A Hundred Years Of Gratitude
Giorgio CastelliniYou are a child, running around the vines with your brother in late October. There is a lot of activity around you, and you move between the vines with the confidence of someone who has spent her whole life there. It is chilly already, so jacket and trousers it is; you run around, as light as your mood. You know that you’ll keep your clothes as clean as possible, you always respected the freedom your parents gave you (and you do not want to hear your mom complain about having to wash off the soil again); but it’s OK, you just want to take a look at those clusters of deep purple grapes that seem as big as your head, look at the people picking them, hear their comments. There’s nothing wrong with that.
The Festival
Ylenia Sandre remembers harvest the way people remember childhood summers: with a specificity that tells you the memory has been turned over many times. The cart overflowing with grapes, her grandparents moving through the rows, the children running between the vines while the adults worked. But above all else, the feeling that something important was happening and that she was allowed to be part of it.
Both she and her brother grew up in a family with deep ties to the land, one that always fostered that connection, even when it meant getting their clothes a little dirty. Though maybe not like that time when her brother Marco kept riding his bicycle in the courtyard way too close to the manure pit despite their mother warning him repeatedly, and obviously fell in. Ylenia still laughs remembering how mom ended up taking the garden hose with freezing cold water and hosing him down right outside in the garden.
With such an environment growing up, it is no surprise that core memories were formed back then, nor that the bond with the land and the art of making wine is so strong in both of them.
"Harvest time was a true celebration," she says. "A huge festival."
She is talking about something that happened thirty years ago on a farm in Campodipietra, in the eastern Veneto, near the banks of the river Piave. But from the way she tells it, you understand that this is not nostalgia for something lost: it is the reason they are still there, looking at those grapes the same way.
Early Beginnings
The Sandre family story begins in 1926, when Angelo Sandre (Ylenia and Marco's great-grandfather) established a small farm in Campodipietra. It was a working farm in the traditional sense: cattle, milk, a few fields, very typical at the time, focused on everyday tasks and on making the most of what the land could give. Bellies were full, the family was happy and content.
Angelo Sandre and his wife Giustina, grandparents of Ylenia and Marco.
It was Luigi, Angelo's son, who turned his attention most seriously to wine. The Piave plain, stretching across the provinces of Venice, Treviso, and Pordenone, has always been viticulture country, and Luigi understood what the land around him was capable of. Together with his wife Dorotea, he built what is now known as Cantine Sandre; not through a dramatic escalation nor a single founding gesture, but through decades of accumulated work and a particular gift for making people feel welcome.
Dorotea was the force behind the hospitality. Anyone who came to Sandre (and people came from all over Italy, arriving with empty demijohns to fill with bulk wine) found a hot meal waiting. Dorotea would prepare pasta for everyone, the table was always open, no questions asked. This was not a marketing strategy, like you would more consciously plan nowadays. It was simply how they lived.
The wedding of Luigi and Dorotea Sandre
Luigi and Dorotea had two sons: Lino and Angelo.
Lino took care of people: he was the one loading the van with demijohns and driving them across northern Italy, all the way to Liguria and down through Emilia-Romagna, to families who had migrated away from Veneto in the 1960s and 1970s, but had never stopped wanting the wine from home. The wine in those demijohns was often Raboso, the native red grape of the Piave plain, tannic and acidic and deeply tied to the land these families had left behind. It was the taste of somewhere specific, and no other wine quite replaced it.
Angelo managed production and the business side, developing an entrepreneurial instinct that would eventually pass to his own children, Marco and Ylenia.
The stable where the animals lived is now the barrel cellar where Cantine Sandre ages its most important wines. This kind of continuity runs through everything the family has built: spaces are transformed but not abandoned, and things change purpose but are never discarded.
After all, this is now a family in its fourth generation, and 2026 is their centenary.
The Grape Nobody Talks About
But let’s take a step back, and understand what this “Raboso” is, since it is not a name that travels easily while it should.
Raboso takes its name from the Italian word rabbioso, meaning angry, which is a reference to the aggressive sensation the wine makes in the mouth when drunk young. The earliest confirmed records of Raboso in the Treviso area date back to the 1600s, when it became famous as a "travelling wine" during the Venetian Republic; one of the few wines that could survive long ocean voyages without spoiling, thanks to its pronounced acidity and vigorous tannins. Which is why, until the end of the Second World War, around 80% of the red wine produced in eastern Veneto was made from Raboso.
Then, in the latter half of the 20th century, it nearly disappeared; this is because historically, Raboso was primarily used in blends or as a cheap, rustic table wine. It took years for this to change, and it was modern producers who eventually decided to craft it as a serious, age-worthy varietal. The grape's high acidity and hard tannins made it difficult to drink young, which made it easy to dismiss at a moment when the market was rewarding soft, approachable reds. And if you look at numbers, this is still true today, as Raboso accounts for just 1–2% of Veneto's total vineyard surface. It is a minority grape in the region that once defined it.
The Sandre family never stopped growing it. For them, it was never a stylistic choice. It was a matter of identity.
"Raboso is the grape our family is most attached to," Marco explains. "It is native to our area, and our grandparents cultivated it almost exclusively. It truly mirrors our heritage."
The Patient Art of Taming Raboso
Marco is candid about what working with Raboso actually requires. "It is not an easy grape to tame; it is naturally very high in acidity." The two techniques the family uses to manage that character are oak ageing and appassimento in vigna, which means leaving the grapes on the vine as long as possible to shed water content and concentrate flavour naturally, without picking them and bringing them inside.
In the best vintages, this means leaving the Raboso hanging until the first or second week of November, which means that the leaves have already fallen and only the grape bunches remain on the bare vines. At this point, the vines are stripped down to their essentials, and so will be the resulting wine.
Giorgio Minello, the estate's oenologist who has been at Sandre for over 25 years, explains the logic from the cellar side. "Raboso is a grape that pairs exceptionally well with wood ageing because it is both tannic and acidic, and it requires time to rest and mature in barrel." In the barricaia, he works with three formats: 225-litre barriques for the most pronounced oak character, 500-litre tonneaux for something more intermediate, and 20-hectolitre large casks for a softer, more delicate profile that requires longer time. Each format produces a different conversation between the grape and the wood. The Raboso DOC spends two and a half years in barrel before release, while the IGT version, a year. Neither is in a hurry.
Essentially, only long ageing in wood manages to soften the more rugged aspects of its character, to finally transform it into a powerful and harmonious wine. We can safely say that the Sandre family has been proving this point for a century.
Forty Hectares and a Fire
Today Cantine Sandre manages around 40 hectares of estate vineyard, the majority planted to red varieties: Raboso, Merlot, Cabernet. The range has obviously expanded from the demijohn days; there are now several bottled wines, sparkling wines, a Traminer that reaches 14% ABV, a passito dessert wine named after Dorotea herself (and that we absolutely love).
But range is not the only thing that changed and evolved. Sandre’s sustainability journey began a few years ago, driven by the same instinct as everything else: the children. Ylenia names them specifically (Luigi, Carlo, Anna, Teresa, these are Marco and Ylenia's own children) as the reason the family began its conversion toward integrated production. In 2019, the winery received the SQNPI certification (National Quality System for Integrated Production): herbicide use eliminated, treatments reduced to the minimum, wild grasses and flowers sown between the rows to restore biodiversity, small wooden houses installed around the estate to provide shelter for bats and insects. The horses, donkeys, and goats that graze near the vineyards are no longer working farm animals. They are, as Ylenia puts it with a smile, now pets.
But sometimes, things go wrong; it was around noon on May 30th 2023, when a fire caused havoc in the estate. A short circuit in the photovoltaic system on the winery roof sparked a flame that spread across 1,300 square metres of the processing facility. It took eleven fire engines and a whole night of work to tame it. And when it was over, nearly half the building was gone. Marco had been around when the fire was developing and understood what was going on; if it hadn’t been for his swift reaction, things could have been much worse.
What the Sandre family did next says something about them. After the initial dismay, they rebuilt; and they rebuilt better. The new structure is modern and clean-lined, with dark colours that play against the lighting and the shine of the steel tanks. The photovoltaic system was reinstalled at double the previous capacity, state of the art; the estate is now close to electricity self-sufficiency. But one element was kept exactly as it was: the load-bearing beam that had survived the fire. It was left exposed, in full view, as a permanent reminder. Rebirth is possible even from the worst moments.
The Wines
Sandre’s range is pretty solid, and at the moment we focus on a few bottles that we love.
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Rosato di Raboso – Sparkling Rosé 100% Raboso, harvested mid-October, with around 12 hours of light maceration on the skins before decanting and Charmat-method secondary fermentation. Deep pink with lively reflections; the brief skin contact gives it colour and the grape's characteristic freshness without the tannic weight. Sour cherry, wild blackberry, a hint of linden blossom. The Raboso acidity preserved in a form that works beautifully as an aperitivo (or especially with burrata). This was a big surprise for me, and it is one of our sparkling I enjoy pouring the most because it is so unexpected for a grape called angry. |
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100% Raboso, harvested late October to early November after on-vine drying. 20 days of maceration in steel with daily pump-overs, malolactic fermentation completed in oak, then one year in wood. Deep ruby with garnet reflections, Marasca cherry and wild blackberry on the nose with violet florals, firm acidity and a dry, peppery finish. A very honest approach to this red grape, structured, built for robust food. |
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100% Merlot, harvested early October, 20 days of maceration in steel, then 4 months in steel and 4 months in oak barriques before bottling. Raspberry, cherry, violet, pepper, and vanilla on the nose; well-structured, harmonious, and persistent on the palate. It is a pretty versatile bottle, especially in Singapore where it works well with char siew, roasted meats, and medium-aged cheeses. |
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60% Merlot, 35% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Cabernet Franc. This is Sandre’s Bordeaux blend, and one of the first bottles I tried from the estate. 20 days of maceration in steel, malolactic fermentation completed in barriques, then 26 months in oak and a further 12 in bottle. Intense ruby with violet hints; red fruit preserves, cinnamon, tobacco, liquorice, vanilla, coffee on the nose; full-bodied, aristocratic, and persistently tannic. This is serious winemaking, and the resulting structure here calls for equally substantial food, such as beef rendang, lechon, or a well-aged hard cheese. Marco pours immense dedication into this bottle, and it definitely shows. |
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The centenary wine, a limited release that we do not know if it will go out again. |
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Named after Dorotea's nickname “la mora”, the dark-haired one, the only brunette among all her blonde sisters, the grandmother everyone simply called by that name rather than Dorotea. A blend of Verduzzo 50%, Manzoni 30%, and Traminer 20%, harvested early October and left to dry in ventilated rooms for around 3 months. Slow fermentation at ambient temperature, first in steel then 14 months in 225-litre barriques. A beautiful golden-yellow colour, with honey, exotic fruit, and wisteria on the nose; sweet, creamy, velvety, and long on the palate. Perfect with pastry or aged and blue cheeses. It is the right wine to end with. Both in the glass, and in this story. |
The Same Table
The old traditions have not ended. Winemaking and passion are the ever-present element in all that the Sandre family does. But it is not only that; when a customer arrives at Sandre today, there is still the instinct to pull up a chair and sit together for a while.
Ylenia says it plainly: "Hospitality is at the heart of our winery. When a customer arrives, there is always a slice of salami and a glass of wine waiting, welcoming them home to share a laugh together."
Four generations later, in a rebuilt winery with doubled solar capacity and certified sustainable vineyards, the plan remains more or less the same.
Her grandmother would have recognised it immediately. So would her great-grandfather, who started all of this with a farm and a few fields in 1926, with no particular plan beyond working the land well and treating people right.
A hundred years on, the Sandre family is still doing both.
Grateful to the land that made it possible, and to everyone who ever pulled up a chair.