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News Release

April 15, 2005

A TASTE OF ITALY COMES TO ANCHORAGE AS LOCAL WOMAN STRIVES TO BAKE A BETTER BISCOTTI

First-generation Italian Tonia Winkler takes her mother's recipe and parlays it into a biscotti wholesaling business that capitalizes on Anchorage's coffee house craze.

Anchorage, Alaska-- In a town chock full of coffee houses--48 and counting, the most coffee houses per capita according to a recent national survey-- Anchorage's love of coffee means a promising market for coffee's dipping counterpart, biscotti.  But it was national pride, not a national survey that inspired Tonia Winkler to launch a side business of making and selling biscotti.

Winkler grew up in Rome, Italy, where her mother, Immacolata Paolino, baked biscotti for her family. When, as a teen, Tonia moved with her family to the USA in the 60's, she saw her mother preserve the family's heritage by continuing to cook and bake Italian foods.  Years later when Tonia moved to Alaska in her early 20's she promised herself that she, too, would carry on the Italian tradition as her mother had.

During times when she felt homesick for Italy and her mother's cooking, she would pull out her mother's recipe for biscotti and make herself a batch. "I see my mother whenever I make biscotti," says Winkler. "We were raised on biscotti with coffee for breakfast. It reminds me of my childhood."

For Winkler, the time invested in making her own biscotti--a careful process of balancing flavors of almonds and anise, forming and cutting the dough just right and baking it twice until the proper crunchiness is achieved--was well worth the effort because American-made biscotti never tasted as good as her mother's. "I found a lot of biscotti in America to be flavorless and too hard," says Winkler. "I said to myself 'I can do better than this' so I did."

After raising three children and working full-time as a leasing officer at Ted Stevens International Airport, Winkler thought the time was right to indulge in her passion and share her mother's special creation. And so Tonia's Italian Biscotti, a side business baking and wholesaling biscotti, was born.

Winkler makes 1,000 biscotti using the ovens at Villa Nova Restaurant--a favor from her good friend Villa Nova owner George Chrimat. Winkler's goal is to make a better biscotti, and according to Anchorage coffee houses, she's done it. Since she began her business late last year, she now wholesales to 16 coffee houses and coffee shacks throughout Alaska, including Cafe' del Mundo in Anchorage, Salty Girls Gifts in Homer and Arctic Trading Post in Nome. Winkler credits much of her success to word-of-mouth.

"I'm really not advertising my biscotti," says Winkler. "I have coffee shop owners call me saying 'I hear you make the best biscotti.' It's really gratifying for me. And my mother says Brava!"