Est. 1965 
Tastings
Tours
Accommodation
Booking required Five iconic wines at the Osteria al Pompiere
A one-hour walk through the five most iconic Schiopetto bottlings at the Osteria al Pompiere, the small osteria a few steps from the cellar. Groups of one to twenty.
Book this experienceAzienda Agricola Schiopetto
Friuli Venezia Giulia, ItalyAzienda Agricola Schiopetto sits in Capriva del Friuli, on the Collio Goriziano hills, in a cellar at the foot of the Palazzo Arcivescovile that Mario Schiopetto rebuilt from leased vines into one of the founding estates of modern Italian white wine. The first pure 'Tocai' bottled here in 1965 redefined what Friulano, and Italian whites in general, could be. Today the producer farms across the Collio (Capriva, Zegla, Pradis) and into the Colli Orientali (Oleis), with the Rotolo family carrying on Mario's stainless-steel, single-variety, native-grape style.
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Friuli Venezia Giulia
- Est. 1965
- Tastings
- Tours
- Accommodation
- Booking required
Wines from Azienda Agricola Schiopetto
Wines Coming Soon
Wines for this winery are still being curated. Check back as the UK retailer selection expands.
Experiences at Azienda Agricola Schiopetto
Bookable experiences, curated by our editors. External booking where marked.
Cellar and vineyard visit with five-wine tasting
A two-and-a-half-hour walk through the Schiopetto vineyards and the Mario Schiopetto cellar, ending with the same five-wine tasting at the cantina. Groups of one to twenty.
Book this experienceRough luxury rooms at Al Pompiere
Four rooms above the Collio vineyards next to the cellar (double, double superior and suite), with breakfast on a panoramic terrace. Run by Schiopetto's own Al Pompiere wine and rooms operation.
Book this experienceFive iconic wines at the Osteria al Pompiere
A one-hour walk through the five most iconic Schiopetto bottlings at the Osteria al Pompiere, the small osteria a few steps from the cellar. Groups of one to twenty.
Book this experienceAbout Azienda Agricola Schiopetto
Mario Schiopetto was born in 1930 in Capriva del Friuli, son of innkeepers who ran the Osteria ai Pompieri at the foot of the Palazzo Arcivescovile. He worked as a fireman and a truck driver before taking over his father's wine selection for the osteria. In 1963 he started making wine on his own taste alone, and in 1965 he bottled the first pure 'Tocai' Friulano. That bottle is the foundation of what Italians now call modern bianco friulano: a single-variety white made for elegance and identity, not for blending into a generic table wine.
Mario travelled Europe and the United States with the critic Luigi Veronelli, and worked closely with Müller-Späth at the experimental cellar in Bad Kreuznach to bring temperature- and oxygen-controlled vinification to Friuli. He bought pine training stakes from Germany and vine cuttings from France, and through the late 1960s and 1970s sat alongside Piero Antinori, Angelo Gaja, the Ceretto brothers, Giacomo Bologna, Maurizio Zanella, the Biondi Santi family and Niccolò Incisa della Rocchetta in the small group of producers who pulled Italian wine into the modern era.
The estate works ponca, the typical Friulian marl of limestone and clay, across four sites. The Capriva home cru is eighteen hectares of Collio Goriziano planted to Friulano, Pinot Bianco, Malvasia, Sauvignon, Pinot Grigio and Ribolla Gialla. Zegla and Pradis sit in the same Collio strip; Oleis, in the Colli Orientali, holds eight hectares of Merlot, Refosco, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Sauvignon and Pinot Grigio. The cellar runs almost entirely on stainless steel, with cold and oxygen controlled at every step. Mario summed up the result as 'French elegance, German technology, native grapes', and the Lo Stile Schiopetto page on the official site still uses that line as the producer's brief.
The current range splits into two tiers. The Linea Mario Schiopetto is the cru white set, a single-variety bottling each of Friulano, Pinot Bianco, Malvasia, Sauvignon and Pinot Grigio, with the selection wines Amrità, Rivarossa and Podere dei Blumeri sitting above them. The Linea del Pompiere is the everyday Collio range, anchored by Blanc des Rosis, the historic Schiopetto white blend, alongside single-variety Ribolla Gialla, Pinot Grigio, Friulano, Sauvignon and a Collio Merlot. Friulano remains the signature grape and the entry point for anyone tasting the estate for the first time.
Mario died in 2003, and his children Maria Angela, Carlo and Giorgio carried the estate into the 2010s. In April 2014 the Rotolo family, Emilio and his son Alessandro, took over Società Agricola Terre Friulane S.r.l. and have kept the Stile Schiopetto operating method intact. The cellar at Via Palazzo Arcivescovile is open by booking for two formats: a one-hour, twenty-five-euro tasting of the five most iconic wines at the Osteria al Pompiere, and a two-and-a-half-hour, forty-euro cellar and vineyard visit ending in the same five-wine tasting. Al Pompiere also runs four 'rough luxury' guest rooms above the vines for visitors who want to stay in the Collio.
Visiting Azienda Agricola Schiopetto
Editorially verified by ItalianWines.co.uk.
Tastings
Available
Tours
Available
Accommodation
Available
Booking
Required
Plan your visit
Via Palazzo Arcivescovile, 1, 34070 Capriva del Friuli, Gorizia (Friuli Venezia Giulia)
Plate I · FRIULI VENEZIA GIULIA
Azienda Agricola Schiopetto on the Friuli Venezia Giulia wine atlas
Common questions
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Schiopetto is at Via Palazzo Arcivescovile 1, Capriva del Friuli, in the Collio Goriziano hills of Friuli Venezia Giulia. The cellar sits at the base of the Palazzo Arcivescovile, around 14 km from Trieste-Ronchi dei Legionari airport and 39 km from Trieste.
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