Baking a loaf of bread and getting curious about the wheat that went into it has led to the birth of an Italian vodka brand that will be launched in India today. Frank Grillo, an Italian-American marketing consultant turned distiller, who has founded Altamura Distilleries in southern Italy, speaks to t2 on the sidelines of the Venice Cocktail Week about industry trends across the world and in India.
Altamura takes its name from the village where you get the grain from. What made you choose that particular district?
It’s a long story. I was a marketing executive in the technology sector in the US. We always wanted to live in Italy and sitting in lockdown in Atlanta, Georgia, in an apartment, I said to Justin (Breland, his spouse): “Why don’t we go now? It doesn’t matter where I am as long as I show up on Zoom calls!” So we moved to Puglia (in southern Italy) and I was intending to continue my marketing consulting practice. We didn’t move to Italy to open the distillery. (Laughs)
So what changed?
I love to cook. Puglia is famous for a lot of recipes like Orecchiette, which is pasta that looks like earlobes. That’s how I found the recipe for Pane di Altamura. It is the only bread in the world protected by a PDO (protected denomination of origin). Like champagne has to be made in Champagne from grapes grown in the region, and Prosciutto di Parma from pigs grown in Parma farms, Pane di Altamura has to be baked in Altamura. There are 12 bakeries that still produce it, baking from grain that’s either grown in Altamura or one of the five communes that touch it. The poet Horace wrote about Pane di Altamura in 37 BC. The bread stays fresh for a long time and he wrote that if you’re travelling you’d be wise to carry loaves of Altamura bread. I baked loaf with Altamura wheat flour in Atlanta and standing in my kitchen with Justin and my business partner Steve, I remarked that if we boiled instead of baked that, it would be vodka! That’s how the idea came.
Are you using the same wheat that goes into Pane di Altamura?
Yes. We buy it from a family that has been growing it for 400 years. There are seven types of wheat and my favourite is Archangel. I understood why nobody was using it. Classically, wheat-based distilling is a cold-climate product. Scotch comes from Scotland — very cold. Winter wheat grows there. Vodka-producing countries like Poland and Russia are also very cold places. Durum wheat of Altamura is a summer wheat. There wasn’t a tradition of distilling it. What’s distilled in Italy or even the south of France or Spain is grape. But experts told us to go ahead. That’s how the distillery was born — from an idea from a loaf of bread in my hand.
That was quite a eureka moment! Where all are you present already?
We are distributing throughout Italy, in Spain and Austria, the UK, the US and we have just started distribution in UP and Uttarakhand in India, where we decided to open our own import company. We have a team member based near Delhi. So that’s why we’re now doing a formal launch, now that we have an actual company.
Wasn’t there this controversy some years back about whether vodka distilled only from wheat and not from grapes should be called vodka?
You can distil vodka from anything that will ferment. People make it from strawberries, some add oyster shells to it, somebody in the UK is fermenting milk… the definition is extremely broad. Traditionally it was made from grain or potato, a more neutral-based product…. The problem really is — and I say this carefully because I believe in creativity — you’ve got some people now barrel-ageing vodka. Tell me the difference between a barrel-aged wheat vodka and Scotch, other than the number of years it spends in the barrel! If you want to call your thing whisky, it has to spend three years in the barrel. So these guys are doing two years in the barrel. It’s not a whisky but it’s no longer vodka either.
Vodka has always been a neutral product. Our product has a flavour profile but it comes from the wheat. It’s not something we did after the distillation process.
Then you got flavoured vodka when they started adding lemon and orange after distillation. Now you got barrel-aged vodka. It’s getting confusing for the consumer. The challenge is how do you support creativity without blurring things so much that people don’t know what they’re drinking any more! (Laughs)
The rule currently is if you are making vodka out of something other than potato and grain you have to mention the ingredients on the cask, right?
That’s not much of a rule because we all label it. Chopin will say they are potato, Grey Goose will say they are winter wheat. We are all clear in what we do. More than any other alcohol, vodka, like rum, is just a pure reflection of what we ferment. All we do is take a core product — wheat, potato, strawberry… — fermenting it, boiling it and presenting it as a liquid that’s a pure essence of the underlying distillery. If you barrel it or add flavour to it, then it’s not what you distilled from but what you did afterwards that turned it into the final product.
Italy is known for other kinds of drinks. What made you go for vodka?
The reason was the wheat. There are other Italian vodkas but they are unknown. They don’t have the provenance that Altamura wheat does. So it was a wide open category in terms of competition. Think about great Italian products, be it parmigiano reggiano cheese or Prosciutto di Parma or balsamic vinegar or Barolo wine. They have the same attributes that our vodka has. It has a very particular base product, grown in a particular place. So Brand Italy is helping a bit. We fit into these characteristics of what great Italian products are. What Italy has done in the food and beverage world helps our story about provenance.
What made you think of launching Altamura in India?
I love India. I got connected to Gopal (Joshi, general manager, Altamura Distilleries India) on LinkedIn and he said Italian products sell well in India. The first time I visited him, we walked into a store in Delhi and the first display was pasta and tomato pasata. The Indian cocktail scene is growing very quickly. The younger generations are open to drinking more diverse spirits. Traditionally, India has been drinking whisky but the emerging cocktail scene is more open. Gin-based cocktails, tequila and vodka are doing well. So as a market it looked positive to us because it wasn’t an established vodka market. As a new entrant, we weren’t fighting years of established thinking around vodka.
Are you looking particularly at the cocktail scene?
Yes, we have focused on the mixology world. Our product has a very particular mouthfeel flavour profile. The way it finishes is like when you sauté mushrooms and finish them in vermouth. There’s this little umami and that hint of savoury and sweetness together. The joke in the industry is that vodka is the little black dress or the tuxedo of the cocktail world. Traditionally most vodkas used behind the bar, other than Ciroc which has a grape flavour, are neutral. Take Grey Goose and Belvedere in the super-premium category that we position ourselves against. They have no real flavour.
Why is flavour important?
A year ago, Class Magazine had asked important mixologists in London what they look for when they bring a new product into the bar. Giorgio Bargiani of The Connaught Bar said he looks for products that can inspire him to make a great cocktail. Altamura brings something different to vodka as it has a flavour profile and a story. We’ve seen it inspire all sorts of fun and interesting cocktails where people really think about its provenance or the history of it or the fact that it’s bread. Moebius in Milan, for example, does a pesto martini. They wash the vodka with basil and pine nuts and clarify it. The mixologist is our first customer who will introduce the vodka to the consumer in a creative way. Though people love drinking it neat, its highest calling is to be in a cocktail.
Why did you tie up with the Venice Cocktail Week (VCW)?
We launched in February 2022. VCW took place in end-September. It was our first big event. Suddenly people were in love with it. We had Maybe Sammy over from Australia (multiple global award winners), which was crazy for a six-month-old brand for one of the 50 best bars in the world to travel to Venice for us. It put us on the world stage. Honestly, I thought this would be a little lifestyle project — we’d make some vodka in the south of Italy and make a little money and have fun. Now we know that the brand has the potential to be in the same category as Grey Goose and Belvedere, though we are different in flavour.
What’s your favourite drink?
Good question. I’d say Old Fashioned (a cocktail made of bourbon, sugar, bitters, orange and a cherry). I’ve come around to vodka too. Nobody hates vodka. Even if they like something else, everybody’s second choice is a vodka cocktail. (Laughs)