Today, Molini del Ponte is a showcase of the extraordinary coexistence of the ancient and the modern, as inside the same building next to the modern state-of-the-art, computer-controlled cylinder plant are the ancient natural stone mills dating back to the late 1800s. Four generations of the Drago family have now been involved in the milling business with undiminished passion since the second half of the 1900s. In the early decades of the 1900s, it was often necessary to go all the way to Palermo to buy the necessities for bread-making and pasta-making. Then came the ambitious project of Francesco Paolo and his brothers, who decided to equip Castelvetrano with a modern mill that would be an expression of cutting-edge technology. As is often the case, innovation goes hand in hand with the recovery of tradition; thus, in the early 1970s, the Drago family's desire to preserve tradition was expressed in the acquisition of two ancient millstones mills for the production of natural stone-ground whole grain flours, so that alongside modern production could be the traditional one. Only the best grains, exclusively hard and soft grains grown in the region of Sicily, are delivered to the mill, where pure processing of each grain takes place. An indispensable condition of flour excellence is the care of the grain. The tool that makes it possible to turn care and attention to the grain of wheat even before milling is a state-of-the-art optically controlled selection and cleaning system. “The future is stone. Aided by technology. A return to ancient gestures, knowledge and measures, also a production that takes into account the gratification of man who must touch what he produces, smell the scents and feel the aromas that can tell stories.”
Today, Molini del Ponte is a showcase of the extraordinary coexistence of the ancient and the modern, as inside the same building next to the modern state-of-the-art, computer-controlled cylinder plant are the ancient natural stone mills dating back to the late 1800s. Four generations of the Drago family have now been involved in the milling business with undiminished passion since the second half of the 1900s. In the early decades of the 1900s, it was often necessary to go all the way to Palermo to buy the necessities for bread-making and pasta-making. Then came the ambitious project of Francesco Paolo and his brothers, who decided to equip Castelvetrano with a modern mill that would be an expression of cutting-edge technology. As is often the case, innovation goes hand in hand with the recovery of tradition; thus, in the early 1970s, the Drago family's desire to preserve tradition was expressed in the acquisition of two ancient millstones mills for the production of natural stone-ground whole grain flours, so that alongside modern production could be the traditional one. Only the best grains, exclusively hard and soft grains grown in the region of Sicily, are delivered to the mill, where pure processing of each grain takes place. An indispensable condition of flour excellence is the care of the grain. The tool that makes it possible to turn care and attention to the grain of wheat even before milling is a state-of-the-art optically controlled selection and cleaning system. “The future is stone. Aided by technology. A return to ancient gestures, knowledge and measures, also a production that takes into account the gratification of man who must touch what he produces, smell the scents and feel the aromas that can tell stories.”