The history of Santo Mario Distillery dates back to the mid 1950s, when Mario Seghese, a son of immigrants from Northern Italy, joined his brother Alberto to set up a cachaça distillery in the southern Brazilian town of Maringá (Paraná State).
Years later, Mario decided to disband the society and leave town with his family. He settled in the small town of Catanduva down on his sister´s farm. It was by mere chance that the farm had been named after french-born saint Mario (Marius Aventicus), worshipped by the previous owner of the farm as his patron saint.
Along with his wife and children, Old Mario started over growing coffee and sugarcane on the farm. Over the years, however, he chose to concentrate his efforts in the sugarcane crop, until the day he succeeded in bringing his dream of producing high-quality cachaça to reality in 1983.