The Corsini family has been in the oil business for about 500 years, and the tradition is tangible. Paul Ferrari harvested olives alongside Dino and Mario, the adult children of contadini (tenant farmers) who themselves have a child who lives and works on the estate. The property's 15,000 olive trees are still picked by hand, and the fruits of the harvest are crushed on site in an authentic stone mill. Most of Corsini's employees at harvest time take their payment in oil rather than cash, giving credence to this oil's reputation as "liquid gold."

The current passion behind Le Corti belongs to Prince Duccio Corsini, who revived the family's long dormant Le Corti Estate in 1992 for the purposes of wine and oil production. For decades, the Corsini family had spent only short holidays in the splendid Renaissance Villa on Le Corti Estate. And upon the death of Tommaso Corsini in 1919, the Villa remained empty and was closed up until 1992 when Duccio decided to make it his permanent home. He opened up and refurbished the rooms and apartments and at the same time re-arranged the garden, reintroducing its original Renaissance layout.

At the same time, he decided to abandon the traditional method of managing farm produce, whereby wine, oil and cereals were sold as "raw materials" to those who processed and sold them. The idea, which was the driving force behind the estate's modernization, was to cater direct to consumers, by providing them with oil, wine and country life. Duccio's encounter with winemaker Carlo Ferrini wrote the first chapter of this story with the beginning of wine growing and production; it has since become the core activity of Le Corti Estate and is held in high regard both in Italy and abroad. The Estate's traditional production of extra virgin olive oil has remained unchanged, although the technology used to extract and preserve the oil has been improved.

Duccio and his wife Clotilde, who have a son and a daughter--Filippo and Elena Clarice--are proud of their relationship with end consumers and every year open the doors of their splendid Villa to host Alla Corte del Vino; the wine fair, now at its sixth edition, has presented the finest Tuscan wines annually since 1997.