The Production
|
The Production |
BAROLO CHINATO
COCCHI
product , history and market
Barolo Chinato is a special wine
produced with DOCG Barolo, flavoured with quinine bark, rhubarb
and gentian, of which extracts are obtained through maceration at
room temperature, with a final addition of spices, including
selected cardamom seeds.
Created in Piedmont in the last century, it quickly became
popular because of its attractive bitter sweet taste and above
all because of the Barolo name, which firmly put it into place as
a prestigious product in the quinine flavoured alcohol range.
Giulio Cocchi’s original recipe invented in Asti in 1891 is
still today the "best kept secret" of Barolo Chinato,
in fact it attracts many imitations. Giulio Cocchi was the most
successful distributor of this type of product: five branch
offices (seven in 1913) were opened in the Piedmont, Liguria and
Lombardy, branch offices that in fact were really bars with
liqueur making rooms attached and were called "Bar Barolo
Chinato Cocchi" or "Bar Cocchi".
In Italy the consumption of Barolo Chinato was helped by its
medicinal attributes. In Piedmontese folklore it became the
principal antidote to many ailments, above all, the common cold.
Drunk as vin brulé, hot and fortifying, its antipyretic
and digestion-aiding qualities were well-known. In any case, its
health-giving reputation was enough to make a bottle de
rigueur in the drinks cupboard and to justify quantities
greater than the strictly medicinal to the women of the house.
Serving it to the guests in the country became a ritual of
peasant hospitality, a simple offering made in good faith.
Its target market can be defined as "the educated
young". The new consumer is not familiar with the history of
Barolo Chinato ; today it belongs to the category of after
dinner drinks such as Port, Marsala Vergine, or late harvest
wines. Consumers appreciate the balance and harmony of the
aromas, the immediately pleasing taste and the long finish of
this product of infusion with twenty-one herbs and spices mixed
in precise proportions with a great wine.
In recent years it has shown itself to be the best Italian wine
match with high quality dark chocolate, in fact the Cocchi
Company asked Andrea Slitti (The winner of Grand Prix de
Chocolaterie in Paris 1994 and golden medal in "The
Olympics of Chocolate" in Berlin 1996) to produce a unique
praline chocolate scented with Barolo Chinato Cocchi to show how
perfect the combination is.
Giulio Cocchi Spumanti