Santa Margherita

The environment to be preserved in Italy is not only made up of Renaissance palazzi, long-lost canvasses and frescoes or abandoned Italian formal gardens. In point of fact, there are lots of other features to be safeguarded. And what could be more characteristic in Italy than a vineyard?
Vines and olive trees, as well as cypresses, lemon trees and all sorts of other varieties of plants are distinctive, fundamental and immediately recognizable traits of the Italian countryside.
But that’s not all. Is Italian culture represented only by outstanding painters, brilliant architects, inventors, musicians and men of letters or is a – certainly not irrelevant – part of Italian culture not also represented by taste, by the pleasures of the table, and by the force and character that the country’s wines are capable of expressing?
These are, admittedly, rhetorical questions, whose answers are obvious and predictable for many of us.

But it was these very questions that prompted Santa Margherita’s decision to support – with sponsorship over a number of years – two very particular components of Italian heritage in the hands of FAI, the Italian Fund for the Environment, perhaps the most meritorious of the non-profit associations and organizations whose aim is to conserve "a certain idea" of Italy and pass it on in as intact a form as possible to future generations.

“We really do believe” explains Lorenzo Biscontin, who has developed this project for Santa Margherita that has introduced the Company into the restricted circle of FAI’s Golden Donors, “that a nation also bears witness at the table to the civilization it has achieved. And that agriculture is today a great instrument for protecting the environment and the countryside. It is this consideration that has given rise to our project for sponsoring the conservation of the historic vineyards of the Castle of Avio, in Trentino, at the mouth of the Vallagarina, the Alpine stretch of the course of the Adige river. The castle, which is still well preserved, has dominated this landscape for centuries”.
“Grapes have always been grown at the Castle of Avio: inside its double row of walls, and also outside, on the slopes of the imposing hills that loom over it”.
“And it isn’t just any old grape variety, but Pinot Grigio: yet another confirmation of the “natural" rapport that exists between Santa Margherita (which "invented" the internationally styled Pinot Grigio that is still today the biggest-selling Italian wine in the world) and the Vallagarina, with its great cultural heritage”.
“But limiting ourselves to such a distant past”, adds Biscontin, “would be limiting. Our arts also have worthy ambassadors in historical periods that are nearer to us as in the case of Villa Necchi Campiglio, designed by the Milanese architect Piero Portaluppi and one of the finest examples of Italian Rationalism. At this villa, a real natural oasis in the heart of Milan, Santa Margherita is supporting for the next ten years the upkeep of the décor of the cafeteria, an area that is open to the public and whose tables and chairs reproduce faithfully Portaluppi’s original plans. This all goes to show that wine and the pleasures of the table are two basic components of our culture: they are major ambassadors for the Italian lifestyle around the world. Santa Margherita, too, aims to interpret and bear witness to this culture and these values on an everyday basis on tables all over the world”.