Ausilia is an ambitious and daring woman who loves nature and food. She is the co-founder of “Cillario e Marazzi Spirits”, she owns a farm called “Faggio Rosso” and recently wrote two cooking books for students.
Tell us about your journey
My husband Attilio and I have always been a couple out of the ordinary. We met at university, while we were studying Law in Milan, and since then we started sharing and cultivating our passion for a simple life – agriculture and good food.
I dropped out of university and started working in the public relations. Every weekend, Attilio and I would go to our house in the countryside near Varese to take care of the garden and the fruit trees. Instead of going clubbing on Fridays, we would rather rake the garden. We were subscribed to “Grand gourmet”, a haute cuisine magazine with fine dining recipes. We both found it incredibly inspiring but we could only reproduce very few recipes. However, at the time cooking was not as fashionable as it is now, it was actually the opposite and it was something that only few mothers and grandmothers would do. Nevertheless, we always enjoyed challenging ourselves and cooking for our friends new, innovative recipes.
What is your relationship with agriculture?
In 2009, our weekend hobby turned into my job. That year I became an agricultural entrepreneur and we legally founded our farm “Faggio Rosso”. We had a fruit orchard, vegetables garden, bees and chickens; we mainly produced jams and tomato sauce. This experience allowed me to understand people needs and translate them into a real product. However, we only produced small quantities to meet the demand of a niche clientele (my friends and their friends).
We never requested to have the organic label on our products as we believe to be more trustworthy than an external entity. We also never used herbicides but instead we had sheep eating grass (they ran away all the way to Switzerland once!) and every time I looked at them from my terrace I would feel so happy to see “life”!
I had the luxury to work in agriculture and live surrounded by nature, but this experience made me realise how though this life is and how few policies there are to safeguard small farms. When running a farm, nature is actually one of your biggest obstacles. For example, throughout the years, we faced challenges such as bad weather destroying our black ribes trees or deers eating all the plums from our trees.
Why did you decide to write cooking books for students?
The idea came to me thanks to the many life experiences I had. Many years ago, I organised cooking workshops for my children’s school and then I found myself with a collection of recipes that were easy yet tasty, and especially appealing for young people that are learning how to cook. I realised that in Italy there are no cookbooks for students who live on their own and just moved away from their “mamma’s kitchen”. Therefore, I decided to write easy and delicious recipes taken from our tradition together with some tips, to ultimately help students with little money to come up with satisfying dishes. Together with a friend of mine, we published two books: “Studenti in cucina: minima spesa e massima resa” (“Students in the kitchen: spend less and eat better”) and “Studenti in cucina: mangio bene e rendo meglio” (“Students in the kitchen: eating and feeling better”) which unexpectedly had a lot of success!
What is the story behind Cillario and Marazzi Spirits?
One day, a friend of ours asked Attilio if he knew how to produce good gin, after all the gin and tonic they had been drinking over the past summers. We had no experience in this sector but we like new adventures and we enjoy experimenting new things independently. Therefore, in 2017 together with my husband and a friend of ours we started this journey. That was the beginning of Cillario and Marazzi distillery. I remember Attilio trying almost seven different recipes a week to get to the perfect gin he had in mind only by changing the quantity of a spice or herb by a few grams.
When you taste our artisanal gin you can feel that it is something completely different from the gin you have been drinking so far. We distill our gin with a discontinuous copper, using the London Dry technique and placing the botanicals and spices on top of the alambic, to ultimately have a slower extraction of the essential oils and have more enduring flavour.
The most important thing when producing a premium gin is to have the best quality botanicals, as well as a fine palate and nose to come up with the perfect recipes for different kinds of gin. Luckily my husband has both of these skills!
What challenges did you face when founding your distillery?
When we decided to produce gin, we knew that we were going to get into an overcrowded market. Nowadays, most of the gin is distilled by big distilleries (and that’s often not even written on the label!), which care more about quantity rather than quality. We wanted to offer something different, that the market was not offering yet: tailored gin.
We tell stories through artisanal tailored gin, developing different recipes together with our customers.
What is your clientele?
Our customers are mainly restaurants, cocktail bars and hotels who want to differentiate themselves and aim to develop an interesting gin for customers. Thanks to our deep knowledge on spices and botanicals (and continuous experiments), we were able to come up with 70 different gin types so far. We distilled a gin made of basil leaves for the restaurant “Macellaio”, one for the three Michelin star restaurant “Piazza Duomo” and recently we made one for the Hilton Hotel in Venice, made with botanicals from the laguna. Through our gin, we not only express our clients’ personality but also their territory.
When they put our name on their label it is a great honour for us, as it shows that they are proud to say who distilled their gin.
What is your role at Cillario e Marazzi?
My role is mainly on the management side. I take care of orders, of our relationships with clients, of suppliers and social media. I have to admit that we made it to this point only thanks to our previous experiences, such as managing “Faggio Rosso” farm. These enriched us and gave us the necessary skills to successfully manage our new business.
Is there a negative side to producing tailored gin?
I believe there are no negative sides in doing tailored gin, you only need a lot of creativity and knowledge to always come up with new recipes!
How did you use your creativity to face the challenges brought by Covid?
We like to come up with new ideas in every circumstance we find ourselves in. One day, we were reflecting on the fact that the majority of hand sanitisers are not edible, but the alcohol we use for our gin is. Therefore, we decided to start producing our own gin-based hand sanitiser, which you can spray on glasses or wherever you want, it smells delicious!
How did Covid impact the Cillario e Marazzi distillery?
Being a small business with no employees enabled us to be very flexible, also thanks to the help of our two sons. During these uncertain times, it was fundamental to keep in contact with our customers and expand our horizons to a new clientele, which meant selling our products to private customers. Thankfully, we are currently working on new projects and new ideas to develop.
Our strength is in our uniqueness and authenticity: we believe that our gin is something that touches you emotionally!