Lindsay Marie Morris

Hugo Gallardo enjoyed his job for the first 20 years of his marketing and advertising career. But at some point, he says, the fun just started to fizzle. Instead, he faced a mundane sequence of meetings, results, new business, travel, more meetings, more results, more business, and more travel. Then his wife, Annalisa, got pregnant, which made him really rethink all the meetings and travel. He was in his forties and knew he needed a change. 

"I got involved in distillation as a hobby while I was living in Australia," Hugo says. "When we started to think about what we wanted to do with our lives, we put things together. The hobby was becoming a passion."

 

Today, that drive has led him to co-found Alma Sicilian Artisan Distillery. The company produces Mater Rum and Mater Gin from sugarcane grown in Sicily, an important center of sugar production under Arab rule. 

Hugo and I spoke about Sicily's sugar history and Alma's start. He shared more about his sugarcane crops and distillation process. The former marketing executive knows how to tell a good story, something that's bound to help as the company aims to expand beyond Italy. 
 

Tell us how you got started.

I read a lot about distilling history and how the spirits we know right now have become what they are. My passion for advertising was getting lower, and my passion for distilling was increasing—the history of the different spirits, raw materials, and the agricultural parts of the raw materials. So, we decided to open a small craft distillery. The original plan was to open it in the Philippines.

But long story short, the Philippines got closed for COVID, and I got stuck in Sicily because my wife is from Sicily, and we came here to spend some time with her parents before we brought their granddaughter to the Philippines.

 

We left our housing in Milan and quit our jobs, and I started to rethink the original plan because we didn't know when they would reopen the Philippines. I had to make a decision. I decided to try to open in Sicily.

 

When I started reading about rum, I discovered sugarcane had grown in Sicily for seven centuries. So, I thought we could try it; there was good storytelling.

In the beginning, it was more of an act of faith because we didn't know where to get the seeds, if sugarcane would grow, or if the yield would be good enough to produce something in industrial terms. So, we started doing some trials.

Meanwhile, we found the warehouse when we built our distillery, and we started to buy everything we needed to be operative and then progress. It was full COVID time, so everything was closed. You had to make all the requests by email, and it was a complete pain because everything was slow. So, after three years, in January 2021, we got all the permits, and the distillery was able to start production in April of last year.

 

Co-founder Annalisa Spadaro

 

Without a background in agriculture, was farming sugarcane a challenge?

To be honest, sugarcane is an easy crop. It needs water, and it needs to be fertilized, but it's a very resistant crop. We are located outside the historical cultivation zones. There are a lot of problems with being out of the historical cultivation zones. Still, there's an advantage in that there are no diseases because there are no other sugar plantations. We cannot be infected by bacteria or fungi or whatever. 

The big challenge for us is harvesting. We have to do it by hand because it doesn't make sense to mechanize such a small plot. We are actually cultivating three hectares, which is nothing in terms of industrial production. Economically speaking, it doesn't make sense to mechanize the harvesting. And that requires a high investment in energy, work, and money.    

 

Sugarcane harvesting is done by hand.

Why did sugarcane disappear from Sicily?

The main reason was that America happened. America was discovered in the 15th century, and on his second voyage, Columbus brought with him slave labor. The soil was perfect; there was much more water available. So, the sugar in Sicily was uncompetitive in the market since American sugar was much cheaper. It wasn't profitable anymore.

 

What shocked me was that it had completely disappeared from the island's culture. The names of a few areas around Palermo are etymologically related to sugarcane, but I was curious to discover that first, no one knows about sugarcane cultivation, and second, the sugarcane industry has no remaining buildings or presence on the island.  

 

Alma Sicilian Artisan Distillery's Sampieri plot

 

You grow in Sampieri and Marina di Modica. How do the unique soil and climate characteristics influence flavor and quality?

Marina di Modica was the first plot; the soil there is almost white and retains much more water than in Sampieri, where there is red soil. Even if they are five minutes apart by car, the sugarcane grows quite differently in both places. In Marina di Modica, it is much taller, but in Sampieri, it's a little bit shorter and has a really salty flavor. We want to keep both because the first one is for our gin, and the second one, the Sampieri one, provides us with this salty olive characteristic.  

 

Yellow and purple sugarcane

 

You grow two varieties of sugarcane: purple and yellow. How do they contribute to the final product?

We are still learning about our raw products because it's the second year, and we are making some changes this year. We are using a single distillation, so the final product is different. We still have to better understand whether the difference is because of the sugarcane or the distillation method. However, the main difference is that the yellow cane has a strong olive smell, and you can feel it in the nose and the mouth. It also has this salty touch in the mouth.

The purple has this touch of wildflowers and marmalade but also truffles.

They are very different in terms of bouquet. Yellow cane is much fresher and saltier and provides our rums with something we really like: this salty olive profile. 

 

 

Alma Sicilian Artisan Distillery is the only distillery in Italy that grows and processes sugar cane directly.

 

What is unique about your fermentation and distillation process?

We are not reinventing the wheel. There is a lot of hype about natural fermentation and spontaneous fermentation, and it's something that I would like to try in the future. The thing about that is that you completely lose control of your fermentations. So it could be nice, or it could be a complete disaster.

 

Since we don't produce that much product, we wanted to start safely with the fermentation process. Last year, we used yeast; this year, we decided to change it, and we are using wine yeast.

 

We changed because the rum yeast was selected to pump certain esters and, of course, the most easy-going esters—banana and pineapple, the kinds of flavors that everyone loves. We decided to use a much more neutral yeast that shows the raw product. And we are very happy with the result.

Then, in distillation this year, we are using a small column of six plates. It's a column that we can switch off every plate. We can decide if we use the six plates, just four, or just one. It is very versatile. We just did a single distillation using the small column. Since sugarcane is a very rich raw material by itself, we felt that going with double distillation, we lost something. So, we decided to go through just one distillation.

 

Mater Rum: Made in Sicily with Sicilian plants

 

What experience do you hope to share?

There are two levels of experience. One is the people who come to the distillery; they immediately become brand ambassadors because of the location and how we work, sharing our passion, history, and what we're trying to do. I'm pretty sure the people who leave the distillery after a tasting or visit enjoy the moment. One hundred percent think that we are crazy in a positive way. 

The second level of experience is the people in a bar who are having a drink, and our product is proposed to them, or they decide to try it. And I'm pretty sure a few are surprised because it's a new provenance for Sicily.

 

Then, we provide a lot of information through our packaging and bottles, which plays a huge role in communicating what we do and want to express. In some way, I hope they get the feeling that we have just met.

 

Finally, the product: I think it's a very particular rum and not for everyone because it is white. It's not the classic Bacardi 40 degrees, 80 proof. Starting for the alcohol by volume, our rums are above 50 degrees, 100 proof, so they are much stronger in terms of profile.

 

I hope people can taste the salty olive and citrus notes—all these notes are very strong in our rums. I hope they can get a piece of Sicily with every sip.  

 

 

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On my first trip to Sicily, one of my cousins handed us a bottle of limoncello. I had never tried the beverage before, but I was grateful for the opportunity to taste a traditional Southern Italian liqueur. We packed the bottle with us when we left to visit my other cousins in Milan.

I did not anticipate that we would receive a second bottle from my Northern relatives, who shared a similar pride in the beverage. By the end of our trip, we had so much limoncello that I had to give it away before we flew back to the U.S. But the sweet lemon liqueur will always remind me of family.

The same holds for Phil Mastroianni, co-founder of Fabrizia Spirits, who remembers his Calabrese grandmother sipping limoncello. After a trip to Italy, where he enjoyed a glass with his cousin, he began making his own. His uncle tasted it and encouraged him to transform his hobby into a business. He's since branched out to sell blood orange and pistachio cream liqueurs and canned cocktails. 

Phil shared Fabrizia's signature natural ingredients, why they use Sicilian lemons, challenges he's faced, advice he'd share, and more.

 

 

What exactly is limoncello?

Limoncello is a lemony liqueur made from the zest of lemons, flavored and colored by the essential oils that are inside the zest. It's a four-ingredient recipe with zest that contains the natural oils added to alcohol, sugar, and water. 

 

Fabrizia's Syracuse lemon grove

Why do you use Sicilian lemons?

Our limoncello uses Sicilian lemons for two reasons. One, they make limoncello as tasty as any lemon you'll get from anywhere in Italy. But there's more transparency. Sicily grows 70% to 80% of the Italian domestic production of lemons. 

Arabs brought citrus to Sicily between 900 and 1000 A.D. They also brought the ideal irrigation system for lemons, and they just grow well. They don't need nets. The temperature rarely goes to freezing, where the tree could get damaged, versus if you go north to Campana, that subtle five additional degrees average temperature makes a difference.

Not only do the lemons grow in abundance, but they're also less expensive for all the reasons I just said, and the land is flatter. Mount Etna has that wonderful volcanic soil on the island's eastern side that really helps them. So because they are easier to grow in Sicily compared to the hilly slopes of the Piano de Sorrento or anywhere else in Amalfi, you end up having more access to the fruit.

 

We visited the other lemon-growing regions—Amalfi, Sorento, and even a town called Rocca Imperiale, which is in Northern Calabria on the Ionian Coast. Rocca Imperiale actually just received an IGP status from the European Union. They sell to the Amalfi Association because the Amalfi Association changed its bylaws to allow lemons from this town in Calabria simply because Amalfi cannot keep up with its own demand given the natural environment of where Amalfi is.

Sicily doesn't have those issues. What we found is even when we visited the Sorento Association in Fondi, where a lot of the Sorrento lemons come from, there have been multiple instances where authorities have had to come in and say, "Nope, these are not Sorrento lemons. These are not Amalfi lemons. They really grew in Tunisia or Spain." I don't believe I've ever heard of that ever happening in Sicily. They're able to grow them in abundance there on their own.

 

So, it is part pricing and part knowing we're getting what we're paying for and using Italian fruit. Ultimately, there's no real difference in the quality. 

 

Nick Mastroianni picks lemons for their flagship product.

 

Why did you choose New Hampshire as your base?

I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. All my grandparents immigrated from southern Italy to Boston. It is $10,000 a year to have a liquor license in Massachusetts as a manufacturer. In New Hampshire, it was $1,700 and still is. And this was 15 years ago. Even to do it the "right way," you need federal and state licenses.

 

I was 25 when we found a place to rent, and I remember doing the math. Even up here in New Hampshire, we would have to sell almost 6,000 bottles a year without a salary, without anything, just to pay all the licensing fees and the rent where we were going to produce it. At that point in my life, I had only made about 50 bottles of limoncello.

 

It seemed like an absurd number: Who was going to buy 6,000 bottles of limoncello? I'm proud to say that this past year, we have hit almost 300,000 bottles in annual production, and our biggest customer is the Epcot Pavilion in Disney World. They buy over 6,000 bottles a year in just that one location. So it shows that sometimes you need to make sure that you dream big enough.

 

When starting, you need to take one step at a time. Had we got the licensing in Massachusetts, we would have had to sell 9,000 bottles. And that was an even more inconceivable number at the time—just to break even. New Hampshire is a small state that treats businesses very fairly and entices them to come here. 

Had we been in California, for instance, we would've felt the need to stay California fruit forever because that's simply what they do. At first, we were all-California fruit, and then it was fruit from wherever we could get it from—Mexico, you name it—and then we went to a blend of Italian fruits. A year and a half ago, we said, "Okay, we're going to go 100% Sicilian," and we have a camera on the grove we buy the lemons from.

 

We are producing limoncello in an authentic way. We could make a limoncello that is an 8 out of 10 just by cutting out the fake coloring and having a good recipe. Now that we're able to get the fruit from Sicily, and we still make it the old-fashioned way, the same way they make it in Italy, we can make it a 10 out of 10, and we can do it at a better cost than the brands that are trying to produce it the right way in Italy and sending it over here. 

 

What challenges have you faced?

We can produce Fabrizio limoncello for less because we just bring the lemons over, not the finished product with the glass and the bottles, et cetera. On the other hand, we import almost a million lemons a year from Sicily. So that has its own challenges.

 

The biggest challenge in the space is—hands down—getting distribution. That's something I wasn't planning on when I started this business. It's taken a lot of time, but I got good at it. And we get to work with some really large liquor wholesalers. But those relationships don't happen overnight. 

 

Fabrizia Spirits now sells a whole line of bottled and canned beverages.

 

Tell us about your blood orange liqueur and pistachio cream liqueurs.

The blood orange came naturally since its production is the same as that of limoncello but with blood oranges. One day, I was walking through Boston's Little Italy (the North End), and a customer said, "Hey Phil, why don't you make blood orange cello? I would buy it from you." We started making it right after that.

 

The pistachio was a lot more work. We noticed an uptick in places making pistachio martinis, and especially since pistachio is popular in Sicily, where we get our lemons, it was a natural extension. With that said, creating the liqueur took a lot of formulation as there is no one set recipe.

 

What led to the creation of your canned cocktails?

All of the left-over lemons! When we launched our ready-to-drink canned Italian Margarita in 2018, we were throwing away about 400,000 zested lemons per year at the time. We started juicing them and used that as the base for the cocktails. Being part of the rising popularity of ready-to-drink cocktails has certainly increased the visibility of the Fabrizia brand. 

 

How has listening to your customers influenced the evolution of Fabrizia Spirits?

Always so important to do. We are constantly listening to feedback on sweetness and taste profiles. With that said, the number one thing we hear is something we always promise to do: Be a brand you can count on to make natural limoncello and other alcoholic beverages with no fake colors or flavors ever. 

 

Ready-to-serve Fabrizia Limoncello Spritz

 

What new products or ventures excite you?

We're looking into producing Fabrizia in Italy for the Italian market in the years to come, which would be a big achievement for the brand. We're also diving into the deep end with a bunch of versions of bottled and canned Limoncello Spritz, made with imported Italian wine.

 

What advice would you offer other entrepreneurs?

If you're going to get involved in the spirits business or start your own business, you have to really size up how big your excitement and passion are for what you're going to do. I am more excited today than I was 17 years ago to be making limoncello.

But there's been so much time over the last 17 years where things have not gone right, and progress has not happened as fast as we had hoped. There were disappointments of many varieties, from business relationships to the product not doing as well as we'd like to in certain places.

 

If you really love the idea and believe in it, and it makes you happy, well, you can sustain all those challenges. And if you don't have the excitement or the true passion, you'll likely find that at one of those challenges, you'll find something else you'd rather do. Fortunately for me, that didn't happen because I believed in the idea so much and wanted it to work, not just so I could make money but also because I really wanted it to work for its own reasons.

 

What do you hope to share?

When it comes to the limoncello, we always love it when it is enjoyed by friends and family together on memorable special occasions. For me, it was about my grandmother. She would have a little bit of limoncello on Christmas Eve. She didn't drink that often, and I always found it to be a spirit that was approachable to the group. It wasn't about drinking; it was about bringing people together. 

We really hope that the experience is better for you if you are going to have an alcoholic beverage. You shouldn't have to say, "Okay, well, on top of having a drink, I'm going to have a bunch of Yellow Number 5," as in the case of our imported competitors, or "I'm going to have a bunch of preservatives in my vodka soda canned cocktail." We use fresh juice in our canned cocktails.

 

We really want the experience to be one of enjoying all-natural ingredients. That's what we're hoping to bring to people.

 

 

 

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