Don Giotti loved wine and did not disdain working in the fields, side by side with the farmers. Although he came from a family of direct cultivators and on his mother's side of a noble branch, he did not have too deep a knowledge of agricultural matters. That is why he relied on Gino, a very competent and skilled worker both in the vineyard and in the cellar, an area in which the priest seemed to juggle best, producing, together with his collaborator, a full-bodied product with a high alcohol content. It was in the cellar, converted from a room in the rectory where he lived in Cortine, that the barrels were located. Inside them was the result of work that the priest jealously guarded and, like a treasure, shared with few. Inside them was the result of work that the priest jealously guarded and, like a treasure, shared with few. He was very selective in his gifts. Gruff and of few words, he had firm and immovable convictions: wine was only to be sold and its proceeds allocated to the needs of the parish and its inhabitants. However, he knew how good his product was and he also knew that word had spread in the village and that many people wanted to taste it. So, to avoid unpleasant surprises, he had taken precautions against possible theft by devising his own trap. On the spiral staircase that led to the barrels, he had removed the last step to trip up possible ill-intentioned people. But this cunning was not enough with his friend Don Cuba, at that time one of the best-known priests in the Archdiocese of Florence and beyond. One day he went to visit him and while he was distracting him, secretly some boys who had accompanied him there 'borrowed a few litres of wine' for a dinner in the Sollicciano prison.

A colourful and sometimes controversial character, Don Agostino Giotti left an indelible mark on the hearts and minds of the entire Val di Pesa, at times even providing pearls of great hilarity destined to be recounted and handed down for decades. The parish priest was a friend of an important local entrepreneur who in 1976 had taken over his father's winery, transforming it into a highly prestigious reality. The story goes that during one of the many hitchhiking trips from San Donato to Cortine, the man provoked Don Agostino with a joke. Given the copious rainfall that threatened to compromise the grape harvest and an entire year, he told him to urge his employer to stop the rain. On the spot, Don Agostino replied nothing, remaining silent the whole way. Then once they arrived at their destination, with one foot still in the car and the other outside, he looked his friend in the eye and said dryly: “My principal was the 'son' of a carpenter, not a winemaker”.

Like good wine, Don Giotti was a gift from heaven. If today his story lives again in the collective memory, it is also due to a happy stroke of fate that he bluntly described as a miracle. On 15 August 1944, when he was 29 years old and parish priest at Lumena, a small village in Mugello, a group of Germans carried out a round-up in which some civilians ended up involved, along with the young priest. As was the custom, they were put up against the wall and shot. His life was spared. He remained for hours praying the rosary until a total silence suggested to him that the Germans had left. From that day on, he would tell everyone the same thing, that Our Lady had saved him from German bullets. The event matured a deep faith in him, leading him to embrace a life of gratitude, aimed at caring for his people and his land, including the vines that still today form the heart of the Cortine line.