The family’s story began in 1898, when Pietro Sartori, Andrea’s great-grandfather, bought a small vineyard with a cellar attached in the heart of Valpolicella called Villa Maria to produce wine for his hotel. It is a name synonymous with traditional values, innovation, dedication to quality, and a boundless passion for quality winemaking. A short time later the wonderful people at Banfi sent me 8 Sartori wines! Honesty, integrity, quality wine making, keeping in touch with friends….these are all examples of Sartori’s family tradition.įor over a century the Sartori name has been crafting fine wine in Valpolicella. I shared my excitement about the lunch and the wines on social media and my friends at Sartori contacted me immediately with instructions on who to email at Banfi for a selection of Sartori wine samples. As I promised the lunch was great, the wines were great and all my fellow wine friends were in love with Sartori. I tell my fellow Texsom friends we must all go to this lunch, Sartori crafts beautiful wines. I am attending the Texas Sommelier Conference (TEXSOM) in Las Colinas and I see on the schedule a special lunch featuring Sartori di Verona wines. It was a wonderful tasting that has stayed with me since that day. Our group began our second day of wine tasting and learning at the winery of Sartori, see my article “ Valpolicella Day Two,” where we were treated to a wonderful tasting of nine Sartori wines lead by none other than Andrea Sartori himself. My first encounter with Sartori wines was the fall of 2014 when I was a guest of the Consorzio Tutela Vini Valpolicella visiting wineries of Valpolicella, located in the Veneto region of Italy, as part of the beta testing of the Consorzio’s new travel wine app.
Great family wineries find a way to balance both and Sartori di Verona is a great family winery! But technology evolves and change is required to keep up with the times of production and manufacturing. A tradition of good wine making practices, good vineyards, and family all lead to good wine. In the wine world both tradition and change are quite positive.
So what happens when the family IS the business? This leads us back to the original question, how to balance tradition and change.
However, in the business world “same” leads to fossilization. Tradition is rooting in the idea of family, of keeping things the “same” year after year. How do you balance tradition with change? This is a question that family businesses face at some point to remain competitive.