Distilleria F.lli Revel Chion

Lakes and woods, hills and mountains, castles and lordly residences, the splendid Sierra of Ivrea, with its luxuriant and sometimes even heroic vineyards: this is the Canavese, a corner of the world crowned by the Gran Paradiso National Park, which seems a thousand miles away from all metropolises, but is actually very near Turin and easily reached from Milan by means of the motorway that leads to Valle d'Aosta.

Here, at a skip and a jump from Ivrea, stands the town of Chiaverano which has conserved the appearance of a medieval village nestled at the foot of the Sierra, the straight mountain ridge 25 kilometers long, modeled in prehistoric times by the immense glacier that came down from the Valle d'Aosta. And in Chiaverano, for at least two centuries, the Revel Chion family has lived and worked. They are farmers by birth and grappa-distillers by vocation.

It was during the year 1850, according to a convention that was never formalized but always agreed upon, that grappa celebrated its 449th birthday. And in that same year, the meticulous Weights and Measures Service of the Province of Ivrea drew up a list of the users subject to periodic inspection. On this list under number 53 the name Battista Revel Chion was registered, and he was attributed the qualification of distiller because it was his predominant business activity.

Grappa was certainly made before 1451, but that year is considered the official date of its birth since a notarial document was found with that date on it. And the Revel Chion distillery most likely made the stills smoke much earlier than that year. Nonetheless, the oldest document with a sure date is the one mentioned above.

In any case Revel Chion was founded not long before the foundation of the cooperation of distillers set up in Piedmont at the beginning of the 1700s.

The Distilleria Revel Chion was thus born of the land and the work of seven generations of men who never left Chiaverano and gradually adapted the company to the needs of the moment without ever betraying its origins and traditions.

Every year a maximum of half a million kilos of marc is distilled (less than 1% of the amount processed by the largest distillers in the sector). Today, just like a century ago, the Revel Chion family runs the alembic.