From the atlas
Villa Sandi
At A Glance
- Location: Crocetta del Montello, Treviso, Veneto
- Appellation: Prosecco DOC Treviso, Prosecco Superiore DOCG Valdobbiadene, Cartizze DOCG
- Grapes: Glera, Chardonnay, Kretos Sauvignon
- Estates: Six across Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia
- First Bottle: Cartizze La Rivetta
The Producer
Villa Sandi operates from a 1622 Palladian villa in the Treviso hills, where the Moretti Polegato family both lives and makes wine. The villa is not a showpiece attached to a separate industrial operation. It is the working headquarters, and three underground galleries running more than 1.5 kilometres beneath the building are the ageing cellars.
The family has been farming grapes since the early 1920s, when Mario Polegato bought vineyards and entered the wine market. In the late 1970s, his descendants bought the derelict villa and began a restoration that would eventually turn it into one of the more distinctive addresses in the Veneto sparkling wine world. Giancarlo Moretti Polegato now leads the winery, and his children Diva and Leonardo have joined the operation, bringing the family to four generations in wine.
The range is anchored in Prosecco across all its tiers: DOC Treviso at the base, Valdobbiadene DOCG crus in the middle, and Cartizze La Rivetta at the top. A traditional-method sparkling wine, Opere Trevigiane Metodo Classico, is made from grapes grown on the Crocetta del Montello estates and aged in the underground cellars.
Place
Prosecco grows in a long strip of northeastern Veneto running from Conegliano west to Valdobbiadene. The broader DOC covers a wide plain; the Valdobbiadene DOCG sits at the western end, where the pre-Alps push the vines onto hillsides with sharper sun exposure and better drainage. Within Valdobbiadene, Cartizze is a 107-hectare sub-zone on a single steep hill above the village of San Pietro di Barbozza. It is the most specific Glera address in the whole Prosecco system.
Villa Sandi draws from this geography at every tier. Il Fresco Brut is a Treviso DOC wine, meaning the grapes come from the broader flatland zone. The DOCG Valdobbiadene crus come from hill estates with the sun and wind exposure that concentrates the Glera fruit. Cartizze La Rivetta comes from Villa Sandi's own parcel on the Cartizze hill, where the family is reported as the largest single landowner in the entire sub-zone. The label tier, the appellation name, and the vineyard position all correspond directly to where the grapes grow.
Soil And Site
The Cartizze hill rises sharply and sits above the morning fog that collects in the Valdobbiadene valley. The soils are a mixture of sandy moraine and clay left by glacial activity, with good drainage on the steeper slopes. This drainage and the hill's particular exposure slow ripening and extend the growing season, giving the Glera grapes time to build aromatic complexity without gaining excessive sugar.
The Valdobbiadene estate more broadly benefits from consistent wind that circulates through the hillside vines and reduces disease pressure. The Nervesa della Battaglia estate, on the Montello slopes near the Piave river, has heavier soils suited to Glera and Chardonnay. At Le Farfalline in the Sile river park, the family planted Kretos Sauvignon, a disease-resistant grape variety that allows chemical treatments to be reduced in a zone with environmental protections.
Story
Mario Polegato bought his first vineyards in the early 1920s and sold wine into what was then a local market. Two generations later, his grandson Giancarlo was looking for a different kind of platform. In the late 1970s, the family found the Villa Sandi, a Palladian building from 1622 sitting in bad repair on the Treviso hills, and bought it. The restoration took years.
During that work, they uncovered three underground galleries running beneath the building. These became cellars. The villa itself became the company's base. Then, in the early 1980s, while Prosecco was still a regional wine consumed mainly by Italians, the Moretti Polegato family began promoting it abroad. They were early in a market that would not catch up for another two decades. By the time Prosecco became a global category in the 2000s and 2010s, the family had been exporting it for a generation.
The range built around this story runs from accessible Treviso DOC Prosecco through to the single-hill Cartizze cru that came to define the top of the Villa Sandi offer. Giancarlo's children Diva and Leonardo joined the business, and the family describes this as the fourth generation of continuous wine cultivation on their land.
Vineyards And Cellar
Villa Sandi runs six estates across Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia. The Valdobbiadene estate provides grapes for the DOCG cru Proseccos. The Crocetta del Montello estates around the villa supply the still reserve wines, Marinali and Còrpore, and the grapes for Opere Trevigiane Metodo Classico. Nervesa della Battaglia grows Glera and Chardonnay on Montello slopes near the Piave.
In the cellar, Prosecco production follows the Charmat method: secondary fermentation in temperature-controlled tanks rather than bottle. For Il Fresco Brut, fermentation runs at 15 to 16 degrees Celsius with selected yeasts. The must is held at zero degrees between batches, and bottling happens in runs rather than in one continuous operation. This preserves freshness across a large production run. Sulphur additions sit at roughly half the legal maximum, a conservative choice that limits oxidation risk without heavy intervention.
Opere Trevigiane Metodo Classico takes a different route. It undergoes secondary fermentation in bottle, in the traditional method, and ages in the underground cellars beneath the villa where conditions are cool and humid throughout the year.
Wines
Il Fresco Brut (Prosecco DOC Treviso) is the entry-level wine, made from Glera, fermented in tank at 15 to 16 degrees Celsius. It carries 12 grams per litre of residual sugar and 5.8 grams per litre of total acidity, with alcohol around 11.5 percent. The bubbles are fine and persistent. White pear, apple blossom and a light green note from the Glera grape; the acidity keeps the sweetness in check and the finish is short and clean.
The Prosecco Superiore DOCG Valdobbiadene crus move up in concentration and hillside character. The grapes come from the sun and wind-exposed Valdobbiadene estate, and the fruit is richer and more aromatic than the Treviso tier.
Cartizze La Rivetta is the flagship, a Glera wine from Villa Sandi's parcel on the Cartizze hill. Cartizze DOCG allows a higher residual sugar than the standard Valdobbiadene DOCG, and La Rivetta reflects this: the wine is richer and rounder than the crus below it, with concentrated stone fruit, fuller mousse and a longer finish.
MarinaIi and Còrpore are still wines from the Crocetta del Montello estates. Opere Trevigiane Metodo Classico is the traditional-method sparkling, aged in the underground galleries and showing the finer, more persistent mousse and longer autolytic character that bottle fermentation produces.
In The Glass
Across Villa Sandi's Prosecco range, the Glera grape delivers white fruit: pear, green apple, white peach and light floral notes in the entry tier, shifting to riper stone fruit and greater aromatic weight as the vines move up the Valdobbiadene hillsides. Il Fresco Brut pours light and quick, with fine bubbles and a mouthfeel that is lean and refreshing rather than creamy. The acidity is present enough to cut the 12 grams of residual sugar and leave the finish dry-tasting.
The DOCG Valdobbiadene crus feel denser, with the hillside exposure showing in a more defined mid-palate and slightly rounder mousse. Cartizze La Rivetta extends this further: the wine opens with concentrated peach and apricot, the mousse is fuller and softer, and the sweetness is more evident but still supported by a brisk acid line from the Glera. The finish is longer and more persistent than any tier below it.
Opere Trevigiane Metodo Classico shows a different register. Bottle fermentation and cellar ageing produce a finer, slower-rising mousse and biscuit notes alongside the fruit. It is a sparkling wine that rewards time in the glass rather than immediate drinking.
A Bottle To Understand It
Cartizze La Rivetta is the bottle to choose. Cartizze is a 107-hectare hill above Valdobbiadene, one of the smallest and most specific Glera appellations in Italy, and Villa Sandi holds what is reported as the largest single parcel on it. The wine is made from those grapes alone, fermented in tank. Ripe peach and apricot on the nose, a soft full mousse in the mouth, with sweetness balanced by the acid line that Glera carries even at full ripeness. It is not a bone-dry sparkling wine. It is a sweet-leaning Prosecco with weight and length. Start here to understand what the Cartizze hill produces and why it has its own appellation.
Anecdote
Cartizze La Rivetta received its first Gambero Rosso Tre Bicchieri award in 2010. Three Glasses is the guide's highest annual rating, given once per year for each wine category, and it is not awarded to the same wine automatically. Villa Sandi's La Rivetta won it again in 2011, and then again the year after, and kept winning through twelve consecutive editions of the guide. Twelve consecutive Tre Bicchieri for a single Prosecco cru, from a single landowner on a 107-hectare hill, in a category crowded with producers large and small, is not a streak that happens without very deliberate cellar decisions each harvest. The twelfth award arrived without any more ceremony than the first.
Final Word
Villa Sandi is a large Prosecco operation with a physical address that most large sparkling wine operations do not have: a seventeenth-century Palladian villa with working cellars beneath it and a family that has been farming the same Veneto hills for four generations. The Cartizze La Rivetta is the clearest argument for taking the producer seriously at the top of the range, and the Il Fresco Brut is among the more carefully made entry-tier Proseccos in the DOC Treviso category.
Sources
- https://www.villasandi.it/en/
- https://www.villasandi.it/en/history/
- https://www.villasandi.it/en/the-family/
- https://www.villasandi.it/en/estates/
- https://wine-pages.com/tasting-articles/villa-sandi-northern-italy-sparkling-and-still-wines/
- https://www.villasandi.it/it/prosecco-brut-doc-treviso-il-fresco.html
- https://www.gilbertgaillard.com/en/resultats/villa-sandi-brut-il-fresco-280443