Frequent questions

Leonardo’s is a gelato crafted fresh every day: to obtain the best freshness we produce maximum 4/5 kg of gelato at a time, many times a day according to the sales volume. Furthermore, we use only selected highest quality ingredients.

At Leonardo gelato laboratorio we have no secrets! The key elements are the fresh and highest quality ingredients selected, the wise combination of the ingredients and the unique and unmistakable recipes from the long Italian tradition continued by Leonardo.

No, they don’t. The sorbets of the Italian gelato laboratorio Leonardo contain only a very high percentage of fruit (more than 50%), water and sugar. The only exception is the coconut sorbet, which contains some milk proteins.

The philosophy of the Italian gelato laboratorio Leonardo is based on one single rule: we make sure the quality is always the highest. For this reason, our sorbets contain only real fruit.

Among our customers there are people who are also gluten intolerant and they have never had any problems with our gelato. To be on the safe side, you will find a “book of the ingredients” in our gelaterias. There, flavour after flavour, you will find every piece of information about the possible allergens contained in the flavour you choose. If you have any other questions, do not hesitate to ask our expert sales people for advice: we are sure our gelato crafted fresh every day will seduce you

There are many flavours containing nuts or traces of them in our range. To be safe, we suggest that you read our “book of the ingredients”, which is available in every Italian gelato laboratorio. There you will find which flavours contain nuts.

The flavours Mascarpone, Othello and Zabaglione contain Marsala wine. The Mediterranean custard cream flavour contains Zibibbo, a sweet dessert wine. The flavours Cassata, Gianduia and Extra Dark Chocolate contain a tiny amount of alcohol. The Orange Chocolate flavour contains Grand Marnier. For further info, we suggest that you read the “book of the ingredients”: there you will find all the necessary information about the contents of our every day crafted gelatos.

The choice of the Italian gelato laboratorio Leonardo is not to use artificial sweeteners. We have also decided to exclude soy from the ingredients of our gelatos: we think that this product does not allow us to obtain a product of the Leonardo quality standards. For our customers intolerant to milk, we have a wide range of fruit flavours and a delicious selection of slushes.

It is one of the best quality cocoa available. For our gelato crafted fresh every day, we use a special mix of African cocoas from Zaire and Ivory Coast, processed by a famous Dutch company.

Heera or Hira is an Indian word, which means “jewel”, “gem”. The “Mango Heera” flavour, produced by our gelato laboratorio, is crafted by using Indian mangos and draws inspiration from a traditional Indian drink called mango lassi.

The idea to found the Italian gelato laboratorio Leonardo started in 2004 in Bologna. Our recipes come from the best Italian culinary traditions. Since Bologna is located on the shores of the river Rhine or in Italian “Riva Reno”, we decided to pay homage to this city choosing the name Leonardo, which is also the name of a district in the city.

The base of the cakes produced by the gelato production laboratorio Leonardo is a fine layer of sponge cake: the rest is every day freshly crafted gelato by Leonardo. You can choose the combination you prefer to stuff your cake.

We put our gelato crafted fresh every day in the stainless steel gelato container or “carapine”: it is simply the best way in the world to keep gelato fresh. The carapina gelato container keeps the perfect humidity level, keeping the right gelato consistency. It also makes sure the hygiene standards are the highest possible.

If kept in the Styrofoam box, the gelato crafted fresh every day lasts around 45 minutes outside freezer. If you need to travel for a long time, we have a special blast chiller, which brings the gelato to a temperature of 40 degrees below zero. In this way its duration outside the freezer is many hours longer, proportionally to the blast chilling time. You need to inform the staff in advance in order to program the blast chilling process.

Being a gelato crafted fresh every day, it should be taken out of the freezer and kept outside, without lid, for at least 15 minutes before eating it. In this way it reaches the right temperature and the perfect consistency.

In the gelato production lab Leonardo we do not use any preservatives or artificial colorants. Our mint slush is natural and has no chemical additives: we make it with an essential oil extracted from mint leaves which does not have a green color.

Our Gianduia cream is very special and costly. When we prepare the cone or the cup, we use a small quantity of it. The cup of Gianduia to take away weighs approximately 80 gr: if we put the Gianduia cream directly in the box with the cold gelato, it would instantly become hard and therefore will lose the Gianduia’s creamy quality.

We state it proudly: at our Italian gelato laboratorio Leonardo not only do we produce a delicious gelato, but it is also “healthy”. Many commonly used food additives in our industry have no natural origins. Such additives are used to avoid the gelato to melt quickly and to add more air, so that the gelato cone seems artificially bigger. We, at the Italian gelato laboratorio Leonardo, prefer to avoid such tricks and shortcuts. We have chosen to have higher costs, therefore to spend more in research and laboratorio experiments to make sure our product is really good and healthy.

This happens only due to seasonality when the sales tend to decrease. During the weekdays at the Italian gelato laboratorio Leonardo we sometimes sell less gelato. Being a gelato crafted fresh every day, to make sure it is always fresh, we are forced to reduce the number of flavours. During the high-season and weekend sales increase, therefore we can increase the number of flavours on offer.

Milk is the main ingredient in our dairy-based flavours of our gelato laboratorio. Dairy based flavours actually contain 70% of milk and cream. The quality of these ingredients and the way we work with them are the key to the intensity of our gelato crafted fresh every day by Leonardo. In order to offer you the best quality available, we buy only milk and cream from the Italian Alpine pastures in the Stura Valley, in the mountain region of Cuneo. The milk and cream from this region are sought after because of their excellent and undiluted quality. The cold weather and the special feed of the cows (mountain pasture in the summer and hay in the winter) make sure the cows produce milk with a high protein content, an excellent nutrition element which enables the gelato to be easily whipped without having to use chemical substances like mono and diglyceride, propylene glycol, and propanediol.

We state it proudly: at our gelato production lab Leonardo not only do we produce a delicious gelato, but it is also “healthy”. Many commonly used food additives in ice cream industry are not natural.  Artificial additives are used to prevent the gelato from melting quickly and to add more air it, so that the gelato in the cones seems bigger. We, at the Italian gelato lab Leonardo, prefer to avoid such tricks and shortcuts. We have chosen to have higher costs, therefore to spend more in research and lab experiments to make sure our products are devoid of any artificial additives and therefore really good and healthy.