Wine territories, between collective interest protected by Consortia, and business initiatives

The collective interest of the territory, a founding element to be valued and protected, and indispensable for the Italian wine quality system, on the one hand; the vision and will of individual companies, which have given life and substance to a territory, and provide social, environmental and economic sustainability, as well as future, on the other; these are the two “souls” that guide the dynamics of every wine territory (and not only), with so many appellations in which, increasingly in Italy, coexist, in a more or less synergic and more or less concordant way, the Protection Consortia - the “common house” that is in any case, by law, an expression of the businesses that come together in them, and where the rules that apply to all are established in the production specifications, to claim the use of the name of the denomination, and where the collective trademarks of the denominations themselves are protected, and through which (even “erga omnes”, where the criteria of representation allow it) territorial promotion is done, but which, without a doubt, as times and market and territorial dynamics change, would need a reflection on their internal representation mechanisms, as in some cases is happening - and free associations of individual companies that, sharing common values and visions among them, decide to follow, especially on the promotion front, but not only, a different path from that of the Consortia, sometimes of synergy and accompaniment, sometimes declaredly more autonomous and different. With a balance and coexistence that is not easy to achieve.
In this sense, one of the most emblematic case histories in Italy is the one that, after a not-easy journey, has seen, in recent months, the Consorzio della Valpolicella (of which an important producer of the appellation, such as Marilisa Allegrini, has returned to join, with her Villa della Torre, after leaving Allegrini, and who in the past had also been president of the “Famiglie Storiche”, ed.), led by Christian Marchesini, and which governs a territory among the most important in Italy, where wine moves a turnover estimated at 600 million euros, and the “Famiglie Storiche”, which, today under the leadership of Pierangelo Tommasi, brings together 13 names that have made the history of the territory and of Amarone della Valpolicella. A group of companies in which now also one of the most important, iconic and historic realities of the territory, Bertani, of the Angelini Wines & Estates group (led by Ceo Alberto Lusini), now joins, thus, Allegrini, Begali, Brigaldara, Guerrieri Rizzardi, Masi, Musella, Speri, Tedeschi, Tenuta Sant’Antonio, Tommasi, Torre D’Orti and Zenato (while Venturini exits the group).