Why it matters
The producer
The Castle of San Salvatore has stood above Susegana since 1245. The family farming the hills around it has been there even longer. In 958, King Berengario granted Rambaldo di Collalto the Montello wood and the Curtis di Lovadina, woods, meadows, pastures, and vineyards at the foot of the Treviso hills. That grant is the documented beginning of a landholding the Collalto family has never surrendered.
Today the estate is managed by Isabella Collalto de Cröy, who took over the winery and vineyards in 2007. The cellar she works from was built in 1904, inside the historic Susegana complex. The 150 hectares she farms are planted entirely with estate fruit: no bought-in grapes, no purchased juice. Roughly 100 of those hectares fall inside the Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG, making Prosecco the numerical centre of the range, but not the whole story.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Susegana sits in the eastern stretch of the Treviso hills, on the edge of Conegliano Valdobbiadene, the elongated DOCG zone that runs between the two towns of the same name in northeastern Veneto. The appellation is built around Glera, a grape that produces sparkling wine by secondary fermentation in sealed tanks, a method called Charmat or Martinotti. The combination of hillside terrain, cool nights from the Dolomites to the north, and the Adriatic moderating humidity from the south gives Glera its characteristic freshness and delicate floral lift.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
The 100 DOCG hectares are farmed under integrated management with no chemical herbicides. Canopy management on the hillside parcels controls yield and preserves Glera's natural acidity and freshness. Harvest is by hand across the native-variety parcels.
In the cellar, the sparkling wines are produced by the Charmat method: secondary fermentation takes place in pressurised tanks, preserving the light, fresh aromatic profile that defines the Prosecco DOCG style. The Ottaviano takes a different route: bottle refermented and left undisgorged, it retains its lees and arrives in the glass cloudy, with yeasty depth and a texture quite unlike the filtered brut expressions.
Wines to know
The range in view
The range divides into three tiers. The sparkling Prosecco DOCG tier centres on the San Salvatore Brut, 100% Glera from estate parcels, produced by Charmat method and matured briefly before release. It is dry in style, with green apple, white peach, and fine mousse. The extra-dry expressions carry a few grams more residual sugar, softening the fruit and making the floral notes more pronounced.
The Ottaviano sits outside the standard Prosecco profile. Glera-based but bottle-refermented and left on its lees, it is intentionally hazy. The lees contact adds a creamy texture, a brioche note, and a fuller mid-palate weight; the mousse is finer and more integrated than in the tank-fermented bruts. It drinks more like an ancestral-method sparkling wine than a commercial Prosecco.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with the San Salvatore Brut. It is 100% Glera from estate parcels in the Conegliano Valdobbiadene DOCG, made by Charmat method, dry, and released with fine mousse and clean white-fruit aromatics. The wine is not complex, but it is honest: estate fruit, no bought-in grapes, no blending with purchased base wine. It shows what a grower Prosecco tastes like when the producer controls everything from vine to bottle. At the price point, it outperforms the category average on freshness and length, and it gives a clean read on what the Susegana parcels produce.