The private Wine Museum was set up in the heart of the historic house Vinicola Tona in 1892, exactly where the 700 square meter old maturity cellars were, beneath the current Restaurant.
The Museum houses the undestructable Valtellina chestnut barrels of various capacities (the largest being 6000 litres) and the numerous tools for growing, cultivation and maturation of wine.
You can admire the ancient hand-pumps (1915) and the electric pumps (1950); the manual, wooden wine presses (1910), the first winepress-destalker (1953), the presses, wicker baskets for manual picking and transport of grapes, wooden wine decanters, ancient wooden and copper funnels for filling up the barrels, ancient filters (1940), manual corkers (1910) and the more recent electric and semi-automatics (1960), the original vapour boiler operated by firewood to sterilise the vats (1900).

The 2 concrete wine-making vats (26.000 and 28.000 litres) were cleverly transformed into “a wine appartment” in 1918 by swiss craftsmen and today houses a private collection of the historical Tona wines from 1892 to 1936. The unique wooden hore-drawn carriage with which the great grandfather Giovani Tona, founder of the Tona Cellar, transported barrels of his prestigious Valtellina wine over snow-laden roads from Villa di Tirano to Switzerland (400 metres above MSL), going back up the Bernina Pass (2300 metres above MSL ) and then down to the famous St. Moritz (1800 metres above MSL ) to deliver the Tona wines to the restaurants and hotels in the years 1900.

There are numerous other original and interesting tools on display for the curious!
The 30/40 -minute visit to the Museum reruns more than 110 years of wine history, the efforts and satisfaction of four generations of the Tona-Bonisolo family of Villa di Tirano, Valtellina.
Your host, Luigi Bonisolo will be very pleased to accompany the guests of the Hostaria Tona Antica Cantina on a guided tour everyday (except Monday) after lunch or dinner (14:30, 22:30). There is no charge.

It is possible to arrange group tours at other times agreed at booking. Reservations must be made 1 week in advance.