Maria Grazia Lungarotti died, “visionary” entrepreneur, among the most influential of Italian wine

Maria Grazia Lungarotti, a “visionary” entrepreneur and one of the most influential “ladies of wine” in the history of Italian viticulture, has passed away at the age of 95. Thanks to her tenacity, intelligence, and unparalleled foresight, she left an indelible mark on the wine world. An art historian, together with her husband Giorgio Lungarotti, founder of Cantine Lungarotti, she helped turn Umbria into an icon of Italian wine worldwide, blending their respective passions, and had an intuition that forever changed the way we look at wine: creating a place entirely dedicated to its culture, with the birth of the first Wine Museum in Torgiano, the most important in Italy and the most prestigious in the world, back in 1974 (on April, 23rd, the night of Saint George). From that moment on, throughout her life, Maria Grazia Lungarotti not only raised two daughters, Teresa Severini and Chiara Lungarotti, with whom she headed the family business until the very end, but also a “third child”: the Muvit.
Thanks to Maria Grazia Lungarotti, awarded the title “Cavaliere del Lavoro” – “Knight of Labor” in 1996, and to the Lungarotti Foundation, which today carries on her legacy, the Muvit Wine Museum in the historic Palazzo Graziani-Baglioni in Torgiano remains and will always be the “crown jewel” of that ambitious and forward-thinking project launched by Giorgio Lungarotti in the 1960s to showcase Umbria wine heritage to the world, among the estates of Torgiano and, later Montefalco (alongside the pioneering five-star Relais Le Tre Vaselle, opened in 1978), from which the great wines of Cantine Lungarotti arise, from Rubesco Vigna Monticchio, legendary wine created by Giorgio and launched globally by Maria Grazia, a pioneer in marketing to San Giorgio, Torre di Giano, and Torgiano. Curated with scientific rigor in the selection of works and museographic design by Maria Grazia, today the Muvit boasts over 3,000 pieces narrating 5,000 years of wine history, including masterpieces by Andrea Mantegna, Annibale Carracci, Picasso, among others, and which make it the largest wine museum in the world, hailed as “the best in Italy” by The New York Times, with works exhibited at Expo 2015 in Milan, as well as in New York, Shanghai, Tokyo, Moscow, Bordeaux, at Vinitaly in Verona, and not only.

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