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Valbruna Vail: Connecting Italy, Latin America through culture, coffee

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December 16, 2014, 10:07 am
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Valbruna Vail in the heart of Vail Village.

Marco Tonazzi sells many things. His Valbruna Vail store sells unique, high-quality clothing – mostly Italian but also from Switzerland and other European countries. His Valbruna Inn in Italy and Hotel Minturn near Vail sell unmatched vacation memories. And his Mangiare Italian food market in Minturn sells hard-to-find culinary items from his homeland.

But Tonazzi says it all starts with coffee, and that he gives away.

“We serve coffee in our store, and it’s a fantastic connection to all the Latin visitors to Vail,” Tonazzi says. “They come in and they slow down. The store has a slower pace. Our cultures have a slower pace. We’re not in such a rush.”

Tonazzi also sells a sense of cultural connection, providing places around the world for people to come together in the mountains – whether it’s the Colorado Rockies or the Julian Alps of northeastern Italy – to enjoy good conversation and a more relaxed world view.

“I think it’s character,” Tonazzi says. “The connection with our store is the people. We think the same way. We drink coffee the same way — not only enjoy it, but the reason we have it is similar to people in South America. It’s social. You have a coffee with somebody.”

And in the process of having a good, rich cup of Italian coffee in the Valbruna Vail store on Meadow Drive in Vail Village, a visitor from Argentina, or Mexico, or Venezuela may ask about the huge photo on the wall showing about 100 Italians gathered in the small village of Valbruna in the spectacular mountains near the ski resort of Tarvisio.

“Valbruna in Vail is the window of what we do, because we talk about the town, where we have a hotel, we talk about Valbruna travel and all the trips I take with [Warren Miller film star] Chris [Anthony] to go skiing there, to go cycling, to go hiking in those mountains,” Tonazzi says. “The store is our fantastic opportunity, our way to talk to people about Valbruna.”

Valbruna is where Tonazzi’s parents owned a cabin and vacationed from the city of Udine, Italy, in the 1960s. After a long career as a World Cup and then professional ski racer, Tonazzi, who by then had met his wife and former ski film star Amy Wheeler Tonazzi, moved to Vail in 1992 and launched his wholesale clothing distribution company in 1993. He opened Valbruna Vail in November of 1998.

But first, after choosing the name in honor of his childhood vacation home, Tonazzi decided he must pay proper tribute. On Oct. 4, 1998, he gathered the entire town of more than 100 people for the huge photograph that takes up so much space in the Vail store. All the townspeople who posed received a mug from the upcoming 1999 World Alpine Ski Championships in Vail and Beaver Creek and an open tab at Valbruna’s bar.

“Every retailer said to me, ‘How can you sacrifice shelf space for a photograph?’” Tonazzi laughs. “And I felt it was the soul [of the town] and a tribute to the town and the people.”

It makes total sense to Tonazzi that an Italian store deep in the heartland of America should resonate so well with visitors from Mexico, Central and South America.

“I think I see more Italians in Argentina if I walk down the street than sometimes I see in Florence, where they’re all American,” he laughs. “It’s a cultural connection that with the store we don’t need to fabricate because it’s real. We are as a company and a store Italian, and Italian to me equals Latin.”

To contact Valbruna Vail go the website or call (970) 827-9092. To contact Mangiare food market in Minturn call (970) 827-5603 or email mangiare@valbrunaitaly.com. To contact Hotel Minturn (just five miles from Vail) call (970) 331-5461 or 1-(888) MINTURN (646-8876) or email hotelminturn@valbrunaitaly.com. To contact the Valbruna Inn call +39 0428.660554.

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David O. Williams

Managing Editor at RealVail
David O. Williams is the editor and co-founder of RealVail.com and has had his awarding-winning work (see About Us) published in more than 75 newspapers and magazines around the world, including 5280 Magazine, American Way Magazine (American Airlines), the Anchorage Daily News (Alaska), the Anchorage Daily Press (Alaska), Aspen Daily News, Aspen Journalism, the Aspen Times, Beaver Creek Magazine, the Boulder Daily Camera, the Casper Star Tribune (Wyoming), the Chicago Tribune, Colorado Central Magazine, the Colorado Independent (formerly Colorado Confidential), Colorado Newsline, Colorado Politics (formerly the Colorado Statesman), Colorado Public News, the Colorado Springs Gazette, the Colorado Springs Independent, the Colorado Statesman (now Colorado Politics), the Colorado Times Recorder, the Cortez Journal, the Craig Daily Press, the Curry Coastal Pilot (Oregon), the Daily Trail (Vail), the Del Norte Triplicate (California), the Denver Daily News, the Denver Gazette, the Denver Post, the Durango Herald, the Eagle Valley Enterprise, the Eastside Journal (Bellevue, Washington), ESPN.com, Explore Big Sky (Mont.), the Fort Morgan Times (Colorado), the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, the Greeley Tribune, the Huffington Post, the King County Journal (Seattle, Washington), the Kingman Daily Miner (Arizona), KUNC.org (northern Colorado), LA Weekly, the Las Vegas Sun, the Leadville Herald-Democrat, the London Daily Mirror, the Moab Times Independent (Utah), the Montgomery Journal (Maryland), the Montrose Daily Press, The New York Times, the Parent’s Handbook, Peaks Magazine (now Epic Life), People Magazine, Powder Magazine, the Pueblo Chieftain, PT Magazine, the Rio Blanco Herald Times (Colorado), Rocky Mountain Golf Magazine, the Rocky Mountain News, RouteFifty.com (formerly Government Executive State and Local), the Salt Lake Tribune, SKI Magazine, Ski Area Management, SKIING Magazine, the Sky-Hi News, the Steamboat Pilot & Today, the Sterling Journal Advocate (Colorado), the Summit Daily News, United Hemispheres (United Airlines), Vail/Beaver Creek Magazine, Vail en Español, Vail Health Magazine, Vail Valley Magazine, the Vail Daily, the Vail Trail, Westword (Denver), Writers on the Range and the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. Williams is also the founder, publisher and editor of RealVail.com and RockyMountainPost.com.