What more fitting than on the International Women’s Day to introduce you to one of the wine world’s Grand Young Ladies, a tour de force, an enfant terrible, and a through-and-through lovable, Elena Penna.

As part of the Vietti tandem, the other being Luca Currado, she has built one of the very finest Italian wine labels over the past 30 years.  Choosing to challenge rather than fall in line. Never standing still.

Now choosing to challenge again by introducing an old local tradition with roots going as far back as the Middle Ages - producing gin, herbal liqueur, and vermouth in Piedmont, in the hills of the Langhe of Barolo, one of the most celebrated winegrowing areas in the world and a Unesco heritage site.

Distilled spirits, herbal liqueurs and vermouths have been produced by the Penna and Currado Vietti families for generations.  Elena’s family used to make and sell them as part of their long-standing involvement in the hospitality sector.  Luca’s father Alfredo Currado, on the other hand, worked in the 1950s as a winemaker with famous local producers of vermouth and amaro before he and his wife Luciana Vietti took over the running of her family’s winery.  Elena and Luca’s passion for this world was therefore passed down through their respective families.

Following years of research and experimentation they have rediscovered and revived this tradition. Only native herbs sourced locally in the Langhe and the Piedmontese Alps and picked by hand. With the rediscovery of an 18th-century wood-fired still and the help of a vastly experienced master distiller, new life has been breathed back into long-lost, age-old recipes from both their own families and the cultural heritage of Piedmont.

The ambitious idea is to produce unique, top-end products with no modern concentrates or extracts, artisanally crafted in keeping with the formulas using just natural, organic, and eco-sustainable ingredients.

More on the gin later.  Today it is all about the woman behind it.

#ChooseToChallenge #ElenaGin #Vietti #IWD2021