Meet the Spirit Cowboys from Fermenthinks

I had a visit to the Fermenthinks distillery where three guys of the 80’s put their heads together to create a micro distillery on the hillside above the center of Florence. It is the only working alambique in the city limits. I spoke to Julian Biondi for the interview.

Matteo, Stefano and Julian with Buffalo Still, while Nicolas Cage looks on

Hi Julian, can you introduce yourself and the team?

Stefano Cicalese is the master distiller and director of production, he's been distilling 8 years now, and he's the first of a new generation of master distillers specialized in London Dry Gin production in Italy. Matteo Di Ienno takes care of product development especially on the liquor side. He works beside Stefano at the production site and they take care of R&D to make sure our offer is always up to date. And I’m Julian Biondi; I take care of the customers, help them through the development of their projects and I seek out new clients.

Why the name Fermenthinks?

It's the merging of two verbs: “to ferment” and “to think”. Underlining the turbolent process of the idea's creation, the beautiful confusion in everyone's mind, giving birth to new ideas. Our symbol is a bubbler, a simple item that helps control this process.

Why spirit cowboys?

We are sons of the pandemic, a dramatic way to say that we lived in that that limbo where people working in our field found themselves unsure about the future. We grew up in the industry of hospitality, an environment in which – if you are good enough – you'll always have a job, because people will always go out eating and drinking, and someone needs to make those dishes and drinks. Covid undermined this certainty, at least for one year. So, we started to wonder what about the future. Our future, our job's future and the future of the world itself. We came up with the metaphor of cowboys because we see them as tough and hard willed people who – no matter how uncertain the future is –keep riding and are eager to discover what's next.

You are all bartenders or ex-bartenders; who came up with the idea to create the distillery?

The idea was mainly in Stefano's mind, chasing the dream of his own distillery. At the beginning we were planning to be not only a distillery, but also a lab where colleagues could come and learn, and a place where we could supply local bars with what they need: fresh juices, syrups, cordials and so on. We were also contemplating a bartending school and many other things. One day we will be all of this, but in the beginning we faced that – based on our budget – we could only start with one thing, and this was most the logical one. The three of us are clear that, since we are all bartenders or ex bartenders, we want to be a distillery that can also have bars as customers, making small batches, allowing a single bar to invest in their own artisanal craft product.

Your set up has been here since March 22, 2022. Can you tell me about the space and how you got it?

It took us nearly one year to find the right spot: we wanted to be in the municipality of Florence but...well, Florence is expensive! In the end we found it on a website, the place looked very bad and the pictures were awful, but we decided to give it a try. In the end it became what we were looking for: not that expensive, perfectly suitable for production (it was a big bakery before, so it had all the things we needed by law to deal with food and drinks). We started production in March 2022 but we are here paying rent since June 2021. This gave us plenty of time to restore everything with our own hands. It's not as beautiful as we want yet, but will sooner or later it will be astonishing!

How do you fill a gap in the market?

First of all, we are 100% “tailor made”. Every recipe we make is unique and belongs to our client. We develop the idea together with them and, if needed, we give some advice. The development part has a cost lower than our competitors, because we decided to offer our know-how as the solid base of any production, even a 50-liter production of an “amaro della casa”. Then, we are competitive in terms of minimum batches: here you can produce 50 liters of a liquor and 150 liters of a spirit. This way, whether is your plan for the product – launching a new liquor on the market or poring it in your venue – you can afford to try with a small investment.

Can you tell me the story about your first client?

The first product we made is was in March 2022, a milk-based liquor, commissioned by a producer of milk and cheese in the area of Mugello, in Tuscany. It's a cream liquor, with pine nuts, vanilla and milk. Actually it’s the only product of that category that we ever made, but our client wanted to showcase it during a fair – Pitti Taste – which takes place in Florence in April. Later on, we developed for a very cool gin for them, made by distilling the milk serum, a leftover, which he has in abundance and which adds a silky texture to his gin.

Tell me about your still, called Buffalo Still?

Buffalo is a 150-liter carter head pot still which operates in a water bath (bain-marie). You can place the botanicals directly in the still or use the basket, for a more delicate extraction with steam. It is not an Italian still for one reason: it took too long to have one! It works very well and he's also handsome, so we are very proud of “Bufalino”.

I know you produce gin, do you produce other spirits as well?

70% of our overall production is London dry gin, but we also make vodka and recently we have started developing fast-aging methods for small batches of rum and whiskey.
Requests for vermouth are growing, thanks to the fact that there are many wineries in our area. Sometimes when you make wine, you are not happy of the result so the best thing to do is...make it into vermouth! We are also making amari, but it's still marginal in our overall business, I'd say only 5% of what we make is amari.

Matteo adding the precious juniper berries to a batch of gin

What is the least you had to work with when you created a new product?

Very recently we had two gin-clients who came with an idea based only on the area of provenance. A sort of “terroir” gin with no other particular direction. Those challenges are sometimes the ones we appreciate the most and – believe it or not – we made one single try for each one of them and...both of them liked them immediately! Normally to reach the final recipe we make 3 to 5 test batches.

You are also a journalist, how has that helped you in your role?

Being a journalist can be helpful because you know what journalists want to write about. Plus, you happen to know other journalists, so you can pitch ideas to them to see if they would like to talk about you. Usually there is a line I don’t like to cross, which is writing for a magazine I work for about something I am making. This time the director of Bargiornale directly asked me to write about us, because she taught it was worthwhile. So I did my first ever self-interview!

Did you ever have to say no to a client?

More often than you might think. Even though we make private labels, there's our name on it, written behind every bottle. Sometimes, if you see that a project is not going anywhere, it’s better not to force it. There are plenty of liquors and gin on the market: we can all live without a new one.

What is the project you are most proud of?

It's like saying asking a parent who is his favorite child. I honestly can't say. There are projects that I started out without a lot of faith and had unexpected success. Strange to say, those ones are the ones I am most proud of because they showed me a new perspective and taught me something.

The bottling phase. Fermenthiinks carries out the entire process, start to finish.

Your wildest/most outrageous request?

I think Vodka Madonna with Lourdes holy water in it is pretty edgy...

How is the white label market growing?

That is all we do--there is a bit of a boom; in the last year I've heard that at least 2 other distilleries in Tuscany were born, doing something similar to what we do. I don't know if we are in the middle or at the beginning of something, I just hope the latter.

You also do bag in box- do you see a big future in this? In Italy? Abroad?

Bag in box is an idea I strongly believe in, being a firm supporter of sustainability. It's just more efficient, there’s less impact on the planet and – with the rising of all the costs of all raw materials – it simply makes sense. I am sure that soon also big brands will embrace this philosophy because is a win- win for everyone.

This company is something new for all of you. What would you have done differently if you knew what you know now?

I think all of us would agree in one thing: don't ever trust the timings of bureaucracy. We applied for European funds and we got funded, but we waited very long and lost a lot of time and money. For the money we needed, we could have just gone to a bank and it would have been more efficient.

Where do you see the company going in five years?

I'm a very down to earth person so it's hard for me to say. I think we would like to make our own products at some point (maybe some weird ones) and we would simply be economically satisfied with what we are making, growing the team and doing our part to help this rising movement of craft distiller grow in Italy

Is there anything else you would like us to know about your company?

Yes, we haven't mentioned the huge effort that our standee of Nicholas Cage has made in our company so far. He's always here with us overseeing every aspect of production. Going back to the previous question: I would love to have Nick Cage visit us in the next 5 years. :-)