Francesco Illy (entrepreneur, 1953)

Francesco Illy (born February 8, 1953 in Trieste ) is a Swiss entrepreneur and wine producer . He is co-owner of the Swiss coffee brand Amici Caffè and has a stake of around 20 percent in Gruppo Illy Holding, the parent company of the Illy Café company in Trieste.

family

Francesco Illy is the son of the food chemist Ernesto Illy (1925-2008) and grandson of the eponymous Francesco Illy (1892-1956), who came from Timisoara and emigrated to Trieste. In 1933 Francesco Illy founded the coffee roastery and trademark Illy together with a descendant of Hermann Hausbrandt . His son Ernesto Illy presided over the company from 1963 to 2004. Andrea Illy (* 1964), brother of Francesco Illy, has been in charge since 2005 .

Francesco Illy lives in Küssnacht and belongs to the third generation of the Illy coffee dynasty. He is the first son of Ernesto Illy and his then wife, Anna Rossi. His personal preferences are music, photography, literature and flying. For many years he took photographs professionally and published an illustrated book about the Dolomites. Francesco Illy's son is also called Ernesto (* 1983) and studied architecture. The Lucerne- based Galleria Amici , which opened in 2012, also comes from his hand .

job

In 1979, Francesco Illy started again to build up a coffee brand in Switzerland with Amici Caffè, after his grandfather had also done the same with the Illy brand from Thalwil on Lake Zurich in 1939 . In 1991 he began to develop the Amici Collection together with Matteo Thun, which for legal reasons is only called that in Switzerland and is called illy collection in all other countries .

He has been handing over the operational side of the business to his ex-wife Annemarie Illy for many years. He focuses on development, communication and research. Since 1994 he has also been involved in building up the FrancisFrancis! began.

Winemaking

Francesco Illy has owned the Podere Le Ripi winery in Tuscany since 1998 . Although sales of wine on 13 hectares at 60,000 bottles and 1.5 million Swiss francs are not very high, he has found a very special cultivation method for his Sangiovese grapes.

The estate near Montalcino has a total of 52.6 hectares and, in addition to the vineyards, also has extensive olive plantations. The soil consists of a mixture of loam, clay and sandstone and is very suitable for viticulture. In 2003 he was able to produce his first vintage, which he called Lupi e Sirene . In retrospect, he criticized his ignorance in an interview. Years later, in Burgundy, he found out that a good wine comes from vines that are more than 30 years old, because they only became deeply rooted over time and could produce multi-layered wines. From then on he experimented with a much higher density of sticks . Instead of 5000 to 8000 vines, Francesco Illy planted 62,500 of them per hectare.

In the vineyards he has been building since then, the vines are only 40 cm apart. Francesco Illy describes them as "bonsai vines". As a result, they stay smaller, but take root more quickly and thus reach the extract-rich layers of soil earlier. He quotes a viticulture professor from Florence who had claimed that "before the phylloxera plague in 1865, all the vineyards in the world were so densely planted". Francesco Illy therefore sees himself as a “rediscoverer” of this narrow planting method.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Emanuele Scarci: Cambi al vertice: illycaffè, arriva la quarta generazione . Il sole 24 ore, January 7th 2017
2. ^ ^{A b c} Francis Müller: Francesco Illy: The life theme is: «Enjoyment» . Handelszeitung, May 10, 2006
3. ↑ Francesco Illy launches Galleria Amici . Press portal, May 9, 2012
4. ↑ ^{a b} The story of the Illy family. on amici.ch
5. ↑ ^{a b} Robert Camuto : Small is big. Wine Spectator, May 26, 2015
6. ↑ ^{a b} Andreas Lukoschik: Francesco Illy. A conversation with the coffee legend about the art of enjoyment, its wines and photography. In: Y Mag , publication by the Canton of Schwyz, Office for Economic Affairs, No. 25, Winter 2017, pages 52–59