We recently tasted one of the first three whisky bottlings produced by Winestillery, an all-Tuscan project that was born in Chianti and will soon continue its way in the urban context of Florence.
We spoke about it with the heart (and soul) of the distillery, Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna, who together with his father Stefano and brother Niccolò has created this new piece of Italian whisky.
WhiskyArt: You tell your story on your website www.winestillery.it, and I think that together with the interview we did with Erin Lee it can really be an inspiration (and encouragement!) for those of us who would like to take the path of distilling. I would like to delve a little deeper into your personal path that led you from lawyering to the still, which really seems to be quite random.
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: That’s right, it wasn’t planned at all! I graduated in law in 2014 in Milan, at the same time that the woman who would later become my wife also finished her studies. She received an internship offer from a very interesting company in the fashion industry, in New York. Being able to afford to take some time before starting my legal practice, I follow her to the United States, planning to stay for a few months, with the idea of deepening my passion at the time, which was craft beer.
Before leaving, I managed to arrange an internship at a brewery in Brooklyn, which, however, a few weeks before the move no longer replied to my emails, discovering later that it had closed due to operational problems! By now in New York, I have to figure out what to do with this ‘free’ time, and as happens in the movies (and as can only happen in the US!), I start helping out a few days a week in a wine shop where I used to go often to buy wine. From there, I realised that the real ferment was not so much in the world of craft beer, now relatively well established, but in that of craft distilleries. And in Brooklyn in particular, in 2010, King’s County Distillery (the oldest post-Prohibition distillery in America) had opened: I have no experience in the sector and not even a family of grappa makers behind me, but I think, let’s give it a try, I put together a CV and send it to them. I exchange a few words with one of the founders, Colin Spoelman (who also comes from a completely different background than distillation), go to visit the headquarters in the Navy Yard, with these brick buildings that look like something out of Once Upon a Time in America, staff all under 35, two Forsythe stills… and I’m blown away! I immediately accepted the offer of an internship with them, and after a week’s experience, the decision was made! I called my father at home, told him everything and told him that I had decided to give up a career in law and open a distillery.
WhiskyArt: Just what every parent wants to hear!
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: My brother was thrilled, my dad obviously not! We talked about it, and in the end he too embraced the project, advising me to do the two years of practice anyway to get to the state exam as a lawyer, so I would never have to regret it (and I thank him for that). I used that period of time to put the pieces together a bit, gather the necessary knowledge by studying between Conegliano and Bordeaux: they were not easy years, trying to make the most of all the time I had. The time in the Cognac area was a fundamental experience, divided between three distilleries (one of which has now changed location) belonging to the same group, with the smallest one having sixteen stills! It was a fundamental training ground, with a Master Distiller who is now retired but who was truly a master for me. I was full of enthusiasm, I even did double shifts because when you have an idea in your head you want to get it out as soon as possible! It was an unexpectedly very rural area with wonderful, welcoming people.
And it was fundamental for the whisky distillery we are going to open in Florence, if we manage as I think we will to integrate a piece of that experience into the still we are going to use.
WhiskyArt: In the meantime, the Winestillery project was going ahead?
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: I finished my Cognac experience in 2017, we had already ordered the still which arrived in November of that year, time to get all the necessary licences and we actually started at the end of 2018. Winestillery was officially launched in May 2019 during the Florence Cocktail Week, and from there one step at a time we got here, closing the circle with the presentation of the whisky in November last year at Velier Live, and opening a new one with the challenge of Florentis, the first city distillery in Florence since the Medici.
WhiskyArt: Your whisky therefore fits into the bigger project that is Winestillery, even if it was not so obvious at first.
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: We did not want to come out with new makes or work in progress, but only when we were convinced that our whisky was ready. In the meantime, Winestillery was already operating with other products that are obviously not children of a lesser god, on the contrary, and anyone who went to read our production specifications, the ‘Grain to Glass’ manifesto, could already guess that something different was on the way. Whisky was for me the great love, the one that changed my professional life, but all of Winestillery for me is a revolutionary idea, a completely different approach to the world of spirits that brings into dialogue our deep wine tradition with distillation, with an emphasis on territory. So Florentis and Winestillery is like twin brothers.
WhiskyArt: When operational, will Florentis break away from Winestillery?
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: We have chosen to use a different brand for the whisky project precisely to distinguish it from Winestillery, although in reality the link with the distillery in Chianti will remain. All the fermentation part will continue in Gaiole, while Bacco (Winestillery’s still) will be dedicated only to gin, vodka and the other spirits, with the distillation of Florentis moved to Florence. Ageing will take place at both sites and the final bottling phase back to Gaiole. This is an exquisitely operational choice: already opening a distillery in the city is not easy, transferring all the other processes there became almost impossible.
WhiskyArt: Is leaving all the fermentation part in Gaiole just a practical choice or is there more to it?
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: There is certainly a practical reason, also linked to the mass of material to be managed and disposed of, since it is easier to move the fermented rather than the solid products. However, there is also a reason linked to the process itself: when we talk about spontaneous fermentations, there is some fear of changing the places where they happen, so there is also an exquisitely romantic component.
In Florence, however, there will be a steaming still, maturing casks and a beautiful visitors’ centre, so the space available must be optimised.
WhiskyArt: Why choose spontaneous fermentation, with all the unknowns and unpredictability added to an already complex process?
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: In the world of wine we have been used to doing this for a long time, spontaneous fermentation is the natural way in which fermentation takes place, even if it is complicated by not having a precise beginning and end, while with selected yeasts you know that you obtain a certain result within certain parameters. Here you leave more space to the yeast, you have to assist it more by accepting its paturnias, and for me it would be a pity to lose a way in which whisky has been made for centuries, and in wine even more so. And besides, I have an instrument like the still, which doesn’t just create alcohol but elevates the product, corrects it and rebalances it by bringing in as many different characteristics as there are distillation curves, so if it’s true that it complicates life, for me it’s fun: it increases the facets of the distillate, diversifies it, characterises it, and for us it couldn’t be any different.
WhiskyArt: Will the new distillery have a Bacco 2, a perhaps larger replica of the still in Chianti, or will it be something different?
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: Bacco combines different distillation styles, as if it were a set of many stills, being able to offer a range of different facets, which is what keeps the distiller alive. The new one will be a still like never before: it will always combine different styles, with an ancient heart, and if everything goes as it should it will be a very special machine that no one has ever used in the whisky world. And perhaps not even for other spirits. Being an unprecedented machine, with Frilli (who made the still, Ed.) we did dedicated engineering sessions, and if it takes shape as I imagine it will be extraordinarily beautiful and able to perform almost all distillation techniques, always remaining discontinuous.
WhiskyArt: And always as a single still?
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: A single still of twenty hectolitres, so much bigger than Bacco which is 500 litres.
WhiskyArt: So there will be a before and an after: the Florentis made in Gaiole with Bacco and the one made in Florence.
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: As a small-batch distiller, I recognise minute variations even in the distillation of gin that are not so obvious to everyone, so yes, there will be differences that I hope can be perceived, also because it would mean that we are doing our job well! But then again, if we really do it well, they will be differences that can only be perceived by very sensitive palates. We will ensure that the identity of Florentis remains intact in Florence, with the still offering us different paths while also accepting its natural evolution.
WhiskyArt: As for the raw materials, are they all local and Tuscan?
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: We will arrive at complete regionality this year thanks to the collaboration with a malting plant that opened in Tuscany in 2023, allowing us to move the entire production on cereals in a regional key, from cultivation to malting.
WhiskyArt: Maybe going beyond terroir, pushing towards organic farming for example?
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: That’s a step we haven’t taken yet, but we’d like to get to the point where I’m not saying we grow the cereal directly, but enter into direct, even exclusive, relationships with farmers to make an even clearer mark.
WhiskyArt: A bit like Rozelieures in France or Waterford in Ireland?
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: That of Rozelieures is a very fascinating project, which starts from agricultural production and then goes into the world of distillation, I am a big fan of their work. It would be a very nice thing, they obviously do it on a scale not comparable to ours, but to one day get to control all the production would be a beautiful dream. In the end we as a family come from agricultural production, from the wine world, so it’s an idea that intrigues me.
WhiskyArt: So can we say that you are among the supporters of terroir expressed in grain?
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: Everything has an impact, the simplification that in whisky 80% of the taste comes from the wood may well be true, at least on certain types of whisky, but even if I don’t yet have such a long history to bring “proof” to the field, I am convinced that a wide range of aromas, tactile sensations and nuances in general also come from the grain: from how the mashing is done, from how the fermentation takes place and from the distillation. I have been working in a French cooperage for five years now, I know wood well and I am a big fan of elevation, and clearly wood also plays its part: you can see this also in our core range, where the same liquid in different casks gives different results. But the matrix is recognisable, and while I understand how on a large scale work it is a useful simplification, in objective reality it is a competition of all the factors of processing.
WhiskyArt: By the way, you still haven’t made a single malt, since the base is a mashing of different grains.
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: Not at present, but… it will come.
WhiskyArt: Speaking of the Italian way to whisky, you have chosen to indicate the region directly on the label, Tuscan Malt Whisky, and not like other producers the word Italian.
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: For us, saying Tuscan means indicating the region of origin, a bit like saying Highlands to indicate the production area. When we talk about terroir, we usually focus on two of its three elements: we talk about the climate and the soil but we never talk about Man, who is instead present in the classic definition with his traditions. Man as craftsman, like the one who in Florence raised a rather famous dome, who with his know-how is the interpreter of the traditions that have been stratified in him: for us, the territoriality of Tuscany is not just creating a product from our region, but celebrating those who from the past have handed down to us a way of seeing and doing things, of approaching raw materials. And even if we do not have a history linked to whisky, we have inherited an approach to production that comes from centuries, millennia of study, of layering, of try & fail which we want to make evident on the label.
WhiskyArt: As far as maturation is concerned, will you continue to follow the initial line using ex-Italian wine casks, if not exactly Tuscan, or do you plan to diversify?
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: We have many things in mind, and in elevation, to see where they will take us, but we wanted the core range to be focused on this precise vision, and even the most particular casks that we are testing want to speak of Italian and Tuscan tradition: we have a heritage that no other country possesses on ex-wine casks. We have set out not to seek the short route, going for ‘safe’ casks such as ex-bourbon, which I don’t think we will ever use, but we try to use those casks that we believe can give a personal imprint to the distillate, perhaps even ex-cognac casks, playing on the influences not only of the wine but of the wine distillate. There is so much ‘fabric’ that we can use, we are spoilt for choice, and in this sense Primo, our single cask made for Velier, has kind of led the way.
WhiskyArt: Primo (First in Italian) because there will be others, I suppose?
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: We hope so! For us, the fact that such a particular cask was chosen, so strong and unusual, really excited us. On the other hand, I’m not saying anything new if I say that single casks are the most interesting bottlings, just because of their irreproducibility, and for a small distillery they are also an added value, which helps explain the path we are following.
WhiskyArt: How has the foreign market responded?
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: We are starting now with France, in the United States we expect to be on the market by the end of the year. We don’t have any market tests, but I can tell you that the tastings we have sent out have garnered a lot of enthusiasm, as has our project, so I have good expectations.
WhiskyArt: What is the timetable for the opening of the distillery in Florence?
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: I would have set October of this year as my target, but there are already delays so it is more likely to be towards the end of 2024, which would also have a symbolic value given that it would be exactly ten years since my New York experience. The still I’m sure will arrive in time, the rest… we’ll see!
WhiskyArt: So the ideal schedule would be to start distilling at the end of 2024 with a visitors’ centre next year?
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: If I can, I’d like to open everything by this year: if a few things get unblocked, I want to believe in it!
WhiskyArt: Always the same principle of not coming out with new makes or work in progress until you have the finished product?
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: By having several casks in elevation we will be able to give continuity, perhaps with differences and variations, but without pauses or breaks.
WhiskyArt: How many do you have in stock at the moment?
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: About two hundred, this year we want to push production a lot and if the new still will soon come to our aid, we expect to have more sustained rhythms.
WhiskyArt: Are more bottlings planned for this year?
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: If we manage to inaugurate the new distillery, we will release a limited edition to celebrate it: we have already chosen the liquid, so we know what it will be like. It would also fall well with the Milano Whisky Festival, where we will be present as in all the Whisky Weeks of the Whisky Club Italia.
WhiskyArt: Is there any idea of making peated whiskies, perhaps hetero-directed through casks that have previously contained them?
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: It is a path we are taking, we have done several tests with particular casks of imaginable provenance to extract the peat scents, for now we exclude using peat in the malting because I would see it as an element alien to territoriality. Maybe look for different ways of smoking without copying Scottish peat, and in this sense we have already done some quite interesting tests: it is not among our priorities, but certainly for the whisky lover the smoky component is a strong attraction, so we are studying how to bring it coherently into our project.
WhiskyArt: Finally, a message you would like to pass on to those who are reading?
Enrico Chioccioli Altadonna: Today using that still, which is one of the most beautiful things that could happen to me in life, is not an easy thing in Italy, and my wish is that this world, that of artisanal spirits and also of whisky, which is considered the King, is treated in the right way, with passion, bringing its own personal interpretation. With the consumer understanding all the complexities involved in bringing that bottle to the shelf, knowing how to recognise a direct producer from those who, with even a significant effort, simply collect someone else’s product and bring it to market. Which is also the reason why we want to open the visitor centre, because we producers have to let people touch our work, make it fully understood and clear the field of wrong narratives, which I see happening today especially in the world of gin. We have to create stories that the consumer can believe in with confidence, and since we are young in this industry, I hope things are done the right way, seeing it grow as it does in other countries. The more hands that are distilling and the more Italian whisky distilleries, the more we will be able to present to the world a style that will be multifaceted but clearly Italian: the Italian way to whisky. I would like us to be up to the task we are given, as a new generation that has no precedent in whisky. Giving strength to craftsmanship while maintaining credibility as an artisan.