A kiln site, a locomotive and a licence.

Distilleria Sibona stands in the Roero, in the comune of Piobesi d’Alba, a few kilometres from Alba in Piedmont. The company says it was born “about a hundred years ago” on the site of an old kiln; Italian Wikipedia gives 1900 as its founding year, and Luigi Barbero, its owner, told the Turin news site Il Torinese, in a promotional feature published in September 2026, that it began at the start of the twentieth century. Its full company name, Italian Wikipedia says, is Antica Distilleria Domenico Sibona S.p.A.

Its founding story is about machinery. The company says distillation began with an old steam locomotive, which later gave way to copper stills, and Italian Wikipedia repeats the account. The distillery’s other founding asset is a document: it holds the old distillation licence No. 1 issued by the UTF, the Italian finance office that oversees distilleries, the company says.

The founding family ran the business for most of the century. In Barbero’s account to Il Torinese, the Sibona family led the distillery until the middle of the 1980s; after Domenico Sibona, the last member of the family directly involved in its management, his daughter, who already lived in Milan, decided not to carry it on.

The company places itself in wine country. Its website describes the distillery as sitting where the Roero meets the Langhe, the hills of Barolo, Barbaresco, Barbera, Dolcetto and Arneis, in an area it notes is also known for the white truffle of Alba.

The Barbero years.

The Barbero family has owned Sibona since about 1986. Luigi Barbero told Il Torinese that his father and his uncle, who already owned a wine business at the time, took the distillery over “around 1986,” and that he now owns it with his family and is also its administrator. In the 1990s, he said, the business moved to its present site, on the outer edge of Piobesi among the vineyards; the company’s website gives the address as Via Castellero.

Production stays in Piobesi, by the company’s account. It says the pomace — the grape skins left after winemaking — is distilled fresh, as soon as it reaches the distillery, and that it comes from the vineyards of the area: Nebbiolo, the grape of Barolo, Barbaresco and Roero, as well as Barbera, Dolcetto, Moscato, Chardonnay, Arneis and Brachetto. It credits three oenologists with the distilling and describes two ageing cellars holding tonneaux and barriques as well as casks that once held Port, Madeira, Sherry, Tennessee whiskey, rum and Sauternes. Its Grappa XO, it says, spends more than six years in tonneaux.

The range now goes well beyond grappa. Barbero told Il Torinese that the company makes about 25 different grappas, counting grape varieties, finishes and ages. Its website also lists single-grape and blended grappas, Barolo reserves aged five and eight years, a Vermouth di Torino made with Nebbiolo d’Alba, an amaro, a gin, a distillate of beer and an Italian whisky. The whisky, Barbero said, is distilled at Sibona, while the fermentation is handled by a brewery in the province of Cuneo.

In 2026 the distillery opened its doors to the general public for the first time, Il Torinese reported, with guided tours run with a local tour company, the first of them on Saturday 26 September.

Grappa and its houses.

The seven brands in this group are all Italian grappa names: Berta, Mazzetti d’Altavilla, Marzadro, Bocchino, Sibona, Castagner and Bonollo. Grappa is a spirit distilled from pomace, the skins, seeds and pulp left over once grapes have been pressed for wine, so a grappa house depends on the wineries around it, and its range is often organised by grape variety, by the wine the pomace came from, or by how long the spirit has spent in wood.

Many grappa houses still carry a family name, and several of the brands here are linked to the northern regions where much of Italy’s grappa is made, including Veneto, Trentino and Piedmont. A family name on a label does not on its own say who owns the business today, where the pomace is distilled or where the bottles are filled, and a single surname can belong to more than one company.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its grappa is distilled and how its bottles and labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A graduated bottle and a number.

Sibona’s identity rests on a bottle and a number. The company calls its bottle the “Graduata” — the graduated bottle — and says its shape is registered and protected by patent. The notches down its side, which mark how much is inside, are taken from the glass containers once used in old herbalists’ shops, the company says, and its labels and boxes, it adds, were designed in pursuit of elegance and value. The bottle is also sold in special formats, from 20 centilitres to a 1.5-litre magnum, according to the website.

The number is the licence. Italian Wikipedia says the company still uses an “N.1” logo, a reference to its distillation licence, and the company’s own website opens its case for the brand with the licence before anything else. One reserve is named “La numero 1.” The rest of the range is named plainly, by grape, by cask or by place: Grappa di Nebbiolo, the Riserva Barolo, reserves finished in Port and Sauternes casks, and the Uvedilanga grape distillate.

The company presents the bottle as a gift as much as a drink: its website says the match between product and packaging matters to anyone giving a present or wanting an elegant presence in a bar or restaurant.

For a design guide, Sibona shows how a distillery can turn an excise licence and an apothecary bottle into a house style. Compare Berta, another Piedmont grappa house, and Marchesi di Barolo, a cellar from the Barolo country nearby. For this guide we use a Barolo red, copper and pale glass tones with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Sibona’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.