Distilleria Romano Levi

Romano Levi - Grappa for the special moments

A branch of the ancient Levi family of Jewish origin worked since the seventeenth century in the Alpine valleys of San Giacomo or Vallespluga, locally called "Val di Giust", in the municipalities of Fraciscio di Campodolcino in the almost alchemical field of distillation. For over three centuries, distillers called "Grapat" temporarily migrated from these valleys to the wine regions of Piedmont during the grape harvest and wine production, where they distilled marc with mobile stills for the production of grappa. In time, many of these distillers settled permanently in the workplaces and established real, permanent distilleries. In Lombardy, Piedmont, Valle d'Aosta, Veneto and Emilia, about fifty distilleries were founded by people from the Val di Giüst.

In Fraciscio di Campodolcino still stands the house of Levi's ancestors, called "Casa degli Angeli" (House of Angels) because all the heads of the families who lived there were called Angelo, like Romano and Lidia's grandfather. Perhaps it is no coincidence that when Veronelli learned of Romano, he called him the "grappaiol'angelico" (the angelic grappa distiller).
Serafino Levi married Teresina Balbo, and the marriage produced two children, Lidia and Romano. In 1925 he decided to settle in Neive, the land of great wines and top quality marcs, where he founded his distillery.

Romano Levi starts distilling

Serafino died at a young age in 1933, leaving behind two young children and his wife, who continued to run the distillery. But she too was marked by a tragic fate, dying in an air raid in 1945. Romano Levi was then 17 years old and a student in Alba. He decided to abandon his studies and continue the distillery with the help of his sister Lidia.

The distillery was built by Serafino Levi and was then, as now, equipped with a direct distiller, as we are told in one of the rare interviews with the son Romano in 1991:

"... back then there were so many of them ... usually the distilleries worked with direct distillers. A Malba device, because I always heard the name Malba mentioned, then I saw that in the Bocchino distillery, which has a room with stills in sight, there was Malba Giovanni Ricostruzioni Meccaniche Asti or Malba Fratelli (Malba Brothers) or something like that, and what we have should be a Malba device ... for me, who I think I can now say I know it pretty well, although not extremely well, having been distilling for 46 years, it's a very good device. It's a little jewel, a toy that if you give it what it wants, what it needs, if you don't push it, if it suits it, it does wonders....
... I believe that this Giovanni Malba was a distiller, because they made this device very well; and if they designed it, they made it very well."

The Distillery Romano Levi today

The distillery of the House of Levi is today a living museum of grappa production, a real time capsule where the genius loci of Romano Levi appears everywhere in the art, in the working method and time, in the simple and basic objects, the scents and the serenity. The distillery is always open to everyone, a little more difficult to find a few bottles ready for sale, because the very small production capacity can not satisfy the demand that comes from all over the world, but connoisseurs are aware of this, they enjoy the serenity of the place, do not get annoyed and continue to wait or taste patiently.