Poli, Venetians since 1400
The Poli family from Schiavon shares a common history with many other families in Veneto. Only roots that go deep into the land can give such an ethereal fruit as Grappa.
People and facts
A company is made up of buildings, machinery and equipment, but above all people, otherwise things will have no soul. That's why I believe that the history of this Distillery is inextricably bound with the history of the people who created it: their dreams, their thoughts and their actions.
The family history written by Prof. Giordano Dellai, an academic and author of several books about the Vicenza area, has been drawn with philological rigour, starting from present-day members of the Poli family and stretching back many generations, looking up parish, notary and cadastral records, tracing and translating century-old documents as only an expert palaeographer can do.
The result is the history of the Poli family from Schiavon, but also of the many Veneto families who settled, in the late Middle Ages, on the Asiago plateau in order to clear the land and grow crops there.
Towards the end of the 19th century, those families headed down towards the plain, where it was easier to run a business or manufacturing activity.
This was the case for the Poli family who, from their native Gomarolo, moved three times in 500 years,covering a distance of 18 kilometres,to Schiavon, where they still live today.
Now there’s dynamism for you, we might be tempted to say, given the time it took them, but the reasons for this attachment to their roots become clear from Dellai’s account.
In particular, it emerges that each of the three moves was an act of love for a wife who suggested the head of the family ought to find a new place to settle in.
True though it is that the genealogy of a family is based on the male line, it must be said that the Poli family women have always played a leading role when it came to change, and it is probably thanks to them that their menfolk have been able to exploit their manufacturing and commercial skills to the full.
Over the centuries, the Poli family have worked as shepherds, hatters, inn-keepers and, finally, distillers.The goods they produced and sold – cheeses, straw hats, wines and Grappa – may have changed.
But what never has are the values that have inspired and continue to inspire these activities: a sense of duty, a sense of social responsibility, respect for the customer and for the goods produced, and a sense of honour towards the family name.
These are the principles we draw our inspiration from every day, and that bind together all the generations that have gone before us.
These are our Roots.
Tour at Poli Distillery