Santa Margherita

Today, Pinot Grigio is Italy’s signature white wine all over the world.
That success is rooted in the past and the passion of Santa Margherita. More than forty years ago, Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio was first released after the cellar’s winemakers took the inspired decision to vinify the pinkish pinot grapes without the skins.
At that time, Santa Margherita was already specialising in the vinification of white-skinned varieties from Trentino Alto Adige, where the cellar’s oenologists had realised that the local soil types and site climates were especially suited to white grapes.
During one of their regular visits to the vineyards in 1960, the oenologists decided to ferment a parcel of hand-harvested pinot grigio grapes in a totally revolutionary fashion, immediately separating the must from the skins. What emerged was a fresh, straw-coloured wine with clean yet intense fragrances.
Gratifyingly, Pinot Grigio Santa Margherita was an instant success with wine lovers from its first year of release in 1961.
In creating its new Pinot Grigio, Santa Margherita demonstrated a ground-breaking ability to introduce a new style to the vinification of white grape varieties. It was a style that preserved the fruit’s primary aromas intact, imparting enhanced appeal to nose and palate, and lifting the wine to a superior level of overall quality.
In the 1970s, the new wine’s popularity in Italy was replicated abroad, where Pinot Grigio Santa Margherita quickly proved equally irresistible. The new wine was particularly well received in the North American market, where years of shrewdly gauged marketing have secured its positioning as a luxury product. Pinot Grigio became the most imported and most widely sold white from Italy, synonymous with premium Italian wine and an icon of Italian style.
Pinot Grigio Santa Margherita signalled a new way of drinking. It has proved enduringly popular around the world, as is shown by the leadership of wine and brand throughout the international on-trade and with an enthusiastic clientele in more than seventy countries.
As Santa Margherita’s signature wine, Pinot Grigio has made a crucial contribution to the brand’s strong international reputation and has opened doors for other products in the Veneto-based wine group’s portfolio.
Over the years, Santa Margherita - Gruppo Vinicolo has acquired properties in several of Italy’s leading wine zones.
Today, Torresella in Eastern Veneto, Kettmeir in Alto Adige, Ca’ del Bosco in Franciacorta, Lamole di Lamole in Chianti Classico, Tenuta Sassoregale in the Tuscan Maremma and two Sicilian estates, Terrelíade and Feudo Zirtari, are the other pieces in the amazing wine mosaic that is Santa Margherita - Gruppo Vinicolo.