ALUMNI/AE
difference. What sticks with me was how
in the Valpolicella region. When Lucy and
open and receptive everybody was. We were
Diego visited comparable boutique wineries
immediately so at home.” They arrived as teenagers in a new country, speaking English but not yet fluently, far from their family. What could have been disorienting instead became formative. That sense of belonging, of being known and welcomed, left a lasting impression. Today, it shapes how they run their winery: the way they host guests, the way they collaborate with their small team, the way they think about building something within a community.
Designing the Cellar When the Todeschinis returned to Italy after college, they inherited land, but not a finished operation. The existing cellar, built years earlier by their grandfather, needed to be completely reimagined, and Lucy took the lead in its design. To do it, she had to learn not only the language of design, but the technical demands of winemaking: airflow systems, safety codes, equipment specifications, production workflows. Every decision had
for reference early in the project, they found almost none with any meaningful design investment at all. Their cellar’s distinction has already been recognized. Last year, Lucy converted an office space on the vineyard property into a guest suite, and the resulting design won an award from the American Society of Interior Designers. It was, she says, the moment her New York interior design practice began to take off in earnest. Corvina, Corvinone, and Rondinella,
Crafting Something Alive If Lucy shapes the space, Diego shapes the product. He manages the grapevines, overseeing everything from harvest
alongside Cabernet, Merlot, Garganega, and Chardonnay. For now, they are focused on red wines: Valpolicella Superiore and, the crown of the lineup, Amarone.
to fermentation to aging. The wines—
Amarone is not a casual wine. The finest
Valpolicella Superiore, Amarone, and new
grapes of the harvest are hand-picked,
experimental blends—are produced through a
then dry-aged for a month to six weeks
process that blends tradition with innovation.
to concentrate their sugars before
The Todeschini vineyard sits within the
fermentation. After that, the wine ages
DOC Valpolicella Classico Superiore
for three years. Diego manages this
designation—one of the most respected
process with their team of enologists and
appellations in the Veneto—and their
agronomists, navigating a blend of old and
fields hold the region’s traditional grapes:
new that directly mirrors his grandfather’s
to serve both aesthetic and practical ends. The concept she developed—what she describes as neoclassical industrial—draws
LEARNING TO SEE DIFFERENTLY
on Verona’s architectural history while
For Lucy, Millbrook was a place of discovery—less about what she
embracing the reality that this is a working
already knew, and more about what she didn’t yet know she loved.
production space. Even the fermentation
“What I really appreciated about my experience at Millbrook was that it opened a lot of doors for
vats reflect that philosophy: custom-built in
me,” she says. “I got to experiment with things I never thought I would like.”
elliptical forms that echo the ancient Arena di Verona while maximizing efficiency. It took three years to bring the space to
Photography, which she took almost by accident, became a lasting passion. Squash, a sport she had never encountered, led to varsity competition and a role as captain in her VIth form year. All that she explored helped her discover more about herself and led to amazing relationships with
life, and it was completed just in time for
friends and faculty.
the winery’s first official harvest. Finishing
That process of trying, adjusting, and refining is at the heart of Lucy’s career today as an interior
touches like lighting and surface details
designer, where each project requires balancing vision with constraint, creativity with function.
are being added gradually as wine sales
At the vineyard, that same mindset guided her through an entirely new challenge: designing a
generate the cash flow to complete them.
working winery from the ground up.
The result is something genuinely unusual
SPRING 2026 •
73