Fabio Gazzabin: the godfather who showed me Venice

Who was Fabio Gazzabin?

On paper, Fabio Gazzabin was the man behind the man. He met Luca Zaia at the Province of Treviso, where Fabio was director general, and never really left his side: private secretary when Zaia was Minister of Agriculture, then again when Zaia ran the Veneto, and chief of staff.¹ At home in Arcade, a town in the province of Treviso, he went from councillor to deputy mayor to mayor.¹

Off paper, he was a don. A proper godfather. The kind of man who didn’t need to raise his voice, because everyone in the room already knew who he was.

He died in October 2022, aged 65, after a long illness he kept almost entirely to himself.¹ Of course he did. Fabio spent his whole life taking care of other people’s problems.

“Fabio always knew where the real Venice was.”

Va’ mona: the two words that got me in

First, Luca, because without Luca there is no Fabio in my story. Luca Zaia was the Veneto’s Minister of Agriculture in Rome, then President of the Veneto for fifteen years, from 2010 to 2025. In 2020 he was re-elected with 76.8% of the vote, which made him the most-voted regional president in Italian history.² Today he presides over the Veneto’s Regional Council.² Fabio was the man beside him the whole way.

I met Luca several times, in Venice and at Vinitaly, when I was first spending time in the Veneto. He was generous with his time, and with dinners. And at one of those dinners, he and Fabio told me the va’ mona story.

They told it as a duet, bouncing it back and forth across the table like two men who had told it a hundred times and still loved it. Every time one of them said va’ mona, it meant something completely different.

If you’re not Venetian, here’s the short version. Va’ mona does for Venetian what a certain four-letter word does for English. It’s an insult. It’s a hello. It’s a compliment, a shrug, a punchline and a whole argument, depending on who says it, how, and to whom. Same two words, dozens of meanings. Only a Venetian can explain it, and it took two of the best to explain it to me.

Every man at that table was proud of that story. And here’s the thing: they don’t tell it to tourists. If you know what va’ mona means, somebody let you in. Luca and Fabio let me in.

“If you know what va’ mona means, somebody let you in. Luca and Fabio let me in.”

How Fabio showed me Venice

Luca asked Fabio to look after me. Fabio took the job personally. He was generous with his time and generous with his connections, a truly exceptional man. He became a great friend, and one of the reasons I fell head over heels for Venice and the Veneto.

Here’s what he showed me, on one February day: the Grand Canal from the balcony of his office at the Region. Most people never get to stand there. Everywhere you look, it’s wow. Take a photo or a video and it’s like you’ve just photographed a painting. The colours, the movement: none of it looks real.

He believed in what I was building

Fabio got it. He knew about prosecco.com and thought it was a great idea.

He believed in what I was doing, and he wanted me to do well. When a man like Fabio wants you to do well, you notice.

The book in the red room

Fabio didn’t stop at the view. He showed you what the view was keeping. In a room hung with red damask, he opened a facsimile of the Grimani Breviary for me: an illuminated prayer book painted in Flanders around 1515 to 1520 and bought by Cardinal Domenico Grimani. The original is kept in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice.³

Two more from that day: the winged lion of St Mark, carved in wood under the words Regione del Veneto, and a carved shield with the word PAX.

How the Veneto remembered him

His funeral was held on 29 October 2022 in the church at Arcade. Members of the regional government were there, with many others from the Veneto’s institutions.⁴

Luca Zaia spoke at the funeral. In our translation of the Region’s statement:

“Fabio Gazzabin was an extraordinary person, whose work was decisive for the Veneto. Thanks to his work, often behind the scenes and without any fame at all, our Region overcame many difficulties.”

The Region added its deepest condolences to his family, his friends and everyone who loved him.⁴

Fabio’s passing left a great void, in Venice and well beyond it. The Veneto has one fewer person who knew where everything was.

Why this page, and why only now

Fabio deserved a page like this years ago. The honest reason there wasn’t one: until recently, prosecco.com didn’t have a design worthy of celebrating anyone, and I wasn’t going to give him anything less. Now it does. So the first thing I wanted to do with it was say thank you.

To Luca, with my respect and thanks, for the dinners, the story and the introduction. To Fabio, for everything after. And to you, for reading about a man you’d have loved to have a drink with.

“Grazie, Fabio. You are missed.”