POLI BARRIQUE SOLERA DI FAMIGLIA

Made using the Solera aging system invented in Spain, this blend of several Veneto grape varieties, with a secret recipe favored by the founder of POLI, boasts aromas of vanilla, chocolate, and coffee beans, offering a complex and multifaceted flavor profile.

It's a Grappa full of surprise, fun, and high complexity.

First launched in 1989 as the POLI BARRIQUE series, Toni Poli (the fourth generation of the POLI family business) used his favorite secret recipe, blending different grape varieties for distillation, producing only nine barrels per year until his final distillation in 2001.

To commemorate his father, Jacopo Poli, starting in 2001, also used his father's favorite recipe for distillation, producing only seven barrels per year until 2014, accumulating a total of 98 barrels. In 2015, the POLI BARRIQUE series was relaunched, with the bottle design entirely based on his father's original design, and blended using the Solera aging system, symbolizing the father's enduring love.

Jacopo uses the Solera aging system, where seven oak barrels of Grappa are arranged in a row. Every year, seven more barrels are added on top of the first row, accumulating to a total of 98 barrels across 14 rows over 14 years. Starting in 2015, wines from the bottom row are bottled, but not all are taken; only a portion is used. The space is filled by wines from the second row above, then from the third row back to the second row, and so on. Meanwhile, seven new barrels of Grappa with a minimum aging period of 18 months are added to the top row each year, creating a complex cycle. This cyclical system ensures that the bottom Grappa has an increasingly longer aging period, and each extraction yields a different flavor profile; the unknown flavors are what make it so appealing.

Tasting Notes: Cocoa beans, vanilla, chocolate, medium roast coffee beans with a slight woody note; quite sweet, with a round and full mouthfeel, and a unique flavor profile, perhaps with some French orange slices, woody notes, licorice and other spice notes, and you can also taste a hint of dried tangerine peel and dried fruit. I really like this Grappa.

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