Eighteen Hours on the Skins: The Macerated Col Fondo
On a small organic estate in the Asolo hills, one family makes prosecco unlike anything else in the denomination: Glera given hours of skin maceration before fermentation, then bottle-refermented and released on its lees. The result has the structure of a white Burgundy and the soul of a farmhouse col fondo — a wine with genuine personality and minerality.
Origin — The Family Cellar, Reopened Properly
The Asolo hills are dotted with case — the old farmhouses whose cellars once fermented the family's wine in bottle, as all prosecco was fermented before the autoclave. Most of those cellars went quiet in the twentieth century; the fruit flowed to cooperatives and the name flowed to branding. Case Paolin is the story of one such cellar, on the family's own ground, reopened with intention.
The family farms a small property of old pergola Glera in the Colli Asolani, converted to organic farming and bottled under its own label. The decision to estate-bottle — to keep the fruit, make the wine, and sign it — placed the estate in Asolo's small natural-leaning cohort, alongside neighbors like Bele Casel who made the same choice on the same hills.
Then came the distinguishing move. Where most col fondo makers press quickly to protect freshness, Case Paolin macerates: the Glera spends hours on its skins before fermentation — a technique borrowed from serious still-white winemaking and almost unheard of in prosecco. The maceration draws out tannin, aroma, and a textural depth that tank prosecco cannot imitate and most bottle-fermented prosecco never attempts.
The Place — The Asolo Crescent
The Colli Asolani sweep in a crescent behind the hill town of Asolo, morainic slopes of sandstone and clay cooled by Monte Grappa's bulk — the last vineyard country of the Venetian plain before the mountains begin. Case Paolin's few hectares sit in this amphitheater: old pergola Glera, organically farmed, harvested by hand into small crates.
Organic from the Start
The estate's farming is certified organic: no herbicides, no synthetic treatments, living cover through the season, compost in place of fertilizer. The choice matters doubly for a macerated style — skins carry the vineyard's story directly into the bottle, so the vineyard's health becomes the wine's texture. Clean ground is not a slogan here; it is a recipe.
Old Pergola Vines
The Glera is old-vine material on the traditional double pergola, the training system that shades the fruit and aerates the canopy on Asolo's warm moraine. Old vines on poor morainic soil give small crops of thick-skinned berries — precisely what skin maceration needs, since thick skins are where the tannin, aroma, and structure live.
Cool Hills, Slow Ripening
Asolo's elevation and mountain breezes stretch the ripening season, building acid and aromatic complexity that the maceration then amplifies rather than corrects. The estate's wines are never acidified, never corrected — the hills do the adjusting, and the cellar simply declines to undo it.
A Small Cellar, Fully Used
Fermentations are spontaneous and slow; the macerated wines press off their skins into old neutral vessels; everything finishes its second fermentation in bottle. The cellar is modest — tanks, old wood, racks of refermenting bottles — and every corner of it earns its place. Nothing here is decorative, least of all the lees.
Winemaking — Texture Before Fizz
The estate's order of operations is the inverse of industrial prosecco's. Where the industry presses fast, ferments cold, filters hard, and carbonates last, Case Paolin macerates first, ferments naturally, filters never, and lets the bottle do the sparkling. The hours on skins are the thesis: Glera is treated as a serious white grape, not a neutral base material, and the resulting wine drinks with grip, length, and a savory mineral spine that survives the lees rather than being buried by them.
Sulfur is minimal or absent; fining and filtration are refused; the col fondo cloud comes along. The style that emerges is singular in the denomination — a prosecco for white-Burgundy drinkers, equally at home with seafood, poultry, or the local mountain cheeses. It has won the estate its following among sommeliers precisely because it refuses the category's expectations.
The philosophy, in short: make the still wine worth drinking first; the bubbles are a delivery system. It is an unfashionable order in a denomination built on sparkle, and it is the whole reason the wines stand apart.
The Wines — Asolo With a Spine
A focused range built on one method: macerate, ferment wild, bottle-referment, rest on lees. Variations are matters of time and format, not technique.
Col Fondo Macerato
The signature — 18 hours on skins, bottle-refermentedThe estate's argument in a bottle: organically farmed Glera macerated on its skins, wild-fermented, refermented in bottle, released on its lees. Amber-tinged, savory, and structured — citrus pith, orchard fruit, herbs, a mineral grip that reads almost saline. Prosecco rebuilt as a food wine. ~11.5% ABV.
Asolo Col Fondo Classico
The traditional register — quicker press, longer leesThe estate's nod to convention, on its own terms: a fresher, more direct col fondo with less maceration, leaning on orchard fruit and florals — but still wild-fermented, still unfiltered, still finished in the bottle. The gateway bottle for tables not yet ready for the macerato. ~11% ABV.
Magnums & Aged Releases
Time and format as the only variablesThe same wines given longer lees aging and larger format: bread crust, dried fruit, and a breadth that surprises everyone who still believes prosecco cannot age. Small quantities, mostly cellar-door and loyal importers — the reward for those who ask.
Legacy — A New Sentence in the Denomination's Grammar
Case Paolin's legacy is a widened imagination. Col fondo had already proven prosecco could be rustic and real; the estate's macerated wines proved it could also be refined and gastronomic — that Glera on Asolo's moraine could deliver the texture and length of serious still whites while keeping its farmhouse soul. Few estates in either Prosecco denomination have expanded the style's possibilities so directly.
The estate also strengthens Asolo's collective case. With Bele Casel and a handful of others, it forms the natural wing of the Colli Asolani — a group arguing, by example, that Asolo's identity should be defined by exactly these wines: small, organic, bottle-fermented, distinctive. Each estate adds a sentence; together they are a paragraph the denomination's marketing cannot write.
And the legacy is methodological — a quiet reminder that technique borrowed from elsewhere (skin maceration, patience, lees) can restore rather than betray a local tradition, when the starting materials are honest. The macerated col fondo is not an invention. It is Asolo's old wine, thought about harder.