Thanks for the reply. I’ve tumbled to your website and the nature of its purpose. Your writing is enjoyable. Unfortunately we’re a little distant from your US market. I’ll be forwarding your site around to my few contacts in Australia and the US. I stayed with Alessandro in 2007 and in May this year. In 1947, I actually helped with the grappa production at Ponte sul Mincio–I was 10 years of age–so long ago! Sadly women often used to receive little credit for their work–an aunt with the ubiquitous name Maria was distillery manager. The only apparent error in your Francoli story is that there were eight brothers in the Francoli family–of the late 19C–that included the younger Gabriele who went to the US and Guglielmo Luigi who was Alessandro’s great grandfather. My records from Campodolcino have three brothers and four sisters. The third brother–a Francesco–took his family to Rivoltella, a small town on lake Garda, and ran distilleries at that town. Incidentally there was an explosion (not literally) of grappa manufacturing out of the ‘home town’ of Campodolcino at the turn of the 19C.

A dignitary at Campodolcino has listed most of the distilleries out of Campodolcino. The histories of by-gone distilleries are still being discovered. Alessandro set up a story about it some years back–in Italian of course. I’ll give you more info on this topic if you wish.
By the way. I’m Australian born–my parents emigrated to Australia in the early 1920’s. A short visit to Italy with my mother at the end of 1946 turned into a 12 month stay–mostly in Campodolcino. As a 10/11 yearold Australian, I had a delightful time living in the Alps. In 2005 I wrote and published a memoir ‘An Alpine Sojourn–Campodolcino 1947′. For libraries, family ‘n friends.

Your writing about Ghemme and Gattinara was very detailed and informative. I went searching back to a diary I was writing after returning from Italy in 2007–I wrote intensively about my time with Alessandro–1000 words a day! He did inspire and is a truly NICE PERSON.

You described the grappa production process very well. Oh, I had a life as an industrial chemist when young. On the history of distillation there’s stuff around crediting the Chinese doing basic distillation of spirits in 3000BC. Checking essentialspirits.com, I was blocked by my security parental controls!!!

Oh! on Irishness. When I was young, Australia was a British protestant country with the significant minority being Irish Catholics. As a member of the smaller minority of Italians, I was educated by Irish-Australian nuns and Irish Christian Brothers–and married a Joan McGrath. We have five daughters, fourteen grandchidren and are stunned at becoming great grandparents a month ago.

Best wishes,

Carl

Nice to e-meet you. I am the author of the article. I spent some time with Alessandro in Italy in April this year (he’s a great guy) and talked at length about his family. I learned about the museum from him and when I returned to the USA, I contacted the museum. They provided me a picture of the still and also some background information that had been provided to them by the local Francoli family.

I was very interested because of the parallels between the Francolis and my family history. In addition to that article, I also wrote one about the Francoli distillery in Gheme and about his Torraccia winery and the Francoli Center there. You can use the search box on my web site and put in “Francoli” and it will give you all the links to the articles.

Thanks for writing to me. Sometime, I wonder if anyone reads what I write!

Best regards,

Rich