Sandra Lodi with her Ferrari 296 GTS Spyder
Sandra Lodi with her Ferrari 296 GTS Spyder
(Image credit: Sandra Lodi with her Ferrari 296 GTS Spyder)

‘I was born in a castle near Ferrara, where my father was the estate manager and owned a vineyard,’ Lodi says. ‘I was never expected to work for a living.’ But the free-spirited Sandra left home at 18 to see the world. Along the way, she made a friend who owned a Morgan – an early British-made sports car. ‘That was the beginning of my love for cars,’ she says.

On the fast-track

Back in Italy, she went to work in communications, for a company involved with Formula 1 motor racing, where she met the likes of race car drivers Nelson Piquet, Ayrton Senna, Eddie Irvine, Nigel Mansell, Gilles Villeneuve – and the man who would become both her life and business partner: scion of a landed Umbrian family and European racing champion, the late Fabrizio Violati.

‘When Ansa, the company I worked for, moved to America, Violati asked me if I would like to join him in opening a Ferrari museum in San Marino,’ says Lodi. It was the idea of Enzo Ferrari himself, a friend, and she jumped at the chance. And so, in 1989, the Maranello Rosso museum was born in the tiny Republic of San Marino.

The first car, purchased by Violati in 1965, was the fabled 1962 250 GTO, of which only 33 were ever made. ‘That model won the world championship [the International Championship for GT Manufacturers] in 1962, ’63 and ’64,’ explains Lodi.

Over the years, the collection grew to 25 road and track Ferraris, spanning the firm’s stylistic and technological development, up to the last model personally approved by Enzo before his death in 1988: a 1987 F40 – the most powerful car of its time. Lodi would regularly take the cars for a spin.

Which was her favourite? ‘The 1960 250 GT SWB Berlinetta Competizione Sports,’ she answers, without hesitation: an elegant, red, long-nosed, Pininfarina-designed model – a car well suited to the equally elegant Lodi, who, now a spritely septuagenarian, still exudes rock-chick appeal.

Nor was the collection just for petrol heads; there was nostalgia, too. An ivory-coloured 250 GT Cabriolet, long-associated with Marilyn Monroe (although its ownership remains unverified), for example, and Peter Sellers’ 500 Superfast. ‘He asked for the most expensive car in the world and Ferrari obliged,’ says Lodi.

Back to the land

The sale of the collection, in 2014, enabled Lodi to buy Tenuta Gacci – 9.3ha of rolling vineyards, famed since Etruscan times and painstakingly restored. They sit within 40ha of woodland and fallow fields inland from Rimini in the Marecchia valley.

Lodi’s son Alessio Vetrano is in charge. ‘My father made him taste wine from the age of four,’ says Lodi, shaking her head. ‘Too young.’ But it seems to have paid off. Gacci produces a single highly regarded IGT Rubicone red blend of Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Ancellotta.

With her focus now on the vineyard, Lodi’s life has, in some ways, come full circle, and she has embraced the new venture with her customary gusto. From the estate, she can see the guillotine edge of Monte Titano, on which San Marino perches. And visitors to Gacci might just spot the flash of a bright-red supercar, framed by the vines.

Explore More
Teresa Levonian Cole
Teresa Levonian Cole

Teresa Levonian Cole is a journalist and writer specialising in travel, lifestyle and the arts. Widely published, her work has appeared in titles including The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, Financial Times and Tatler.