Maurizio Gozzelino, the inventor of Crodino, the 'blond non-alcoholic drink', died
Gozzelino was 91 years old. Born in Saluzzo, he had arrived in Crodo called by Piero Ginocchi. In 1965 the production of the aperitif began
Maurizio Gozzelino, the inventor of the Crodino, has died. His wife Marisa and daughter Barbara announced it. The Centro Studi Piero Ginocchi of Crodo, the village in Verbano-Cusio-Ossola that gave the famous "blond alcoholic drink" its name, recalls that Gozzelino was born in 1935 in Saluzzo (Cuneo), and then moved to work in the Antigorio valley, where he perfected the mix of aromatic herbs that would become the recipe for the celebrated aperitif.
Production of the drink began on 28 July 1965. At the end of 2023, Crodino left Crodo and has since been produced in Novi Ligure (Alessandria). The Study Centre remembers him as an 'affable person, a skilful communicator, generous, with the simple manners of the cultured but not exhibitionist'. Gozzelino became an honorary citizen of Crodo in 2021.
The collective imagination
'The non-alcoholic blond that makes the world go mad' was not just an advertising slogan: it was a piece of Italia's collective imagination. Behind that formula that entered the memory of generations was Maurizio Gozzelino, the Piedmontese oenologist and 'wizard of essences', who died on the night between Friday 22 and Saturday 23 May at the age of 91. With him passes away the man who helped give an identity to Crodino, the non-alcoholic aperitif that over time became a symbol of the 'Italian-style' aperitif, capable of spanning decades of advertising, television and custom.
The story of an invention
Originally from Saluzzo and educated at the Enological Institute of Alba, Gozzelino arrived in the Piedmontese town of Crodo in the early 1960s, called by the entrepreneur Piero Ginocchi to the Terme di Crodo Spa. It was a phase of transformation: the establishment, until then dedicated to mineral water from the springs of the Antigorio Valley, was preparing to enter the world of aperitifs. It was in this context that the intuition was born that would change everything. In 1965, the first 53,835 bottles of Crodino were produced.
The recipe - still secret to this day - is perfected by Gozzelino: a calibrated balance of herbs, spices and roots, including vanilla, orange peel, ginger, wormwood, coriander and cloves, combined with local mineral water and matured in oak barrels for months The result is a new, immediately recognisable taste that soon finds its consecration outside the laboratory.
