A Long-Lost Trattoria In Italy Yields A Treasure Trove Of Rare Whisky

Every couple of months, at least, I make a point of stopping into Collezione New York, the luxury wine and spirits boutique on Madison Avenue. Partly it’s because I’m a booze nerd and I love looking at all the rare bottles on display, even if the ones I really want are mostly out of reach financially. For me, it’s an honor just to be in the same room as a bottle of, say, 50 year old Bowmore distilled in 1966, which generally sells for $35-40,000. And part of it is because I love to kibitz with the owner, Stefano Pileggi. Before he opened Collezione, he was (well, he still is) a big-time collector of rare single malts, particularly Macallan. He’s also an opinionated guy who doesn’t keep his opinions to himself, as well as a deeply knowledgeable industry expert. So walking into Collezione is also, for me, a little like a beat reporter stopping by the office of a police captain and asking what’s new. You never know when a juicy story might result from it.

A couple of weeks ago, I hit paydirt. Or juice, I guess, if we want to maintain the “juicy story” metaphor. Pileggi told me about an incredible find he’d made — boxes of rare, decades-old single malt Scotch in absolutely perfect condition, from the inventory of an Italian trattoria that had been closed since the ‘80s. “This has to be written about,” I said, “and you have to let me be the one to write about it.” And he did. And I did. In addition to getting the details from Stefano, I did a lot of research to verify what he’d told me, and in the process learned a whole lot about the early days of Scotch single malts — until the 1960s, whisky was almost universally consumed in blends, and single malts didn’t really gain traction until the ‘90s. As it turns out, the story of Scotch whisky runs, in large part, through Italy.

The more I learned, the more interesting the story became. I hope I was able to get a little bit of that across in the article; I’ll let you be the judge. Check it out courtesy of the fine folks at Forbes! Link is -> HERE <-.