Why it matters
The producer
Chazalettes & Co. is a Vermouth di Torino house producing aromatized wine from a base wine and natural botanical extracts, using historic recipes retained by Giovanni Chazalettes. It is not a grape-growing estate. There are no vineyards, no parcels, no soils to discuss. The maker's art here is botanical: which herbs, which wine base, and in what proportion.
Clemente Chazalettes was forty years old when he founded the house in Turin in 1876. He had spent the preceding years as technical production manager at Martini & Sola, then one of Turin's most established vermouth producers, and he left with the confidence to start his own business. The original premises were on Via Sacchi, close to the Porta Nuova railway station, a practical address for a producer whose bottles needed to travel. By 1909 the business had grown large enough to require a new plant in Collegno, west of Turin: 20,000 square metres, more than forty employees, positioned beside the railway connecting Turin to France and the rest of Europe.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Vermouth di Torino is a regulated category, not a vineyard appellation. Turin is its home city, and Piedmont is the broader region the category is associated with. The name on the label means the aromatized wine meets a legal standard: wine base, natural botanical extracts, a defined alcohol range, and production in the Turin area. Chazalettes operates within that framework.
The category's flavour logic does not come from soil or elevation. It comes from the selection of botanicals and the character of the base wine. A Rosso and a Bianco from the same house can taste entirely different from each other because the botanical recipe, not the vineyard, is the primary variable.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
Chazalettes has no vineyards. The production work is botanical. Each expression starts with a wine base, red for the Rosso and white for the Bianco and Extra Dry. Natural herbal and spice extracts are added using the house recipe for each expression. The Extra Dry combines citrus peel freshness with Alpine herbs, juniper and other spices.
All extracts used by Chazalettes are natural. No artificial flavouring is documented.
Wines to know
The range in view
The current range consists of Rosso della Regina, Bianco della Regina and Extra Dry.
Vermouth Rosso della Regina is built on a red wine base. The botanical list runs to wormwood, Piedmontese savory, marjoram, musk mallow and coriander. Wormwood gives the defining bitterness of the category. Savory and marjoram add dry herbal lift without sweetness. Musk mallow and coriander round the spice profile and soften the finish. The red base contributes body and depth of colour. This is the most bitter and herbal of the three.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with the Extra Dry. The Extra Dry combines citrus peel freshness with Alpine herbs, juniper and other spices. The citrus is clean and identifiable. Juniper and other spices sit alongside the citrus and Alpine herbs. The dryness is not a reduction of sweetness but a deliberate flavour direction. At 18% alcohol, it works as an aperitif over ice, in a dry Martini, or alongside cold cured meats in the Piedmontese tradition. It is the expression that shows most clearly what a historically grounded botanical recipe, carefully executed, can do inside the Vermouth di Torino category.