FAMILY MEMORIES - STORIES

If it was a clear day or if it rained I don't know but that day in '43 when the “Titini” partisans decided to blow up that train in Yugoslavia, with dad on it, was still important. When he woke up in the hospital in Trieste, everything had changed: his name, his documents, the enemy and his destiny. So it was that after 8 September 1943, instead of being lost in Russia, he found himself in Milan under a false name. Instead of being a naval designer, he got on a gas-fired truck; with the CNL pass in his right boot and the German "zulassung" in the left one he began to be a fellow. Yes the smuggler !! After the war and Mr. Chellini met, they opened Meritalia (nothing to do with the current one) and with the same truck they began to bring fatty acids to France, in Grasse, to be used for cosmetics to which the first ones were added. essential oils of Sicily.

And from them soaps and cosmetics that they resold on the square in Milan. It was there that he met Mr. Variati, who, once Meritalia closed, hired him into his own company.

Having known her mother, in the 1960s on the wave of the economic boom, she decided to set up her own business and with the liquidation money she opened in Milan, in via Papiniano: the SCABE. Acronym of my parents' surnames. In the meantime, I am born.

Time passes, producing aromas for pastry, food, feed, perfumery. The customers are there, they are all over Italy, and the consumption of essential oils is considerable; many come from Spain. That country is still rural, it is Italy's first competitor for steam distillates: certain plants only come from there.
In 1968, in August we leave. Remarkable for those years to make a 5000 km car trip to go to make a commercial agreement, also hooking up the holidays. I was six years old but I remember the handshake between my father Cesare Bellati and Señor Pedro Muñoz Galvez. We were in a large field, that man was directing about fifty peasants who cut a grass and took it to a strange truck. A very intense perfume around. That herb was Mint, a huge field of mint, and the truck was an effective "field" distillation plant. We feel good, a friendship is born and the agreement is made: supply and representation. We are now in the third generation. In fact, the following year Pablo, the grandson, was born: the current director of the company.

It's been 50 years!

Time continues to pass, plus the collaboration with Felix Reverte who produces herbs and spices. It is the moment when, in Italy, those who use eggs want them with a very yellow yolk, because they are healthier! Everyone adds sweet paprika to their feed. Now the eggs are pale, because they are healthier ... mah. (it's the doll market!). It goes on and continues to travel in August, for work and for pleasure.

SCABE closes, dad passes away in '92, mum continues with the two representatives. Then at the Fiera in Parma he met Isidro from Nortindal and on his impulse a sales job began in a totally new field. Yes, the squid ink, it works: it sells!
Now one would say: It has its own why!

2006 arrives. By now mom is tired too and would like to retire, she decides to leave. I had a degree in Chemistry in the 1980s and then I had worked in pharmaceuticals, but my company collapses and after twenty years of Montedison, the unit where I work changes hands, and the hands it passes through have few scruples: not we stand, we have different morals. So ... I leave Milan, I come to Genoa and it continues, it increases, the internet helps. Then comes the crisis and the request for a new material for me from a client ...

It was a sausage factory, a customer for chilli, which ran out of casing for its sausages;
or rather the prices had gone up a lot and he wanted to find alternatives. After several requests from them I decide to try and contact various producers / traders until I find the valid quality and price: I place the first supply. Where does it come from? Of course, from Spain!

So one is satisfied, who knows if the others .... Italy is the home of sausages. Let's try !

So it is that I cut out my market niche in this field. It does not take off, but it does not collapse ...

It wasn't easy, I had to learn the animal anatomy as well as the nomenclature of the different types of natural gut (I assure you it's a huge world). Those who produce salami consume spices, and sometimes also produce mortadella. So here I am with pistachios by the will of another big butcher: directly from Don Quixote's Mancha. Those who sell pistachios also sell almonds and those who consume them in desserts also use candied fruit, hazelnuts and other dried or dried fruit or vegetables and perhaps also have vegetables preserved in other ways in their catalog.

And I study .... I learn the shape and quality of almonds, the properties of fruit, the diversity of raisins and like a schooner I follow the sea of commerce. I will never be an expert on nuts or captain of pistachios, but every now and then I sell something new, I conclude, I land. And now another story ......
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