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ITALY
– WINE GROWER PORTRAIT –
Schenk Italian Wineries has its head office in Ora, near Bolzano in the province of South Tyrol
VERTICAL INTEGRATION
The small town of Rolle, in Switzerland’s Vaud
wine region on the shores of Lake Geneva,
is the birthplace of the Schenk Group. It is
from here that the company’s founder Charles
Schenk, then his son Arnold, set out to build a
pan-European empire that currently embraces
3,500 hectares of owned and managed vineyards and
numerous subsidiary companies. “What makes Schenk
unique”, says Roberta Deflorian, sales director for Schenk
Italian Wineries, “is that the Group has always focused
solely on wine, and nothing else, for nearly 130 years”.
With fourth-generation François Schenk at its helm, it is a
vertically integrated firm, encompassing every aspect of the
wine industry, from winegrowing through to bottling and
sales, with distribution companies and wineries in France,
Italy, Spain, Germany, Benelux, the United Kingdom and
more recently, the United States. Although it has a strong
Swiss base, it markets wines not only across Europe but to
all the world’s leading consumer markets, including Italy,
the US, Russia, Asia and Scandinavia.
TRANSITIONING WITH THE CONSUMER
Its development and investments align with three core
values: its family commitment; a spirit of enterprise and
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