Lugana first, then the hills of Valpolicella.

Zenato is a family wine house on the southern shore of Lake Garda, based at San Benedetto di Lugana in the municipality of Peschiera del Garda, in the Veneto. Wine Spectator reported in July 2008 that Sergio Zenato founded the winery there in 1960; the company’s own history opens with the same year and place, and names Carla Prospero, his wife, as his partner in the venture from the start. The company says Sergio Zenato saw in Lugana and its native white grape, Trebbiano di Lugana, also called Turbiana, a potential that few others had yet recognised, and that he and Carla Prospero experimented together and believed in native grape varieties.

That early bet on a white wine is what he became known for. Wine Spectator wrote in 2008 that he was widely credited with putting the Lugana appellation on the wine map with his range of whites made from Trebbiano di Lugana. The company describes the setting of its Santa Cristina vineyards as a natural amphitheatre of rolling morainic hills close to the lake, with a temperate climate and deep, moisture-retentive clay soils rich in minerals.

From the lake the family moved into red wine. The company says Sergio Zenato created its Costalunga estate in Valpolicella Classica, the hills north of Verona, shaping 35 hectares of vines framed by dry-stone walls; Vino-Joy News reported in 2024 that the vineyards lie at about 300 metres and grow Corvina, Corvinone, Rondinella and Oseleta for Amarone. Sergio Zenato died in July 2008, Wine Spectator reported, and the magazine said that his children Alberto and Nadia, already active in the winery, would carry on where he had left off, alongside his widow Carla.

Lakeside whites, hillside reds and a founder’s signature.

The company organises itself around its estates. Santa Cristina, in Lugana, supplies its whites: the Lugana San Benedetto, a Lugana Riserva named after Sergio Zenato, a traditional-method sparkling Lugana and wines from the Massoni vineyard. Vino-Joy News wrote in 2024 that the historic vineyards of Podere Massoni in Santa Cristina supply both the Lugana Santa Cristina and the Riserva. Costalunga supplies the reds: Amarone della Valpolicella Classico, the Ripassa, a Valpolicella Classico Superiore, Alanera, the Amarone Riserva Sergio Zenato and a limited release the company calls Archivio Storico.

Two of those reds carry the family’s story most directly. The Amarone Riserva Sergio Zenato puts the founder’s name on the label, and Vino-Joy News reported that the 1980 vintage was the first to bear his signature. The Ripassa is a Valpolicella Superiore re-fermented on the pomace left after making Amarone, the technique known as ripasso, and the same report said its first vintage was released in 1992. Wine Spectator already listed a Superiore Ripassa and the Sergio Zenato Riserva among the house’s wines in 2008.

A third estate came through Carla Prospero. The American importer Winebow says that she and her daughter Nadia acquired Sansonina, an 18th-century farm in the Sirmione area, in the mid-1990s, and gives 1997 as the year that winery was founded. Winebow says the estate stood out in white-wine country for its mature Merlot vines, and that its name refers both to the biblical Samson and to a former owner nicknamed “Little Samson.” Zenato now lists Sansonina, with 13 hectares of vines near Sirmione on clay and fine silt, among its own estates, for Merlot-based reds and for Lugana, including a spontaneously fermented version. The fourth property, Podere Prospero, is a small estate on the Via Bolgherese in Bolgheri, on the Tuscan coast, which the company uses for a Bolgheri DOC red and an organic olive oil.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Italian wine houses and labels: Gaja, Sassicaia, Ornellaia, Tignanello, Allegrini, Zenato and Pio Cesare. Wine houses and labels in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family houses that still carry a founder’s name to labels that belong to a larger wine group or estate, and a single name can be sold everywhere from a wine 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, bought new vineyards 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 second generation and a wider map.

Zenato remains a family company. The company says that today it is Nadia and Alberto Zenato who carry the story forward, and Vino-Joy News described the division of labour in 2024, with Alberto overseeing winemaking from vineyard to bottle and Nadia leading the company’s growth abroad. The company says its vineyards now cover nearly a hundred hectares across Lugana, Valpolicella and, more recently, Bolgheri, and the wines come from those estates; Vino-Joy News placed the headquarters on the lake at Peschiera del Garda.

The company reports that it has followed the Equalitas sustainability standard since 2021 and the Biodiversity Friend protocol in its vineyards, with weather stations and soil sensors to monitor them, and that in 2023 it joined a Valpolicella pollinator project, “Bee Our Friend,” installing an apiary in the woods of the Costalunga estate. It also runs the Zenato Academy, which it describes as a programme built around photography, using images of its landscapes and its production to build a visual record of the company.

Two practical notes for anyone looking up the name. Sansonina wines appear under their own name, and Winebow presents Sansonina as a separate brand from Zenato in its portfolio, although Zenato counts the estate among its own. The family’s Lugana Riserva and its Amarone Riserva both carry the words “Sergio Zenato,” so the founder’s name on a label can mean either a white from the lake or a red from the hills. The company’s site is zenato.it.

For a design guide, Zenato shows how a winery can carry a founder’s name and signature from a lakeside white to a hillside Amarone, and hold two very different landscapes under one family identity. Compare Masi, the Boscaini family’s Amarone house in Valpolicella, and Allegrini, the Fumane family house behind La Poja. For this guide we use Garda blue, Turbiana gold and Amarone ruby with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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