A family, a small valley and a date in 1772.

Masi takes its name from a place. The company dates its history to 1772, the year it gives for the Boscaini family’s first harvest in the Vaio dei Masi, a small valley in the Valpolicella Classica area north-west of Verona; “vaio” is a local word for a valley. Decanter, in a producer profile, describes the origin as a lease: in 1772 Giobatta Boscaini took on vineyards in the valley, which the family later came to own. The company marked its 250th harvest in 2022, and its headquarters are at Gargagnago, in the municipality of Sant’Ambrogio di Valpolicella.

The modern business grew from the late nineteenth century. Decanter reports that in 1882 Paolo Boscaini founded the firm of Paolo Boscaini & Figli, and that his son Guido expanded it, planting vineyards and selling wine in barrel to merchants. In the mid-1960s Guido’s son Sandro and his brother Sergio, an oenologist, set up a new branch, Tenuta dei Masi, to make Amarone and other estate wines, the same profile says. Sandro Boscaini has led the company for decades; the company describes him as the sixth generation of the family, with the seventh and eighth already at work in the business. Gambero Rosso described Raffaele Boscaini, of the seventh generation, as the company’s marketing director in 2020.

The family’s fortunes are tied to one technique. Amarone della Valpolicella is made from grapes that are dried after picking before they are pressed, a process known as appassimento, and Masi describes itself as a leading Amarone producer; its range includes Costasera Amarone. The company also has a technical team, the Masi Technical Group, which Gambero Rosso reported in 2020 was coordinated by Raffaele Boscaini.

Campofiorin, a second fermentation and a poet’s descendants.

The wine that changed Masi’s business is Campofiorin. The Moodie Davitt Report, marking the wine’s fiftieth anniversary, reported that harvesting for its first vintage began on 30 September 1964, and quoted Sandro Boscaini: “My father Guido was the inventor of Campofiorin.” The company calls Campofiorin “the original Super Venetian.” Its method borrows from Amarone: a red wine is made from fresh grapes and then fermented a second time with dried grapes. Masi says the wine led to the development of the style known as ripasso, which it now prefers to call “double fermentation,” as Gambero Rosso reported in 2020.

A second strand of the brand is history borrowed from a neighbour. In 1353 Pietro Alighieri, son of the poet Dante, bought the Casal dei Ronchi property at Gargagnago, and his descendants, the counts Serego Alighieri, still own it. Masi has worked with the family on the estate’s wines since 1973, the Cayman Compass reported in 2016.

The company has spread its method beyond Verona. Gambero Rosso reported in 2020 that Masi moved into Argentina at the end of the 1990s, in the Tupungato valley of Mendoza, where the wines are sold as Masi Tupungato; that the sparkling-wine producer Canevel of Valdobbiadene had been part of the group since 2016; and that agreements with the counts Bossi Fedrigotti in Trentino and an estate in Friuli widened the range. The Moodie Davitt Report in 2024 also listed Fresco di Masi and Rosa di Masi among the company’s brands.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Italian wine names: Antinori, Santa Margherita, Ruffino, Masi, Zonin, Bolla and Cavit. Wine brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family houses that still carry a founder’s name to cooperatives owned by their growers and labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a restaurant list.

A wine brand’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, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its wine is actually 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.

A family company with shares on the Milan market.

In 2015 Masi became a listed company. Borsa Italiana announced that Masi Agricola began trading on 30 June 2015 on AIM Italia, the Milan market for smaller companies now called Euronext Growth Milan, and The Drinks Business and Decanter reported the flotation that summer. The family kept control. WineNews reported in March 2026 that the brothers Sandro, Bruno and Mario Boscaini each held 27.5 percent of the company, with the Enpaia Foundation holding a further stake and the rest traded on the market, and named Sandro Boscaini as chairman. The Moodie Davitt Report named Federico Girotto as chief executive in June 2024.

One outside shareholder came and went. EFA News reported in April 2021 that Red Circle Investments, the investment company of the Diesel founder Renzo Rosso, had bought 5 percent of Masi in 2020 and raised it to 7.5 percent. In March 2024 Red Circle sold its 10 percent holding to the three Boscaini brothers, and all pending legal proceedings between the two sides were settled, Websim reported.

The company has also turned toward visitors. It groups its tourism and direct sales under the name Masi Wine Experience, and WineNews reported in 2026 on Monteleone21, a hub for wine culture in Valpolicella, and a Masi wine bar and restaurant at Verona airport. Masi frames its environmental work as MasiGreen, and Sandro Boscaini’s motto “Into nature, at a man’s step” was quoted by The Moodie Davitt Report in 2024.

For a design guide, Masi shows how a valley name, a drying technique and a family’s long count of harvests can become a wine brand’s whole story. Compare Bolla, another Verona wine name, and Santa Margherita, from elsewhere in the Veneto. For this guide we use Amarone, straw-mat gold and Veronese stone with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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