"Our business began," recalls Italo Maccari, "as an azienda agricola, or farming estate, and up to the Second World War, we sold our wine in bulk, in large casks. After the war, the botti gave way to demijohns. But when I entered the business, in September 1962, right after my university degree, I introduced the practice of selling our wine in standard-sized bottles."
Most of the sales in those years were in the Tri-Veneto area. Then as early as the 1970s, the winery expanded its sights and marketed to nearby Lombardy and Emilia, where demand immediately proved strong for the Veneto's traditional wine-types. Today, we are in the top ranks of Italian wineries, and leader in the innovative draught-wine sector. We were true trendsetters in concentrating on the wine keg as early as the late 1980s.
"It was in those very years," recalls Italo Cazorzi, winery director, "that we received our first requests for wine in kegs, so we carefully researched the feasibility of putting in steel kegs the same premium wines we had sold in demijohns. The demijohn market by that time was actually in decline, and we thought that keg packaging might allow us to maintain sales volume. And the market proved us right."
In high-tourism areas, the demand for wine on draught has always been strong, and our winery enjoys a significant sector position and healthy sales increases, amounting to about 15% annually. Our strong points are twofold: the quality of the wine, first, but also sufficient container supply, even in the critical summer months when tourism increases and consumption doubles. On the same subject of distribution, Maccari sells direct to wholesalers throughout northern Italy, while it utilises a large national distributor for the rest of Italy.