Region & History

Grappa trentina, the pomace brandy from the province of Trento, has carried a protected designation of origin since 1989, and with it six other brandies: Distillato di mele, Williams, Kirsch, Sliwovitz, Aprikot, and Genziana. Each of these names is registered as a geographical indication in the EU.

But distilling in Trentino began long before there was any protection of origin. When Edoardo Bertagnolli and Giulia de Kreutzenberg registered their business with the Chamber of Commerce in Bolzano in 1870, Trentino belonged to Tyrol and thus to the Habsburg Monarchy. Distilleria Bertagnolli in Mezzocorona is considered the oldest distillery in the province of Trento.

The postwar years brought the next wave. According to the house, Ferruccio Giori founded Giori Distillati Trentini in 1946. In 1949, winegrowers in Brancolino near Nogaredo delivered the first pomace to Sabina and Attilio Marzadro, who distilled it in a small, directly fired copper pot still built by a local coppersmith.

In 1957, the Pilzer family's distillery in Faver in the Val di Cembra joined them. The Istituto Tutela Grappa del Trentino was founded in 1960 to protect and promote Grappa trentina.

What the protection of origin means here: the plain name Grappa is reserved for all of Italy, while an addition such as trentina confines it to a single province. Brandies made from fruit and roots follow the same logic, as their names too are bound to Trentino.

Today, families run the houses: Marzadro has operated from a new facility in Nogaredo since 2005, and as early as 1975 the house, by its own account, released a single-varietal Grappa made from Marzemino pomace from Isera — a novelty at the time. So anyone who sees the name Grappa trentina on a bottle is looking at very different producers: a house with roots in the 19th century alongside a family now in its third generation with Alessandro Marzadro.