Charter Members

The Allegrini family has had a central role in the agriculture of the Valpolicella for many generations. A document from the year 1557 demonstrates that a certain Allegrino Allegrini had obtained the right to utilize the water of certain “fountains”, or underground springs, in Mazzurega, a part of the township of Fumane, in order to irrigate his lands, an indication that the family was already present in the area in the 16th century. And already in a pre-eminent position given that various legal acts and transcriptions between 1616 and 1630 show the Allegrini to be among the major landed proprietors of the zone. The head of the current generation, Giovanni Allegrini, therefore inherited an important agricultural tradition, but he was able to reinvigorate this tradition, becoming one of the fathers of the oenological history of his area. After the Second World War he was among the first to question the traditional viticultural practices of the Valpolicella, fearlessly overturning settled habits and customs in order to aim for high quality wines. He knew his way around the cellars as well: his father had began training him in the secrets of fermentating and aging of wine when he was twelve years old, and he had begun to learn at an early age.They called him “the spider of the casks”, because, when entertaining clients and offering them wine to taste, he leapt from large barrel to another in order to draw out one sample after another. Intelligence and passion allowed him to produce, in the 1960’s and 1970’s, some of the finest wines of his zone. His final project, which he did not live to see completely realized, was to replant the vineyard of the most famous and prestigious property of the Valpolicella, the Grola, a hill which had been abandoned in the early 1900’s: he brought it back to active and productive life and made it possible to cultivate it with the tractors which were newly available. His children followed him in his work: initially the first-born, Walter, who died prematurely in 2003, then his daughter Marilisa and son Franco, in charge, respectively, of marketing and winemaking. The vineyards are all in the classic part of the Valpolicella appellation: 175 acres which belong to the family and another 50 which are leased. With an annual production of 900,000 bottles, the estate has had an important role in establishing the concept of the cru, of vineyards with superior quality potential: two important expressions of the concept are La Grola and Palazzo della Torre, true and outstanding ambassadors of the territory in the markets of the world. An equally prestigious part of the line are the innovative Amarone and La Poja, a 100% Corvina wine from the grapes of a single vineyard which expresses all of the character of the variety. The Allegrini have succeeded in creating four aces to put on the table.

The choice of the name Argiolas for the winery and the firm was by no means a random one: this has always been a family-run operation ever since its foundation at Serdiana near Cagliari by Francesco Argiolas in the early years of the 20th century. Oral tradition has it that a certain number of vineyards were planted during the First World War by Polish and Austrian prisoners of war. The firm was given a legal structure and entrepreneurial dynamism in 1938 by Antonio Argiolas, son of Francesco, quite active in extending the marketing of wines such as Monica, Nuragus, and Cannonau, previously confined to Sardinia, first to Tuscany, Latium, and the Veneto and then to France and Germany. Wines of good quality, but sold in bulk, not in bottle, as was the case of almost all of Sardinia’s wine at the time, though these were often anonymous in terms of character and personality as well. And during the deep commercial crisis which bulk wine went through in the 1980’s, many cultivators on the island accepted EEC contributions to uproot their vineyards and cease activity altogether. Antonio Argiolas, convinced that quality sooner or later would reveal itself to be a winning choice, refused this solution to the problem, even though it would have been an extremely lucrative one for him, significant capital easily gained. The decisive move came with the arrival of his sons, Franco and Giuseppe, who took over operations in 1989 and transformed production into bottled, not bulk, wine. A decisive event was the collaboration with consulting winemaker Giacomo Tachis, the father of modern Italian oenology, who has inspired the work of house enologist Mariano Murru, his pupil. It was with the assistance of Tachis that the Argiolas brothers transformed their vineyards and experimented new methods in the cellar, the first steps on a journey which has witnessed the success of these wines in all of the markets of the world. If success can be measured with figures, those of Argiolas are imposing ones: 575 acres of vineyards in four different locations, Serdiana, Selegas, Siurgus Donigala, and Porto Pino, ten different wines in the line, and an annual production of some two million bottles: wines which have made the name of Sardinia in the world. The top wine, Turriga, an IGT Isola dei Nuraghi, is a rich blend of various local varieties, Cannonau, Carignano, Bovale Sardo, and Malvasia Nera and has entered into the exclusive club of the internationally famous. Equally important for the name of the firm have been the dry white wine Is Argiolas, a Vermentino of depth and dimension, and the sweet Angialis, a blend in which a small percentage of Malvasia amplifies and further enriches the aromas of Sardinia’s Nasco.

The Castello di Montepò estate, located in the Tuscan Maremma to the south of Grosseto, on the same parallel as the fortress of Talamone, is far from Montalcino. For what conceivable reason did Jacopo Biondi Santi, scion of the family which invented Brunello di Montalcino, acquire it from the nephew of writer Graham Greene in order to turn it into the headquarters of his own winemaking activities? The reason is quite simple: his father, Franco, is there to continue the traditions of Montalcino, while he, ever since 1991, has gone off on his own with the idea of producing wines more in tune with the demands of the market without, however, any idea of entering into competition with Brunello di Montalcino, a wine with which he feels the strongest possible identification. Since 1991, accordingly, he has produced Sassoalloro, made with Montalcino grapes, but in a different, innovative style compared to Brunello. And with the 1993 vintage he created another Super Tuscan. Schidione, blending Sangiovese with Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot. The project entered into an operative phase with the purchase of Montepò, from which he acquired the grapes for his first experiments: 900 acres of land with a great viticultural potential, dominated by a castle, a medieval fortress intact over the centuries. Perched on a summit of an imposing hill, this military structure was rendered more gracious during the Renaissance and today is in perfect condition because the husband of the previous owner (nominated director of the British Museum a few years ago), carried out an exemplary work of restoration. Jacopo Biondi Santi, has extended vineyard surface to 500 acres, planting the historic variety of his family, Sangiovese, and adding such international varieties as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Syrah. The composition of the soil, the various micro-climates, the nearby sea all combine to create the conditions for the realization of outstanding wines, fully expressive of the enormous possibilities of the Maremma. A cru which Biondi Santi singled out in 1997 supplies the grapes for the latest great red wine of his line, a Cabernet Sauvignon to which he has given the historic name of Montepò: Montepaone. This emphasis on Super Tuscan wines, is it not in conflict with the family tradition? “Not at all”, he sustains: “in the last analysis Brunello di Montalcino was the result of a violation of the rules in force one hundred years ago, a decision to break the rules taken by my great-grandfather Ferruccio Biondi Santi. A man who, before becoming a producer of wine, had fought with Garibaldi at Bezzecca in 1866, when he was only 17 years old. He was no conformist, he was a free spirit and a rebel. I hope to resemble him at least a little”.

They call him “the banker of wine”, but Gianni Zonin, the foremost Italian private entrepreneur in terms of vineyard acreage, accepted to guide the Banca Poplare of Vicenza with a spirit of service to the community and has remained in charge due to the brilliant results obtained. But he did not do it for an authentic passion: his real mission in life is the land and its fruits. With a diploma in oenology and a doctorate in jurisprudence, he has directed his family’s firm in Vicenza since 1967 when it became a joint-stock company, and then became president of the firm at a mere 29 years of age. It was due to his foresight that the company, up to then a négociant house, began to concentrate its efforts on vineyard property as well in order to improve overall quality and gradually acquired sizeable vineyard properties in areas of major viticultural interest, from Friuli to Tuscany, from Piedmont to Lombardy, and from Apulia to Sicily. Working with this spirit, Zonin became a group which, alongside the large bottling cellars in Gambellara near Vicenza, can boast of nine viticultural estates, eight in Italy and one in Virginia in the USA, 4500 acres of vineyards, 350 employees, and 23 million bottles per year of production. The philosophy of Zonin is that the true challenge is not to produce limited numbers of good wine at high prices but rather, due to large volume, good wine at accessible prices for a wide public. Gianni Zonin has won this challenge: Acciaiolo, a sumptuous blend of Sangiovese and Cabernet produced at the Castello d’Alba in Radda in Chianti, is a Super Tuscan of important personality and Deliella, a fascinating Nero d’Avola from the Feudo Principi di Butera, is one of Sicily’s most prestigious wines.

The name Donnafugata, literally “woman in flight”, refers to the story of Hapsburg queen Maria Carolina, wife of Bourbon king Ferdinando IV who, in the early 19th century, fled Naples at the arrival of the French troops of Murat and took refuge in the heart of the Belice area of Sicily. The writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, in his famous novel “The Leopard”, then indicated with the name Donnafugata the possessions of the Prince of Salina.
The Donnafugata firm was created by a family which, for 150 years, has strongly believed in the oenological potential of the land of its origins.
Giacomo Rallo and his wife Gabriella, both pure-blooded Sicilians and both convinced that, to grow, it is always necessary to be open to the changes which are occurring in the world, began a new project in 1983, an entrepreneurial adventure. The point of departure were the historic cellars of the family at Marsala and the vineyards of the Contessa Entellina area, and the search for exceptional quality arrived as far as the island of Pantelleria. Their children, José and Antonio, have now joined their parents in the firm, enabling the house to grow at an even faster pace and become one of the symbols of the rebirth of Sicilian wine.
The family project is based by total attention to every single detail in order to achieve objectives which are constantly more ambitious, that of realizing the entire potential of the territory with an absolute respect for the environment and the typical character of Sicilian wine.
This philosophy is even more present in the production of the firm’s most important wines, the crus of Contessa Entellina and of Pantelleria.
Mille e una Notte is a red wine which blends Nero d’Avola with small percentages of other native varieties, an impenetrable ruby red in color, ample on the nose and structured on the palate. Vigna di Gabri, instead, is a fragrant white wine, 100% Ansonica, named for Gabriella Rallo who deeply desired a wine of this type, a totally achieved example of the Ansonica grape which expresses all of its characteristics, a variety whose important potential has become even more widely accepted in recent years. Last but not least, Ben Rye, “son of the wind” in Arabic, a Passito di Pantelleria DOC, deep and of great complexity, a pride of the firm which proclaims its extraordinary character and expressiveness right from the start, from the amber-tinged yellow of exceptional brilliance.

The Manetti family has been famous for generations in Chianti, but not for wine: its renown is linked to the production of the terracotta of Impruneta. A well deserved fame: it was the firm of Dino and Domiziano Manetti which produced the roof tiles for the restoration work on the dome of the cathedral of Florence and provided the flooring for the Uffizi gallery as well. Nowadays it is difficult to say whether the Manetti are better known for their wine or for the terracotta, even if their adventure in the world of wine is far more recent. The first step was the purchase, in 1968, of the Fontodi estate in the heart of the Florentine part of Chianti Classico, near the country church of San Leonino in a valley which opens up to the south of Panzano. The area has been known for centuries as “the golden slopes” for its exceptional position: the soil is difficult to work but the grapes are of exceptional quality. The sign that something had changed for the Manetti in their rapport with what had simply been a country house came in 1980, when the entire family moved to the property. It was the younger generation which took charge of the vineyards and the cellar, the young children of Dino, Giovanni and Marco, though always with the close supervision of the elder generation, their father and uncle.
In fact, it was with the next vintage, in 1981, that new wine was born alongside the traditional Chianti Classico and Chianti Classico Riserva, an offering that would create a sensation, Flaccianello della Pieve. The wine was conceived, along with the younger Manetti brothers, by a young oenologist, Franco Bernabei, a man with important ambitions. A pure Sangiovese from the best exposed vineyard of the property, the wine was fermented in a way which was both traditional and innovative: the period of skin contact was a lengthy one, but with a constant control of the temperature. After the initial phase, the wine, in the following March, went into small oak barrels for aging, French oak from the Massif Central, and after a lengthy aging period was given additional bottle aging time as well. Since then Fontodi has made enormous progress, the cellars have been enlarged, more land has been acquired (of the estates 275 acres, 175 are planted to vines, all cultivated according to the dictates of biological agriculture), new wines have been created, but the fame of the estate is linked to Flaccianello della Pieve, which in fine vintages truly reaches the heights. Other classy wines are not lacking in the estate’s portfolio: the spicy Case Via and the Chianti Classico Riserva from a special vineyard, Sorbo. Flaccianello is in a class of its own.

When Livio Felluga created, in 1956, his original label, a map of the hills of his vineyards, the place where his wines were born, the legislation which established Italy’s system of wine appellations was yet to appear. Virtually unchanged from that date, in addition to being an excellent marketing instrument, the label also testifies to Felluga’s deep conviction that great wine can only come from a cru, a great vineyard. And, in fact, when the appellations began to appear, he had already gone beyond them: he fermented his grapes vineyard by vineyard and proudly stated their name on the labels. Where did this pioneering awareness come from? He responds with a quip: “the family has been working in wine for five generations, it has been our bread and butter”. His great-grandfather produced Refosco and Malvasia in Istria, as did his grandfather, and a part was used in the small family trattoria of Isola d’Istria. This territory, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was annexed by Italy after the First World War, but the family did not change its way of life for this reason. On the contrary, to expand it, it sent one of the sons, Giovanni, to sell the wine at Grado, a seaside resort much loved by the aristocracy of central Europe. Livio, Giovanni’s son, accordingly grew up on this lagoon, right next to the Collio and Colli Orientali del Friuli areas, and dreamed of making wine in a place with such an important potential. The outbreak of World War II prevented him from carrying out his plans: he was called back to arms in 1940. Three years in Libya and then prison at Cap Bon and three more years in Scotland. And, at his return, the frontier of his country had changed once again. But he, as soon as possible, return to his first love: in the early 1950’s he acquired a few acres of land at Rosazzo in the Colli Orientali appellation. “Difficult years”, he recounts. “The hillsides were totally abandoned. The first factories sprung up and the cultivators preferred the city and factory work. The landscape itself began to change. My challenge was to resist all of that and make the hillsides productive once again”. He chose Brazzano in the Collio appellation as the site for his cellar, a cellar which has grown as production has increased. He could enjoy his position as patriarch, his reputation as re-founder of the viticultural traditions of Friuli, but not even his advancing age has slowed him down. He was among the first to understand that these vineyards could not continue to produce every type of wine envisaged in the appellation rules: only the varieties which gave excellent results in their specific sites were to be cultivated. Fewer wines but with more personality. With the aid of his children, Maurizio, Andrea, Elda, and Filippo, despite 90 years of age, he is carrying out this program of high level vineyards at Venco, Ruttars, Rolàt in the Collio appellation and at Rosazzo in the Colli Orientali. He has already achieved two very satisfying results: Terre Alte, a blend of Tocai, Pinot Blanc, and Sauvignon, for over a decade among the top white wines of Friuli, and Sossò, which blends Merlot, Refosco, and Pignolo, first produced in 1989, a potent but supple red wine with aromas of berry fruit, plum jam, and spice.

The Frescobaldi name goes back 700 years in the world of wine and, by now, has involved 30 generations of the family. In the 1960’s, Vittorio Frescobaldi, proprietor of the house along with his brothers and sisters, Dino, Maria, Ferdinando, and Leonardo, gave a modern organization to this tradition, creating a firm headquartered in Florence with nine estates in Tuscany and another in Friuli. There are some 2250 acres of vineyards in zones with very different soils and climates, source of the seven million high-level bottles produced annually. It is not easy to fully explain a complex reality such as this to customers, connoisseurs, and journalists. The Frescobaldi have succeeded by showing, in a large room, the significant elements of the major estates, proposing to visitors a virtual trip through this bio-diversity employing all five senses: aroma and taste, first and foremost, by tasting the most important wines along with the gastronomical specialities of their zones and identifying, one by one, fragrances and essences which the estate oenologist presents.
It is a kind of game which also involve sight, touch, and even sound, with carefully chosen music as accompaniment as well. An original way to get to know the historic Frescobaldi properties: Castello di Pomino, the Castiglioni estate, Castello di Nipozzano. And more recent acquisitions as well: Castelgiocondo in Montalcino, Santa Maria in the Tuscan Maremma, Luce della Vite, originally a joint-venture with the Mondavi family of Napa Valley in California, now entirely owned by Frescobaldi, and finally the Attems estate in the Collio hills of eastern Friuli. It is from the crus of Nipozzano that Montesodi and Mormoreto are made, while Lamaione comes from Castelgiocondo: the Super Tuscans which have given the greatest satisfaction to the family.

Brother of Livio Felluga, Marco Felluga belongs to the same dynasty of producers of wine. With a childhood at Grado and oenological studies at the school of Conegliano, it was inevitable that he should fall in love with the nearby Collio hills, where a magical landscape is one with a climate and soil with important potential for fine wine. From the lagoon of Grado to the hills of Gradisca d’Isonzo, therefore, it was only a short step for Felluga, who founded his own cellar at the latter spot.
The balance between modern innovation and modern technology on the one hand, and the traditions of the zone on the other, have made the house a reference point for the entire territory. It is no accident that the local producers consortium has been guided by Felluga in recent years. Today, to follow in the footsteps and in the philosophy of absolute quality is his son Roberto, the fifth generation of the family. Vineyards amount to 300 acres and production to 600,000 bottles annually, and two wines top the quality pyramid: Carantan, a red, and Molamatta, a white. They make Marco Felluga a widely respected firm, but only the leader of a group with three other estates. The most important is Russiz Superiore, 240 total acres and 175 planted to vines, a place imbued with the history of Friuli whose owners, in the 13th century, were the Torre e Tasso princes.
Acquired in 1966 at Capriva di Friuli, its annual production is 200,000 bottles and its leading labels are the white Col Disôre and the red Riserva degli Orzoni.
The Castello di Buttrio estate, instead, was purchased in 1994 and is endowed with a rich patrimony of vineyards planted with selections of native grapes from the old vineyards of the property. Two wines are produced: the white Castello di Buttrio-Ovestein and the red Castello di Buttrio-Marburg. The last property to become part of the group consists of 125 acres of vineyards at San Casciano Val di Pesa, near Florence in Tuscany. This estate, San Nicolò a Pisignano, produces a Sangiovese-based cru, Sorripa.

Mastroberardino holds the record of being the oldest winery of Campania. Founded in the early 18th century, it is headquartered in 19th century cellars in the township of Atripalda. At the tiller of this historic company today is Piero Mastroberardino, son of Antonio Mastroberardino who, in the first years after World War II, with prophetic foresightedness, courageously placed his stakes on the native grape varieties of the Irpinia zone, Fiano, Greco, and Aglianico, fermenting and bottling them as pure varietal wines.
A strong tie to the tradition and values of the territory is still strongly felt at Mastroberardino, but has not prevented the house from equipping its cellars with the most up-to-date technology and from investing in research aimed at exploring the potential of “new”, but often ancient, vine varieties to be found in Campania. A strong belief in quality, which finds happy expression in the frescoed vaults of the cellar beneath which the wines age.
To work with high quality grapes, Mastroberardino owns properties in all of the major areas of Irpinia. Among the major selections, the Taurasi Radici and Villa dei Misteri offering merit special attention. The house interpretation of the only DOCG wine of the region is a expressive compendium of all the aromatic qualities of the Aglianico grape: cherries and blackberries, light, sweet spices, and, with more age, chocolate and game.
Villa dei Misteri, more than a wine, is a cultural project: the Piedirosso and Sciascinoso grapes used in the blend come, in fact, from five vineyards (Oste Eusino, Casa della Nave Europa, Osteria del Gladiatore, Foro Boario and Casa del Triclinio Estivo) located in the archeological zone of Pompei. With the permission of the Superintendent of Fine Arts, Mastroberrdino has given a new birth to the viticulture of the ancient city buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Equally worthy of note is the Taurasi Naturalis Historia, a 100% Aglianico harvested from a single vineyard site in the town of Mirabella Eclano.