Sarah's vineyard
“My grandfather owned some land near Conegliano, in Northern Italy, and I grew up among the woods and hills. After my studies, I decided to renovate the old family farmhouse and create an agriturismo (holiday farm) that would become a place to discover prosecco.” Born in 1987 in Vittorio Veneto, near Conegliano, Sarah Dei Tos comes from an entrepreneurial family: her father runs the Itlas wood company. After graduating in Economics from Bocconi University in 2009 and earning a Master’s in Management from Nottingham University in 2010, she decided to return home to relaunch the wine business on the family estate.
After all, wine has long been her passion. She says: “I remember going with my father on his work trips. He would go to auctions to buy wood, and when we traveled through France we would go to wineries, exploring vineyards and champagne.”
This is how La Vigna di Sarah was born, a winery that started out with 7 hectares and later grew to 21. Production began in 2012 with the first bottles of Rive di Cozzuolo Prosecco. From the beginning, Dei Tos experimented with innovative techniques and tried to introduce them in the vineyard. “I decided to try harvesting Glera at night. Harvesting after sunset means we can take advantage of the lower temperatures than during the day. That way the grapes don’t ferment right away,” she explains. An innovation that led the winery to draw up a production specification, pending approval, thanks to collaboration with Coldiretti (National Confederation of Italian Farmers).
A passionate traveler, Dei Tos loves the opportunity to meet people and discover different cultures: “In the farmhouse and winery we have visitors from China, Japan, and the United States. People who come to taste our product, which evolves every year.” As evidenced by the decision in 2018 to create the Bio Consortium, together with two partners, to build a network of companies capable of promoting sustainable activities.
However, breaking into the world of wine is not easy for a woman. “I often notice that there are few of us women in this industry. I was making a video at one of the recent producer fairs and I counted three women out of 200 participants. People don’t want to give you any credit in this world; they test you right away to see how much you know, how much you understand about winemaking. But being underestimated can be an advantage in the long run,” she adds. Now a mother of three, Sarah Dei Tos explains that having children has taught her a lot: “I’ve improved my time management skills. You have to be super organized to get everything done, and that’s a plus for running a business too. I’ve also become much more patient.”
Looking to the future, Dei Tos is betting on precision farming. “I think that technology can do a lot to reduce the physical effort that this work requires. In this sense, I am convinced that innovation can also pave the way to opening up the wine sector to women.” The advice she gives to women wine enthusiasts is to get as much specific, technical expertise as they can. “From oenology to agronomy,” she says, “specialization is the key to success in the world of wine. And the key to doing away with a few too many stereotypes,” she adds.
