Pietro Bordiga (depicted in the painting alongside) is a passionate herbalist, expert especially in Alpine botanical and oriental spices, much sought after at the time. His parents, from Val Grana- Grana Valley (also homeland to one of the most famous cheeses in the world, the Castelmagno) move to Turin, the first capital of the newborn Kingdom of Italy.
Here, Pietro’s son married the daughter of the owners of a renowned café in the city, the Caffè Dilei.
In this Risorgimento context, especially thanks to his botanical knowledge, Pietro Bordiga created a recipe for Turin Vermouth, which is immediately greatly appreciated in the city. He then decided to start his business as producer of Vermouth and opened his distillery in Cuneo. The success was immediate, especially thanks to the excellence of its products. In fact, he received several requests from various important cafe. Even today, the historic cafe of Turin, Caffè Mulassano, one of the oldest in Italy, has its Vermouth produced with an exclusive Bordiga recipe.
The choice of Cuneo was obviously dictated by sentimental reasons, it is the city from where the Bordiga family originally comes.
But, above all, is the geographical position of Cuneo, set among the mountains , which plays an important role in this choice. Cuneo is also very close to the Langhe, where the excellent wines of Piedmont come from. Secondly, it is at the foot of the Alpine valleys, where medicinal herbs spontaneously grow and thanks to the proximity of the Mediterranean sea are particularly rich in essential oils.
Wine, officinal herbs and fine oriental spices are the ingredients of Turin Vermouth, the original product of Bordiga.
Over the years, the company developed thanks to the authenticity and quality of its products and becomes the reference not only for Vermouths, but also for liqueurs and sprits, especially, the alpine ones, but not only: at the beginning of’900 in the stills of Bordiga is produced a distillate of juniper that still today does not envy nothing to the most famous gins in the world.
Centuries go by, times changes, the great crisis of the 1920s arrive, but above all the second post-war period see big changes and the production of liquor is also affected.
Thanks to the synthesis and production of artificial flavors, high quantities can be produced at cheap prices, obviously of mediocre if not even low quality.
Small artisans suffer from this situation: either they transform and become huge industrial realities or they are gradually destined to close.
Bordiga didn’t get with this evolution and the production filosophy remains that of its origins, even with enormous difficulties, as evidenced by the countless closures of well-known famous brands.
The philosophy and the quality of the products that inspired the founder remained unchanged; Bordiga continued to produce using selected and high quality raw materials. In fact, our characteristics are always the same: the good Piedmontese wine, the alpine botanicals still today hand-picked by mountaineers, the finest spices, the purest wheat alcohol, the most refined sugar and the water of our Alps. All these ingredients constitute the basis of Bordiga products, as it was in the 1888, for this reason our motto is “Tradition is our future”.