The Pitch: IL Baronello Vino Cotto a recipe for success for Melbourne’s Angela Galtieri

A MELBOURNE mum has dug into her memories of her Italian childhood to resurrect an age-old recipe for vino cotto dressing that is winning fans around the dining table.

Angela Galtieri owner of IL Baronello Vino Cotto. Picture. Michael Klein.

In the Herald Sun’s ongoing series about Victorian entrepreneurs, The Pitch, our experts examine Angela Galtieri’s business, built on a passion to keep an age-old Italian recipe alive.

THE PITCH …

AMONG Angela Galtieri’s fondest memories of childhood is her mother’s vino cotto, a condiment used in sweet and savoury dishes.

Based on a centuries-old technique, it was made in the villages of southern Italy during the winemaking season.

Vino cotto is a syrupy, molasses-like grape condiment with a flavour profile of berry fruits and spices.

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It is made from fresh grape must — unfermented grape juice — and is known as “musto” in Italian.

Ms Galtieri said the women in the villages would use vino cotto as a sweetener in their cakes and biscuits because honey was saved for trading and sugar was too expensive.

“Vino cotto is part of ‘la cucina vecchia’, which means peasant food,” she said.

Growing up in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, Ms Galtieri, who lives in Essendon, said her mother made vino cotto from a recipe derived from the ­family’s roots in La Basilicata and Calabria.

Extremely versatile, it also can be drizzled over ice-cream and ricotta desserts, served with fruit, added to ­biscuit batters and used to dress a salad.

In savoury dishes, vino cotto can be used to marinate lamb and beef or as a glaze.

Angela Galtieri’s vino cotto can be used in savoury and sweet dishes.

Ms Galtieri said it was a ­labour-intensive process with the must slowly cooked for ­18 to 20 hours — ­constantly stirred to ensure the natural sugars of the grapes do not burn — and reduced to a ­delicious syrup.

It’s then cellared for many months or even years, allowing it to develop a unique flavour profile.

Ms Galtieri said she started making vino cotto about six years ago. It was well received by family and friends.

Once Ms Galtieri decided to launch the product, she built a website, pooling the IT ­knowledge of her husband and herself.

She decided to call it IL Baronello Vino Cotto as a dedication to the home region of her “super helpful” 83-year-old mother-in-law, ­Giulia.

“Giulia has such an amazing knowledge and intuition of cooking ‘peasant food’,” Ms Galtieri said. “She too would make vino cotto with her mother and grandmother.”

The word “baronello” in Italian means “young baron”.

It goes back to the landholding in Calabria where ­Giulia was raised.

Ms Galtieri said getting the range — which includes original, infused figs, infused quinces and infused apple — to market had been a gradual process.

As the product is not well known outside Italian households, she has had to educate people, including holding tastings at food stores such as Boccaccio Cellars, in Balwyn, That’s Amore Cheese, in Thomastown, and O’Heas Bakery, in Coburg.

She might pair the Vino Cotto with produce and cheese the host venues are looking to promote.

“During my tastings I often chat to elderly Italian customers who are so surprised to see vino cotto still being made by my generation and tasting just like they remembered it as young children,” Ms Galtieri said. “Vino cotto, to the elderly Italians, is a reminder of their childhood and an expression of the love of their homeland.”

She refers to “casalinga” in Italian, defined as home cooking and home-made.

Ms Galtieri has a handful of stockists and gets repeat orders, particularly at Christmas, when people want to use vino cotto in their cooking or give it as a gift.

She is currently rebuilding the website and rebranding her product labels. “I am very proud to be able to continue and share this tradition.”

vinocotto.com.au

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WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY …

JOHN DOWNES, BUSINESS COACH, ACORRO

John Downes

IT’S a real achievement to resurrect an old recipe from the ancestral country and perfect something that evokes the feelings and sensations of yesteryear while also being deliciously contemporary and relevant.

Does your pricing fully represent the true costs of production and, if so, is it viable at scale?

The costs of a 24-hour, labour-of-love, hand-stirring manufacturing process need to include the cost of labour contained in each batch of five, 20, 100-litre pots on the stove.

And then add in: energy, ingredients, testing, vessel sterilisation, bottling, packaging, labelling, cartons, delivery and risk.

Are you getting a return for your time and can you scale this to 500 litres per week? Is your vision for this to be an elaborate hobby, or a business?

Scaling to a niche product business requires you tapping into a distribution network. Markets and mail order might give you low-volume “cellar door” high margins, but to move volume, you need to be relevant to provedore suppliers, which requires delivering their margin, and your commitment to capacity and ongoing product innovation.

Bigger does not always mean better.

I wish you pleasure, fulfilment and to earn a just financial reward from your passion for bringing a delicious traditional condiment to market.

VIVIAN VO, MENTOR, MELBOURNE INNOVATION CENTRE

Vivian Vo

POP UP shops are a cost-effective way to trial a product’s viability in the market, particularly if the product is something new and unfamiliar.

It provides the rare opportunity to see first-hand who your customers are and their motivations for purchasing your vino cotto.

Social media advertising and re-targeting can also be used to effectively market an unfamiliar product, while insights and analytics are useful to further collect customer data.

Your website will need to do the hard work of telling a story and creating an experience for customers.

When it comes to online, first impressions matter.

Your images will be the only visual reference customers have of your product and brand.

Consider having photos taken professionally for credibility, and demonstration videos for enhanced engagement.

Be aware that high-quality imagery and videos can result in slow loading pages, which affects search engine optimisation and may turn customers away.

Consider resizing large images and embedding videos from YouTube rather than uploading to your website’s hosting server.

You can also use Google’s free PageSpeed Insights to measure and receive suggestions on how to enhance your website’s speed and optimisation performance.

BRUCE HALL, MENTOR, SMALL BUSINESS MENTORING SERVICE

Bruce Hall

THE opportunity of IL Baronello exists in the rich history of food from Italy, providing a powerful tapestry to weave a story to build the brand and engage retailers and customers.

Given the artisan nature of the product, and the time it takes to produce, the story in which it is wrapped is as important as the ingredients and production method.

Without this story, no matter how well made, the vino cotto is just another product. The story creates a point of difference and gives customers a reason to pay the price being asked.

To build the brand and support retailers stocking the product, I suggest you use the revamped website and social media to share content — not just about the product but about Italy’s food and rich history.

To succeed, this will take time and work, however, the pay-off could be huge.

One channel that should be leveraged is YouTube, particularly as you communicate so authentically on this medium.

Short videos covering the production and maturation process would be a good starting point.

This could be extended to cooking other traditional Italian dishes, all with a bit of history thrown in.

Supplementing this with recipes via the blog and posts around lesser-known elements of Italian history could position IL Baronello as the vino cotto brand of choice.