Her Royal Highness Princess Maxima at the Fattoria del Colle
Beautiful, friendly and an expert in wine, Her Royal Highness Princess Maxima of Holland and 17 of her friends from Argentina recently came to visit the Fattoria del Colle. Her Royal Highness tasted some wine from the barrel and then tasted some of our bottled wines. Her favourite of all the wines was the Brunello Prime Donne 1996
In the ageing cellar
Princess Maxima d’ Orange Nassau was born in Argentina, she passed a degree in economics and then worked as an investor at Deutsche Bank in New York. She speaks Spanish, Dutch and English perfectly and she is also pretty good at Italian!
In 2002 she married the Heir to the throne of the Netherlands His Royal Highness Prince William-Alexander. A few months ago he celebrated his 40th birthday with a concert which was attended by the crowned heads of Europe. The Princess has three beautiful children and she is herself a beautiful woman, she is always smiling, is vibrant, lively and also very intelligent.
It is perhaps her affable nature, her sweetness and simplicity of manner (she personally drove her car with some of her friends inside) which won the heart of the future King of Netherlands and which made her stand out from the crowd amongst all the people he meets. It is very clear that she has a desire to live as normal a life as possible, she likes to socialise with her old childhood friends and she doesn’t stand on ceremony and wants to be treated as an ordinary person not a princess. This is a desire which is not always easy to achieve for those who receive her as a cherished visitor.
On September 7th, we had scheduled for the Princess to visit the cantina of Casato Prime Donne in Montalcino. They were all ready to receive her it but at the last moment the program was changed: Princess Maxima decided she wanted to go to Montepulciano and to visit the Fattoria del Colle.
Violante gives a wine gift to the princess
In the end we were able to arrange a very entertaining day, which included tasting wines from the barrels which held a future Doc Orcia wine, When Violante extracted some wine for the tasting from the barrels she felt almost like a thief stealing a precious commodity in advance!.
The friends of the Princess asked us if we exported the wine to Argentina and were very disappointed to hear that at the moment we do not. Violante told them that we needed their help so that we can make the wine available in their country. In reality we would love to sell this wine in Argentina but Argentina is a big wine producer itself and it is a difficult country to export to.
The visit to the historic rooms of the villa fascinated these young people from Argentina. They loved the views of the surrounding area and really enjoyed all the tastings, particularly the Brunello riserva 1996. They were all particularly impressed that our cantina was staffed only by women and said ‘Well done!’ to the Prime Donne project.
Before leaving the Princess bought a good supply of top quality bottles of wine to accompany her meals in the villa that the Dutch royal family owns near Florence.
In the end we seem to have passed our ‘test’ with flying colours and provided a very enjoyable evening for our important guests, one thing is for sure, we are all literally ‘in love’ with this beautiful future queen.