Emilio

A winegrower and his grapevines

The Sanfeletto winery, always belonged to the Ceschin family, was established at the beginning of the past century by its founder Emilio, born in 1887.
Emilio was a young winegrower who cultivated with passion and dedication his vineyards to obtain a wine that he sold to the local markets and the taverns of the Treviso County.
From his small winery in San Pietro di Feletto, he used to reach personally his clients by means of a horse-drawn cart, transporting the wine in small barrels (caratelli) in an area ranging from Cadore to Carnia, in the Friuli region.

Rino

From bulk wine to the first bubbles

In 1930, Emilio’s nephew, Rino, entered Sanfeletto. He took then control of the winery and led it for 60 years.
Under his guidance, Sanfeletto started to develop and to stand out for the obsessive pursuit of quality that will later become the distinctive trait of its products.
At that time, wine was sold in bulk, stored in massive wooden barrels and then poured into glass demijohns to be delivered to final clients.
Also, little by little, the first bottles of “bubbly” Prosecco started to appear.
These bottles were filled manually under moon’s crescent phase right before Easter. As nature started to sprout after the harsh, cold winter, and the climate became warmer, the young Prosecco began again to ferment, naturally. Inside the capped bottles, the yeasts turned the little residual sugar into vivacious bubbles. Thus was born the so called Prosecco “col fondo”, precursor of the successful Conegliano Valdobbiadene DOCG.

Rino From bulk wine to the first bubbles

Paolo

The growth in the name of quality

In 1975, Rino’s son, Paolo, entered the winery right after having graduated from the prestigious Technical Institute of Vinegrowing and Enology in Conegliano, the oldest and most important enological school in Italy.
Together with his father, he brought a new approach to the winery’s philosophy, stopping completely to sell bulk wine in order to concentrate all their efforts on the production of high-quality sparkling and still wines. In those years, the first autoclaves to perform the Martinotti-Charmat “prise-de-mousse” were installed in the winery, as well as the first isobaric bottling line.
In the late ‘70s, after having started to spread his wine around Europe, Sanfeletto “crossed the Ocean”: the first container of Sanfeletto Prosecco left for the “New World” in that period.
From the beginning of the ‘90s, Paolo’s wife, Imelda, joined him in running the winery. She oversees the management and commercial parts, holding a degree in Economics from the Ca’ Foscari University in Venice.

Present and future

New perspectives, the same philosophy

As 45 years ago, nowadays Paolo keeps leading Sanfeletto and making Prosecco with the same philosophy as always, devoting all his efforts to achieve the highest quality in each of his bottles. The four sons of the couple, Alberto, Nicola, Francesco and Giovanni, give as well their support to the winery, helping out from the harvest to international fairs and business meetings.
Over its one-century history and its three generations of winemakers, Sanfeletto has become synonymous with excellence and coherence in the world of Prosecco DOCG, as it grew and developed always keeping the quality of its wines as its top priority.
The long list of international prizes that Sanfeletto has been awarded testifies the success of this philosophy of conceiving the Prosecco, a success which is “enjoyed” nowadays by its customers in more than 15 countries in 4 continents.

Pope John XXIII

A “special client”

Over almost one century, many anecdotes and stories would be worth to be told.
However, the most significant one is probably that of the “botticelle (small barrels) of the Good Pope”.
In the ‘50s, before being elected Pope as John XXIII, Card. Giuseppe Roncalli, back then Patriarch of Venice, used to spend long periods of rest and meditation in San Pietro di Feletto, where the Patriarchate had an agricultural estate.
During one of his usual walks around the hills of Feletto, Rino Ceschin got the chance to meet him.

The “botticelle” of the Pope

A precious keepsake

Card. Roncalli fell immediately in love with the wine produced by Rino and he commissioned the historic barrels factory Garbellotto in Conegliano two oval, tiny barrels, tailor-made to fit in the trunk of his black Opel Kapitan, with plate number SCV30.
From that moment on, for many years the chauffeur of the future Pope John, Guido Gusso, came to fill those barrels at Sanfeletto to provide the Venice Patriarchate Canteen with some excellent Prosecco.
When Pope John passed away, Mons. Loris Capovilla, his private secretary, gifted Rino with those barrels in memory of the love the Pope felt for Feletto’s hills and Rino’s wine. Nowadays, the barrels are still jealously kept at Sanfeletto.

A precious keepsake The “botticelle” of the Pope