Our Story

About our Bottega

Bottega 1900 was born from the idea of creating an Organic Italian old style grocery shop (called bottega) online, where customers could find the best of the best artisan products Italy has to offer.

We are a family owned and run business based in the Northern Beaches, Sydney and formed by Alice (mum), Enea (dad) and our little bub, who is the CEO! We want to transmit to our son the principles and traditions we were raised by our families, which include, but not limited to, eating habits and using genuinely made products for personal care. We are both Italian and our families come from different regions. Enea’s family is from the south while Alice’s family is from the north. We grew up with the love for good food and we followed the Mediterrenean Diet‘s main principles: good produce genuinely grown and/or raised (organic), simple dishes, balanced diet where vegetal proteins and fats are preferred rather than animal ones. 

We love food, cooking and eating well so we were always in the search of good products that had those traditional tastes, flavours and smells. We were looking for these characteristics even in simple products like pasta, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, tomato passata but unfortunately something was always missing, those flavours from our childhood were not there.

 

italian grocery store

About Alice and Enea

We both come from different backgrounds: Enea is Business Development Manager in the security industry and Alice is a certified and recognised Sommelier who worked in hospitality all her life. We were in Europe early this year so we have decided to join forces and undertake a truly amazing journey in order to find the best products Italy had to offer. 

We have driven from Milan all the way down to Sicily and back up to Veneto with our little one to discover the best producers, meeting with them, visiting the workplaces and trying the goods ourselves. We really wanted to have the feel of the place where things were made but more than anything, we wanted to MEET THE PEOPLE behind all that.

When I became a mum, I started to be more mindful about what I was buying as personal care for ourselves and the baby and realized that many products were actually not good for us. We think that to feel good you need to be healthy inside and also outside. That is the reason why we also import an amazing cosmetic producer based in Tuscany who only uses certified organic plants, flowers, fruits extracts to create the most amazing products. They cater for babies, kids, women and men, making the whole family happy.

We strongly believe that good products are made well in many places but outstanding ones are made from very few and the difference is in the passion and love that the makers have about their products. The passion is what pushes you to strive for the best, find the best fruits, vegetables, flowers, materials in order to create, make or just transform them to the best end products of all. So, yes, we fell in love with the goods, but we also fell in love with the producers and their amazing stories.