Ca Di Rajo
Veneto, Italy
Ca’ di Rajo is one of those Italian wineries that somehow manages to make Prosecco feel properly interesting again, which is no small achievement considering how much forgettable Prosecco currently exists floating around supermarket aisles pretending to be festive. Based in Veneto, the Cecchetto family have been making wine since the 1930s and have built Ca’ di Rajo around a mix of deep local tradition, modern winemaking and an obvious obsession with preserving historic native grape varieties that most people outside the region have never even heard of.
What makes the winery stand out immediately is the Bellussera training system used in some of their vineyards. These huge overhead vine canopies look slightly like someone crossed a vineyard with a Victorian greenhouse project after too much espresso. It’s an old Treviso growing method that nearly disappeared because it’s massively labour intensive and inconvenient by modern standards, which of course makes wine nerds love it even more. Ca’ di Rajo have helped keep it alive while also producing some genuinely brilliant wines from local grapes like Raboso, Marzemina Bianca and Manzoni Bianco alongside their Proseccos.
The wines themselves tend to lean bright, fresh and polished, but there’s usually more texture and personality going on than you might expect. Even the sparkling wines have a bit of character rather than just delivering generic “cold fizzy apple water” energy. The native reds especially can get wonderfully rustic and savoury, with proper northern Italian food-wine vibes running through the whole range.
There’s also something very classically Italian about the whole operation. The winery sits among medieval buildings, old churches and vineyards that look like they’ve been there forever, yet the wines never feel trapped in tradition for tradition’s sake. It all feels carefully modern without losing the regional identity underneath. A very difficult balance that Italy occasionally makes look suspiciously easy.
