Levi Serafino

The historical origin of the Levi’s family is from the village of “Fraciscio di Campodolcino” in the valley of “Spluga” (close to the Swiss border) where they operated as distillers since the 17th century.
For more than two centuries these distillers migrated to the Piemonte region when it was grape vintage time. They moved there with a few mobile alembics and distilled locally, producing high quality grappa, mainly from Barolo and Barbaresco (Nebbiolo) marcs.
From mid 19th century some of these distillers decided to remain in the area where large wine makers were present and installed some important distilleries, not only in Piemonte but also in Lombardia and Veneto.
At ” Fraciscio di Campodolcino” the old Levi’ family house still exist, called “Casadegli Angeli” (Angel’s house) as all family head, had the Angelo name.
Levi Serafino married Balbo Teresina and they had two children: Lidia and Romano. In 1920 Serafino decided to move to Neive as territory with great wines and where high quality marc was available in large quantity.
In 1924 ,in Neive, he founded his distillery “a fuoco diretto” (at open flame).
Unfortunately Serafino died very young in 1937 and left two young children Romano (1928) and Lidia (1926) and his wife, Teresina, which kept on working in the distillery. But Teresina died in 1945 from one of the few bombs that was launched against the town of Neive during the war.
At that time Romano was only 17 years old and he was a student at Alba. He decided to stop studying and , with the assistance of his sister Lidia, began to work in the distillery, from which he never moved away, till his death on May,1st ,2008.
All labels currently applied to the bottles are a reproduction of the original hand drawings of Romano Levi dated from 1962-1963.