Strange Italy: Espresso Pioneer's Ashes Placed into Moka Pot

Some say Italians are strange. Perhaps so, but some of their strangeness might be due the the passionate and often unusual way they live their lives... and end them.

Moka espresso pot pioneer and marketer, Renato Bialetti, died in February and was laid to rest. (Read the GVI article HERE) But he was not laid to rest in the way most Catholics are in Italy... With the deceased body being viewed and kissed by all, a procession to the cemetery on the outskirts of town, and the coffin placed into a concrete mausoleum with a photo of the person on the front plaque.

You see, Alfonzo Bialetti, Renato's father, was the inventor of the Moka pot, but it was Renato who was the genius responsible for marketing the Moka as the world knows it today. It was his huge mustache that inspired the little character that is emblazoned on every Moka pot sold in the world. He is the one responsible for marketing the Moka to people outside of Italy and Europe.

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So it should be considered appropriate that as his last, big marketing campaign, Bialetti was was cremated and his ashes were placed in a huge Bialetti Moka pot. The priest from St. Thomas the Apostle in Montebuglio, Lombardy held a funeral mass, swung the incense around the Moka and put Renato to rest. In Italy, there is a lack of space for new burials, but this wasn't the reason for the cremation and placing Bialetti's ashes into a Moka. He will be interred in the family's cemetery plot in Omegna, Lombardy. Renato something knew about great public relations.

We all hope he will rest in eternal peace, that is, if all that espresso doesn't keep him up.

Every time we pick up a Moka pot we'll imagine him inside...


Jerry Finzi

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