Every hospitality executive has a creation myth. Lorenzo’s involves a library, a panic attack, and a nightclub he never meant to work. “I’ve always been someone who needs people around me,” he says. “It’s just how I’m wired.” Before he became the face of Italy’s most quietly ambitious vodka brand, Lorenzo was a librarian by day and a bar-back by night in Rome.
Two worlds, same city, same restless curiosity. “Someone would come to me in the morning asking for a book recommendation,” he recalls, “and I’d see them again that evening asking for a vodka soda. Different needs, same underlying thing — they wanted someone to pay attention to them.” The moment that changed everything happened, as they usually do, by pure accident.
A friend called him last minute to help out at a nightclub. He walked in blind. “The pace, the volume, the chaos. For the first thirty minutes I was completely paralyzed. Frozen. And then something shifted. I started moving. By the end of the night, I realized I loved it.” That night taught him what he calls his first and most important lesson: “Doing has infinitely more value than ‘but what if I get it wrong.’ The only real limits are the ones we set for ourselves.”
He met Altamura later, when he was running the Experimental Cocktail Club in Venice. The founder, Frank, came in to present the product. “It was something in his eyes in that first conversation — a certain intensity that told me this project was different. Something worth betting on.”
Ask Lorenzo about his mistakes, and he does not give you a polished PR answer about “learning opportunities.” “I’ve always been someone who respects rules and hierarchy,” he admits. “Structure, process, the company playbook — I believed in following it. And there was a moment early on where I followed the plan so rigidly that I completely missed what the person in front of me actually needed. I did everything right on paper and got it entirely wrong in practice.” What did it cost him? “A relationship.” What did it teach him? “Luxury service without empathy is just procedure.
You can execute flawlessly and still fail the guest, because you never actually saw them.” That experience, he says, “fundamentally changed how I define excellence — not as the absence of mistakes, but as the presence of genuine human attention.” It is a remarkable thing to hear from a man whose job now is largely numbers. He does not romanticize the bar. But he also cannot forget what it taught him.
THE DARK SIDE OF THE FORCE
Lorenzo is candid about his transition from bartender to brand manager. He calls it “the dark side of the force.” “Now I mainly deal with numbers, market activation, recruiting — making sure the numbers are sustainable for the company and that our clients and collaborators are happy at the end of the month.” We are a young, small brand that does big things,” he says. “The moments where my pressure spikes are when we run major activations in multiple markets simultaneously.
The logistics, the people, the moving parts across different time zones and cultures all at once.” He admits he likes to have his hands on everything. “Those periods cost me more than a few nights of sleep and more chamomile tea than I’d like to admit. Learning to let go without losing sight is an ongoing exercise.”
Those periods cost me more than a few nights of sleep and more chamomile tea than I’d like to admit.
SIXTY-TWO FLIGHTS AND COUNTING
As Altamura Distilleries continues to establish itself as one of the most distinctive and progressive premium vodka brands in global hospitality, Lorenzo’s lifestyle becomes something closer to an airline safety briefing. When I asked Lorenzo how many flights he had taken this year, he corrected me mid-sentence. “Sixty-two. At last count. And the year isn’t over.” He paused. Then added, quietly: “Last year, I spent more or less a month in the airplane. An entire month of my life. That’s something tough.
You need to be very motivated to do it.” Is he motivated? “I am very motivated,” he says. But there is a flicker of something else. Weariness? Self-awareness? Both. “Frank Grillo, Managing Director of Altamura Distilleries, said to me a couple of days ago, ‘You really rent a house — your room — you’ve never been there.’ I think if you think about how much time you spend in the airport, you are the main character of The Terminal.” He laughs. “On the other hand, I’ve visited the entire globe. I feel like a little Magellan.
Someone traveling around the whole world.” It’s a life that has produced, inevitably, its share of stories that have nothing to do with vodka at all. “I was with Patrick Pistolesi, from Drink Kong,” he says, laughing before he even gets to the punchline. “Patrick said he was tired. I said, ‘Time to have a coffee.’ He said, ‘We can have a coffee at an Irish pub.’ We went inside. I said, ‘Patrick, I need to go to the restroom.’ The moment I came back, Patrick had bought a bunch of beers. I said, ‘Okay, fine. I don’t want coffee anymore. I’ll have a Guinness.'”
When I ask if the Lorenzo of today is different from the Lorenzo of forty days ago, he doesn’t hesitate. “Completely different. If I look at myself two or three years ago, I am completely different. Now I position myself in front of a different country and I am more respectful. I never say ‘I know these things.’ I say, ‘I don’t know my way — but I’m ready to learn your way.’ In China, they don’t bring you water. They bring you tea. And if you ask for water, ninety percent of the time it’s warm water. For us (Italians), warm water is uncomfortable. For them, cold water is uncomfortable.” He learned this not from a report. He learned it by being there. “Now I’m not surprised anymore. I know some words in Chinese.
No problem at all. I feel better. I feel I’m growing.” That instinct for reading a room — a country, a culture, a language — runs so deep that I ask him a lighter version of the same question: if he had to give up one of his four languages forever, which would it be? He doesn’t take long to answer. “French. And I say that with some affection. France has marked a real chapter of my life, and I don’t take that lightly.
But in the world we’re operating in today, Spanish and English are the languages that open the most doors — commercially, culturally, relationally. Spanish gives you Latin America, Spain. English is the universal currency of business. Those two I couldn’t function without.” He grins. “And Italian? You didn’t seriously think I’d give up Italian. That’s not a language. That’s a personality.”
We have people who love this brand genuinely — who have built partnerships with us that no spreadsheet would have green-lit. The relationships came first. The numbers followed.
THE CREDO
Lorenzo is unusual in this industry because he refuses to pretend that work is his religion. “Work for me is something that gratifies me very much,” he says carefully, “but it is a means to improve my life, to have economic stability, to do honestly what I think and what I like.” He tells his team a simple thing: have a direction. “If you know where you’re going, you know which steps to take to get there. Without a clear destination, you’re just reacting to whatever happens next — and that’s a strategy for mediocrity.” This philosophy applies directly to how he structures deals. “Not every agreement is about volume. Sometimes a partnership is about exposure.
Sometimes it’s a foothold into a larger group, a cultural statement, a long-term relationship investment. When you’re anchored to your actual objective, you stop chasing the wrong metrics.” What does he consider the wrong metric? “The numbers don’t always tell the whole story,” he says. “We have people who love this brand genuinely — who have built partnerships with us that no spreadsheet would have greenlit. The relationships came first. The numbers followed.
” Then he delivers a line that any old-school bartender would recognize as truth: “In a category this crowded, that human dimension isn’t a soft variable. It’s often the only real differentiator. I’d rather have ten people who believe in Altamura than a hundred doors where we’re just another SKU.” It’s a philosophy that starts, he tells me, with the product itself — and with a very deliberate bet against the rest of the category. “The name itself is already a story,” he says. “Altamura — the bread, the ancient grain, a town in Puglia that has been producing something exceptional for centuries.
That heritage isn’t decoration. It’s the foundation of what we’re doing. And then there’s the liquid. Most prestige vodkas race toward neutrality — the cleaner, the more invisible, the better. We went the opposite direction. Altamura has character. It has an Italian soul you can actually taste. That’s not a marketing line — it’s a deliberate choice that goes against everything the category has been doing for decades.” He shrugs, like the rest follows naturally. “If you want a vodka that disappears into your glass, there are plenty of options. If you want one with genuine Italian identity and a flavor profile that actually says something — we’re the right choice.”
THE BET THAT PAID OFF
(…and the one that didn’t)
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When pressed, Lorenzo is willing to name names — almost. “We bet on a restaurant group in the U.S. with Spanish roots, essentially from scratch. We brought them into Europe on a tour when there was no commercial logic to justify it on paper. Today they’re one of our best-performing accounts. The relationship built something the numbers never would have predicted.” The other side of that coin is darker. “A major hospitality group in London made promises that were, let’s say, generous. The vision they painted was compelling — and it never materialized. In fact, the reality turned out to be the opposite of what was presented.” That one, he says, “was a lesson in the difference between enthusiasm and commitment. And in reading people more carefully than their pitch decks.”
That same willingness to trust his own read over the spreadsheet, he tells me, once produced the hardest — and most quietly profitable — decision of his career. “There was a moment where we looked at our placement strategy and asked a hard question: where is Altamura actually living, and does that reflect who we are?” he says. “The answer was uncomfortable. We had distribution in accounts that moved volume but diluted the brand — environments where Altamura sat next to products that told a completely different story.
We were gaining presence and losing positioning at the same time.” So they pulled back. “We made a deliberate decision to pull back from certain accounts and redirect that energy into fewer, better placements — venues where the service ritual, the clientele, and the menu philosophy were already aligned with what Altamura represents. We invested in training the staff in those accounts, in the right glassware, in how the bottle was presented and the story told at the table.”
The immediate reaction from some corners, he admits, was: “you’re shrinking.” But what actually happened is that average bottle value per account went up, reorder frequency went up, and promotional spend per case went down. “The counterintuitive truth in luxury is that selectivity isn’t a constraint on growth. It is the growth strategy. The margin improvement was a consequence of getting that right.”
ITALIAN HOSPITALITY THAT THE WORLD CAN’T BUY
I asked Lorenzo what luxury markets most desperately want from Italian hospitality — and fail to get. He answered without pausing. “Italians have hospitality in the blood. It’s not a policy. It’s a reflex. If you walk into someone’s home in southern Italy, before you’ve even sat down, there’s a coffee in front of you. Nobody asked. Nobody deliberated. It just happens — because making someone feel at ease is the first priority. Full stop.” But there are two specific things, he says, that the world struggles to replicate. “The first is instinctive problem-solving — what we call l’arte di arrangiarsi — The art of figuring it out. We grew up improvising, adapting, making things work with what’s available.
In a hospitality context, that translates to staff who handle the unexpected without making the guest feel the friction. The second is a natural ease in leadership. Italians tend to read a room intuitively and bring people together without it feeling managed.” He pauses. Then: “That combination of warmth, resourcefulness, and human intelligence is what people are really paying for when they seek out Italian hospitality. They just don’t always know how to name it.”It’s not an abstract hope.
Proof, it turns out, is already arriving from outside Italy — and outside the industry that already loves him. “I’m super impressed by what we’ve done in the last three years,” he tells me. “Honestly, I’m surprised. I never expected something like this.” Two days before we spoke, he says, a message arrived from a friend — the owner of one of the most successful cocktail bars in Taiwan. “He said, ‘We’re putting contact with an importer.
The market wants you. When you’re in Macau for 50 Best Asia, let us know. We want to bring you as a guest for two days in Taiwan. We want to show you our family.'” I ask him why. “Why? Why us?” he repeats back to me. “I think it’s because we really take care about people. We are such a small brand, but in the meantime, we are super well connected. That makes us special.” He shakes his head slightly, still a little in disbelief. “People say, ‘Wow, these guys have passion. They want to understand more about us. We’re happy to share a little bit of us.’ Altamura sends me everywhere. I feel lucky. I feel like I’m living a young movie.”
Lorenzo is not easily intimidated. But he admits that the next frontier for Altamura keeps him up at night — and not just because of jet lag. “The next real frontier for Altamura isn’t a new market or a new distribution deal. It’s something harder: entering the collective imagination of the end consumer — not just the industry.” He explains: “Right now, Altamura is known and loved by the people who work in hospitality — bartenders, sommeliers, buyers, F&B directors.
That’s a foundation we’re proud of. But the next step is making sure that when someone who simply loves great things — great food, great travel, great experiences — thinks about Italian vodka, Altamura is the name that comes to mind. Instinctively. Without having to think about it.” That ambition, he tells me, isn’t new — it’s the same one he’s been building toward all along. “I want Altamura to be the Italian vodka,” he says. “Not one of them — the one.
Present in the best bars in the world, and the automatic choice whenever a new Italian concept opens anywhere — a restaurant group, a hotel, a private members club. If it’s Italian, Altamura should already be on the list before anyone even asks the question. That kind of positioning isn’t built through campaigns. It’s built through consistency, through relationships, and through never compromising on where and how the brand shows up. We’re laying that foundation now.”
He knows the competitors are well-established and well-funded. But he believes Altamura has something they cannot manufacture. “A genuine story. A real identity. And a community of people who believe in what we’re building.” Then he adds, quietly: “That’s not nothing. That’s actually everything.” I always end interviews with a practical question. What should the reader do tomorrow? Lorenzo did not tell me to buy a bottle.
He did not tell me to follow him on social media. He told me something else entirely. “Pick a direction. Not a dream. Not a mood board. A direction. Something concrete enough that you can take one step toward it before lunch.” He leaned forward. “Everything I’ve talked about — the nightclub shift in Rome, the library, the London deal that went sideways, the restaurant group we believed in when there was no reason to — all of it comes back to the same thing: the people who build something real are the ones who decide to move, even when they’re not ready, even when the outcome isn’t guaranteed.”
Then he said something I will never forget. “The world doesn’t reward the most talented people. It rewards the ones who show up consistently and stay committed to where they’re going.” He paused. Smiled. And added: “And if you happen to be somewhere with a good bar, order an Altamura. Neat. See if the story holds up in the glass.” Then he looked at his watch — or perhaps at the boarding time on his phone — and apologized. He had a flight to catch…
Of course he did.
Credits: Photography for Lost & Found Italy by Alessandro Camponeschi
Shoot Location: Hotel De Russie, Rome
