The Club

The Buttafuoco Storico takes its origins from the watershed ridge between the Versa and Scuropasso torrents, in the first hilly area of ​​the Oltrepò Pavese called “Sperone di Stradella”.
The multi-millennial vocation of this territory to the cultivation of the vine and to the production of wine is well known.
There are numerous classical and modern authors who deal with the wine history of this area, linking it to the favorable geographical position that forced the leaders, pilgrims and merchants to cross it.
It is precisely the passage of these people that allowed a commercial outlet to the wine produced here and enriched the local viticulture over the centuries, making it one of the most important in Italy.
Documents of 1700 attest on the spur of Stradella the production of very strong red wines by the antesignan of Buttafuoco, which lent themselves well to accompany the tables of the nobles and monasteries of Pavia and Milan.
Between 1700 and 1800 the Milanese dialect poet Carlo Porta attributed the name Buttafuoco, in the dialect “Butafeug”, to a wine coming from the hills of Stradella of great body and alcohol, which almost burnt the mouth.

Another anecdote between history and legend linked to Buttafuoco is the account of an event that happened in 1859 during the second war of independence. Peter Schenk tells that a company of Austrian sailors engaged in ferrying troops on the river Po, at the time of going to battle on the mainland had deserted and, instead of enemies, had slaughtered barrels and bottles of a local wine called Buttafuoco. The writer ties this story to the fact, instead actually happened, that the Austrungarica marina after a few years launched a ship calling it “Buttafuoco”.
It is from this story between myth and reality that on 7 February 1996, when some winemakers decided to join in re-evaluating this prestigious wine, they adopted the sailing ship as their symbol.

The history of the Sailing ship present in the Trademark of the “Club del Buttafuoco Storico” Consortium stems from an anecdote between history and legend … the report of an event that occurred in 1859 during the second war of independence in the famous Battle of Montebello near Casteggio.
The Austrians who fought against the Piedmontese were located in the area between Broni and Stradella with headquarters of the headquarters at Palazzo Isimbardi, about forty sailors arrived from the Imperial Regia Marina, with the task of assisting the bridges in the construction and in the ferrying of the Austro-Hungarian troops on the Po river.
When the battle became complicated for the Austrian troops, the generals Urban and Julai ordered a department of the Imperial and Royal Navy Bridge Crew, 39 men commanded by a Guardiamarina, to come and fight in the hills of the Oltrepò to give strong man to the troops.
According to Peter Schenk these sailors “mysteriously” lost themselves at the very beginning of the war operations; at first it was thought that their disappearance was caused by a gun battle with the Piedmontese or with the numerous smugglers in that border area, so the Austro-Hungarian General Staff decided to start the searches of the disappeared sending departments of Hussars to horse in the vicinity of Stradella, the sailors were found the next day safe and sound but completely drunk in a cellar on whose barrels was written the name of the “deadly” wine: BUTTAFUOCO.

The legend now goes to a fact that really happened … the writer Peter Schenk tells us that in 1872 the Imperial Navy launched the gunboat “Erzherzog Albrecht” and that the same after thirty years of activity on March 31, 1908 was radiated; in memory of that excellent wine drunk by the sailors in Oltrepò 60 years earlier it was renamed “Feuerspeier” (in Italian Buttafuoco), the new mission of the ship was registered as a pontoon to be used as accommodation for the students of the Artillery School of Pola.
In 1916 with the increase of the Submarine Fleet it was adapted to the Submarinement of the numerous German U-Booteers operating in the Adriatic.
In 1920 it was delivered to Italy, which took it to Taranto and gave it the name of “Regia Nave Buttafuoco”, continuing to use it as a ship-barracks for submarine crews of the IV Group.
Later it was given the acronym GM64. In 1947 he was still in the arsenal of Taranto, where he was finally demolished in 1955, after 83 years since the launch.
From this story between myth and reality that on 7 February 1996, when some winemakers decided to join in re-evaluating the prestigious Buttafuoco wine, they adopted a ship in their symbol or rather the sailing ship.