Santa Margherita is introducing Harmonia Mundi, the first sparkling wine produced in Venice; it is made from the grapes cultivated in the cloisters of San Francesco della Vigna which, for 800 years, has been home to that city’s oldest urban vineyard. It is a unique wine, offered in a limited edition of just 1,107 precious, numbered bottles from the 2022 vintage, which successfully captures both the mysticism of its religious origins and the essence of the lagoon’s terroir, thus revealing the intimate connection between Santa Margherita and the city of the Lion of Saint Mark.
Harmonia Mundi is a Charmat Method sparkling wine that obtains its finesse and complexity from a prolonged sojourn on the lees of at least six months, as well as from the noble grapes from which it is made: Glera and Malvasia, the white varieties that were most widely grown in the Veneto at the time of the Republic of Venice.
These were replanted at San Francesco della Vigna by Santa Margherita’s agronomists in 2019. It is a wine that revives the traditional cultivation techniques of the past, such as alberello (bush) training of the vines, exclusively manual operations in the vineyard, and creating greater biodiversity thanks to sowing perennial varieties of flowers, with their kaleidoscopic blooms, between the vine rows. From the first vintage, which took place on 30th August 2022, 1,107 elegant and refined numbered bottles were produced: a symbolic number, because that is the total length in meters of the vineyard.
The production of this special sparkling wine is the result of the revitalization of the vineyards that have
inhabited the cloisters of the monastery ever since 1253: an ambitious project, aimed at sealing the historic
connection between the iconic wine brand and the city of Venice. This rapport began almost a century ago,
when the founder of Santa Margherita, Count Gaetano Marzotto, chose the hinterland of Venice to launch a
real revolution in the Italian agricultural industry, which led within just a few decades to the creation of one of Italy’s most famous wine brands around the world.
Making the Harmonia Mundi sparkling wine even more exclusive is its premium packaging: a screen-printed bottle whose blue and golden nuances recall the colors of the lagoon and the glints of the lights that are reflected in the waters of Venice’s canals at night. Another one-off is the elegant gift case, made from the wood of disused briccole (the posts used for navigation in the lagoon and canals): a further tribute to the city and to the unusual origins of this wine.
«For us at Santa Margherita,» declares Stefano Marzotto, Vice-President of the Santa Margherita Wine Group Gruppo Vinicolo, «recuperating urban vineyards represents one of the most important initiatives that the world of wine can – and should – perform, so as to keep alive its history, its roots, and its traditions. These vineyards were an integral part of the life and scenery of our towns and cities, of which they represented an essential economic component, and whose urban planning and social organization they characterized. This was also the case in Venice which, though limited in the area it has above water, has cultivated vines in its historic center for centuries. San Francesco della Vigna, whose origins date back to the thirteenth century, represents one of the last ancient examples of this presence in the historic center. It is therefore a motive for great pride to have intervened in their reorganization and reuse, with the objective of giving further dynamism and prestige to this unique terroir with the creation of our new Harmonia Mundi sparkling wine».
ABOUT SANTA MARGHERITA WINE GROUP
Founded in 1935 by Count Gaetano Marzotto, the Santa Margherita Wine Group incorporates ten different estates in some of the most beautiful wine-producing regions in Italy: the Eastern Veneto, Conegliano-Valdobbiadene, Trentino-Alto Adige, Lugana, Franciacorta, Chianti Classico, the Maremma, Sicily and Sardinia. Through the Santa Margherita, Torresella, Kettmeir, Ca’ del Bosco, Cà Maiol, Lamole di Lamole, Vistarenni, Sassoregale, Terrelíade and Cantina Mesa brands, it represents one of the most significant family-owned clusters in the Italian wine sector, with over 27 million bottles sold in 2023 in more than 90 countries worldwide. The Group is owned by the four brothers in the third generation of the family: Gaetano Marzotto is the President of the Group; Stefano Marzotto is Vice-President of the Group; Luca Marzotto, and Nicolò Marzotto are members of the Board of Directors. The wines are distributed on 5 continents, with a particular focus on Italy, Canada, Germany, and the United States, where the Santa Margherita USA Inc. import and distribution company, based in Miami, is operative, and the ROCO Winery estate in Oregon has recently become part of the Group’s “enological mosaic”.