Merotto

Graziano Merotto was born in Col San Martino, a farming village of meadows and slopes in the hills between Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, long before it became a hub of sparkling wine. He grew up in a family of growers and set himself a goal that, by the house's own account, sounded bold at the time: to give Prosecco dignity, through years of work on natural fermentation.

He founded the winery in 1972, making a Sur Lie wine from Glera. The first autoclave arrived at the end of the 1970s, and with it the Martinotti method, learned under the oenologist Piero Berton. In the 1980s he turned to Pinot as well, with a few pupitres and a near-private run of classic-method bottles. In 2001 he registered the Merotto name and the slim bottle the wines still wear.

The vineyards are spread across the denomination. Several lie around Col San Martino, on clay mixed with sand, and on the rocky conglomerate at the top of Colle il Castello, which gives the single-vineyard Castè. Others sit in Colbertaldo on calcareous clay, in Soligo, in Miane, in Collalto on old iron-rich soils, on the steep, wind-swept slopes of Cozzuolo, and in Cartizze, the 107 hectares the house calls the summit of the denomination.

The range runs from Extra Brut to Dry. La Primavera di Barbara, named for his daughter in the early 1990s, is the Dry. The Cuvée del Fondatore, from a historic riva of his own in Col San Martino, followed in 2009, and Integral Extra Brut, from the oldest vines, in 2018. Rosso Dogato, a still red first made in 1997 and aged in French tonneaux and barriques, keeps a foot outside the bubbles. In 2025 came Rosélla, a Pinot Nero metodo classico without dosage, dedicated to his wife Rossella.