaldi family), and also honorary sommelier: this is also His Majesty King Charles III of England, who ascends the throne after the departure of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.
A king, Charles of England, who has always been attentive to agricultural issues. Not only as an organic food producer, farmer and wine maker on his Highgrove House estate in Gloucestershire. But also as a supporter for British farmers, for example, with “The Prince’s Countryside Fund,” launched in 2010, as Prince of Wales, to support farming families in the United Kingdom. But King Charles has long been a lover of Italy and its wine, agricultural and gastronomic heritage. Beginning with the Windsor family’s historic friendship with the Frescobaldi family, which, for seven hundred years, has had relations with the British Crown, of which, for wine and oil, it is a historic supplier, thanks also to the personal acquaintance of Bona and Vittorio Frescobaldi, with the royal house, who were among the very few Italians guests at the wedding of Charles’ son, William with Kate Middleton, to whom they donated the “Brunello di Montalcino Riserva di Castelgiocondo”, not to mention Charles’ 1986 visit to Tuscany.
“It was April 1986,” recalls Lamberto Frescobaldi, to WineNews, “and Charles came the first time with a granddaughter, then he came back with Lady Diana, and together with my mother, as a sign of friendship, he planted an olive tree and a vine in Nipozzano. And from that olive tree then we always harvested olives and gave Charles, every year, a symbolic bottle of Laudemio … It is a true friendship with my family, Carlo was a guest at my parents’ house, not in a hotel. With my mother they visited many things, the important cities, but also many villages, something that was not usual at the time, such as San Gimignano and Montalcino, the land of Brunello (is historic the picture together with Vittorio and Bona Frescobaldi in the “Caffè Fiaschetteria Italiana 1888″, a café created by Ferruccio Biondi Santi, the inventor of Brunello, in the historical center of Montalcino, in 1888, ed.) His friendship was born with my mother Bona and my father Vittorio, who cultivated this relationship with Prince Charles, now King, who is a lover of nature, of the countryside, of good stewardship of the countryside, of the land, he is a producer himself, and he has brought to England visions of farming that are more environmentally friendly. He is attentive to ethics, he is a lover of all of Italy and Tuscany in particular.”
A bond, then, that of Charles III with Italian wine, which had already blossomed in the 1980s, and was also strengthened in 2017, when in his capacity as Prince of Wales, he personally met so many protagonists of Italian wine, from Jacopo Biondi Santi, to Giovanni Manetti (Fontodi), in Chianti Classico, from the Antinori family to Vittorio Moretti patron of the Moretti group (which includes Bellavista, Contadi Castaldi, in Franciacorta, Sella & Mosca in Sardinia, and Teruzzi, in San Gimignano), as well as, of course, the Frescobaldi family), at the meeting organized by Franco Ricci, patron of the Italian Sommelier Foundation (Fis), who, on that occasion, presented Charles and Camilla with the diploma of Sommelier of Honor.
King Charles III of England has waited longer than anyone else before ascending the throne, but he seems to have clear ideas on issues such as organic farming, architecture and sustainable development and could in his own way mark a turning point in the relationship between agriculture, sustainability and the fight against climate change, the real emergency of the whole world.
