Maculan Selects Its First PIWI Barrel for Santalucia Charity Bottling

Maculan, the historic winery in Breganze in Italy’s Veneto region, has renewed its support for eye disease research through the 17th edition of Santalucia, a charity project carried out with the Fondazione Banca degli Occhi del Veneto, or Veneto Eye Bank Foundation. For the first time since the initiative began, the barrel chosen for the project came from a PIWI wine, made from grape varieties bred to resist fungal diseases and reduce the need for vineyard treatments.

The selected barrel was chosen during a blind tasting by a panel that included food and wine critics, journalists, businesspeople and institutional representatives. The panel tasted six samples and picked the wine that will be bottled as Santalucia. From that barrel, 300 unique numbered bottles will be produced, with proceeds going to the Lucy Project, a study focused on age-related macular degeneration.

According to the foundation and the winery, the Lucy Project is being conducted in collaboration with the National Eye Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, one of the leading eye research centers in the United States. The work builds on the foundation’s experience in cell therapy and on research inspired by Nobel Prize-winning scientist Shin’ya Yamanaka. The goal is to reprogram a patient’s blood cells into healthy retinal pigment epithelium cells, with the aim of improving treatment outcomes for people with retinal degeneration.

The project targets a condition that specialists expect to weigh more heavily on aging populations in the coming years. Age-related macular degeneration is one of the main causes of blindness in Western countries, and the foundation said the new study is intended to advance treatment options for retinal disease more broadly.

The 300 bottles will be officially presented on Dec. 10 during a charity dinner at the Le Calandre restaurant run by the Alajmo brothers in Rubano, near Padua. Each bottle will carry a hand-painted label created by the young artists of Atelier In.Perfetto, a creative workshop run by the Vite Vere Down Dadi social cooperative in Padua, which provides job training for people with intellectual disabilities.

Fausto Maculan, who leads the family winery, said the selection also reflects the company’s environmental strategy. He said the grapes used for the wine are disease-resistant PIWI varieties that require fewer treatments in the vineyard, helping the winery strengthen a more sustainable approach to viticulture. Maculan said the company planted those varieties in 2007 and has continued to expand their use as results in the vineyard have improved over time.

The wine chosen for the Santalucia project was made from Cabernet Volos and Merlot Khorus, two PIWI varieties grown by the winery. Maculan said the grapes were vinified in small stainless steel tanks and then aged in oak barriques before the winning barrel was chosen for the charity bottling.

The Santalucia project has linked wine and medical research for 17 years. The partnership joins one of Veneto’s better-known wine producers, long associated with Torcolato, with a regional research institution focused on corneal donation, ocular tissue banking and regenerative medicine. Organizers said the aim is not only to raise money, but also to bring business leaders, researchers and supporters together around a specific clinical goal.

Diego Ponzin, president of the foundation, said the initiative has become an annual meeting point for supporters of scientific research and for members of the business community who work with the foundation. He said the current edition centers on an ambitious effort to develop treatments for retinal disease, which remains a leading cause of blindness in the Western world.

The selection of a PIWI wine marks a new step for a project that has traditionally tied charitable fundraising to a single barrel chosen each year. In this edition, the organizers are also linking the fundraising drive to two broader themes that are increasingly important in Italian agriculture and medicine: the search for more sustainable farming methods and the effort to develop cell-based therapies for chronic degenerative disease.