The Bocchino distillery is one of the historic cellars of Canelli, placed on the UNESCO world heritage list together with the town and the Asti wine zone. What is made here is not sparkling wine but grappa, which is why the visit has a different slant from the underground cathedrals: you go down into the world of spirits and into the history of a family that has practised it for generations.
What to see
The route passes through the barrel room, which is the heart of the place: hundreds of barrels of different woods, holding distillates of different vintages and different grape varieties. That is where you grasp the difference between one grappa and another, because wood and time do most of the work, and seeing them all together makes obvious something that stays invisible in the bottle.
Visiting
It lasts about two hours and is exclusively by reservation, for very small groups. This is not a quick stop to slot between two others: it has to be planned, and planned early, because places are few. A tasting is part of the route.
Our editors' tip
Anyone with only one day in Canelli should choose according to what interests them: the Gancia cellars tell the story of sparkling wine and of underground engineering, Bocchino tells that of the distillate and of the wood. They are two different trades in the same town, and doing both in one afternoon means enjoying neither.