The story behind Gagliardo is the story of a revolution
2013
In 2013, Marco Schiavo, the owner and master distiller at Distilleria Schiavo, a fifth generations Grappa distillery based in a small town near Vicenza named Costabissara, chatting with his longtime friend Carlo Gasparin, realized that all the Bitter he knew were so full of sugar and perservative that they weren’t bitter at all:
it was time to produce a Bitter worthy to be called that.
But it was thanks to the encounter with the bartender Giacomo Diamante that the first Gagliardo Bitter bottle was born.
Since there was no recipe, the two started a completely empirical work methodology: Marco did a lot of tests and Giacomo mixed them to see if they could have worked or not. The aim behind the process was to achieve an old fashioned Bitter with a long and strong bitter taste and aftertaste using as little sugar as possible in order to help the correct mixing.
Now the only thing left was a proper name: it was Vito Lamanna, another friend of Marco, the one who choose Gajàrdo, an italian word that means strong, powerful.
THE NAME
Strong product, with a rich taste, different from the crowd and not for everyone. Add to this the adjective Radical to reinforce the idea of uncompromising, to return to the essence of taste.
2014
The first Gajàrdo Bitter recipe was presented in 2014 at Bulgari Hotel in Milan but for the Industry it was “too much” so we decided to add a little bit of sugar and change some of the herbs and spices in the recipe: it was a success.
2015 / 2016
After that, we started to product also Gajàrdo Fernet and Gagliardo Triple Sec. Just like Gajàrdo Bitter every Gajàrdo product is made with the infusion of all naturals herbs, roots and spices and crafted in small batches. We’ve also decided to only partially filter them in order to maintain all those original flavors, oils and aromas that only a crafted process could give.
2017
In 2017 we decided the time was ready to appreciate the first original Gajàrdo Bitter recipe so we decided to do a special production naming it Gajàrdo Radical Bitter Extra and we got awarded as Best Italian Bitter of 2018 by amarobsession.com, the Italian Amaro bible.
2019
Our concept
Every Gajàrdo product is made with the infusion of all naturals herbs, roots and spices and crafted in small batches.
We’ve also decided to only partially filter them in order to maintain all those original flavours, oils and aromas that only a crafted process could give.