The Real Italian Taste is the phrase General Fruit uses for its brand promise, and ahead of The World’s 50 Best Bars 2026 awards, the company set out to show how literally it means it. I spent three days with the family behind Polot 1882, toured the production site in Villongo, sat at the table with the Lochis family, and drank a non-alcoholic amaro in the city it is named after. Here is what stayed with me.
I landed in Bergamo on the morning of Monday, October 5. If you fly into Milan a lot, you probably know this airport as somewhere you pass through rather than somewhere you go. That is a shame. Bergamo has something Milan sometimes lacks: a historic center that knows how to put on a show for visitors, and an elegance with a touch of old-school restraint. Modern Milan is just down the road, but in mood it is a different city entirely.
Giuseppe Lochis was there to meet us in person. He owns General Fruit and is the fifth generation of a family rooted in Italian food production. Over the years I have been welcomed in all sorts of ways, from a driver holding a name card to someone from the marketing team. When the owner himself is the one waiting for you, it tells you more about how the company does business than any opening presentation.
Then came a short walk through the old town and lunch, with local opera singers performing in the street. I know, it sounds like a film set. But that is exactly how it was, and every bite carried that flavor the Italians call la dolce vita. In the afternoon we had a private look at the production, then sat with other people from the company until evening. No agenda, no slides. Conversations like that tell me more about a brand than any catalog.
Lunch at La Marianna
The official program began on Tuesday at La Marianna in the center of Bergamo. The weather was perfect, the Champagne nicely chilled, and behind the bar stood brand ambassadors Lorenzo Uberti and Giulio Dossi. They were mixing two drinks, a Beer Negroni and a Gravity, both built with cordials and Opificium by Polot 1882.
If you have not had Opificium in your hands yet: it is a range of non-alcoholic aperitivi and spirit alternatives that General Fruit makes alongside the Polot 1882 syrups. A Beer Negroni is a good test for a line like that. Behind the bar, a Negroni comes with clear expectations on bitterness, sweetness, and body, and a zero-proof version either holds up or it doesn’t. At no point did I feel I was drinking a compromise.
Lunch was served in a beautiful garden. Around the tables sat the Lochis family and trading partners from more than ten countries. That detail is worth pausing on. A company that can bring people from such different markets to one table and still keep the feel of a family lunch understands relationships. And in the drinks ingredients business, relationships are half the job.
What I remember most from the menu is the homemade pasta made to a local recipe, and an ossobuco cooked for sixteen hours with porcini picked that same morning. Then dessert: stracciatella gelato, which was born right here in Bergamo, alongside a freshly made zabaglione gelato. And to finish, as is only proper in Italy, an amaro. This time a non-alcoholic one: Opificium Amaro Bergamo.
I was still thinking about that running order later that evening. A non-alcoholic amaro served as a digestivo, at the end of a proper Italian lunch, in the city whose name is on the label. The producer put it in the toughest context there is. Most brands prefer to show their 0.0 products in long drinks, where they can hide behind tonic and ice. Here there was nowhere to hide.
After lunch came a quite literally fast and furious transfer to Pier’s for a short tasting of exclusive local cheeses and Champagne. And by evening, Milan.
Casa Tobago and Moebius
Casa Tobago in Milan hosted the Polot 1882 evening. Signature drinks with Opificium and Polot 1882 syrups, paired with a selection of Caribbean dishes. An interesting match: an Italian brand happy to put its products next to spicy, fruity flavors from a completely different part of the world. For a bartender, that is a useful signal. A syrup that only works in one style of drink is the bottle that sits on the back shelf gathering dust.
The after-party was at Moebius Milano, number 2 on The World’s 50 Best Bars 2026. A night full of surprises, with a star line-up of guest bartenders behind the bar, each making their own signature drinks. They were, as the Italians say, deliziosi. For me, a night like that is also a working lesson: you get to watch how the very best handle pace, guests, and whatever ingredients they have to hand.
Villongo, the Heart of Production
Wednesday, October 7, was awards day. Before that, though, came the part of the program I was looking forward to most: a tour of the General Fruit production site in Villongo, a small town near Lago d’Iseo. This is where every Polot 1882 product is made.
The tour was led by sales director Cristian Lochis. Hygiene measures were strict, as they should be in food production, and that is precisely what allowed us to see right into the heart of the production and of the company itself.
For people from the bar world, a production visit is more useful than it might seem. Behind the bar we see the bottle, the label, the price per liter, and how the product behaves in the shaker. We don’t see who makes it, how the company thinks, or whether there is a reliable process behind the brand. With syrups and cordials, consistency is everything. If the flavor shifts from batch to batch, the drink on your menu stops tasting the way it should, and the bartender is the first to notice.
What struck me most in Villongo was the whole picture. A family business that keeps syrups for bars and cafés, cordials, and the non-alcoholic Opificium line under one roof, and still works as a single organism. The management is present in production, with customers, and at the table with partners. Talking with the Lochis family, you could feel a flexibility that big corporations tend to lose somewhere between the third and fourth round of approvals.
Why 50 Best
Polot 1882 and Opificium by Polot 1882 are official partners of The World’s 50 Best Bars. From a brand-building point of view it is a logical move, but sponsorship on its own doesn’t build a brand. Everyone sees the logo on the wall at the awards and most people forget it within a week. It pays off when the brand can bring the people it meets at an event like this closer to the product: to the people who make it, to the place where it is made, and into the bar where it is used.
The whole week was built exactly that way. Family and production first, then the bar, and only at the very end the stage.
For lunch we headed back to Bergamo, to Bar Barrier, which features in the Top 500 Best Bars 2026. We raised a fully non-alcoholic Garibaldi Sbagliato. A small thing, but a telling one for me. A classic Italian aperitivo moment, without alcohol, in a ranked bar, and the taste of Italy was still there in the glass. For anyone putting together a drinks list today and working out what to offer guests who don’t drink, that is practical inspiration.
Palazzo del Ghiaccio
In the evening we arrived at Palazzo del Ghiaccio for The World’s 50 Best Bars 2026 Awards Ceremony. If you have been to one, you know the atmosphere. People who spend the year seeing each other mostly on social media finally meet face to face, congratulate each other, and talk drinks, guests, and new openings. I have been part of this hospitality community all my life, and I am proud of it.
Once all the awards had been handed out, the night moved on to the after-party at Lubna Milano, where the award-winning bars took over and served their signature drinks. A great mood and a fitting end to a long day.
What I’m Taking Home
General Fruit uses the phrase The Real Italian Taste. This week showed me how literally they mean it. In every sense, and to the full.
Professionally, I am taking home one thing. Honestly, I don’t know another producer in this segment with such a complete concept, such flexibility, and such vision. Syrups, cordials, and non-alcoholic aperitivi don’t surprise anyone behind the bar anymore, and the competition is fierce. What decides it is what stands behind the bottle, and whether the brand can show that to the people who work with it every day. Here I saw it with my own eyes, and the team deserves real respect for it.
Grazie mille to the whole team at General Fruit and Polot 1882.
Joseph Benjamin Benian
