Poli Distillerie

From the material ... to the spirit

Chiara was the name of a girl with topaz-green eyes I met in 1985 and it seemed to me the right name for this newborn aqua vitae from grapes.

The Fior d’Arancio Moscato bunches had the same fresh  light and put you in a good mood just by looking at them.

The primary aroma of this variety has no equal: fruity, sweet notes with a hint of citrus to recall tangerine and orange blossoms - hence the name ‘Fior d’Arancio’.

This Moscato variety, different from White Moscato and the so called ‘Cannelli’ Moscato from the Piedmont region, is grown on Colli Euganei, at the border between the lower Vicenza province and the Padua province.

It was nice to go to Vo’ Euganeo and “fix” the price of grapes with Mr. Ugo Zatterin, one of the most qualified vine growers in the area. He was a handsome farmer, nearly eighty years old, very thin and full of energy.

The collar of his shirt four size larger, sunburned skin and eyes full of light.

Each time he would invite me into his kitchen and start discussing the price of grapes.

Every year the same pantomime, with him shouting that his grapes were worth twice the market price, and me replying that at those prices it would have been cheaper to grow them myself, and so on for a good half hour. In the end, inevitably, I was the one to give in, you could not overcome someone like that, with eighty vintages of price bargaining behind him.  A good handshake, faking a frown at each other as if to say “ you got the deal” but knowing full well  we both had.

I must say it had become a lovely fight, repeating  itself every year at the beginning of August, when prices began to emerge on the market according to vintage expectations.

When he died it was as if his vineyard had gone with him, and together with them a whole way to farm.  Now his grapes are brought to the wine cooperative on Colli Euganei, a splendid association bringing together big and small vine growers devoted to quality as Mr. Zatterin used to be.

Jacopo Poli