A Sicilian distilling family that settled in Calabria.

Vecchio Amaro del Capo is the herbal liqueur of the Caffo family, distillers at Limbadi, in the province of Vibo Valentia in Calabria. Italian Wikipedia says it takes its name from Capo Vaticano, the headland near Tropea, which appears on the label. The business trades as Gruppo Caffo 1915, and the amaro’s own website carries the name Distilleria Caffo.

The date in the group’s name points to Sicily rather than Calabria. The national daily Domani, in a profile of the family published in December 2021, says Giuseppe “Pippo” Caffo was distilling grape pomace in the Catania area by the 1890s and in 1915 bought an old distillery at Santa Venerina, on the slopes of Etna. A company profile carried by the news agency Adnkronos tells the same story: pomace distilling at the foot of Etna in the late nineteenth century, a leased distillery, and then the purchase at Santa Venerina in 1915, after which the business began making liqueurs from herbs infused in alcohol.

The move to Calabria came with the next generation. Domani says the brothers Giuseppe, Santo and Sebastiano Caffo, trading as Fratelli Caffo, took over a distillery in Limbadi in 1952, and that it became the company’s headquarters. The Adnkronos profile says Sebastiano and his brothers, back from Australia, revived an old distillery in Limbadi, then a town known for red wine.

In 1966, according to Domani, Fratelli Caffo was dissolved and Sebastiano and his son Giuseppe Giovanni Caffo took over the business; Gambero Rosso’s producer profile says that in 1966 the two took over Amaro del Capo, and that Giuseppe Giovanni is the group’s president.

Twenty-nine botanicals, served iced.

The recipe is not published. Italian Wikipedia says the amaro is made from water, neutral alcohol, sugar and herbal infusions, with the ingredients macerated for several days in strong alcohol, and gives 29 natural ingredients, all from plants grown in Calabria; those it names include mandarin, orange, anise, chamomile, juniper, liquorice, mint and hyssop. Forbes Italia, profiling the group in its 2023 list of Italian “eccellenze,” repeats the figure of 29 native Calabrian botanicals, adds bitter orange, and says the maceration and infusion are done at harvest time; it says the recipe was refined by four generations of Caffo master distillers, as the company tells it. The amaro is bottled at 35% and is amber in colour, Italian Wikipedia says.

Temperature is central to the brand. The producer recommends drinking it iced, at −20 °C, ideally from frozen glasses, Italian Wikipedia says, citing the company’s own serving guidance. The slogan it records is “Capolavoro ghiacciato” — an iced masterpiece.

The range has grown around the original. Italian Wikipedia lists a Riserva del Centenario, a limited edition for the distillery’s centenary in 2015; the Red Hot Edition of 2020, flavoured with Calabrian chilli, which Calabria Economia reported in September 2020 as a feature of the Peperoncino Festival; and, from 2024, Cocktail del Capo, ready-to-drink mixes in 250 ml cans in two versions — Capo Tonic, with tonic water, and Capo Arrabbiato, a spritz made with the Red Hot Edition. The amaro’s website keeps separate sections for the Riserva, the Red Hot Edition, ready-to-serve drinks and cocktails.

Amaro and anise in Italy and beyond.

The six brands in this group are amaro and anise spirits: Vecchio Amaro del Capo, Rabarbaro Zucca, Amaro Sibilla, Henri Bardouin, Pastis 51 and Arak Brun. They come from two old families of drinks. Amaro, English Wikipedia says, is a descriptor for an Italian, or Italian-style, herbal liqueur, usually bittersweet and usually served after a meal. Pastis and arak belong to the anise family: English Wikipedia says pastis was first sold commercially by Paul Ricard in 1932, and describes arak, often called the national drink of Lebanon, as a spirit traditionally made from grapes and aniseed.

The anise spirits share one visual effect. Add water and the clear spirit turns a cloudy, milky white — the effect English Wikipedia calls the louche, or the ouzo effect.

The owners behind these names range widely. English Wikipedia lists Pastis 51 as made by Pernod Ricard, the French drinks group, and Henri Bardouin as made by Distilleries et Domaines de Provence, while Arak Brun belongs to a Lebanese wine estate that changed hands in 2000.

A drinks brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands or grown far beyond where it started. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its spirit is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A Calabrian amaro house that collects historic brands.

Around the amaro the family has built a group. Domani lists the steps: an American import company, Caffo Beverages, in New Jersey in 1999; a liquorice plant, Liquirizia Caffo, in Vibo Valentia in 2001; a distillery in the province of Udine, in Friuli, in 2006; a German company, Typical, in Leipzig in 2009; and the historic Borsci liqueur works in Taranto, home of Elisir Borsci S. Marzano, in 2013. Gambero Rosso’s profile names the Friuli distillery as Friulia, a grappa distillery.

Bigger brands followed. In early April 2020 the group bought Petrus Boonekamp from Diageo, and it also bought Ferro China Bisleri from Diageo, Scatti di Gusto reported on 8 June 2020; a new Milan company carrying the old name, Felice Bisleri & C., was set up to hold the Bisleri brand. Forbes Italia in 2023 also listed Amaro S. Maria al Monte among the brands the group had acquired, and named Mangilli and Durbino as its distilleries in Friuli, alongside Borsci in Taranto and the Distilleria Caffo in Calabria, where it says Vecchio Amaro del Capo is made.

The family still runs the business. Scatti di Gusto in 2020 named Giuseppe Caffo as president and his son Sebastiano “Nuccio” Caffo as chief executive of the liqueurs and spirits business, and the Adnkronos profile describes Nuccio Caffo as chief executive of Gruppo Caffo 1915, organised under the holding company Caffo 1915 srl. Forbes Italia says the group sells in more than 70 countries, with its own subsidiaries in Germany, the United States and the Netherlands. The Adnkronos profile adds that the company farms about 16 hectares a few kilometres from the Limbadi distillery and runs a liquorice-root processing plant nearby.

For a design guide, Vecchio Amaro del Capo shows how a place name and a serving ritual can carry a brand: a Calabrian headland on the label and an iced serve in the slogan. Compare Averna, the Sicilian amaro from the island where the Caffo story began, and Amaro Lucano, another southern Italian amaro. For this guide we use cape blue, Calabrian mandarin and amber with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Vecchio Amaro del Capo’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.