ABOUT

DISTILLERIA SCHIAVO / GAJÀRDO

A family distillery dating to 1887, now in its Fifth Generation.

Headquartered just outside Vicenza in the grappa-rich northeastern Veneto, the historic Schiavo distillery is an artisanal grappa house and, under the direction of 5th-generation proprietor/distiller Marco Schiavo, so much more. About a half hour from the iconic town of Bassano del Grappa, the village of Costabissara was where entrepreneur Domenico Schiavo began traveling from farm to farm with a mobile still, selling the resulting spirit to inns and wineries in the area. Domenico’s son, Giuseppe Schiavo, built the family’s first brick-and-morter distillery in 1887 (about 10 years before Jacopo Poli was founded), and down the family it has continued to Marco, who’s equipped with a fleet of antique copper stills to produce a wide range of varietal and aged grappe, crafted from only the most recently pressed grapes.

In a market dominated by a handful of big brands, the arrival on US shores of a historically significant grappa label is newsworthy on its own, but Marco has taken Schiavo beyond grappa and into liqueur, aperitivo, and amaro production. Among the highlights is Anno Decimo, a plum (prugna) liqueur created according to his grandfather’s recipe, and Amaro Felsina, a bright, lifted style of amaro that can do double duty as an aperitivo or digestivo.

Schiavo’s latest innovation, a “cocktail line” launched in 2013 called Gajàrdo, is designed to take aperitivo and cocktail culture to a new level, with bitters and liqueurs that prioritize the most sustainably sourced ingredients; the most thoughtful and innovative formulations; and the most natural production methods. These are for bartenders who demand that every ingredient in every drink be of the highest possible quality.

The Gajàrdo products originated from a collaboration between Marco Schiavo and bartender Giacomo Diamante, who realized that, in Marco’s words, “all the bitters [we] knew were so full of sugar and perservatives that they weren’t bitter at all: it was time to produce a bitter worthy to be called that.” Marco tried different formulations, with the goal of using as little sugar as possible. His first iteration of Gajàrdo Bitter debuted at the Bulgari Hotel in Milan in 2014, after which Marco was compelled to tweak the recipe slightly to make it a touch sweeter; later, in 2017, he resurfaced the “original” Gajàrdo Bitter recipe—originally deemed too intense—and put it out into the world as Gajàrdo Bitter “Extra.” It was subsequently dubbed “Best Italian Bitter of 2018” by amarobsession.com.

Each Gajàrdo product is made with the infusion of all-natural herbs, roots, and spices and crafted in small batches. They are only lightly filtered, to preserve as much of the character of the flavorings as possible.