LUNGAROTTI
UMBRIA, ITALY
Lungarotti
The origins
As far back as two centuries ago the Lungarotti family, local landowners, was producing wine and olive oil in the Mid-Tiber River valley. Over the years this activity grew and became consolidated, bringing us to the early 1900’s when the father and uncle of Giorgio Lungarotti were already renowned for the quality of the wines they produced and marketed, only at a local level at that time, including a famous Vin Santo.
In 1936 young Giorgio Lungarotti obtained a degree in Agriculture with a thesis on modern vineyard practices, demonstrating his openness towards innovation and taking the reins of the family company with entrepreneurship and vision. He began an experimentation phase in the early 1950s which resulted in specialized viticulture and re-shaped the hillsides around Torgiano, covering them with vineyards of strategically selected native varietals. He established a winery to process his grapes and released, starting with the 1962 harvest, his first bottled wines “Rubesco” and “Torre di Giano” which in 1968 obtained one of the first DOC appellations in Italy for the cultivation zone (Rosso and Bianco di Torgiano). The 1964 harvest saw the first vintage of Rubesco Riserva Vigna Monticchio (Torgiano Rosso Riserva). Today Rubesco is one of the most famous Umbrian labels in the world.
Also, thanks to the energetic and illuminated spirit of Giorgio Lungarotti, well aware that the potential of his region needed to be affirmed with a collective force provided by other producers, in 1979 the Denominazione d’Origine Controllata appellation was granted to the Montefalco zone. Thus, in 2000 it was a natural choice for the family to purchase another 20 hectares to dedicate to producing Sagrantino.
The Team
Since 1999, with the passing away of their father, the company has been guided by his daughters Chiara (C.E.O.) and Teresa (Director of Marketing and Communication). Two women with great expertise, intuition and sensitivity who are guiding this historic winery towards new challenges
With her Agricultural degree and specialization in Viticulture, Chiara deeply believes in the importance of “innovating and developing while respecting tradition and one’s own roots”. A dynamic entrepreneur, she has inherited from her father the love for her land and confesses she can recognize its smell and taste even blindfolded. Alongside her scientific and technical education, she cultivates her cultural interests with passion in the conviction that the culture of wine and olive oil have played a fundamental role in the development of Umbrian and Italian civilization.
Teresa has a degree in Agriculture with a Specialization at the Institute of Enology of Bordeaux University and was one of Italy’s first female enologists. As the company’s Director of Marketing and Communication, she has an unwavering dedication to the identification between product, company and territory, scrupulously analyzing consumer evolution and intercepting tastes and preferences of new potential clients. Her motto is: “winning the attention of young people to make them informed winelovers of the future”. Her unstoppable dynamism led her to be among the founding members of the “Le Donne del Vino” association which promotes the role of women in the entire wine sector.
The third great female figure in the family is Maria Grazia, mother of Chiara and Teresa and director of the non-profit Lungarotti Foundation. Her exceptional intellectual liveliness, initiative and far-reaching vision are united with this distinguishing sign of great finesse: for more than 40 years she has been tirelessly working to promote the millenarian culture of wine and olive oil. Having obtained her degree in the 1950’s in Literature and History of Art, she is passionate about museography and museology. In 1974, Maria Grazia along with her husband Giorgio, founded the Wine Museum of Torgiano (MUVIT), one of the first and most complete of its kind in the world, and more recently (2000) inaugurated the Olive and Oil Museum (MOO). In her untiring cultural activity she was one of the first to believe that viticulture was capable of generating satellite activities associated with specialized tourism, incoming and hospitality, thereby confirming her role as a pioneer of wine tourism in Umbria and in Italy by creating a tourist hub inspired by this theme and by the surrounding environment.
The commercial aspects are overseen by grandson Francesco, Teresa’s son, who is now the Estate’s Export Manager. With a Law degree and a Master in Company Management, he honed his skills working for several multinationals and then returned to Umbria to make his invaluable contribution within the family company.
His sister Gemma, with a degree and a Ph.D. in Contemporary History of Art, supports her grandmother Maria Grazia in managing the activities of the Lungarotti Foundation.
Tradition, history, generational continuity, love for one’s native land: these are the founding values of Lungarotti.
Lungarotti today
Lungarotti now totals 250 hectares of vineyards between Torgiano (230 ha, VIVA certification since 2018) and Montefalco (20 ha, organically cultivated since 2010); in both estates are practiced vineyard techniques based on sustainability and biodiversity as well as promoting native varietals interspersed with international varietals such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio which were introduced to Umbria by Giorgio Lungarotti as early as the 1960s and ‘70s. The two wineries produce a total of 29 different labels for an average of about 2.5 million bottles a year which are the fruit of painstaking work and coordination between enologist Vincenzo Pepe and agronomist Attilio Persia, assisted by Lorenzo Landi, the company’s consulting enologist.
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