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Issue 744 - July 28th - August 1st 2025 - Expressly created for 3680 wine lovers,
professionals and opinion leaders from all over the world | |
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| | | Expected yesterday, duties at 15% for EU products bound for the U.S., including wine, as of now, will go into effect on August 7. The announcement came from Washington, with the executive order signed by U.S. President Donald Trump confirming the threshold agreed upon with EU Commission Chairwoman Ursula Von der Leyen, but at the same time changing the duties for some countries, such as Canada, which will see its rate rise from 25% to 35%, for example. To see the glass half full, in this climate of general uncertainty, the fact that there is a few more days to hope that wine will be included in the list of “zero for zero” products, i.e. products excluded from tariffs. | |
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| | Tenuta San Guido owned by Marchesi Incisa della Rocchetta, “cradle” of the Sassicaia myth, is once again confirmed as the winery no. 1 in Italy in terms of profitability, with a gross operating margin to sales ratio of 62.2%, followed at a distance, by the Friulian label Jermann, now controlled by Marchesi Antinori, with 54.5%, and then again by Antinori itself, with 53.3%, in a “top 5” closed by Biserno (founded by Lodovico Antinori, in Bolgheri, and now co-owned with brothers Piero and Ilaria Antinori, and led by Niccolò Marzichi Lenzi, Ilaria’s son), with 50.4%, and again by Marchesi Frescobaldi, with 39%. This is one of the evidence that emerges from the usual survey on the 2024 turnovers of Italian wineries by journalist Anna Di Martino, published in the pages of “L’Economia” of “Il Corriere della Sera” (of which we had reported in April 2025 previews of the largest companies by turnover, in a list dominated by the giant Cantine Riunite & Civ, with 676.6 million euros in 2024, of which 428 can be attributed to the subsidiary Gruppo Italiano Vini - Giv, followed by Argea, with 464.2 million euros, ahead of another big one, moreover listed on the stock exchange, such as Italian Wine Brands, with 401.9 million euros, and again by the cooperative giant Caviro, with 385.2 million euros in turnover, and then Marchesi Antinori, the first private entity in Italian wine, with 262.5 million euros in turnover related only to the core wine business, ed.). Next, again, among the leaders by profitability, the Sardinia-based label, Argiolas, with li 36.2% (and a jump of +13% over 2023), then the Marzotto brothers’ Herita Marzotto Wine Estates group, at 32%, and again Cusumano with 30.5%, ColleMassari (28, 2%) and the Abruzzo-based Fantini group created by Valentino Sciotti, with 26.6% (just outside the “top 10”, with a profitability of more than 20%, Feudi di San Gregorio with 25%, Marchesi Mazzei with 22 %, and Donnafugata with li 20%). Among the new entries in the ranking of the 115 bigs (turnover above 10 million euros, ed.) are Cantine PaoloLeo from San Donaci, which has just acquired Candido, also in the area, and ColleMassari Estates itself, owned by the Tipa Bertarelli family, with the ColleMassari, Grattamacco, Poggio di Sotto and San Giorgio wineries, operating in the Montecucco, Bolgheri and Montalcino areas. | |
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| | Prosecco, one of the most famous and consumed Italian wines in the world, as well as imitated, wins in Poland “on a case of geographical indication infringement in the non-food sector”. This was communicated by “Sistema Prosecco” (union of the Consortia Conegliano Valdobbiadene Docg, Prosecco Doc and Asolo), led by Giancarlo Moretti Polegato, in underlining “an important victory within the scope of its activities aimed at guaranteeing, in Italy and abroad, the correct use of the term Prosecco and of the denominations protected by the three member Consortia”. Specifically, the note explains, “with a ruling, issued on June 11, by the Warsaw Regional Court, the infringement of the name Prosecco was recognized in Poland on beauty products of a well-known U.S. multinational, active in the local market through a distributor”. | |
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| | | Among the top names by vineyard ownership (a ranking from which cooperatives are excluded, as is that of profitability, since the cooperative world has as its goal the redistribution of value to members, ed.), Marchesi Antinori dominates, with its 3,350 hectares in production, including properties abroad, Anna Di Martino points out. In second place is Marchesi Frescobaldi, with 1,700 hectares, and then Zonin 1821 Group, with 1,450 hectares of vines. Completing the “top 10” category, then, Banfi, a leading reality in the Brunello di Montalcino territory, with 1,015 hectares, then the Terra Moretti group of the Moretti family led by Massimo Tuzzi, at 8,99 hectares in production between Franciacorta, Sardinia and Tuscany, and again Tommasi Family Estates with its 800 hectares spread over seven regions (the last one being Sicily, with the Ammura winery in the Etna Natural Park), Tenute del Leone Alato, a wine-making hub controlled by Leone Alato, an agribusiness holding of the Generali Group, with 629 hectares, and again Cusumano (534 hectares), Herita Marzotto Wines Estates (524) and Feudi di San Gregorio (510). | |
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| | | A tailor-made “special gift” to give a piece of wine Tuscany to great artists from all over the world: from planetary icon Jennifer Lopez to the famous conductor Riccardo Muti, from Australian musician Nick Cave to the famous guitarist Carlos Santana, the celebrities who have been performing, these days, in the “Lucca Summer Festival 2025” have received as a gift a prestigious magnum of Sassicaia 2002, a wine-myth produced at Tenuta San Guido and a label that has always been an ambassador of Italian oenology in the world. | |
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| | After Lo Sparviere in Franciacorta, Steinhaus in Alto Adige, Fortemasso in Monforte d’Alba in the heart of Barolo, Castello di Radda in Chianti Classico, Orlandi Contucci in the Colline Teramane, and, from 2024, the Fabio Motta winery in Bolgheri, now the Gussalli Beretta family is also putting down roots in Friuli: Upifra Agricole, a company that controls the wine investment arm of the Gussalli Beretta family, has acquired a 40% minority stake in Società Agricola Leonardo Specogna, in Corno di Rosazzo, in the Colli Orientali del Friuli, with 27 hectares of vineyards managed according to organic farming principles. “With this investment”, says Pietro Gussalli Beretta, who, with his brother Franco, leads the Group, “we are looking to the future, believing in an entrepreneurial project managed with enthusiasm and foresight by Michele and Cristian Specogn”. | |
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| | Making forecasts about the quantity and quality of the 2025 Italian grape harvest, which is just in its very early stages, is a bit like the summer soccer market: everything can change from one moment to the next, everything can be disproved. But to hazard the first numbers is Coldiretti, in recent days in Sicily, from the Massimo Cassarà farm in Salemi, which has begun harvesting. “Climatic adversity is not stopping Italian wine, with production expected to be around 45 million hectoliters this year, with quality between good and excellent”, Coldiretti says. | |
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