The Venica family is happy to share with you the excitement of our (first) 90 years, described in this article in the Messaggero Veneto:

Venica & Venica celebrates 90 years of the ‘Wine and Sustainability’ company

“Udine. The deed bears the date 6 February 1930 and is jealously guarded in the family archives. On that day, a young sharecropper from Collio, Daniele Venica, took the decisive step of his life, which also determined the lives of the generations that came after. He signed the preliminary purchase agreement for a farmhouse in Cero’, a locality in the municipality of Dolegna, and the surrounding vineyards.
So it is exactly 90 years of the Venica&Venica company, an important anniversary for one of the oldest families of Friulian wine. At that time, in the 1930s, Daniele Venica was already making wine, red and white, which he sold in taverns and trattorias in the Gorizia and Cividalese areas.

Later, the founder’s son, Adelchi, continued the wine trade, albeit in hard times. Those of the post-war period, when most of the population took the road of emigration, abandoning land and old professions. Adelchi, born in 1930, stayed up here, a stone’s throw from what became the Iron Curtain, the border between East and West, but he did not give up, becoming a kind of ‘sentinel of the territory’. Slowly he succeeded in developing the company and bringing dynamism to it, so much so that in 1972 he began to sell his wine directly on the premises, one of the first to do so.”

The real take-off took place in 1976,

when Gianni Venica, born in 1956, freshly graduated from the Cividale wine-making school, discovered white wine-making and applied it. In 1977, Venica & Venica’s whites and reds were bottled for the first time, starting with the former Tocai. Giorgio Venica, Gianni’s brother, soon joined the company and took charge of the cellar.

The eighties were the years of the export boom. With the first markets opening up, Germany and immediately afterwards the United States, countries that still today represent the strong points of the Cero’ winemakers. In 1985, the first nucleus of the agriturismo opened, today transformed into an elegant ‘wine resort’ immersed in the countryside.

And now, in the 2000s, the fourth generation of the Venica family, Gianni and Giorgio’s children: Giampaolo, Serena and Marta, each with their own specific task, has entered the control room.
Venica&Venica currently owns 40 hectares of vineyards, all in the Collio DOC area, producing between 280 and 310 thousand bottles a year. Depending on the season and the harvest, 85% white wines (Ronco delle Mele and Toblar among the most awarded and appreciated) and the remaining 15% reds (from Merlot to Schioppettino). Market shares, in the Horeca sector alone, speak of 55% in Italy and 45% abroad, mainly Germany, the United States, the rest of Europe and Asia, from Japan to Korea.

Sustainability for Venica & Venica …

is not a fashion, but a practice implemented since 2006, when photovoltaic panels were purchased to produce energy and hot water. To arrive in 2019 with the first sustainability report, a document that only large listed companies are required to present.”

08/02/2020 Maurizio Cescon ©Messaggero Veneto: Venica & Venica celebrates 90 years of the company “Wine and sustainability”