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The Albergaccio di Castellina, the restaurant of Sonia Visman and Francesco Cacciatori, celebrates three decades of activity.

But Sonia and Francesco started working side by side in 1982, when they were working together at Trattoria Pestello in Castellina.

A few years later, as they got closer and eventually got married, they decided to set up their own restaurant; using some shabby agricultural buildings that they found in Albergaccio, the hamlet near Castellina.

The restoration work to make these rooms usable, welcoming and pleasant, ended in the summer of 1989, without affecting their charm and authenticity: they kept the stone walls, the terracotta floors and exposed beams.

At the beginning the menu was inspired by the typical Sunday lunch, then they aimed to bring to the table the noblest Tuscan culinary tradition, that dates back to the Renaissance.

In the last few years they focused on the quality and freshness of the raw ingredients, and simple recipes that exalt them. They want to enhance the territory by looking for top-quality products produced by local artisans of taste.

The selection of wine is also very important in this context, and cannot be based merely on commercial calculation. Every wine is chosen after a careful tasting, and added to the wine menu and the cellar.

Because we are in the Chianti Classico area, and the dishes are mainly inspired by the land, there are various red wines, but also sparkling, rose´ and sweet wines. The wine list has over 350 wines.

The celebration for the 30th anniversary of the restaurant started a few weeks ago, when the bottles of wine that had been ageing in the cellar since the Summer of 1989 were opened.

Celebrations will carry on throughout the next months, with parties and special events to commemorate all these years of activities with the restaurant’s most iconic dishes.

If we must do a summary of these years, the patron should be proud of the fact that the team managed to change and adapt their restaurant, from the good years of the growth in the 90´s to the crisis after 11th September 2001 and the econom crisis after 2008.

Finally, he’s very satisfied to be able to accompany the next generation – his son Pietro in the kitchen with Sonia and the daughter Laura, an exemplary factotum – into the next decades of the Albergaccio.

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