Female Supremacy Articles - Page 8

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In the Noninos' case, there were no boundaries between one and the other. Dinner was a strategy session. "Dad worked in the distillery, and my mother did everything else," Antonella said, adding that she and her sisters could not help but be swept into the whirlwind. "Grappa is part of our chromosomes."

So is marketing. While most Nonino labels are no longer handwritten, the family's push to fix grappa's image as a special, $60-a-liter luxury never ends. Over the years, the Noninos have put their grappa in so many elegant containers that a museum in Milan once collected them for an exhibition.

GIANNOLA'S life is like a rose-colored version of having it all.

Her youngest grandchildren's drawings decorate the walls of the offices that she shares with her daughters. Her house, repeatedly renovated over the decades, is just a few dozen paces away: close enough for her and her daughters to eat lunch there almost every day, with the grandchildren flitting into and out of view.

She has many Italians' candor. She has all Italians' flair for melodrama, which was clear when she cataloged the toll of her exertions.

"I've had three ulcers, a broken leg and two broken wrists," she said, not making clear precisely how these ailments were connected to grappa.

But the second of the wrist injuries was classic Giannola. It happened in a restaurant, toward the end of a business lunch, when she sped too recklessly from the table and lost her balance.