A legend, a family recipe and a grocery in Saronno.

Disaronno is an amaretto, an amber Italian liqueur, and it is made in Saronno, the Lombard town north of Milan that gave the drink its old name. Until 2001 it was sold as Amaretto di Saronno; that year it was renamed Disaronno Originale, English Wikipedia says. Italian Wikipedia notes that the town has two historic amaretto makers: ILLVA Saronno, which makes Disaronno, and Paolo Lazzaroni & Figli.

The brand tells its origin as a legend, and presents it as one. In 1525, the company says, the painter Bernardino Luini, a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci, was commissioned to paint the Madonna of the Miracles in Saronno’s sanctuary, chose a local innkeeper as his model, and was given a flask of amber liqueur by her in thanks. English Wikipedia describes this and similar amaretto tales as of “sometimes questionable provenance,” popularised by the major brands; the fresco itself can still be seen in the Santuario della Beata Vergine dei Miracoli, Italian Wikipedia says.

The documented business is younger. The company says Domenico Reina opened a shop and workshop in Saronno at the start of the 20th century, near the terminus of the steam tram from Milan, under the name Domenico Reina Coloniali, and that liqueur-making became its main trade. After the Second World War, on 23 July 1947, the firm became ILLVA Saronno, short for Industria Lombarda Liquori Vini & Affini, Italian Wikipedia says, naming Domenico Reina as founder. The company describes the recipe as an old Reina family formula; according to the company, it is an infusion of apricot-kernel oil with alcohol, burnt sugar and the essence of seventeen herbs and fruits. Italian Wikipedia classes amaretto as a liqueur made by infusion in an alcohol base rather than a distilled spirit, and gives Disaronno Originale a strength of 28 per cent alcohol.

A Murano bottle and a ribbon.

Disaronno’s strongest design asset is its bottle. English Wikipedia describes it as an oblong glass bottle designed by a craftsman from Murano, the Venetian glassmaking island, and the company calls it “a design born in Murano,” crowned by a square cap. The company says its advertising from the 1940s presented the liqueur as a refined gift, with a ribbon on the bottle as a symbol of sharing, and that as other amaretti appeared it leaned on the word “originale.” Campaigns later drew on Renaissance imagery, and around the turn of the millennium the brand moved to a more contemporary visual language built on colour and spontaneity, the company says.

The bottle has been dressed by fashion houses. The company says its Disaronno Icon limited editions began in 2013 with Moschino and went on to involve Versace, Cavalli, Etro, Missoni, Trussardi and Diesel. For the brand’s self-declared 500th year in 2025 it issued a limited collection of five bottles, and in 2026 it introduced a redesigned bottle with an embossed cap, a renewed label and taller proportions, the company says.

The range has stayed narrow. Alongside Disaronno Originale, a cream liqueur, Disaronno Velvet, was introduced in 2020, English Wikipedia says. The company says Disaronno is now sold in more than 160 countries. For the lettering on the label, see our separate note on the Disaronno font.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all liqueur and aperitif brands: Baileys, Kahlúa, Disaronno, Martini, Cinzano, Molinari and Becherovka. Liqueur and aperitif brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to names that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a hotel bar.

A liqueur or aperitif brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single recipe than by a bottle, a label, a name and the drink or occasion it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its drinks are 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 drinks are made and how its bottles and labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A family company that grew into a drinks group.

The company behind Disaronno has stayed with the Reina family. Italian Wikipedia says it is wholly owned by the descendants of Domenico Reina through a holding company, and that at the end of 2025 ILLVA Saronno Holding announced it would change its name to Disaronno Group, as the Italian financial site BeBeez reported in May 2026. Headquarters and the main plant remain in Saronno.

The company says international success in Europe and especially the United States in the 1970s and early 1980s funded a string of acquisitions. Its own timeline lists the Rabarbaro Zucca and Artic vodka brands in 1996; a 33 per cent stake in the Chinese wine and brandy maker Yantai Changyu in 2005; a joint venture in India with the Modi group in 2008; the Tia Maria coffee liqueur in 2009; the Sicilian wine houses Corvo, Duca di Salaparuta and Florio, the Marsala maker it bought in 1998; Royal Oak Distillery in Ireland, maker of The Busker whiskey, in 2013; a majority of Sagamore Spirits, the Baltimore rye-whiskey distillery, in 2023; and Engine, an organic Italian gin, in 2024. In December 2025 the Italian news agency ANSA reported that Campari would sell Amaro Averna and the Sardinian Mirto Zedda Piras to the group, which says the deal completed in 2026. A separate division, Disaronno Ingredients, makes semi-finished products for gelato makers and bakers.

For a design guide, Disaronno shows how a single bottle shape and a told-as-legend origin can carry a brand for decades while the label around it changes, and how limited editions by fashion houses can refresh a pack without altering its outline. Compare Sambuca Molinari, another Italian liqueur built on one bottle, and Kahlúa, the coffee liqueur that competes with Disaronno Group’s Tia Maria. For this guide we use amber, burnt sugar and walnut with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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