"Off the Skins", the celebratory exhibition in honor of the sixtieth anniversary of Santa Margherita’s Pinot Grigio, opens its doors to visitors in Venice
Sixty years ago, Santa Margherita’s Pinot Grigio made its debut: a new, elegant, modern wine that gave rise to a real revolution in vinous taste and pleasure. In these first sixty years, Pinot Grigio has become the symbol of Italian white wine in the world: a wine which strongly contributed to the development of Italian enology, revolutionizing both domestic and international markets. Every day, thousands of bottles of Pinot Grigio Santa Margherita are uncorked in the world; a great success story “Made in Italy” that has its roots in the last century.
It all began towards the end of the 1950's when, in anticipation of future trends, the visionary Count Gaetano Marzotto set out in search of a new type of wine that would break out of the cliché and for the first time decided to ferment Pinot Grigio without its skins. It was cultivated in what would later prove to be his chosen area: Trentino-Alto Adige.
The result was an elegant, intense, fresh and fruity white wine, unique of its kind. Its success was as surprising as it was immediate: from its debut on the Italian market in 1961 to 1979, when it was crowned "the best white wine of Italy", the doors of the great American market were opened wide to it, where it quickly established itself as a new icon-wine, fostering unprecedented brand loyalty, and where it is still today the most imported and appreciated Italian white wine.
To celebrate the first six decades of success of Pinot Grigio Santa Margherita, from June 25th to July 4th, the cloisters of the monastery of San Francesco della Vigna in Venice will host the exhibition "Off the Skins", a story through images aimed at telling the story of the wine that still dictates the style of Italian Pinot Grigio around the world. The exhibition, realized in collaboration with the young students of the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED) of Venice, celebrates the past, but with an attentive eye towards the future.
The exhibition takes the form of suspended rolls of cloth that recall papyruses and parchments and are perfectly coherent with the precious manuals preserved in the Library of the Monastery of San Francesco della Vigna; they also evoke memories of the past and the company’s close contact with its terroir and the world of ideas, such as the farsighted vision of Count Gaetano Marzotto. The fourteen series of illustrations created by the young designers are accompanied by texts that describe the main stages in the extraordinary evolution of Santa Margherita’s Pinot Grigio, together with the progression of history between the end of the last century and the beginning of the present one.
Acting as a guide for visitors as they enjoy this experience in the cloisters of San Francesco della Vigna will be the typical clean, fresh, citrus-like notes of Pinot Grigio Santa Margherita, followed by its attractive, mouthwatering flavors of white-fleshed fruits. Immersed in the spiritual atmosphere of the Monastery, visitors will also be accompanied by a musical composition created specially for the occasion by sound artist Yilin Zhu, inspired by the sounds of fermentation, of the winemaking process and of bottling, as well as the faint, almost inaudible one of wine being poured into the glass.
The choice of the location is not at all random: San Francesco della Vigna is the oldest urban vineyard in Venice, located in Campo San Francesco della Vigna, in the Sestriere of Castello. The complex houses the convent of the Friars Minor, the Institute of Ecumenical Studies, the Library and three cloisters, one of which is dedicated to the cultivation of aromatic herbs, one to the collection of rainwater for irrigation, and one as a vineyard - cared for since 2019 by the agronomists of Santa Margherita in person.
For further information about the temporary exhibition and to find out more about the history of Pinot Grigio Santa Margherita: https://pinotgrigio.santamargherita.com/.