One grape, one town and a founder whose name is still on the bottle.

Bocchino is a family grappa distillery in Canelli, the Piedmont town in the province of Asti. The company’s own line is “la Grappa dal 1898”: it says Carlo Bocchino founded a small distillery in Canelli in 1898 and chose to distil only the pomace of the local Moscato grapes, rather than the undifferentiated mix of pomace that was usual at the time. Gambero Rosso gave the same founding story in July 2021: a small distillery in Canelli, founded in 1898 by Carlo Bocchino, making grappa from Moscato pomace.

The business passed down the family. The company says Carlo’s son Lazarito took it on in 1937, and that it then passed to Lazarito’s son-in-law, Giorgio Micca. The company says Carlo Micca Bocchino, Giorgio’s son, has led the distillery since 1996, working with his daughters Miranda and Marta; Gambero Rosso also described Carlo running the business with Miranda and Marta and called it a family firm. The founder’s name now does three jobs at once: it is the name of the founder, the name of the grandson who runs the house, and the name on its signature aged grappa, the Riserva Carlo Bocchino.

The method, the company says, is still the founder’s: pomace from a single grape variety is fermented in steel tanks and then steam-distilled in discontinuous copper stills, so that the vapour passes slowly through the pomace. The aged grappas rest in small oak casks and barriques in cellars dug into the tufa of the hillside, which the company says give the grappas their amber colour. The raw material is local too: the company says it selects pomace from growers in the Langhe and the Monferrato, chosen by the cru area it comes from, so that each grappa carries the aromatic profile of a particular grape and place. Only the longest-aged spirits, it says, go into the house reserves.

A black seal, and a quiz-show host on the Matterhorn.

The brand’s best-known name came from the third generation. The company says Giorgio Micca launched the Sigillo Nero — “black seal” — brand in the 1970s, and Gambero Rosso also credited him with creating the grappa’s symbol around the name “Black Seal.”

That advertising had a famous face. The company says Giorgio began a collaboration with Mike Bongiorno, the Italian television quiz-show host, in the same decade. Panorama reported in February 2013 that Bongiorno was the face of grappa Bocchino for ten years, and that in 1976 he was flown by helicopter to the summit of the Matterhorn — the Cervino, 4,478 metres — to shoot a commercial ending in the line “sempre più in alto,” “ever higher.” The helicopter left to refuel, the weather turned, and, Panorama reported, it took three hours of attempts before the pilot could bring him down. Sorrisi e Canzoni TV told the same story of the 1976 shoot and the three-hour wait in May 2024, and Italian Wikiquote lists “Sempre più in alto!” among Bongiorno’s lines, from a 1970s grappa advertisement, citing la Repubblica.

Today’s ranges are arranged by age and grape. The company lists Grappe Riserva, the Cantina Privata collection, single-variety grappas and grappas of tradition, alongside gift collections and Macaja, a gin with its own website. Gambero Rosso described Cantina Privata in 2021 as a collection of numbered vintages aged eight to twelve years in wood. Several Cantina Privata bottlings carry the cask in the name, such as a Moscato grappa finished in a Sauternes cask and a Barolo grappa finished in a Barolo cask, according to the company’s list.

Design and documentation.

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 grappa house that once owned a sparkling-wine house.

For almost two decades Bocchino also owned one of Canelli’s historic wine houses. Skurnik Wines, the American importer of Contratto, says on its producer page that the Contratto winery was sold in 1993 to the Bocchino family, “who own a local grappa distillery in Canelli,” and that the family found it difficult to run both the distillery and the sparkling-wine business. According to the same account, Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini suggested in 2007 that Bocchino meet Giorgio Rivetti of La Spinetta, who first advised the house; Rivetti and his brothers decided in 2009 to buy Contratto from the Bocchino family, and negotiations finished in 2011.

The distillery itself has stayed in Canelli and in the family. The company invites visitors to tour the distillery and its cellars in what it calls the heart of the UNESCO territory. “Canelli and Asti Spumante” is one of the components of the Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont: Langhe-Roero and Monferrato, inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2014, English Wikipedia notes. Its online shop runs at shop.bocchino.com, separate from the main bocchino.it site.

For a design guide, Bocchino shows how a grappa house can hang its identity on a single grape and a single gesture: Moscato pomace from Canelli, a black seal, and a television host shouting “ever higher” from the top of the Matterhorn. Compare Berta, the Piedmont grappa family of Mombaruzzo, and Nonino, the Friulian family that built its name on single-grape grappa. For this guide we use seal black, Moscato gold and tufa with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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