Ruge is the project of Ruggero Ruggeri, a young enologist from Santo Stefano di Valdobbiadene who spent years consulting for wineries in the area before turning his attention to his own family's land. In 2010 he began vinifying fruit from the four hectares his parents had planted decades earlier — grapes that, until then, had always been sold off to other local producers.
The vineyards sit within the Valdobbiadene DOCG— the heart of premium Prosecco production — on steep hillside terrain at about 300 meters above sea level, where yields run naturally low and quality runs high compared to the flatter, more heavily cropped sites down in the valley. The soil is a lean mix of clay and limestone, planted at high density with Glera. Production is still tiny — around 13,000 bottles a year — though Ruggeri's long-term goal is to scale toward 3,500 cases.