“Tre Donne” winery

As much as Alessandro Lequio loved his daughters, in staying with Italian traditions, there was no way he was going to hand over the family vineyard to women. (According to his wife, Donna Bruna, Alessandro actually cried for half an hour when their third and last child, Daniela, was born!).

Four generations of fathers had handed the estate down to their sons, and even though he hadn’t had a boy, Alessandro wouldn’t let the family business to be run by the fairer sex. “Marry a good winemaker,” he would tell them. Just as stubborn as their father, the sisters all staunchly refuted this notion, and assured him that he would be handing the estate over to them one day…

In the end (and presumably tired of arguing), everyone agreed to a “do-or-die” wager, and literally bet the ranch; deciding he could trick them into failure, Alessandro agreed to give the gals everything if they could pass three years of his rigorous tests, culminating in a single vintage of wine which he himself would judge.

To everyone’s surprise, the sisters never gave up, and moreover, they actually won more awards in their first year of production than Alessandro had in his entire career! True to his word, their father changed his tune and turned the estate over to his daughters. He was so deeply impressed, he even allowed them to change the name to “Tre Donne”, which means “Three Women.”