Italy is paradoxically both a major spirits producer, both in volume and in historical importance, and a country of resolutely moderate spirits consumption. It has long produced some of the world’s most innovative bartenders, but their greatest impact has generally been felt in other countries.
still, pot.In any case, by the late Middle Ages, distillation flourished widely throughout the Italian peninsula, with Taddeo Alderotti of Florence (ca. 1220–1295) writing the first detailed treatise on the art in around 1280. In Savonarola’s day cheap grape spirit was being made on a quasi-industrial scale and sold in the marketplaces in the north, while costly and complex medicinal liqueurs were being exported as far as England and France. See rosolio.
From the 1500s through the 1800s Italian distillers refined and streamlined those liqueurs into a library of traditional formulae that would form the stock in trade of the distillatore-liquorista, the distiller and liqueur maker, a common fixture in Italian towns. Each would make his, or sometimes her, own versions of these formulae—including, for example, maraschino, vermouth, aperitif bitters such as Stoughton’s, and digestive ones such as Fernet—and serve them both over the counter and in bottled form. Production was small and distribution local. See aperitif and digestive and vermouth.
During the nineteenth century, as happened elsewhere, many of these local producers turned their variations on traditional recipes into proprietary brands and began exporting them, including such household names as Martini & Rossi, Campari, and Averna. See Averna; Campari; and Martini & Rossi. Eventually, each region, and in some areas each town, had its own preferred brand of amaro, or digestive bitter. Italian brandies and grappe—pomace brandies—did less well on the world market, although these products, mostly from the north, built markets elsewhere in Italy. The end of the twentieth century saw artisanal distillers turn grappa into a world-class sipping spirit, while the modern cocktail renaissance has turned many of the various amari into international cult favorites. See arzente and grappa.
The nineteenth century also saw the “American bar,” with its iced drinks made to order, invade Italy—although it arrived there in the 1860s, a generation later than in England and France. (The first American bar in Italy appears to have been the one Leopoldo Bomboni added to his Florence beer bar in 1869.) But the Italian peninsula’s combination of a hot climate and a spine of high, cool mountains meant that Italy had a long experience with iced drinks, dating back to Roman times. It also had its own way with mixed drinks, which were traditionally pre-bottled by the liquorista rather than mixed to order. Ultimately, the peninsula found its own accommodation with American-style mixology. The cocktail bar gave rise to the cocktail hour, when cafés, restaurants, even pastry shops and confectioners, would suddenly break out the shaker, every drink coming with a bite or two of food. Drinks were mixed to order, but they tended to be lighter in alcohol than their American equivalents, emphasizing refreshment over impact. See Americano; Aperol Spritz; and Negroni.
At the same time, Italy gave birth to a bartending culture that values precision and elegance, a culture that has produced some of the world’s most celebrated bartenders, from Ciro Capozzi, who taught the European aristocracy to drink cocktails, to Peter Dorelli and Salvatore Calabrese. Ironically, most of them have made their mark in the profession outside of Italy; while there are and long have been true, full-scale cocktail bars in Italy, they are relatively few in number, and their influence has traditionally been limited, although the twenty-first century has seen that change: indeed, any list of the world’s best cocktail bars would be incomplete without establishments such as Nottingham Forest in Milan and the Jerry Thomas Project in Rome. See
Cendali, Antonio, and Luigi Marinatto, eds. Il barman e i suoi cocktails, 2nd ed. Milan: Selepress, 1974.
Savonarola, Michele. Excellentisimi medici Michaelis Savonarolae libellus singularis de arte conficiendi aquam vitae. Grossenhain: 1532.
Vicario, Renato. Italian Liqueurs. N.p.: Aboca: 2014.
“The Week.” Anglo-American Times (London), March 27, 1869, 10.
Wilson, C. Anne. Water of Life. Totnes, UK: Prospect, 2006.
By: David Wondrich