A meeting on the theme of Innovation from historic companies’ perspective, but also an evocative moment dedicated to the visit of a museum that is a symbol of the Italian entrepreneurial tradition.
The Autumn Convivium of the Italian Historic Companies Association, held on Friday 9th October in Schiavon – a small village of just a thousand souls in the province of Vicenza, located at the foot of the hills – was a valuable opportunity to admire the Poli Museum of Grappa (Italian grape-based pomace brandy).
The Poli family has been producing grappa in Schiavon since 1898, and it restored one of the oldest buildings of the village, close to the distillery, as an exhibition space dedicated to the development of the most important Italian distillate.
The educational-informational path of the Poli Museum of Grappa in Schiavon was completed in 1993 with the opening of the Museum’s main building in front of the Ponte Vecchio of Bassano del Grappa.
The Poli Grappa Museum in Schiavon consists of two floors and six areas, occupying an area of 1,000 square meters. The first area is dedicated to “The Origins of Distillation”: thanks to reconstructions of ancient stills, you can trace the evolution of the art of distillation in time. A chronological panel indicates the most important scholars who studied it and perfected it from the XI to the XIX century, while another panel indicates the 300 spirits distilled in various countries of the world.
The second area is dedicated to distillation plants: the several stills for the production of grappa on show represent different traditional and industrial distillation methods: “direct fire”, “bagnomaria” (water bath), and “flowing steam”.
