Banfi Vintners history

It is an arm of the privately held Banfi Products Corp., a family-owned and operated firm founded in New York in 1919 by John Mariani, Sr.

When Prohibition ended in 1933, they went back into the Italian wine business, importing chianti, marsala and vermouth.

She died in 1938 but not before sharing her knowledge -- she made wine at home -- with her nephew Giovanni Mariani, John and Harry's father.

The last of the brothers with heirs, he bought out his surviving brother in 1963.

Over the objections of their father, John Mariani, Jr., and his brother Harry went to Italy in 1967 to search for a low-alcohol, semisweet wine that could be chilled.

1969: Now a wine distributor, Banfi imports 20,000 cases of Riunite.

The drink--packaged with a twist-off top rather than corked--caught on with young people and showed great potential as an entry-level wine, but Banfi restricted it to the test areas until 1974.

By 1980 Banfi alone was importing more wine from Italy--some nine million cases a year--than France and Germany combined were exporting to the United States.

At the same time the Marianis were encouraging the public to quaff Riunite casually, with ads that matched the words 'nice' and 'ice.' By 1981 one ad showed a bottle of wine being tossed from hand to hand at a picnic, like a soft drink.

She joined the business in 1982 after graduating from the hotel school at Cornell.

The distributor, now known as Villa Banfi, moved its headquarters in 1983 from Farmingdale, Long Island, to an estate, complete with a 60-room mansion, in Old Brookville.

1984: Riunite's United States sales peak at 11.2 million cases.

The following year the company topped even this total with 11.2 million cases, but the boom ended in 1985 when Banfi had to recall 1.4 million cases of Riunite after the federal government found trace amounts in samples of a chemical normally used in antifreeze.

To compensate for the drop in sales of its standard Riunite table wines, the company, in 1986, introduced fruit-flavored Riunite Peach and Riunite Raspberry as competitors in the wine-cooler category, adding a third--Sunny Apple--soon after.

Some 8.1 million cases of Riunite were sold in 1987, with the fruit-flavored brands accounting for more than 30 percent of sales.

Also in 1988, the company purchased Excelsior, a small company that was importing Concha y Toro, the leading wine brand in Chile.

"It appears that that's the way it's going to happen," Harry Mariani said, as the next course arrived with the next wine, grilled butterfly leg of lamb and wild rice, served with the estate's trademark, Castello Banfi Brunello di Montalcino, D.O.C.G., 1989.

Another strong woman in the next generation, Harry Mariani's oldest daughter, Virginia Kitt Mariani, talked about taking over the business where their fathers left off, as the dessert and dessert wine were served: fresh summer fruits and homemade cookies with Banfi Brachetto d'Acqui, D.O.C., 1993.

By 1994 Banfi was producing a wide range of wines at its estate in Tuscany, where 2,700 of the 7,100 acres now had been given to plantings.

In 1997 the company brought suit against developer Homer G. Williams after reportedly losing in excess of $20 million of its $50 million investment on a failed business venture there.