Cocchi wines and vermouths are made in Asti, in the heart of Piedmont region of northwest Italy. I had a chance to visit the facilities this fall.
The company was founded in 1891 in Asti by Giulio Cocchi. He made flat, sparkling, and aromatized wines. Since 1978, the Cocchi company has been run by the Bava family. Our host was Roberto Bava, who is often seen around the global cocktail circuit at events like Tales of the Cocktail and Bar Convent Berlin.
Bava is currently the president of the Vermouth di Torino Institute and was part of the coalition of vermouth makers to get legal recognition for the Vermouth di Torino geographical indication (GI) in 2017. In order to qualify, the production and bottling must be in Piedmont, with alcohol between 16-22%, with Italian wine, artemisia absinthium and/or pontica also from Piedmont.
This is the entrance to the winery.
Cocchi previously produced products like fernets, annisetts, and rababaros that were discontinued in the 1980s, along with vermouths I believe. But with the cocktail renaissance the vermouths came back into necessity.
They only use macerated (rather than distilled) botanicals in their products. They do extractions in groups- a few botanicals at a time that can be used in various products. We visited the botanical room, where I would have stayed all day if I could have.
When I got home, I found I also had this printed document with more botanical information:
Visitor's Center:
Cocchi Products
Cocchi Americano is an aromatized wine with gentian, cinchona bark, bitter orange, and wormwood. It is used (and was probably designed) for drinking with ice and soda water.
Cocchi Rosa is made from a red wine base with the same extracts as the bianco, but with additional ginger and rose petals.
Cocchi Vermouth Di Torino is a sweet vermouth with wormwood, cinchona, bitter orange, and rhubarb.
They also make Dopoteatro Vermouth Amaro, an "evening vermouth" with wormwood, a double dose of cinchona, rhubarb, quassia, and chiretta (which is sometimes called Indian gentian and tastes very much like gentian).
Barolo Chinato Cocchi contains barolo wine and cinchona bark (as you'd guess from the name), rhubarb, gentian, and cardamom.
In addition to their still and sparkling wines, they also make grappa and made one batch of brandy.
Nardini, a company known for grappa but which produces a range of liqueurs and amari as well, is headquartered in Bassano del Grappa, Italy, and dates to 1779. I had the chance to visit the company this past fall and wow!
We started our tour in the distillery, or rather, one of the distilleries. The distillery and offices are fronted by Bolle, a building finished in 2004 to celebrate the brand's 225th anniversary.
The building is shaped like bubbles, has a pond underneath it, and the building continues underground. You can see peepholes into the lower level.
This building has an auditorium, meeting space, and laboratory testing space just to embrace the sci-fi look. When you're inside the building it doesn't look Coke bottle green as it appears in these pictures.
Then we left the Bolle and went into the actual distillery. This distillery in Bassano makes the batch distilled products, another one in Treviso (closer to Venice) has column/continuous stills and waste processing facilities.
Y'all know I can't resist a good filtration picture.
We then went into Bassano proper. The town has a famous wooden bridge. One end of the bridge is the Nardini Grapperia (the bridge is embedded in the building) – the original distillery site. On the top level there is a tiny grappa shop, but the building goes down several levels. A 360 Google map of the little shop is here.
We had aperitifs here and a chance to try some of the products.
Then we walked uphill through the ridiculously charming Bassano city (the cocktail bar you see wasn't open or we'd have stopped in).
Then we hit our third Nardini venue that day, Nardini Garage. It's a restaurant and bar and event space where we had lunch.
Making Grappa at Nardini
There was so much to see on my visit to Nardini (and we didn't even get to the second distillery) that there wasn't as much time as usual for me to geek out on production. So my notes on grappa production are going to be super brief.
They use a variety of grape pomace including merlot, tokai, and pinot grigio
The pomace is covered and sealed and left to ferment in cement vats. No yeast is added.
Distillation is via steam in air-tight stills (so it can be done at a lower temperature). [Note – as covered in my baijiu posts, baijiu is also distilled with steam as a solid.] The steam passes to the distillation column next, where the alcohol and water are separated. It is then redistilled in a rectifying column.
Grappa made at the two different distilleries is blended; I'd imagine much like rum with column still providing the bulk and discontinuous still grappa providing more of the flavor.
demineralized water is used to reduce
Aged grappa is aged in Slovenian oak
The grappa is chill filtered at -10 Celsius
Then they filter with "fossil flour" (which I think is diatomaceous earth) to remove oil. The oil comes from the seeds of the grapes and apparently it's not great for you – contributes to head and stomach aches. Then it's filtered through cellulose.
The oil is recycled and used for the cosmetic industry and grape seed oil; the grape skins are used for cattle feed.
Nardini Products
Nardini produces unaged and aged grappas bottled at 40, 50, and 60% ABV
Rue-infused grappa (rue is apparently a bitter plant that was once used as a vermicide like wormwood)
Tagliatella liqueur- grappa cherry distillate, bitter orange, herbs and spices
Mandorla – almond essential oil plus marasca cherry distillate
Acqua di Cedro in citron
Ginepro is juniper berries with cumin and other herbs
Mistra is star anise
They also have a fernet, elixir china (quinine), rabarbaro, amaro, and red gentian drinking bitters.
Mezzoemezzo is a blend of the rhubarb and gentian bitters
I had the pleasure of visiting the winery and distillery for Cocchi in Piedmont, Italy. More on the visit in a later post, but for now I wanted to share a bunch of images I took of botanicals used in the production of their products.
American readers will be familiar with Cocchi Americano, Cocchi Vermouth di Torino, and their Barolo Chinato.
I've been studying a lot of these botanicals lately, and found the write-ups on these from the tasting room to be very good. So I'll just post them here for future reference (yours and mine). Note that there is some good information on a few of these at the Cocchi website.
At this year's Golden State of Cocktails in Los Angeles, I attended a seminar by Giuseppe Gallo called "The Truth About Vermouth."
I knew a few things having visited both Martini and Noilly Prat in the past (follow those links to my distillery visit posts), but learned a lot more about the history and legal categorization of vermouth during this talk.
Below are my notes. You can see most of this information on Giuseppe Gallo's Slideshare page as well.
The word "vermouth" is based on the word for wormwood.
Absinthe (also containing wormwood) is based on the Greek word for unpalatable, referring to wormwood's bitterness.
Wormwood-infused wines go way, way back.
The spice trade in the vermouth region was monopolized by Genova in Italy (bordering the Piedmont region in which Turin is located) and Marseille in France (across the bay from Noilly Prat's Marseillan)
Part of Piedmont and part of Southern France were both part of the Kingdom of Savoy at one time. Then the Chambery region (where Dolin was founded; interior of France, north of Marseille) was traded to France, and the capital of Savoy was moved to Turin (where Martini was founded). So both sweet and dry styles of vermouth can essentially be traced to one place.
The first commercial vermouth was Carpano, founded in 1786. Sweet-style vermouth. A legal decree made the official style of vermouth in Turin be the sweet "rosso" style.
Noilly Prat in Marseillan was a dry style of vermouth, founded in 1813. It helped make France the center of dry-style of vermouth.
The EU laws for vermouth (note all legal stuff below is based on the EU law, which is not the same as in the US) are here: EEC No 1601/91 and state
Must be at least 75% wine
Must use artemesia ( of which wormwood is a member) as the main bittering agent [edit: the actual language around it is "the characteristic taste of which is obtained by the use of appropriate derived substances, in particular of the Artemisia species, which must always be used"]
14.5% – 21% ABV
Must be fortified
Categories of Aromatized Wine (all have added alcohol and artemesia) are:
Vermouth – as above
Americano – with gentian as the main bittering agent, and orange peel
Bitter Wine – including Amer Picon. Gentian
Vino Chinato – quinine wine
Vino All'uovo – Marsala and wine-based egg liqueurs like Vuv
Geographical Indications for Vermouth Can Be:
Vermouth d Chambery
Vermouth di Torino (which uses wormwood from the Piedmont region, and produced and bottled within region)
Sugar quantities for vermouth are:
(a) 'extra-dry': in the case of products with a sugar content of less than 80 grams per litre;
(b) 'dry': in the case of products with a sugar content of less than 50 grams per litre;
(c) 'semi-dry': in the case of products with a sugar content of between 50 and 90 grams per litre;
(d) 'semi-sweet': in the case of products with a sugar content of between 90 and 130 grams per litre;
(e) 'sweet': in the case of products with a sugar content of more than 130 grams per litre.
Martini vermouth does all their infusions into neutral alcohol, not into the wine itself
Martini (sweet, I assume) vermouth lasts 28 months after bottling when closed, and up to 8 months in the refrigerator after being opened.
Last year I visited Limoncello di Capri located on the island of Capri south of Naples in Italy. The liqueur is assembled on the island from ingredients produced on the mainland, including the lemon peels. These come from the Sorrento area nearby.
The Sorrento region has a long history with citrus. During the Greek/Roman period there were lemon trees planted for their beauty in the area. In the 17th century Jesuits started cultivating lemons to use as disinfectant against cholera. The beginning of the 19th Century saw the use of the pergola system I'll talk about in a minute.
Limone di Sorrento IGP – Lemon Laws
The lemons here as well as the limoncello are IGP products – Protected Geographic Indication like AOC or DOC. The IGP are includes both Sorrento and Capri. Here are some of the IGP Limone di Sorrento laws I was able to pick up:
Lemons must be covered in winter (see below).
Only natural fertilizer can be used.
They must be grown within the region
There are further regulations for limoncello below
The name for the lemons of the region is Ovale de Sorrento. The fruits take about one year to grow, though the tree flowers 3-4 times annually and they harvest fruit several times as well. The soil is volcanic and helps produce less acidic lemons than in other areas, but these lemons require special care to thrive in this region at all. We visited a lemon grove called Il Giardino di Vigliano.
*Note that somehow I destroyed all my pictures from this trip, so these photos come from Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing.
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
The lemon trees/branches are grafted onto wild orange tree rootstock. Those roots are bigger and hardier and live longer (200 years) than typical lemon trees, so they extend the life of the lemon trees.
Some of the trees have wild orange roots and base of the trunk, followed by a grafted regular (not wild) orange trunk, and then lemon branches grafted onto that (like some sort of citrus turduckin). They can only graft during April and May, and have only a 60-70% success rate in grafting, so this is not easy to accomplish.
Photo: Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
In the winter, the region cools down and gets windy, so they use the pergola system to protect the trees. Chestnut wood pieces make an awning structure over the top of the trees, and in the winter nylon netting or pagliarelle is spread across the top.
Pagliarelle (which sounds like "pie-a-rella") is just an old covering made from small wood slats. Both these coverings keep the temperature more stable in the cold months. In the photo below, the little houses actually hold the wooden slats which can be spread out over the pergola.
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
Northern Lemons vs. Southern Lemons
I previously visited another limoncello facility south of this area along the Amalfi Coast, and was surprised to see how different the lemons are grown while not being very far apart. Read about my visit with Pallini Limoncello here.
Those lemons are of the variety sfusato. The trees grow on terraced cliffs and the branches are supported by a pergola. (In Sorrento the pergola just holds up the roof.) Those lemons also grow faster and larger, have less essential oil in their peels, and are more acidic, according to my hosts.
Harvesting and Peeling Lemons for Limoncello di Capri
Limoncello di Capri purchases from about 30 different growers. They do not own the orchards but they employ 2 people whose job is to check on the quality of the lemons from the trees through the bottling process.
This is all tracked, so that the company could look at a bottle's serial number and tell you where the lemons came from used in it.
The lemons are hand-harvested and transported to the processing facility. Then they are soaked, then sprayed and brushed/polished.
Next they go into the peeling machine. Eighty Five percent of the lemon – all the fruit part – is discarded as they only want the peel.
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
The peelers at this facility are adapted cantaloupe peelers that can peel lemons 4 at a time. Here it is at regular speed:
And in slow-motion:
The peeled lemons are put into plastic bags, vacuum sealed to remove air, and frozen in 6 pound bags. They are frozen because they will be used to make limoncello year-round, while the lemon harvesting is only for part of the year.
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
Limoncello Laws
There are IGP laws for IGP Limone di Sorrento limoncellos, which can be produced in Sorrento and on Capri.
It must be produced, peeled, and bottled within the IGP
No colorant is allowed and no chemicals can be used in the processing
They must have a minimum of 250 grams of lemon per liter. (Limoncello di Capri uses 330 g/l in their formula.)
That number is the quantity of whole lemons used. So, since Limoncello di Capri uses 15% of the lemon (the peel), that means there are 330 x .15 = 49.5 grams per liter of lemon peels used.
Life Gives You Too Many Lemons
With 85% of each lemon discarded, I asked about any recycling/reuse. They said that some lemons are in fact juiced. Some of the lemons are composted, some are disposed of as industrial waste, and the city uses some as a disinfectant in its water treatment program.
Assembling the Limoncello on the Island of Capri
Capri is an island a short ferry ride from the town of Sorrento. It is full of windy roads and tall cliffs, which means there are great views from nearly everywhere on the island.
If I understood correctly, not only is Limoncello di Capri the only commercial limoncello made on the island, it is the only production facility of any kind on the island.
It was also the first brand to use and trademark the name "limoncello" meaning "little lemon", but plenty of other people used the term. The Italian Supreme Court ruled that limoncello was a generic name in 2002, so they got a bit stiffed on that one.
The lemon peels are removed from their vacuum-sealed bags and added to 2000 liter tanks of 96% ABV grain alcohol. The lemon peels are infused for 5 days in the alcohol, and by the end the mixture is down to 87% ABV. They use lemon peels collected at different parts of the season to control for natural variation.
The lemon peels are then filtered out and sugar and water is added. The final sugar content is 240 grams per liter.
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
They bottle the product at 32 percent alcohol, which they say is slightly higher than other brands because the product is all natural and more alcohol is needed as a preservative. (They also say that only 20% of limoncellos are made with only lemons- the rest have flavorings and colorings.)
The bottled limoncello is then shipped out. They bottle on the island in the mornings and ship out the limoncello in the afternoons. Because the island only has small roads, their van can only take one palette of limoncello at a time. The driver loads up 7 palettes per day.
In bad weather, they can't get supplies in or limoncello off the island, so production goes on hold.
They produce 800,000 bottles per year at this tiny facility.
A Model of Inefficiency
It doesn't take an efficiency expert to see that this is a crazy system: Bottles, alcohol, sugar , and lemon peels are shipped over from the mainland, mixed together, then sent back to the mainland. It would make a lot more sense to do this all on the mainland, but they're sticking with the brand's heritage and producing on the island.
The brand history dates back to the 1800s, when hotel owner Vincenza Canale would prepare the drink for hotel guests. There were traditions of making homemade lemon liqueur but according to the brand nobody thought to commercialize it until much later. (As far as I can tell, commercial limoncello only began in the 1980s.)
The brand Limoncello di Capri was not launched until 1988 by the descendants of Vincenza.
We visited the little hotel where the brand was founded, Casa Mariantonia, which was apparently only the second hotel built on the island. There is still a lemon grove in the yard, where we had drinks.
I think of bottles of spirits with strong regional connections as postcards of flavor. Limoncello di Capri will always remind me of the sunny island where it's made.
In the fall of 2014 I had a really terrific visit to the distilleries for Molinari Sambuca and Limoncello di Capri, both located south of Rome in Italy.
History Lesson
Molinari Sambuca is an anise liqueur originally created in Civitavecchia, a port city north of Rome. Much like Schiedam in the Netherlands where the spices that came on ships ended up in local spirits (juniper for genever and other ingredients for liqueurs in that case), star anise reaching Civitavecchia wound up in in local spirits and gave birth to the category of sambuca.
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
Molinari was not the first brand of sambuca on the market- that honor belongs to Luigi Manzi and his Sambuca Manzi going back to 1851; also in Civitavecchia.
However it was Molinari Sambuca, created by Angelo Molinary in 1945, that became world famous (and is still the best-selling sambuca in the world). During the "La Dolce Vita" era in Italy the brand purchased TV ads and it became the second-best selling spirit in Italy after Aperol.
Today there are two Molinari distilleries. One is still in Civitavecchia (though they say the facility is now more for administration and a small production line) and the other is Colfelice, about a 1 hour drive south of Rome, where they make the majority of the product.
The company is still run by family members. Only one person per generation knows the exact recipe for Molinari, but after one of them was kidnapped and held for ransom many years ago they decided that they should also keep a copy in a vault.
Making Molinari
The primarily flavor of Molinari comes from star anise that is imported from southeast China. To prepare it, the fruits are harvested, the seeds are blanched to stabilize them, they are then partially crushed and essential oils are extracted through water distillation. I believe this all happens in China, though some refinement of the essential oils may occur locally. Most of the essential oil from star anise comes from the seeds.
*Note: I somehow lost most of my photos from the trip so I'm using those of Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing.
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
There are other secret ingredients in Molinari. (Wikipedia notes that licorice and elderflowers are often found in sambuca but I'm not sure what's in this one.)
The sugar used for Molinari is non-GMO sugar derived from sugar beets. They say it has a high solubility which makes it good for use in liquids.
The base alcohol is distilled from wheat (they purchase, rather than distill it). Often that wheat is grown in France but it is distilled in Italy.
To make Molinari they combine demineralized water at 60-75 degrees Celsius with sugar so that it dissolves. They wait for it to cool then add 96% ABV alcohol and essential oils.
The mixture rests for 5 days in large tanks. It is then filtered with a 3 micron cellulose filter at room temperature. (Chill-filtering sambuca would cause the louche effect and remove many of those essential oils they just added.)
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
Molinari Caffe
Molinari Caffe has been made since 2003 but it was just reintroduced to the US market this winter.
It is made primarily with two kinds of coffee: Aribica (from the Domonican Republic/Java region) and Robusta from Africa. The coffee is roasted in Italy before making the liqueur here at the distillery. It is not just a coffee liqueur – the base Molinari Sambuca is there as well so it's a coffee-anise liqueur.
The color comes in part from burnt caramel. My hosts tell me that if you use burnt caramel for coloring you don't need to declare it on the label per EU rules, but other caramel coloring does need to be declared.
(a) Sambuca is a colourless aniseed-flavoured liqueur:
(i) containing distillates of anise (Pimpinella anisum L.), star anise (Illicium verum L.) or other aromatic herbs,
(ii) with a minimum sugar content of 350 grams per litre expressed as invert sugar,
(iii) with a natural anethole content of not less than 1 gram and not more than 2 grams per litre.
(b) The minimum alcoholic strength by volume of sambuca shall be 38 %. L 39/42 EN Official Journal of the European Union 13.2.2008
(c) The rules on flavouring substances and preparations for liqueurs laid down under category 32 apply to sambuca.
(d) The sales denomination may be supplemented by the term ‘liqueur’.
Note that the regulations define sambuca as 'colourless' but there are red and green and black ones on the market at least in the UK. Not sure how that's allowed.
One Quick Recipe
Molinari has hired the talented Gegam Kazarian to develop cocktails with the brand. We tried several of them at a tasting at the cocktail bar Barnum Cafe in Rome. The Cucumis Collins was my favorite of the bunch.
Cucumis Collins By Gegam Kazarian
60 ml Molinari Extra 30 ml Lemon Juice 60 ml Sparkling Water 60 g Fresh Cucumber Cherry tomato Lemon Peel
Muddle the cucumber in a cocktail shaker then add liquid ingredients except sparkling water. Shake with ice and strain into collins glass. Add sparkling water and garnish with lemon peel, and cherry tomato, and a thin slice of cucumber.
This July I visted the town of Saronno, Italy, and the blending and bottling house where they make Disaronno liqueur (formerly known as Disaronno Amaretto).
So The Legend Goes
Disaronno, as with many brands, is based on a legend involving a beautiful woman and a secret manuscript. We visited the chapel where the story begins.
In the 1400s, the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Miracles was founded in Saronno. For a later addition to the chapel in 1525, a painter named Bernardino Luini found a model for the Virgin Mary in a local widowed innkeeper, and used her face in the paintings in the chapel.
As a reward for this honor, the innkeeper gave the painter a present of a flask of liqueur, which was what would become Disaronno. The brand claims that this was the first amaretto liqueur, “amaretto” meaning “a little bit bitter.”
In the 1600s, a member of the Reina family supposedly rediscovered the old recipe, and it was commercialized in the early 1900s. The Reina family still owns the company.
The Company Today
Today Disaronno is one brand from a big company named ILLVA. A big part of the company is a flavor company called Real Aromi. This part makes the flavors that go into the liqueurs. Other spirits made in the facility include Zucca, Tia Maria, and an amaro called 18.
How Disaronno Makes Bitter Almond Oil
Probably the most important ingredient in Disaronno is the essential oil made from bitter almonds.
Bitter almonds are illegal to sell as a food product in the US, because they contain a chemical that converts to the poison cyanide. Sweet almonds is what we crunch on. Neither type of almond is a true nut; they are pits of fruits.
As I understand it, there are many varieties of both sweet and bitter almonds, and both share the same botanical genus as the peach. While sweet almonds (as well as the tree) are just called almonds , bitter almonds can be either a particular almond tree/nut, or (as is the case at Disaronno) the pits of related stone fruits. The folks at Disaronno seemed to say that no matter if the pit comes from cherries, peaches, or apricots, it's still a bitter almond.
According to Wikipedia, "The fruits from Prunus dulcis var. amara are always bitter as are the kernels from other Prunus species like apricot, peach and cherry (to a lesser extent)."
For Disaronno they purchase 300 tons of bitter almonds (apricot pits) annually. They only use their oil for their product; they don’t sell it to other companies.
So, bitter almonds, which here are the kernels of apricots, are first crushed in a machine that grinds them into a flour. This flour is then soaked in hot water, which separates the flavor components from the sugars in the pits.
This is similar to making scotch whisky, in which ground malted barley is heated with hot water to separate the sugars from the solids. The sugary water is used and they leave the solids behind. For Disaronno, though, they don’t want the sugars and they do want the flavors.
The sugar and heated almond flour mix is then distilled under pressure (which allows you do to it a lower temperature), so that they don’t cook the bitter almonds. The run the still at a max of 50 degrees Celsius. Note that this is a water distillation, not an alcoholic one.
As is typical in distillation, the lighter components boil over and leave the heavy ones behind. This includes not only the almond solids (which are sold to make biscuits and other Italian treats), but also the poisonous arsenic that is contained in pits. (At ArtOfDrink, Darcy O’Neill studies the problem of cyanide in pits.)
The result of the distillation after condensation is oils and water. These are kept in a tank and left to naturally separate. They then pull off the bitter almond essential oil to use to make Disaronno, and save the water to use in the next distillation.
We smelled the raw essential oil – it has those high orange/cherry notes, sweet nuts, and marzipan notes typical of Disaronno, but also a bit of a marker smell that thankfully doesn't show in the final product. The essential oil is not bitter from the bitter almonds, as those aromas are heavier and don't pass through their distillation.
The Blending and Bottling Facility
The production and administrative offices for Disaronno, Real Aromi, and the ILLVA are in an industrial office park of sorts in Saronno. We were the first group of press ever allowed into the facility, but alas, no pictures were allowed of the production part.
While the office building is decked out in modern style with gray and white backgrounds with red accents and modern art on the walls, the rest of the facility seems to hold anonymous buildings in which all the magic happens. We visited a chemical analysis lab, the bottling room, blending room, and the areas where they make the almond essential oils and other flavors.
We started in the herb storage room, which was full of big sacks of things like Chinese rhubarb (which smells like smoky curry and I later tasted as a note in Campari), ginseng roots and vanilla beans, along with things like Glucinex, propylene glycol, and dextrose monohydrate.
The extraction room was filled with all different sorts of stainless steel vats and tubs, with a few older machines scattered about. (The flavoring part of the company only relocated to this spot a year ago – before that it was in southern Italy.)
Some of the vats were soaking vats, where water and/or alcohol is combined with a flavor to extract it. In front of one row of vats was a centrifuge that runs sideways, like the one I’d seen at Cointreau.
Other tubs rotate slowly sideways to keep liquids and solids mixing.
A set of cool-looking stills that basically hang from the ceiling perform distillation under pressure for the purpose of concentrating ingredients. So while in a typical alcohol distillation we distill over the parts we want and throw out what’s left in the bottom of the still, here they keep the reminders and discard or recycle what comes out of the still. They were making ginger and guarana concentrates when we were there.
Another room was filled with a single giant machine for making powdered flavors. The flavor components are combined with starches and the liquids are flicked around the inside of a big diamond shaped box. When the liquids hit the sides of the box (I think it is heated), the liquids evaporate and the starches and flavors remain together. The solids then fall to the bottom of the diamond and into a collection bag below.
Putting It all Together: How Disaronno Is Made
Bitter almond essential oil is one of the two main flavoring components of the liqueur. The other is vanilla. These flavors (and probably others, the recipe is a secret) are combined with water, sugar, alcohol, and coloring.
First water and sugar are combined to make a weak syrup. Alcohol and the flavorings are combined and added together. Then the coloring comes after the mixture has rested for 2 hours. The flavored oils are added with alcohol, as aroma molecules are soluble in alcohol (we learned more about this at that Mixing Star Lab), and with this method the water won't blow off the aromas.
Disaronno is then bottled. In most parts of the world it is bottled at 28% ABV but in Spain and Australia it is bottled at 20% (because apparently you can only advertise alcohols under a certain percent), and it is bottled at that same lower ABV for Ohio and Alaska due to bigger tax rates at higher strengths in those states.
The alcohol base is dervied from either sugar beets or sugar cane (they say it's the same once it's distilled up super high), and the sugar used to sweeten it comes from sugar beets.
Thanks to Disaronno for a peek inside the process.
I am one lucky son-of-a-gun. This September I visited Rome and the Amalfi Coast with PalliniLimoncello. Though we began the trip in Rome and went to the Amalfi Coast later, I'll explain the process of making limoncello in the proper order.
The Lemons of the Amalfi Coast
The lemons for Pallini are sfusato ("elongated") lemons, so-named for their tapered shape. They are also sometimes called feminine lemons because each side looks like a nipple. These are slightly different from Sorrento lemons that are more football-shaped.
These lemons are low in acid; very sweet. In fact we had an unsweetened lemonade made with them. It was tart, but still drinkable. Even the pith isn't that bitter- we had a 'salad' made with these lemons soaked in balsamic vinegar and salt – and you could eat the whole thing – fruit, pith, and rind.
But for limoncello purposes, they're interested in the skin of the lemons only. The skins of sfusato lemons are highly aromatic and rich in essential oils.
These lemons grow along the Amalfi Coast in a most improbable way. Actually, the whole coast doesn't make much sense – it is all incredibly steep and rocky, with sharp inclines from the mountains down to the ocean. Picture the drive along Highway 1 in California if people had build houses all the way down to the ocean.
Carved into the cliffs are terraced gardens on which they grow lemons, along with eggplants, grapes, tomatoes, olives, and everything else you can think of. It's a surprisingly productive area given that the base is just rocks.
But the cliff-side growing arrangement means lots and lots of sunshine for these plants. The lemons grow so big and so productively that if these were just normal trees growing on their own, the branches would almost surely snap beneath the weight of the fruit.
Thus the farmers have developed a system to support the lemon tree branches, a pergola made of chestnut wood. This forms a lemon tree umbrella of sorts, with hundreds of huge lemons dangling from above.
(Bonus cat picture!)
The terraced lemon groves present some difficulties in harvesting, as you'd imagine. The lemons are all picked by hand as they ripen, then must be carried uphill to the next road that can be pretty far when you've got a heavy crate of lemons on your back.
Processing Lemons
After the lemons are harvested, they're transported by truck along the windy (and terrifying to those of us scared of heights) road to the processing center. We visited the one Pallini uses: CastierAgrumi De Riso.
When the lemons come in to the factory, they are first washed and then sorted. The very best lemons are sold in crates to stores and restaurants. The rest are peeled to make limoncello.
To do this, they use a machine that peels two lemons at a time. It is hand-loaded and seems to frequently jam – no wonder with sticky, oily peels involved. In this video, you can see the machine working.
The peels that come out are then vacuum-sealed into bags and sent to Pallini to use.
Making Limoncello
Pallini's distillery (it's not actually a distillery as they don't distill there but a rectification plant; still I'll call it a distillery for the sake of clarity) is where they make limoncello from the lemon peels.
Though once there were 30 distilleries in Rome, Pallini is the only one left. Originally, the distillery was located a few hundred yards from the Pantheon in central Rome but now it is in an industrial park-type area a good 30-40 minutes drive from the city center.
To make the limoncello, first they soak the peels in high-proof alcohol (I think around 96%) to extract their flavor. Though they didn't tell us the exact time, I inferred the extraction takes less than a couple of days.
Then they blend this concentrated lemon alcohol with more neutral alcohol (that is distilled from Italian sugar beet molasses), water, and a sugar syrup (made from crystallized sugar beet sugar). To make the flavor pop, they also add essential oils from the same lemons.
Somewhere in the process, they homogenize the ingredients so they retain a fresh flavor and do not separate or oxidize. We tasted several other brands of limoncello and most had a slightly musty flavor of oxidation compared to Pallini.
Other Products
Pallini also makes a Raspicello (useful as a Chambord substitute, or perhaps in a Bramble?) and a Peachcello (for the Bellini). These are actually made by distilling the berries and peaches, and adding fruit juice or fresh berries back in at bottling time. The production seemed pretty interesting but we didn't go into it in detail.
Pallini makes around 150 products, which you'd never guess given the size of the distillery. The most famous one, however, is SambucaRomana. They created this brand but sold it to Diageo in the 1980s. They still produce it for Diageo though. It's actually a pretty interesting product on its own; a blend of distillates from three kinds of anise, elderflower, angelica, and other herbs and spices.
Anyway, that's it for my Pallini trip. Limoncello is an incredibly straight-forward liqueur made from very special lemons grown in an absolutely stunning place.
In May I visited Italy to learn more about the botanicals used in Bombay Sapphire. From Tuscany they get both the juniper berries and orris used in the gin.
In the rolling hills of Tuscany at high elevations where there are few trees and many wildflowers are found the juniper bushes.
They're kind of ugly, sprawling little bushes.
They're full of clusters of berries- more than I'd expect. We were there during the off season, so not many are the blue color of ripe berries.
Juniper is harvested by hand, using wide round baskets and short sticks.
They stick the baskets beneath a branch and whack it with the stick so that the blue, ripe berries fall off but the green, unripe ones do not.
Some of the needles stick to the berries. Any green ones that get in are sorted out later.
I tried it, but wasn't very good at it.
But then again, there weren't actually any ripe berries to harvest at this time of year.
This is the entrance to the winery. 
