My work frequently involves a winery called Tenuta Lamborghini, in Italy’s Umbria region. It is a place I find myself visiting again and again.
Giuseppina Maccioni — whom everyone calls “Giuji” — always welcomes me there.
She started working at Tenuta Lamborghini on June 1, 1978. For more than 48 years, she has watched over this estate and the Lamborghini family.
Her mother, known to everyone as Delia, helped build this winery from its earliest days. Alongside Guido Crezzini, who had worked for the previous owner, Delia became one of Tenuta Lamborghini’s first employees. She spent about 10 years supporting Ferruccio until her retirement. Later, her daughter, Giuji, started working there, too — passing the winery’s history from mother to daughter.
Link beyond language
Every time I visit, she welcomes me with genuine warmth.
It doesn’t seem to bother her that I don’t speak Italian; she talks to me anyway, without hesitation. Naturally, I don’t catch everything she says.
Even so, the time I spend with her is deeply enjoyable. Her feelings come through regardless — in her expressions, voice and gestures — beyond what the words themselves mean.
When disaster struck Japan, even without a shared language, I could tell from her face how truly worried she was.
The 2024 Lamborghini wine party interview
She is also quite shy. Over the years she has received plenty of interview requests, and from what I understand, she has turned almost all of them down.
In 2024, while preparing for the Lamborghini Wine Party at the Osaka Geihinkan inside Osaka Castle, I wanted to show an interview with Giuji at the venue.
I asked her through the staff, and she agreed.
“It’s rare for Giuji to agree to an interview,” the day-to-day staff told me. They seemed genuinely surprised.
I flew to Italy ahead of the event to film it myself. She seemed nervous at first, but the moment she started talking about Ferruccio, her expression changed right there on camera. Shy as she is, she began speaking about him with real warmth, almost as if she were walking back through a cherished memory. That moment has stayed with me.
“Un uomo, un sogno”: Ferruccio’s life in the vineyard
What she told me about Ferruccio Lamborghini in that interview also stuck with me.
Ferruccio fell in love with this stretch of land in Umbria and built the winery himself, by hand.
There is a phrase that captures him well:
“Un uomo, un sogno” — one man, one dream.
Ferruccio had already made his dream real once — a supercar the whole world would love. Once he achieved that, he set his sights on a new dream: a wine the whole world would love. That is how Tenuta Lamborghini came to be.
He was always at the winery, out among the vines from the early morning.
There were no smartphones back then, of course. When a call came in for Ferruccio, Giuji would go find him in the vineyard and tell him, “You have a call.”
Even when something needed his signature, whether for an invoice or a contract, he wouldn’t bother returning to the office. Giuji would bring the papers out to the field, and Ferruccio would sign them right there, using her back as a desk.
The Miura, the Countach and the mud
She also remembers him driving supercars, including a Miura and a Countach, straight through the winery grounds.
A beautiful supercar kicking up dust as it went, with Ferruccio behind the wheel, covered in mud.
A luxury car that captivates the world, and a man working the vineyard, unpretentious and covered in dirt — that contrast struck me as endearing.
Passing the dream to the next generation
Watching her talk about Ferruccio with such joy, I could tell that their time together remains vividly alive in her memory.
Ferruccio is gone now. But the words he left behind — “one man, one dream” — still live on in this land. I believe Giuji, the staff who have come after her, and I myself, are all carrying forward a piece of his dream and passion through this wine, passing it on to the next generation.
Ferruccio was actually a witness at her wedding. She showed me a treasured photo from that day, which I still have on my phone.
However, I forgot to ask permission to publish it, so unfortunately, I cannot share it with you here.
If you ever happen to run into me somewhere, come say hello. That is when I will show you, just between us, a photo of Giuji looking every bit as charming in her wedding dress as she is today.
