A wine village, a family name and a date on every label.

Ponti traces its vinegar to 1787 and to Sizzano, a wine village in the hills of the province of Novara, in eastern Piedmont. The company says the del Ponte family — the original form of the surname — is documented in Sizzano from 1595, and that in 1787 Giovanni Battista del Ponte began selling vinegar; the family’s “fabrica dell’aceto,” its vinegar works, is documented there in 1795. Italian Wikipedia bases the same chronology on archive research by the historian Sergio Monferrini, and says the year 1787 appears on every Ponti label; it was put there in a rebranding completed in 2020.

The nineteenth century gave the family a nickname. Giovanni Ponti (1837–1900), a farmer who made wine and vinegar, was known locally as “Giuanin d’la asei,” Johnny of the vinegar, and took over the family business in 1864, the company says. His son Antonio Ponti built a new vinegar plant at Sizzano in 1903, which the company counts as the start of industrial production, and won a diploma of honour for wines and vinegars at an international fair in Paris in 1911. In 1938 Antonio handed the Sizzano vinegar works to his son Guido, and in 1939 father and son began preserving vegetables in vinegar and in olive oil.

In 1948 Ponti opened its plant at neighbouring Ghemme, which Italian Wikipedia says is still the company’s operating headquarters. The same year, it says, Guido Ponti graduated from the royal school of viticulture and oenology at Alba and went on to bring new technology into the business.

Aroma Antico, Peperlizia and a balsamic in Vignola.

The eighth generation turned a local vinegar maker into a national one. Cesare and Franco Ponti, Guido’s sons, joined in 1965. Italian Wikipedia says the company then bought up the main competing vinegar makers and opened a second vinegar plant at Dosson di Casier, near Treviso, in 1974 and a third at Anagni, south-east of Rome, in 1989, becoming Italy’s main vinegar producer. In 2016 Corriere della Sera described Ponti as the market leader, with half of Italy’s vinegar sales. The company dates its Aroma Antico wine vinegar to 1969 — “the day after the Moon landing,” it says.

Diversification came in jars. Peperlizia, launched in 1983, began as Carmagnola peppers preserved in sweet-and-sour, Italian Wikipedia says, and later grew to other vegetable sides such as the artichoke dish Carcioghiotto. In 1991 Ponti bought Modenaceti of Vignola, a balsamic specialist, the start of its business in Balsamic Vinegar of Modena PGI; apple vinegar followed in 1992, and in 2008 Ponti bought the organic producer Achillea and launched a balsamic glaze. Later lines include the oil-free vegetable sides Zero Olio in 2013 and the DolceAgro condiment in 2019. Since 2020 Ponti has printed an SGS-certified classification on its balsamic labels, rating each vinegar on maturation, the amount of grape must and density.

Ponti has advertised on national television since 1979, Italian Wikipedia says, beginning with Aroma Antico and continuing with Peperlizia, whose rhyming line “Peperlizia. Il contorno che ti vizia” — the side dish that spoils you — became well known. The actor and director Ricky Tognazzi fronted the campaigns from 2007; from 2013 the advertisements starred the products themselves as animated characters, and in 2018 Ponti ran its first corporate campaign, built on the line “Il potere di una goccia,” the power of a drop. In 2025, Italian Wikipedia says, a campaign made with the agency McCann used the lines “di fronte a posizioni così distanti, noi mettiamo Ponti” and “Ponti, l’ingrediente che ci unisce,” the ingredient that unites us; in Italian, ponti means “bridges.”

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are food brands, and all of them come from Spain or Italy: Fontaneda, Carbonell, Hojiblanca, Galbani, Star, Ponti and Bauli. Spanish and Italian food brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s surname to names that now belong to much larger food groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a village shop to a supermarket shelf abroad.

A food brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a pack, a name and the meal or occasion it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its factory or grown far beyond the town where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its products are actually made and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Nine generations, four plants and a historic-brand title.

Ponti remains a family company, now led by its ninth generation. Giacomo Ponti, Franco’s son, joined in 2000 and, Italian Wikipedia says, gave the company a technological push and began its international expansion; his cousin Lara Ponti, Cesare’s daughter, joined in 2010 and steered it towards more sustainable production. Ponti France was set up in Paris in 2014 and Ponti USA in New York in 2015. The company, Ponti S.p.A. Società Benefit, says it became the first benefit company in Italy’s vinegar and vegetable-preserves market in 2021 and was certified as a B Corp in 2023, and that in 2025 the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy recognised Ponti as a Marchio Storico, a historic brand of national interest.

Production is spread across Italy. Italian Wikipedia says wine vinegar is made at Ghemme, Dosson di Casier and Anagni; apple vinegar is made in the same plants from cider produced at the Achillea works in Paesana, in the province of Cuneo; balsamic vinegar is matured at the Vignola acetaia near Modena; and pickles, vegetables in oil and rice and pasta condiments are made at Ghemme. The company says its wine-vinegar bottle is fully recyclable and that the whole range now uses 30% recycled PET. Besides Ponti and Peperlizia, Italian Wikipedia lists Achillea, Modenaceti, Monvisia and Rossini among the company’s brands.

For a design guide, Ponti shows how a founding date can become a brand asset: after more than two centuries, “1787” went on to every label. Compare Sacla’, another Piedmontese family maker of jarred vegetables and sauces, and Mutti, the Parma tomato family firm. For this guide we use a vinegar burgundy, a balsamic brown and a pepper red with a classic serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Ponti’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.