THE ICEMAN Paolo Coletto's artisan ice cream. #storiesfromsouthtyrol
Avalon is one of South Tyrol's best ice cream parlors. The ice-cream maker, Paolo Coletto, can talk for hours about his ice cream; work and philosophy are one for him. Coletto says that the ingredients of his ice creams are living beings, which he gets to know as he creates the ice cream. Together with him, who mixes them together, they become ice cream. Coletto is no ordinary ice-cream maker. For him, making ice cream is a very personal form of expression. “I am ice cream,” says the Bolzano native when he talks about his work. He shrugs his shoulders as he says it. What more can you ask for?
Ever since he threw away all his cookbooks, he makes the best ice cream. It's all about having the right ingredients and a flair for putting together good combinations. The ice-cream maker prefers to source his raw materials locally: milk from the dairy farm in Dobbiaco/Toblach, strawberries from the Val Martello/Martelltall Valley and raspberries from the area around the Sciliar/Schlern Massif. He tinkers with new flavors for hours in his tiny laboratory in the basement of Bolzano's Corso Libertà/Freiheitsstraße. One of them is called Bombay Dream.
An Indian in South Tyrol? Yep, that's also part of Paolo Coletto's life philosophy.