Old Vines, Old Style and a Family Legacy – Ca’ Dei Zago

Christian Zago is the fifth generation to run Ca’ dei Zago, a small estate in the hills near Valdobbiadene. They farm their 16 acres of vines according to biodynamic methods, and make just two wines.

Christian (below) is often referred to as the face of the “new wave” of Prosecco di Valdobbiadene growers and producers. But his approach to viticulture and his winemaking style actually harkens back to a century ago, long before anyone could imagine that Prosecco would one day become a worldwide phenomenon and the best-selling sparkling wine in history.

Founded in the 1920s, the Ca’ dei Zago family farm and estate stretches over just six hectares planted to vine, including some of the Prosecco di Valdobbiadene appellation’s most coveted growing sites. Many of the vines on the estate are more than 40 years old and most are planted on impossibly steep hillsides where all vineyard management must be done by hand. The farming practices are rigorously — religiously, some would say — biodynamic. Demeter-approved preparations are used throughout the vegetative cycle and harvesting, winemaking, and bottling are carried out in strict accordance with the lunar calendar.

As a young oenology student a decade ago, Christian Zago learned that most Prosecco was akin to beer. “They taught us that common Prosecco was something you drank and then pissed out. We have some fantastic terroirs. The problem is that, to the public, it is all Prosecco.” But that image of Prosecco is changing, and he has established himself as an important producer of what is known as the traditional Col Fondo Prosecco. Christian reckons that this is the best way to bring terroir to the table, through minimal amount of filtering, sulfites and no enological corrections.

The Zago Family Legacy

We often hear the word ‘Family’ being used in most businesses, but a walk through the vineyards of Ca’ dei Zago will prove that this is not just another cliche. ‘Family’ is naturally present in virtually everything here. Even the bottle of their flagship Col Fondo has barely changed since Christian’s father designed the label in the 1970s.

The most important part of this family legacy is the vineyards (now 6.5 hectares in total) is the way the Zagos treat them. Since its beginnings as a mixed farm in 1924, they have never used chemical fertilizers, an approach that Christian is taking even further as an avid practitioner of biodynamics. “Nature is stronger than you. If you break the balance in the vineyard by trying to control it, you can’t recreate it in the cellar. You are only temporarily coercing the wine into a fake, short-lived equilibrium,”

The vineyards in Valdobbiadene are quite steep, forbidding almost all use of machinery. It sometimes takes as much as four times the amount of work compared to the lower parts, where millions of litres of industrial Prosecco (with taste and charm as flat as the vineyards) are born. Up here in the hills, you gotta work. 

Back down in the cellar, the family strikes again. In each room, there is the same old photo of his grandfather and uncle. There’s no high-tech area in the cellar; when stainless steel and machines took over traditional Prosecco production in the 1980s, Christian’s grandfather stubbornly stuck to the old ways.

To get to where they are today, they had gone through years of poverty because of their insistence on producing Prosecco in the Col Fondo method and refusing to modernise into the ‘tank method’ where the demand lies. 

“He always said that when the machine replaces the hand, the quality of the wine goes down. Back then it cost us a great deal as most of the customers switched to the new, crystalline sweet style, and our artigianale col fondo fell out of fashion.” But the persistence has paid off: the shiny cast-concrete vats from the 70s are still in use today!

Despite his focus on col fondo, Zago uses his family’s best vineyard, Bastia di Saccol, planted with old Glera clones nearly 80 years ago, to make about 350 cases using the Metodo Classico. “Every year, the wines are complex and balanced,” he says of the vineyard. “People think of Prosecco as a wine that can’t age. But here, we have body and minerality that can allow a wine to age.”

Christian ferments the Glera grapes partially with skin contact, then does a secondary fermentation of 16 months before disgorging the bottles, topping them off with more of the same wine, rather than a sweetened dosage. At disgorgement, the crown caps are replaced with the more typical corks.

Thanks to 80-year-old vines, the resulting Prosecco is one with finesse, concentration and a pure expression of his vineyard that rivals his Col Fondo bottling, with less influence from the lees.

Check out Christian’s masterpieces through the link below!