Nardini
The Estate
Distilleria Nardini is a place where scents and flavours come together with moments, words, sensations. It’s the story of a family that began in 1779 on the Ponte Vecchio, the famous covered bridge in Bassano designed by Palladio, and that continues to this day with a product that has become an icon of Italian lifestyle and a symbol of the national distillate: Nardini Grappa.
In this area, precisely North of Bassano, in the Cembra Valley, the art of distillation has been known and practised since the middle ages. This is where Bortolo Nardini hails from, the founder of what is the oldest and most long lived family of Italian distillers. Their story starts with a precise vision and tenacious will to turn it into reality.
Between the end of the 1700’s and the beginning of the 1800’s distillates are produced with traditional stills and stored in copper vats. Bortolo Nardini calls his grappa «Aquavite di Vinaccia» (grape pomace eau-de-vie) without the «c», the Latin way, playing with the double meaning of the words, the «Water of Life» or «Water of the Vine».
The Spirits
Nardini operates two distilleries, one in Monastier near Treviso and the other in its home town of Bassano del Grappa. Monastier uses continuous column distillation to produce a purer more neutral distillate, while the Bassano distillery operates traditional discontinuous stills to produce more flavoursome grappa.
In effect, Nardini only produces one blend of grappa. The various different grappas which comprise the Nardini range are distinguished by the strength they are bottled at and whether they are aged or not, and if so how long. The base grappa of all is the same Nardini blend.
Nardini’s ethos is to blend throughout the process to enable the production of a consistent product. This, along with the grape varieties of the pomace used and the mixed grapes, allows a uniform flavour profile to be achieved. They also blend grappas from five different vintages to eliminate annual variations in pomace and guarantee uniform quality.