Italy · Colli Orientali del Friuli (Udine hills)

Zorzettig

Family wine estate founded in 1874, farming 115 hectares of hillside ponca soils across four Colli Orientali del Friuli territories, with native Friulian varieties at the core of the range.

The producer

Zorzettig has been making wine in the hills east of Udine since 1874. The estate is based at Spessa, a hillside locality within Cividale del Friuli, and its vineyards spread across four named territories in the Colli Orientali del Friuli DOC: Spessa around the winery, Ipplis to the east with rootstocks up to a century old, Prepotto to the south, and Premariacco along the Torre river valley. Annalisa Zorzettig runs the estate today, continuing her father's work. Winemaker Fabio Coser works with 115 hectares of hillside vineyards on ponca, an ancient marine sediment that the estate credits with the mineral character and natural ageing capacity of the wines.

The range puts native Friulian varieties first. Friulano, Ribolla Gialla, Picolit, and Pignolo grow at Spessa, each requiring its own sentence of explanation and each giving wines that no other Italian region replicates. Pinot Grigio from Casali Pasch and Pinot Nero across the estate round out the portfolio without displacing the native core. In 2016 the estate adopted Italy's SQNPI integrated farming protocol, dropped synthetic insecticides, and went further still, partnering with the University of Udine to build biodiversity corridors of certified native trees and shrubs along the vineyard edges, designed to house parasitic wasps and ground beetles as a living alternative to chemistry. The house style runs toward freshness, mineral character, and clean fruit.

Known for

Native Friulian varieties from ponca hillside vineyards: Friulano, Ribolla Gialla, Picolit, and Pignolo, alongside Pinot Grigio and Pinot Nero from Colli Orientali del Friuli.

Notable facts

The story

Predators in the Vines

In 2016, Zorzettig signed up to Italy's SQNPI integrated-crop-management system and dropped synthetic insecticides from the vineyard program. That was a commitment plenty of Friulian estates had made before them. What came next was less expected. Annalisa Zorzettig contacted the University of Udine and proposed something closer to a field experiment: could the estate build a population of predatory insects large enough to manage vineyard pests without chemistry at all? The university agreed. Ecologists began mapping which beneficial species were already present in the hedgerows and woodland margins around the Spessa and Ipplis blocks. Then the estate planted corridors of certified native trees and shrubs along the vineyard edges, chosen to provide year-round habitat for parasitic wasps, ground beetles, and other insects that prey on the organisms that damage vines. The flowers between the rows, left to bloom rather than mowed, added foraging ground. A family that had farmed the same ponca hills since 1874 was now conducting field ecology with a university research team, counting insects rather than spraying them.

From the atlas

Zorzettig

At A Glance

The Producer

Zorzettig has been making wine in the hills east of Udine since 1874. The estate is headquartered at Spessa, a hillside locality within Cividale del Friuli, and its vineyards spread across four named territories in the Colli Orientali del Friuli, the DOC zone that covers the sloping ground between the Natisone and Judrio rivers before the land rises toward Slovenia. Annalisa Zorzettig runs the estate today, continuing the work of her father. Fabio Coser is the winemaker. Together they farm 115 hectares and produce around 800,000 bottles a year.

The range is built around native Friulian varieties. Friulano, the white grape most closely identified with the region, grows at Spessa alongside Ribolla Gialla, Picolit, and Pignolo, the four grapes that define what is locally distinctive about Colli Orientali. International varieties, Pinot Grigio at Casali Pasch and Pinot Nero across the estate, share the portfolio without displacing that native core. The house style runs toward freshness, mineral character, and clean fruit.

Place

Colli Orientali del Friuli sits in the far northeast of Italy, where the Friulian hills fold toward the Slovenian border. The climate sits between two large influences: the Alps block cold air from the north, and the Adriatic, roughly 50 kilometres away, pushes warm maritime breezes inland. The Alps protect the vineyards from cold northern winds, and Adriatic sea breezes influence them. That temperature range is part of why the wines hold acidity alongside ripe fruit.

Zorzettig's four territories, Spessa around the winery, Ipplis a short distance east, Prepotto to the south, and Premariacco upstream along the Torre river valley, each sit on hillside slopes that capture morning sun and drain cold air overnight. The elevation and aspect vary between sites, which gives the winemaker material to work with across the range.

Soil And Site

Ponca is the Friulian name for the ancient marine sediment that underlies most of the Colli Orientali hills. It is a compressed layering of marl and sandstone, deposited when this part of northeastern Italy was a shallow sea floor, then lifted and folded by the same tectonic movement that raised the Alps. Ponca is rich in minerals and nutrients and requires little irrigation.

Zorzettig credits ponca with two things in the glass: flavour definition and the capacity to age. The mineral character attributed to Friulano and Ribolla Gialla from this zone traces to that ancient seabed. At Ipplis, some of the estate's oldest rootstocks are up to 100 years old, their roots long since anchored deep in the ponca. Old vines on lean, mineral soil produce lower yields and more concentrated fruit, which is why the Ipplis holdings carry particular weight in the Zorzettig story.

Story

The estate is 150 years old, which in northeastern Italy means it predates the modern DOC system by nearly a century. For most of that time, Friulian wine moved in bulk. Families grew grapes, sold wine by the barrel, and kept records of parcels and varieties rather than building brands.

Annalisa Zorzettig now leads a winery that has made the full arc from bulk producer to DOC estate. Her father shaped the modern estate. She inherited both the 115 hectares and the decision to keep native varieties at the centre of the range. In 2016, Zorzettig formally adopted Italy's SQNPI integrated-crop-management protocol, ending synthetic insecticide use and replacing mineral fertilisers with organic ones. That formal commitment led to something more ambitious: a partnership with the University of Udine to investigate whether biodiversity corridors and predatory insects could replace chemical pest control entirely. Agroforestry plantings of certified native species now border the vineyard blocks, designed to house beneficial insects year-round. The winery that had farmed the same ponca hills for 150 years was reconfiguring its relationship with the land.

Vineyards And Cellar

Spessa is the home territory, surrounding the winery, planted to Friulano, Ribolla Gialla, Picolit, and Pignolo. These are the grapes most rooted in Colli Orientali: Friulano gives broad, textured whites; Ribolla Gialla brings high acidity and citrus-driven fruit; Picolit, one of Italy's rarest grapes, produces a late-harvest wine of concentrated sweetness and natural low yields; Pignolo, a red variety that nearly disappeared from Friuli before a small group of producers revived it, gives deeply coloured, structured wine with dark fruit and firm tannin.

Ipplis holds the estate's oldest vines, some rootstocks a century old. The age of the vine affects yield and concentration: old vines produce fewer clusters, and each cluster carries more flavour per berry.

Casali Pasch, an old farmhouse estate with a traditional cellar, is planted to Pinot Grigio and Cabernet. The Pinot Grigio from this site is matured for six months in stainless steel followed by bottle ageing, a regime that preserves the aromatic freshness of the grape without adding oak weight.

Farming across all four territories follows the SQNPI protocol. Flowering cover crops grow between the rows, building soil health and supporting insect life. Soil microbiome testing informs which green manures are applied at each site, and the estate's agroforestry plantings create permanent wildlife habitat at the vineyard margins.

Wines

The Zorzettig range is a single-level portfolio of single-variety wines, each labelled by grape and site under the Colli Orientali del Friuli DOC. There is no prestige tier or reserve hierarchy in the available information. Native and international varieties sit together across the range.

Friulano is the white anchor, a grape that in Colli Orientali gives wines with almond, white stone fruit, and a slightly bitter finish that is characteristic of the variety. Ribolla Gialla runs leaner, with pronounced acidity and citrus, often showing lemon pith and green apple. Picolit is a rare dessert wine, low-yielding and naturally high in sugar at harvest, with apricot, honey, and dried-flower concentration. Pignolo, the native red, carries dense dark fruit, iron-edged tannin, and enough acidity to age.

Pinot Grigio from Casali Pasch shows peach, apricot, and Scotch broom on the nose, with a fresh palate shaped by the steel maturation. Pinot Nero in the 2023 vintage opens with Morello cherry, raspberry, and wild strawberry, with violet and white pepper on the back of the nose. On the palate it is supple and fresh, with silky tannins and a clean red-fruit finish. The 2022 showed considerably more weight, suggesting the style shifts meaningfully with vintage conditions.

In The Glass

Across the range, the Zorzettig house character reads as bright and clean rather than broad or extracted. The ponca soils and the temperature swing between warm days and cool nights in Colli Orientali contribute to that: the grapes hold natural acidity through the growing season, and the mineral character of the ancient marine sediment comes through most clearly in the white wines.

Friulano shows the ponca mineral thread most directly: a textured white with stone-fruit flesh, a faint almond note from the grape's skin contact potential, and a clean finish that lingers without heaviness. Ribolla Gialla is the freshest and most acid-driven of the whites, its lemon and green-apple fruit cutting across the palate without softening. The Pinot Grigio from Casali Pasch sits in aromatic territory, peach and apricot forward, with the steel maturation keeping the texture light and the finish clean.

The reds follow the same directional logic. Pinot Nero 2023 is light-framed: the silky tannin and fresh finish suggest a winemaking hand that protects the grape's natural fragrance rather than pushing extraction. The aromatic range from Morello cherry to wild strawberry and violet is characteristic of Pinot Nero grown in a cool-night environment. Pignolo is the structural outlier in the range, a grape that demands patience and rewards it with dark fruit, spice, and tannin that can carry several years of bottle ageing.

A Bottle To Understand It

Start with the Pinot Nero. The 2023 is 100% Pinot Noir from Colli Orientali ponca vineyards, and it carries enough specific sensory information to make clear what Zorzettig does with its fruit. Morello cherry, raspberry, and wild strawberry on the nose, with violet and a touch of white pepper behind. The palate is supple and fresh, the tannins silky rather than gripping, and the finish clean and fruit-driven. It is not a heavy wine: Zorzettig's ponca soils and cool-night climate produce a Pinot Nero built around fragrance and grip rather than weight. The price sits in approachable territory for the appellation, and the style is legible to any buyer who knows northern Italian reds. Buy it, open it within three to four years, and it shows what the estate's freshness-first philosophy produces in its most readable form.

Anecdote

In 2016, Zorzettig signed up to Italy's SQNPI integrated-crop-management system and dropped synthetic insecticides from the vineyard program. That was a commitment plenty of Friulian estates had made before them. What came next was less expected. Annalisa Zorzettig contacted the University of Udine and proposed something closer to an experiment: could the estate build a population of predatory insects large enough to manage vineyard pests without chemistry at all? The university agreed. Ecologists began mapping which beneficial species were already present in the hedgerows and woodland margins around the Spessa and Ipplis blocks. Then the estate planted corridors of certified native trees and shrubs along the vineyard edges, chosen specifically to provide year-round habitat for parasitic wasps, ground beetles, and other insects that prey on the organisms that damage vines. The flowers between the rows, left to bloom rather than mowed, added foraging ground. A family that had farmed the same ponca hills since 1874 was now conducting field ecology with a university research team, counting insects instead of spraying them.

Final Word

Zorzettig is a Friulian estate with genuine depth: 150 years of continuous family farming, ponca soils that shape the mineral character of every white in the range, old-vine holdings at Ipplis, and a native-variety portfolio that covers the best of what Colli Orientali grows. The farming shift from conventional to integrated to biodiversity-active is not cosmetic. The University of Udine partnership is the mark of an estate that took a formal protocol and pushed it into research territory. The wines are fresher than they are weighty, and the range gives both an easy entry through the Pinot Nero and a deeper exploration through Friulano, Ribolla Gialla, Picolit, and Pignolo for anyone who wants to understand what northeastern Italy does that no other Italian region replicates.

Sources

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