Il Ceo

Historic grapes on volcanic soil of Breganze

• Location: Breganze, Veneto, Italy
• Owner & Winemaker: Davide Andreatta
• Vineyard area: 4.5 hectares
• Soil type: Basalt and volcanic
• Main varieties: Gropelo Gentile, Vespaiola, Merlot, Pinot Noir
• Age of vines: Restored vineyards up to 80 years old
• Vineyard management: Organic and Biodynamic (no certifications). Davide uses 500 and 501 preparations, herbal treatments, and as little copper as possible.
• Winemaking: Zero-zero; native yeasts. Neutral vessels are used for fermentation and aging, including regenerated or recycled wooden barrels. 

Fun Facts

• Davide describes himself as a surfer-turned-winemaker, making a 180-degree change from the life he used to imagine living in the Canary Islands. He’s happy he took the leap, and the surfboard still comes out for vacations.
• Besides wine grapes, Il Ceo are passionate cultivators of life among the vines. Their land is home to ancient varieties of apple, pear, and cherry trees and old-growth persimmons — beloved also by the local bird population, which has made Breganze a known place for birdwatching.
• Avid cooks, Davide and Francesca built their own kitchen with a traditional wood-burning oven, for which Davide and his father chop their own wood, harvested sustainably on their land. In their garden they grow tomatoes, broccoli, cabbages, and 20 kinds of radish.

In the Breganze hills, green-carpeted valleys and terraced vineyards cradle storybook villages against a backdrop of Alpine foothills. Here, forty minutes north of Venice, Davide Andreatta became one of the region’s first natural winemakers. Together with his wife Francesca he continues to fuel his passion by making unfiltered, zero-zero reds, rosés, macerations and frizzantes from native grapes: an expression of both their specific land, and reverence for Veneto’s ancestral ways.

“My start was my passion for working the soil,” says Davide. Like most in the region, his parents and grandparents were small-production dairy farmers and grew wine grapes only for family consumption. During school Davide helped his grandfather during the summers and winters, which grew into a love of cuisine and being in the kitchen. 

After a surfing stint in the Canary Islands, Davide came back and began working for a chef while chasing a new passion: taking classes to learn to make bread, which he’d share with his friends and family. It was the baking venture that got him introduced to a local caviste with his own tiny production: the first zero-zero wine in Breganze. Energized by what he’d found, Davide offered his hand in the vineyards during their next seven vintages from 2012 to 2020. Their first vintage was 300 bottles of the native grape Tai Rosso (Italian Grenache), a sharp contrast to his parents’ Merlot and Cabernet.

“The wines opened up something inside of Davide when he drank them,” Francesca tells us. “They are so different from what his family would normally drink at home. So from here, he started to understand better what he wanted to do [in life].” 

Today Davide and Francesca work 4.5 hectares of vines, many of which they’ve restored from vineyards up to 80 years old. In a carefully thought-out strategy to preserve the long-term health of the region they call home, they’ve re-grafted half their vines in favor of climate-adapted, disease-resistant natives like Groppello and Vespaiola, using massal selections of old, strong plants. (Merlot, proving well adjusted to the region, was kept intact.) “In our terroir we have thirty different grape varieties,” Davide beams. “The indigenous grapes are very, very important for the terroir’s history.”

The plantings lie between Lake Garda and the southern edge of the Italian Alps, a pocket with rich volcanic soil and diurnal temperature shifts. A very special place for wine growing, says Davide — and largely overlooked outside of traditional sweet wines like Amarone, making it a treasure trove for newcomers in search of good soil, old vines, and space to plant new variants. Equally special is the number of different sites that Davide farms: 13 scattered plots averaging less than half a hectare each. “It’s fantastic for me because I have all different elevations,” he says, giving a wide range between 200 and 1500 meters. In practical terms this means the overall harvest is less susceptible to increasingly frequent storms: if one plot gets hit, the others may not.

But there’s something else that gives Davide a twinkle in his eye when talking about his land’s unusual layout. “It’s my secret,” he says, “because every harvest I make seven wines.” In other words, Davide ferments and vinifies separate groupings of plots, isolating a single variety to understand its personality before deciding whether and how to blend them. True to his signature fresh and glou glou style, he plays with skin contact and carbonic maceration, works completely chemical-free and sulfur-free, and favors neutral vessels — fiberglass, concrete, steel, and up to ten-year-old barrels and tonneau, many from nearby Amarone producers — to bring out the best in each vintage with the lightest-possible touch. 

Il Ceo’s approach to growing and winemaking might be summarized in their utmost respect for these plots, the surrounding region, and the historic grapes that give Breganze its own character. With others following in the footsteps of Davide and his mentors, there are now eight natural winemakers here: “a big achievement,” he says, “because most around us are conventional wineries using international varieties. But the eight of us are a good thing for our area. We’re a community; we help each other during harvest, share everything. They’re special friends, a really nice team.” He adds with a wink, “it’s also very dangerous when we throw a party.”

Grapes (2023): 20% Pinot Gris, 20% Pinot Noir, 60% Merlot

Vineyard: 16-year-old (average) vines on volcanic soil with flat basalt; iron and silica. Hills of Sarcedo in Veneto, 250 meters above sea level. Organic & biodynamic farming.

Making of (2023): Grapes are hand-harvested, destemmed, and gently pressed into stainless steel vats and epoxy tanks for spontaneous fermentation with indigenous yeasts. Each variety is fermented separately. The wine ages 6 months in epoxy tanks before all 3 varieties are blended together, and bottled with must from the same vintage; the second fermentation in-bottle makes this a Metodo Classico, rifermentazione in bottiglia sparkling wine. Bottled under crown cap unfined, unfiltered, with nothing added.

Vino Bianco

Grapes (2024): 60% Vespaiola, 20% Glera Lunga, 20% Pedevenda

Vineyard: 50-year-old vines on volcanic soil with flat basalt; iron and silica. Hills of Hills of Breganze and Zugliano, 250 meters above sea level. Organic & biodynamic farming.

Making of (2024): Grapes are hand-harvested and undergo separate fermentation: Vespaiola undergoes 10 days of carbonic maceration, while Glera Lunga and Pedevenda are destemmed and left to macerate on skins for 5 days. Each variety is gently pressed and ferments with indigenous yeasts. The wine ages 6 months in concrete tanks before being blended and bottled under cork. Unfined, unfiltered, nothing added.