The Sabatini family’s passion for the world of spirits began to take form at the beginning of the last century, with Guglielmo Giacosa, Ugo Sabatini’s maternal grandfather. Born at the end of the nineteenth century in Alba, a famous winemaking area in the region in Piedmont in northern Italy, Guglielmo got a degree in enology and Cinzano sent him to Bolivia to manage their local factory there and begin producing their world-famous vermouth, thus making him one of very few people to know its recipe. He was subsequently transferred to the Australian branch of Cinzano, in Melbourne. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he faced an adventurous journey back to Italy to sign up for the army, but was captured en route and detained in a prisoner-of-war camp in Australia, together with his wife and children. At the end of the war he was released and returned to Melbourne, where he was hired by one of the most important Australian wine companies, Wynns & Co, for which he created a line of Italian products named Boronia, including vermouth and marsala. Having returned to Italy in the mid sixties, Guglielmo Giacosa passed away in Alba in 1973.