A lawyer, his wife and an inherited estate.

Donnafugata is a Sicilian winery owned and run by the Rallo family, with its historic cellars in Marsala, on the island’s western tip. The company says those cellars date back to 1851. Decanter reported in 2016 that Giacomo Rallo was born in Marsala, took a law degree and then joined the family wine business, and that the family had been in wine for five generations.

In 1983, the company says, Giacomo Rallo and his wife, Gabriella Anca Rallo, founded Donnafugata at the Contessa Entellina estate, in western Sicily. The company describes Giacomo as the fourth generation of the wine family and Gabriella as a co-founder who looked after the estate and the company’s communications. Decanter called Giacomo a pioneer of a new generation of Sicilian wines and said his family described him as an instrumental figure in calling for a quality-based approach to winemaking on the island. He was named a Cavaliere del Lavoro, an Italian order of merit for labour, in 2006, the magazine reported.

The name comes from literature. The company says it was taken from Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel of the Sicilian aristocracy, and that it refers to Queen Maria Carolina, who took refuge in the area where the vineyards now stand; Gabriella Rallo chose it, and the company translates it as “fleeing woman.” The same story, it says, inspired the logo: a woman’s head with her hair blown by the wind. The winery is separate from the Castello di Donnafugata, a castle near Ragusa in the south-east of the island that shares the name.

Giacomo Rallo died suddenly on the morning of 10 May 2016, Decanter reported, citing a statement from the family, which said he was survived by his wife, Gabriella, and their children, José and Antonio.

Labels drawn like stories.

Donnafugata is known for its labels. The company says they were designed by the illustrator Stefano Vitale, beginning with La Fuga in 1994, and that this first label changed how its wine labels were conceived. The illustrated labels sit alongside the wind-blown woman of the logo.

The illustrated style has also been applied to collaborations. In summer 2020, the French trade publication Journal du Luxe reported in October 2021, Donnafugata and the fashion house Dolce&Gabbana released their first joint wine, a rosé called Rosa made from the Sicilian grapes Nerello Mascalese and Nocera. About six months later they released a 2016 vintage of Tancredi, a red of Cabernet Sauvignon and Nero d’Avola with some Tannat, a name shared with a character in The Leopard. The labels and cases of the collaboration echo the patterns and colours of traditional Sicilian painted carts, the magazine said, a theme the fashion house often uses.

The company also uses its historic Marsala cellars as a showcase: its website lists a permanent art exhibition there, alongside the barrel rooms where, it says, its wines are aged.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Italian wine houses from Piedmont, Sicily and Campania: Fontanafredda, Marchesi di Barolo, Planeta, Donnafugata, Feudi di San Gregorio, Mastroberardino and Cusumano. Wine houses in general sit at many different points in the trade, from families that still carry a founder’s name to estates that now belong to investors or larger groups, and a single name can be sold everywhere from a local wine shop to a restaurant list abroad.

A wine house’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, bought vineyards far from where it started or added new labels of its own. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its grapes are grown and its wine is made and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its wine is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Five estates, one family.

Donnafugata is owned and run by the Rallo family. The company’s registered name is Donnafugata S.r.l. Società Agricola, at the Cantine Storiche in Marsala. Its website names José Rallo and Antonio Rallo, the fifth generation, as chief executives; both joined in the early 1990s, and Antonio is also a winemaker. Gabriella Anca Rallo is honorary chairman, the company says, and Gabriella Favara, of the sixth generation, joined the export team in 2022.

Where the wine is made is spelled out by estate. The company lists five: Contessa Entellina, the original property in western Sicily; Pantelleria, the volcanic island between Sicily and Tunisia, where it says the vines are hardy and grow low to the ground; Vittoria, in the south-east, between the Hyblaean plateau and the sea, which it describes as a place for reds; Etna, on volcanic soils; and Marsala, its historic centre, a 19th-century baglio, the walled farmstead typical of western Sicily. The company says it farms 459 hectares of vineyards across the first four, works with ten native grape varieties and runs five winemaking and ageing cellars.

Pantelleria is the estate the brand leans on most in its storytelling. The company says its work on the island began in 1989 and that it farms 53 hectares of vines there, all of a single grape, Zibibbo, whose name it links to the Arabic word for a dried grape. The vines are trained as low bush vines in hollows dug into the ground, a practice, the alberello, that the company notes is on UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage. The estate’s best-known wine is Ben Ryé, a Passito di Pantelleria dessert wine that the company calls “son of the wind.” It also says it gave a walled Pantelleria garden, the Giardino Pantesco, built to shelter a single orange tree, to FAI, the Italian national trust.

For a design guide, Donnafugata shows how a winery can build a brand on a story and an illustrator rather than on a crest. Compare Planeta, another Sicilian family wine company that spread across the island, and Titone, a Sicilian estate olive oil. For this guide we use a red, night blue and gold with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Donnafugata’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.