MILWAUKEE – Festa Italiana 2024 features a Milwaukee company bringing Italian wines to the shores of Lake Michigan. Michael Lo Duca recently purchased ownership of his family’s business, Lo Duca Wines.
“We’re now looking to reach the next generation in upcoming years,” Lo Duca said.
Lo Duca told WTMJ his grandparents, who emigrated to the United States from Italy, started the business in 1941- but not as a winemaking operation.
“We actually started as a music company, we made accordions out of Italy,” Lo Duca said. “Started with nothing and built a national distribution through all the major retailers at the time in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.”
Lo Duca said the business expanded into other instruments and cases for those instruments, made at factories in Milwaukee, before branching into wine in the 1970s – although the wine business started less than reputably.
“Importing it from Italy, filling up the boats of music instruments with wine,” Lo Duca said.
The wine imports became legal in the 1980s, and the Lo Duca family has continued selling wine up until the present day. Lo Duca said that Festa Italiana features the company’s best-sellers, including a family-recipe mamertino and the lambrusco, the most popular wine.
“We have a chianti in the wicker basket from Tuscany, we do sangiovese, moscto d’asti, prosecco,” he said. “A nice little assortment, it’s very fun.”
Lo Duca said he enjoys Festa Italiana because it allows him to connect with others who share his experiences.
“I’m dealing with other restaraunt owners and different people who are also generations beyond their grandparents who started their companies and emigrated here from Italy,” he said. “It’s a nice way to all connect and get together and create new friendships and continue old ones.”
Festa Italiana runs through Sunday.
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