Our family business began in 1995 in Villar San Costanzo, at the foot of the Maira Valley, in the province of Cuneo. The challenge was to propose a breakfast product with a hint of innovation and a new vision. The biscuits have always been on house table, one different from the other, with more or less original names, but something was missing: an authentic taste. Going through the lists of ingredients, Fabrizio, together with his mother Bruna and his father Felice, realize that, while changing the biscuit type, the ingredients were in fact always the same.
The turning point comes when Fabrizio, through his grandmother Rita, discovers and tests the flour ground with stone (and water). The biscuits thus acquire another gear: the taste of the cereal is alive, surprising, but above all good! This is why in 1996 it was decided to combine the activity of the biscuit factory with that of the mill.
Fabrizio learns from Massimo Borgogno, owner of the mill of the same name for more than three generations, who with patience and passion infuses him with all the knowledge of a lifetime. Time passes quickly and so also the knowledge of the milling art.
At the beginning of the 2000s the biscuit factory grew and it was decided to make the qualitative leap in search of a mill owned. The historic “Mulino della Riviera”, in the center of Dronero, attested on the Comella canal, derived from the Maira torrent, is bought.
The decision to buy the “Mulino della Riviera” of Dronero has certainly been influenced by the charm of the ancient structure, but above all by its water operation, as in the past. .
After the '70s, the ancient mills, once fundamental activities, gradually ceased their activity, overwhelmed by the industrial products with which it was impossible to stand the comparison in terms of quantity and cost of production. The “Mulino della Riviera” is an artifact of great historical and architectural value, which testifies to the artisan history of our valleys and the peculiarities of its inhabitants.
As a family deeply linked to the territory of the Maira valley and more generally to the province of Cuneo, we understood that the mill had to be recovered and put back into operation, not so much to compete with industrial production, How much to distinguish itself from it by proposing a product of much higher quality, linked to the traditions, to the raw materials of the territory, to the peasant knowledge handed down from father to son.
Beyond the production aspect, we proudly carry out numerous initiatives for its enhancement, for the dissemination of knowledge of ancient milling techniques and technical details that allow their operation.