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exploring taste – Spring/Summer 2016 heritage – Utopia made real
The movie theater Piazza Santa Margherita, the village's main square
spirit. After the war, Gaetano Marzotto was overwhelmed by requests for help and he tried his best to offer solutions: specific idea of a society. It begins with a thousand hectares of wild and poorly farmed land, a land in which the
it is one of many examples that sheds light on the intelligence and humanity of this Italian industrialist. The estate vine is not an important crop, but one of many and it starts to grow and develop in the backdrop an Italy whose
became a sort of self-sufficient state within the state. The industrial and agricultural hub ensured the livelihood consumption habits are changing. Wine is undergoing a transformation from being a mere staple – a quasi-food
of its inhabitants, as well as being their only source of income. During this period, the new housing projects were that for centuries served as a calorie supplement for those that labored the land – to being a product of quality.
differentiated according to type: detached single family homes for white collar workers, and multi-unit housing Gaetano Marzotto was one of the first to perceive this transformation and understand its potential. This is why he
with communal gardens for the factory workers. The social activities and community centers brought all social decided to focus on wines that can claim a denomination of origin, and why he focused on pursuing technological
classes together. The kindergarten, for example, was attended by all children, the sons and daughters of farmers, advancement even in the making of wine. Among the ‘innovations’ of those first pioneering years we find two
factory and office workers alike. The school fees were proportional to the income of the family, working more as a game-changing introductions: the sparkling vinification of Prosecco, and the off-the-skins vinification (launched
tax than a fee for a service. In 1949, the “Marzotto Sea Resort” was officially opened in Jesolo, accomodating 1,500 in 1961) of Pinot Grigio, the wine which has transformed Santa Margherita into a household name. These are two
adults and children, for many of whom it was the first taste of a summer vacation by the sea. global products that have conquered important markets and opened up new paths for other successful Italian
The Fifties and Sixties were very interesting times. Influential personalities from a variety of directions visit exports. To walk through Villanova Santa Margherita (named after Gaetano’s wife, Margherita Lampertico
Portogruaro, from politicians, to foreign observers and intellectuals. From just a few hundred sharecrop farmers Marzotto) today serves as a reminder, it brings us back to a partially lost ambition towards a possible, people-
in the 1930s, by 1962 the company had 10.000 employees. It is an Italian success story in which know-how, the oriented idea of progress. The houses in ordered rows, the grid-like road system, the town center clustering around
development of a territory and above all consideration for the welfare of workers, have come together. A place in the main square, the school, the pretty building that used to house the cinema, the omnipresence red of clay-brick
which people represent the future. The story of Villanova, of Valdagno and of the Marzotto family has started to – and further out, in progressively larger circles, the factory plants, and then the land, the water, the trees. It feels
spread overseas. The origins of the Santa Margherita wine estate are strongly connected with this vision, with this unusual and special, to see nature coexist alongside the work of man, and to see man not lose his nature.
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