presence of those public officials. At most sites we visited, we were only able to peek through windows at the rows of filled cooperage as there were no government officers present. The day we toured Castagner wasn’t one of the two weekdays such officials were usually there. “We asked the officer to come today so we could go in to see the barrique cellar,” Giulia Castagner reveals. “Someone has to be physically here to make sure nothing weird happens.” That goes for the stillhouse as well. When a producer finishes distilling for the season — most activity takes place between September and April — the government agents affix a seal with wire to every seam of every still. When production commences the following season, the official is on hand to remove the seals. Most producers partner with select wine makers to procure a reliable supply of pomace, though some operate as both winery and distillery. For red varieties, the skins usually arrive postfermentation, as they’re fermented along with the must. Distillers typically have to ferment the pomace from whites before they distill. At many distilleries, a large Archimedian screw pump will transport the fermented pomace into the still for the first round of distillation. The solid marc is then steamed and distilled to about 27 percent ABV. It’s then usually distilled twice more (frequently using a combination of pot and column stills) to no more than 86 percent ABV — otherwise the distillery can’t legally call it grappa. When we dropped in on one of Italy’s largest grappa production facilities, Bonollo Umberto Distillery, large trucks carrying multiple tons of pomace were dumping it into gargantuan mounds occupying a sizable chunk of the 800,000-square-foot building. About 100 trucks a day deliver roughly 30 tons of pomace to Bonollo. There’s a very tight window of time between collection and distillation of the raw material, as it’s known to spoil quite quickly. That, of course, raises the question of what happens to all of those skins once they’ve gone through the distillation process. At Bonollo — and many other distilleries — the spent pomace becomes fuel. Bonollo prides itself on being 100 percent self-sufficient. The exhausted marc is burned to power a large horizontal cylindrical drying machine that separates the seeds from the skins of a fresh batch of pomace (Bonollo distillers say they use no gas whatsoever in the facility). The distillery removes seeds prior to distillation, as their known to impart harsh, tannic qualities to the finished product. Bonollo then sells the seeds to companies that produce grapeseed oil. Very little, if anything, gets wasted in the production process. Sustainability appears to be the norm across many of northern Italy’s grappa producers and it represents an embrace of modern operational realities — just as a focus on premium, single-varietal and barrel-aged expressions reflects a desire to evolve with the tastes of 21st century consumers. But, even with such an eye on the future, centuries-old family traditions remain safely intact.
Jeff Cioletti is the editor at large of Beverage World Magazine, creator of The Drinkable Globe website, and hosts the web series, The Drinkable Week. 54
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