The beginnings, in 1775, as wood artisans
The Garbellottos are a family of craftsmen deeply rooted in the Veneto region, more precisely the village of San Fior in the Treviso area, near the town of Conegliano on the Friuli border.
Born in 1754, Giuseppe Garbellotto was already practising in 1775 his carpenter trade; taking over from him were his son Pietro, born in 1778, and grandson Augusto Emilio, born in 1801. All three of them were craftsmen expressing their talent not only in the production of casks, vats and barrels but also in creating art furniture.
In those time there already was a sizeable workshop, originally set up in the back garden, employing about a dozen people. Born in 1815, Giovanni Battista took the family business into his hands and ran it for about fifty years with the help of his many sons, including 1853 born Narciso. His eldest son Emilio emigrated to Brazil and founded the Garbellotto's Brazilian branch, keeping up to this day the family craft tradition across the Atlantic ocean with three furniture factories: two in Passo Fundo and one in Porto Allegre.
Deep in the heart of history
On this side of the ocean Narciso, with the help of his two remaining brothers, boosted the traditional cooperage activity, producing at the same time a lot of precious furniture. He was such a diligent, skilled and highly esteemed cooper that Karl of Habsburg hired him to repair the wine casks in his wife's estate (a princess of Italian origin, who owned lands in the lower Padua province). The company thrived for quite a long time, up to the First World War, when all production came to a stop because of the Austrian troops occupation, covering a vast area from the Piave river to Mount Grappa. Turned into a war zone, Conegliano suffered badly because of requisitions and war destructions.
The family home (now a listed building and undergoing restoration) was turned by the occupying troops into an army emergency ward. All family archives disappeared and only a few furniture pieces, a real memento of the family's history, were saved.
A new life
The war ended, and Giobatta Emilio, Narciso's son born in 1886, began to rebuild the family business concentrating exclusively on casks, vats and barrels production. Together with two temporary minority partners he created a new company - "Società Bottai di Garbellotto e soci" - which took up after a few years the company's present name. Business expanded quickly and Garbellotto shortly became the leading Italian company in the sector, as well as one of the best in the world. In the period following the Second World War, and especially after the Eighties, it made casks, vats and barrels for the most famous cellars in the world.
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With 712 closed top vats holding 166 hectolitres each, for a total capacity of c.120,000 hectolitres (a job that took 4-5 years to complete), Garbellotto helped turn GALLO's cellars in Modesto-California into the world largest wine aging cellar of all times.
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GALLO:
veduta di una delle 24 file esistenti
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The residence of Würzburg Archbishop Princes in Bavaria, a prestigious castle with Tiepolo frescoed stairways, is with no doubt one of the most beautiful cellars ever furnished by Garbellotto.
A brilliant idea
The company's recent remarkable growth is mainly due to Pietro Garbellotto (called Piero), Giobatta's son and present company's principal, who added to the traditional cooperage a timber production and trade activity, with great working synergy between the two.
Thanks to the newly developed sector, large quantities of timber can now be bought at excellent conditions, and either be selected to build wine casks or alternatively be sold, according to the wood characteristics. This fortunate intuition saved the company during bad market times and made it, with later market upturns, the only one able to deal with orders of all possible quantity, shape and size within reasonable delivery times; other companies had to close down because of a decreased demand for casks in favour of barrels (barriques), which are mass produced.
There's a huge difference in making a barrel, or barrique (7 to 750L capacity) as opposed to a cask (10hl upwards): a barrel is easy to make because it only entails one bending operation (the staves one) and is small in size, while a cask requires four (in its round format) or six bends (oval format), all to be brought together, a very difficult but essential job.
A unique company in the world
In a class of its own, "Giobatta & Piero Garbellotto S.p.A.", the oldest and most famous Italian cask maker, often receives the visit of leading cellars, wine schools and universities representatives, as well as various celebrities and cultural figures.
