Female Supremacy Articles - Page 8

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Women make up 46.5 percent of the U.S. work force and held a little more than 50 percent of managerial and professional specialty positions last year.

A Dynamo and Her Daughters Turn Leftovers to Gold

By FRANK BRUNI

NY TIMES

December 6, 2003

ERCOTO, Italy

GIANNOLA NONINO was given garbage, and she simply refused to accept it. That is one way to distill her experience and adventure, a liquor-trade tale in which she played Pygmalion to a peasant's swill.

Before Ms. Nonino administered her makeover, Italian grappa was no more dignified than its ingredients: the grape skins, seeds and stems left over from making wine. That mash was trash, and the crude concoction it produced often tasted that way.

But she saw a potential in grappa and a possible market for it that no one else did. She envisioned what it became: a crystalline nectar that could compete with cognac and do battle with brandy.

"I have changed grappa from a Cinderella to a queen," said Ms. Nonino, 65, at the end of a recent lunch here, over a glass of that post-dessert delicacy.

She accomplished something else, too. In the process of refining grappa, she both exemplified and defied what Italian ingenuity is all about, becoming a success story at once utterly representative and strikingly different.

Like many profitable businesses in Italy's rich north, hers is compact and focused, propelled by a special sense of style and built on the indefatigable drive of a closely knit family.