Where the Red Grape Survived: Col Sandago & Wildbacher
On the historic hills of San Pietro di Feletto, between Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, Col Sandago farms the old way and bottles the rare thing: organic col fondo prosecco from estate Glera — and Wildbacher, the nearly extinct red grape of the Treviso hills, kept alive in a single plot when the rest of the world let it disappear.
Origin — The Estate That Kept Two Heritages
San Pietro di Feletto is one of the historic communes of the prosecco denomination — a hill town with a Romanesque church, a restaurant culture older than the brand, and vineyards that were famous locally centuries before the world learned the word prosecco. On its slopes sits Col Sandago, the family estate of the Ruggeri family — prosecco people for generations, witnesses to the denomination's entire transformation from farmhouse wine to global commodity.
Col Sandago's response to the transformation was to become the denomination's quiet archive. While the hills replanted for yield, the estate kept its old Glera on pergola and its farming organic; while the world went Charmat, the estate kept bottling col fondo. And in one plot above the town, it kept something rarer still: Wildbacher, the indigenous red grape of the Marca Trevigiana, a variety the twentieth century nearly erased and the twenty-first had all but forgotten.
The Wildbacher plot makes Col Sandago unique in the denomination's natural wing: a prosecco estate whose second identity is an ampelographic rescue mission. The red wine it yields — wild, herbal, bracingly acidic — reads like a message from the hills before prosecco was anything at all.
The Place — The Church Hill & the Wild Plot
San Pietro di Feletto's hills are classic denomination heartland — morainic slopes of sandstone and clay tilted toward the afternoon sun, cooled by the breezes that run the length of the Conegliano-Valdobbiadene corridor. The estate's vineyards are old family ground: pergola Glera farmed organically, harvested by hand, with the Wildbacher plot holding its own corner of the property like a guest who never left.
Organic Across the Estate
No herbicides, no synthetic treatments — cover crops through the season, compost instead of feed, treatments of copper and sulfur at most. On slopes this historic and this visible, the organic farming is also stewardship: the estate farms beneath one of the denomination's landmark churches, in a landscape that belongs as much to walkers as to winemakers.
Old Pergola Glera
The white-wine plantings are old-vine Glera on the traditional pergola — material of genuine age on poor morainic soil, giving small crops of thick-skinned berries with real concentration. The pergola keeps the fruit aerated on warm slopes; the age keeps the yields honest; the soil keeps the wines mineral.
The Wildbacher Plot
The estate's red vineyard is its crown jewel: Wildbacher vines kept in production through the decades when every neighboring property tore out red plantings for white. The variety — acidic, herbal, intensely colored — was once common in the hills and is now among Italy's rarest sanctioned grapes. Every vintage bottled is a reprieve.
A Small, Patient Cellar
Fermentations run with native yeasts; the prosecco finishes in bottle, col fondo; nothing is fined, nothing filtered, sulfur kept minimal. The red ferments slowly and rests in neutral vessels. The cellar's whole technology is the patience of a family that has watched every fashion pass from the same hill.
Winemaking — The Archive, Bottled
The estate's protocol is the old one, kept rather than revived: hand harvest, gentle pressing, spontaneous fermentation, bottle refermentation for the prosecco, long lees contact, no fining, no filtration, sulfur only when the wine truly asks. Nothing in the cellar is new technology; everything is old technique, maintained.
The style follows the ground: col fondo of unusual seriousness — dry, savory, lees-driven, the moraine showing through as citrus pith and stone — and a Wildbacher of startling character, all herbs, bramble, and acid, closer to a mountain red than anything the denomination's image suggests. Tasted together, the two wines map the hills' double identity: white and famous, red and forgotten.
The philosophy is archival at its core: the estate understands its vineyards as inherited documents, and each vintage as a transcription. You do not improve an archive; you keep it legible. That is the whole winemaking program.
The Wines — White Memory, Red Memory
A compact range with an unusual spine: the col fondo whites of the denomination's old way, and the red rescue wine that makes the estate singular.
Col Fondo
Prosecco Col Fondo — old-vine Glera, San Pietro di FelettoThe estate's daily creed: organic old-vine Glera, wild-fermented, refermented in bottle, released on its lees — dry, savory, and stony, with the citrus-pith and mineral snap of the moraine. A prosecco that tastes of the hill's long memory rather than the category's market present. ~11.5% ABV.
Wildbacher
The red rescue — the rare grape of the Marca TrevigianaThe estate's monument: Wildbacher from the rescued plot, fermented wild and raised in neutral vessels — deeply colored, herb-scented, electric with acidity, closer to a mountain wine than to the soft reds of the plain. A bottle that exists nowhere else in the denomination, and barely anywhere in Italy. ~12.5% ABV.
The Estate Whites & Cellar Releases
Cru bottlings, aged col fondo, still winesAlongside the flagship: cleaner estate whites for the conventional table, col fondo bottles held back for extra lees time, and occasional still wines from the old plots. Small lots, mostly cellar door and specialist importers — the family's quiet experiments around a conservative core.
Legacy — Two Archives, One Hill
Col Sandago's legacy is double. In white, it is the denomination's memory kept legible: old pergola Glera, organic farming, bottle fermentation — the original prosecco method, practiced continuously on one of its historic communes. Every col fondo bottle is a page of the pre-industrial record, transcribed again.
In red, the legacy is rescue: Wildbacher exists in commercial quantity essentially nowhere else, and its survival in the San Pietro plot is one of the quiet ampelographic victories of the Veneto. Vineyards are erased easily and recovered almost never; the estate's single red plot undid one erasure.
Together the two wines make the estate's whole argument: that the denomination's future is written in its diversity, and that the hills were always more than their most famous grape. Col Sandago farms both halves of that sentence.