Page 14 - Italian American Herald - November 2019

14 ITALIANAMERICANHERALD.COM | NOVEMBER2019 ITALIAN-AMERICANHERALD
FAMILY BUSINESS
Limoncello business all about friends and family in South Philly
By Barbara Ann Zippi-Och
If you arrive at the modernized row home on Rosewood Street
in South Philly on a Wednesday night, you’ll notice a bright citrusy perfume in the air
before you get to the front door.
Inside, the family is gathered around the
kitchen table, using hand-held peelers to shave the yellow zest from a crate of lemons. The natural zest is the crucial ingredient that they’ll deliver to a commercial production kitchen nearby that makes the Pezone line of Italian limoncellos.
The Pezone brand was conceived by business
partners Danny Pezzetti and Sal Sansone, who took a traditional Italian
liqueur and added a homey South Philly vibe to create their Row Home Grown Cello, which is now sold in a variety of styles and flavors.
In a classic move from the small-business playbook, the brand name Pezone was created from parts of the founders’ own surnames — Pezzetti and Sansone.
The business was built on love, tradition and family. The founders’ wives Joanne Pezzetti and Adrienne Sansone take care of social media marketing on Facebook and Instagram. Sal’s son Salvator designed the logo and website, and Sal’s parents Joe and Linda Sansone open their kitchen for lemon peeling and are often joined by Uncle Mike and Aunt Tina Franceschetti.
Danny (a car salesman) and Sal (a school- district employee) met 10 years ago, and became fast friends while experimenting with making a variety of flavored wines for family and friends.
Then one day, destiny intervened.
Sal was helping Danny clear out his
aunt’s home when they came across an old handwritten limoncello recipe describing the lemon rinds being “cut by razor” and a not-so- common ingredient, cream. Intrigued, they
had to produce a batch, and the Pezone brand was born. The 36-proof lemony
concoction went down smooth, delivering a mild boozy kick, and the drink became popular by word of mouth.
Pop Joe Sansone, who has ancestors from Abruzzi, Naples and Sicily, dubbed Danny and Sal the Cello Kings of South Philly.
Danny Pizzetti (left) and business partner Sal Sansone. Sal’s parents, Joe and Linda Sansone, are skilled lemon peelers.
As demand grew for Row
Home Grown Cello, the
partners secured an industrial
production kitchen in South Philly, and a Pennsylvania Liquor License on Sept. 18, 2018. Today Row Home Grown Cello is available at 15 spots, including Pennsylvania State Stores, the Lansdowne Farmers Market and Reading Terminal Market at 11th and Arch streets.
Row Home Grown Cello sells for about $25 a bottle, and comes in an array of flavors. According to Danny, family involvement is
key to the business.
“Our wives work right along with us,
bottling, labeling, corking. Our parents are master lemon peelers and our children, nieces, nephews and their friends are recruited to work the Reading Terminal,”
he says.
All flavors are personally created by Danny and Sal with family tastings for approval. Their passion shows in their collection of reinvented cellos. They’ve produced chocolate mint, vanilla mint, chocolate strawberry for Valentine’s Day, a pumpkin spice flavor and even green cellos to pump up Eagles fever. IAH
To learn more, visit pezonecello.com
LET’S LIFT A GLASS
It’s not witchcraft, but biodynamic wine still casts a spell
By Murray Schulman
I recently came across a book
that caught my attention. “The Vine Witch” by Luanne G. Smith is a work
of fantasy and fiction. Yet, it caught my eye because the story involves — what
else? — wine, winemaking and vineyards. Reading this book triggered my natural curiosity. Wine in a very broad sense has an almost mystical aura intertwined with every aspect of it. From the soil, the vines, the fruit, the process all the way through to the impact that it has on all lovers of wine. Think about it. Wine introduces fun and important events. It enhances our appetites and our ability to experience food. It is an aphrodisiac as well as a love potion. Wine is a key element in most of our traditional rituals and ceremonies, happy or sad. Wine is part of our lives.
I cannot help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, there is a bit of magic that
is part of the art of winemaking. In my research, I came upon an article written by Danielle Pergament for The New York Times, dated Oct. 25, 2016. I am not going to tell you that I found witches making wine in Italy. After all, I have my reputation and credibility to protect. But, let me lay some information before you and you can draw whatever conclusions you choose.
According to Pergament’s article,
while traveling the wine regions in Italy, she came across small farms. Mind you, none of these were the giants of wine production in Italy with production in the millions of bottles of wine per year. These were small vineyards with production of 10,000 to 20,000 bottles per year. These farmers are not cultivating only grape vines. They grow a variety of crops as well as raising livestock.
What makes them unique in the wine world is that they follow a system called biodynamic farming. This system takes
a big step outside the box of organic farming. The difference, according to this article, is that these farmers claim
that “organic farming does no harm to the earth. Biodynamic farming aims
to make the earth healthier.” How do they manage to do this, you ask? This
is where it gets a touch mystical in my opinion. In biodynamic farming, no synthetic chemicals are used. Plus, no mechanical irrigation is introduced. These farmers claim that by including fruits and vegetables on the farm in addition to wild or domestic animals, their little ecosystem is kept in check. It doesn’t stop there. Biodynamic farmers are mandated to follow a specific celestial calendar.
One of the farmers that was interviewed explained that the
12 constellations are helpers. The winemaking process follows the rhythm of the planets. According to this farmer, there are days of fire, water, air and earth. They work the soil only on “earth days.” Leaves are worked on “water days” and the sugar in the grapes grow as the moon grows. Harvests only take place after the full moon. This individual also stated that “water days are the best days on which to eat salad.”
Here in the United States, it is next
to impossible to find wine produced
on biodynamic farms. These are tiny vineyards on tiny farms. The farmer who was interviewed explained that they bottle when the moon is descending. The wine was referred to as “she” because “she” is alive and with the right moon, knows that “she” is in a bottle.
At another farm, the farmer fills a cow horn with manure, flowers and herbs. The horn is buried in the soil for the winter. In the summer, this farmer digs up the horn, mixes it all with water and sprays the vines like a fertilizer.
These farmers waste very little. They believe that wine is food. They live simple bohemian lives. Most of these farmers are artists, musicians, philosophers and deep thinkers. Their beliefs and methods are
a beautiful balance of old-world science and magic. If I ever get to return to Italy,
I will step away from the mainstream
and seek out that path to an alternative lifestyle seeking a brief glimpse of the magic in winemaking. Is it witchcraft? I’ll leave it to you to decide. Cheers! IAH