A coffee drink made for a railway, dated to 1860.

Caffè Borghetti is an Italian coffee liqueur from Ancona, the port city on the Adriatic coast of the Marche, and it dates its recipe to 1860. Its owner today is Fratelli Branca Distillerie of Milan, the company behind Fernet-Branca, whose own timeline records that Caffè Borghetti entered its portfolio in 2001. Branca’s product page describes it as a liqueur made from real espresso coffee, using a blend of arabica and robusta beans.

The story begins in a railway bar. Branca’s product page says the original recipe was created by Ugo Borghetti in 1860 to celebrate the opening of the Pescara–Ancona railway line, and VICE Italia, in a 2020 article by Francesco Morresi, describes Ugo Borghetti as an Ancona businessman who ran the Caffè Sport, a bar in front of the city’s railway station. An account in the Italian trade magazine Beverfood, published in September 2024 for the brand’s new look, tells it slightly differently: there the station bar belonged to Eugenio Borghetti, who made large batches of coffee with alcohol and sugar and called the drink “Caffè Sport Borghetti,” and it was his son Ugo who expanded production and sent the bottles across Italy. Both versions place the drink at Ancona’s station.

The railway explains the next date in the story. Italian Wikipedia says that when the line between Ancona and Pescara opened in May 1863, departing travellers were given the drink, and VICE Italia likewise writes that Caffè Sport was offered to everyone at the inauguration of the line in 1863. Beverfood adds that vendors on the trains sold it in small bottles.

A dark red label, a gold star and a bottle for the stadium.

The label is built on two colours and a star. Branca’s product page says the label is dominated by an intense dark red and by the gold of its “Stella,” the star. When the brand introduced a new look in September 2024, Beverfood reported that the star had been made larger and placed at the centre, as a tribute to the Italian national emblem and to the drink’s Italian origins, and that the label carries a female figure portrayed like a goddess, crowned with a thick wreath of coffee beans. The report did not name a designer.

The early labels carried words as well as pictures. Italian Wikipedia says the first bottles bore a short poem attributed to Ugo Borghetti; it is not reproduced here.

The other half of the identity is a format rather than a label. Branca sells Caffè Borghetti in a 70 cl bottle and in a 3.35 cl PET pack it calls “On the go,” and Beverfood described that small format in 2024 as having a red cap and a bright star. In Italy the little bottle is tied to football. In VICE Italia’s 2020 article, Eros Giardini, president of the supporters’ association C.U.B.A., said the stadium bar began selling the liqueur in the 1950s, and described the 30 ml plastic “stadium” bottle with its red cap; the article also describes unofficial sellers outside the grounds known as “borghettari.” Roberto Cipriani, quoted in the same piece, recalled supporters’ coaches that smelled of coffee, and chants and banners dedicated to the drink.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all coffee or cream liqueurs: Mr Black, Carolans, Saint Brendan’s, Kamora, Caffè Borghetti, Dooley’s and Coole Swan. Some are sweetened spirits flavoured with coffee; others blend dairy cream with a spirit such as Irish whiskey. Brands like these sit at many different points in the trade, from small independent companies to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and the same bottle can turn up on a supermarket shelf, in an airport shop or behind a cocktail bar.

A liqueur brand’s identity is usually carried less by the liquid than by a bottle, a label and the story it tells, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or licensed its name to others. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who created it, who owns it now, and where it is actually made and bottled.

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

From a family bar to Carpano and Branca.

The brand passed through two companies before reaching Branca. Italian Wikipedia says the Borghetti business ran into financial trouble in the 1970s and went bankrupt, and that the brand was then leased for some years to a company in Jesi. Carpano, the Turin vermouth house, says on its own history page that it acquired the Caffè Sport Borghetti brand in 1978; Italian Wikipedia gives 1976, the year it says the brand was auctioned. Branca’s timeline records that it bought half of Carpano in 1982, and Carpano’s history says Branca acquired the company in 2001, the year Branca gives for Caffè Borghetti’s entry into its portfolio. Fratelli Branca Distillerie has owned the brand since 2001. Branca itself traces its origins to 1845, when, its timeline says, Bernardino Branca created Fernet-Branca, and it also lists a Sambuca Borghetti among its products.

Branca describes how the liqueur is made. In Beverfood’s 2024 account, the arabica and robusta beans are roasted and ground, the coffee is extracted in a 500-litre percolator likened to a cross between a moka pot and a Neapolitan cuccumella, and grain alcohol is added so that the remaining grounds settle out. The liquid then passes through an accordion-style filter, sugar is stirred in, and it is filtered once more. The company says the recipe contains no added flavourings, and Italian Wikipedia gives the strength as 25 per cent alcohol. Branca suggests serving it neat, over ice or in cocktails, and Beverfood printed an Espresso Martini recipe using it.

The name is spelled Caffè, with a double f and a grave accent, and the brand keeps its own website at caffeborghetti.com alongside Branca’s.

For a design guide, Caffè Borghetti shows how a dark red label, a gold star and a stadium-sized bottle can carry a coffee liqueur from an Ancona station bar to the stands of Italian football. Compare Kahlúa, the coffee liqueur from Veracruz, and Tia Maria, the Jamaican coffee liqueur. For this guide we use Borghetti red, star gold and espresso brown with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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