Winemakers and wine industry developments in Italy (1884–1914)

ABSTRACT The association of Italian wine growers was founded in Rome in 1884. It was the beginning of the history of wine entrepreneurship in Italy. This article analyses the first nucleus of wine entrepreneurship in Italy between 1884 and 1914. During that period the international market made a decisive contribution to the modernization of wineries. The state played an important role in creating a favorable context for the industrialization of the sector and the practice of competitive commercial strategies. The most relevant result was the birth of national entrepreneurship, with a significant contribution from the southern regions of the peninsula. From a social point of view, Italian wine entrepreneurship was the effect of the fusion of noble families and members of the commercial bourgeoisie. The result was that in Italy too, there was a consolidation of a dynamic entrepreneurial group in the wine and spirits sector, open to global markets. Many of these wine companies, born at the end of the nineteenth century, continue to represent solid entrepreneurial realities, demonstrating that wine remains a favorable terrain for the formation of long-term entrepreneurial trajectories.