Grappa from the direct-fire still Serafino Levi installed in Neive in 1925, under Romano Levi's hand-drawn Wild Woman labels.
Neive is one of the Barbaresco villages in the Langhe. The pomace, Nebbiolo from Barolo and Barbaresco, Barbera, Moscato d'Asti and Roero Arneis, comes from leading Langhe producers. It is pressed hard into an underground silo, which keeps it fresh for months.
The direct-fire alembic, about a century old, is the last of its size in Italy. Each 5 to 6 hour run turns 400 kg of pomace into about 20 litres of grappa. The distillery runs as a working museum under a tacit agreement with the comune of Neive, making about 20,000 bottles a year.
The Levis distilled in the Spluga valley from the 17th century, and Serafino Levi set up in Neive in 1925. He died in 1933, and his widow Teresina ran the still until she was killed in an air raid in 1945.
Romano, 17, left his studies in Alba to keep distilling with his older sister Lidia, and worked the still until his death in 2008. His hand-written labels began in 1962 and 1963, and grew into the Donna Selvatica, the Wild Woman who climbs over the hills.