“Breganze dal buon vin, dal ricco prete”(“Breganze with its good wine and rich priests”), wrote the poet from Padua, Carlo Dottori in 1600. The history of this little town, which today numbers around 8500 inhabitants, has also been closely tied with viticulture and it is no coincidence that the first written documents were precisely notorial deeds for the sale of vineyards around the year one thousand. A sign that winegrowing has been practised here since ancient times.

It was however between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that Breganze asserted itself as an area of excellent wine. In 1754 Valeriano Acanti in his  Il roccolo ditirambo, (a sort of guide to wines from Vicenza of the time) lists thirty varieties of wine, three of which are from Breganze: Groppello, a red wine which today is being rediscovered; Vespaiolo, which he describes as  “a parer d’uomo togato è il più prelibato” (in the opinion of a togaed man, the most exquisite) and Pasquale, the grapes for which were hung to dry in the air until spring: the forerunner of Torcolato.

The Breganze area was given Denominazione di Origine Controllata status as far back as 1968, amongst the first in Italy. The DOC area covers a band of hills between the rivers Astico and Brenta and includes, either part of or the whole of the following comuni: Bassano del Grappa, Breganze, Fara vicentino, Marostica, Mason, Molvena, Montecchio Precalcino, Pianezze, Salcedo, Sandrigo, Sarcedo, Schiavon and Zugliano.