A Bolognese pharmacist in Milan.

Ramazzotti is one of the oldest names in Italian amaro. Italian Wikipedia says it was first produced in Milan in 1815 as “Amaro Felsina Ramazzotti,” from a secret recipe of Ausano Ramazzotti, a pharmacist from Bologna who had moved to Milan early in the nineteenth century. German Wikipedia adds that Ramazzotti drew on experience in Milan’s wine and liqueur trade, and dates the recipe to “around 1815.”

Italian Wikipedia describes it as the first aperitif not to use wine as its base. In 1848, it says, Ramazzotti opened a bar on Via Santa Margherita, where the amaro was served; German Wikipedia places his establishment near the Teatro alla Scala. German Wikipedia also says that the original laboratory was given up in 1872 and production moved to a new plant.

The company says the recipe has not changed since 1815. Italian and English Wikipedia describe it as a maceration of at least 33 herbs, spices and roots, among them Sicilian orange peel, star anise, cardamom and cloves, ground and blended with caramelised sugar and alcohol; German Wikipedia’s list adds cinchona bark, angelica and vanilla. The classic amaro is bottled at 30 per cent alcohol.

From posters to Carosello.

Ramazzotti’s identity has always been tied to Milan. Italian Wikipedia says the link to the city runs through all of its advertising, and it gives a short history of that advertising. Between 1920 and 1950 the brand was promoted mainly through posters. From 1972 it moved to television with Carosello, the evening advertising programme on Italian state television, first with the American comedian Jerry Lewis in 1972 and then with the singer and presenter Loretta Goggi in 1974. A spot with the entertainer Johnny Dorelli followed in 1979.

The best-known campaign came in 1987. Its slogan, “Milano da bere” — roughly, “Milan to drink” — was coined by the copywriter Marco Mignani, Italian Wikipedia says. Later lines were shorter and more general: “Piacere da bere” in 1992, “Giovane amaro” in 1994 and “L’amaro positivo” in 1999, according to the same source.

Advertising also brought Ramazzotti into one public dispute. In November 1995, Italian Wikipedia says, citing the Corriere della Sera, Ramazzotti joined the Branca and Montenegro distilleries in obtaining a ban on a television advertisement for the state railways, featuring the singer Adriano Celentano, in which an actor playing a station master spat out an amaro.

In 2013 the brand relaunched its website ahead of its bicentenary, Il Messaggero reported, and the company has marked the 1815 date in other ways: a long drink called the 1815, made with ginger ale, is named after the founding year, according to Italian Wikipedia.

The amaro has also found a place in mixed drinks. Pernod Ricard Italia promoted the RamaTonic, a long drink of Ramazzotti and tonic water, in a press release archived in 2014. Bartending books have used it too: Cocktail Culture, by Shawn Soole and Nate Caudle, published in 2013, includes a drink called the High Tea in Milan that combines it with Amaro Lucano, Cynar, lemon juice and tonic, and A. J. Rathbun’s 2011 book Ginger Bliss and the Violet Fizz mixes it with orange juice and soda in the Friar Minor. Italian Wikipedia notes that it is also served as an aperitif with soda water and a slice of lemon, an echo of the aperitif tradition its founder started in 1815.

The amaro tradition.

The seven brands in this group are all Italian amaro and liqueur names: Fernet-Branca, Averna, Ramazzotti, Montenegro, Cynar, Strega and Galliano. Italian amaro and liqueur 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 neighbourhood bar to a supermarket shelf.

A drinks brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a bottle, a label, a name and the ritual it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production 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 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 Milan brand made in Piedmont.

The brand left Italian hands in the 1980s. In 1985 the company was sold to the French group Pernod Ricard, La Repubblica reported on 12 June 1985; the mark now belongs to Pernod Ricard Italia, the group’s Italian subsidiary. German Wikipedia says distribution in Germany passed to Pernod Ricard Deutschland in 1989.

Production then left Milan’s orbit. Italian Wikipedia, citing the Corriere della Sera of February 1994, says the plant at Lainate, north-west of Milan, closed in 1994 and production moved to Canelli, in the province of Asti in Piedmont; German Wikipedia dates the move to 1995. English Wikipedia says the amaro is bottled in Canelli by Pernod Ricard.

The range has grown around the amaro. German Wikipedia lists Menta, Aperitivo Rosato, Crema, Espresso, Sambuca and Orange; Ramazzotti Menta, at 32 per cent, has been sold in Germany since October 2000, it says. In 2010, Italian Wikipedia says, the brand began a fair-trade project in Kerala, in southern India, buying herbs and spices through a local organic producers’ unit, with the NGO PlaNet Finance and Germany’s development agency GIZ. The amaro was certified kosher in 2012, the trade site Beverfood reported.

For a design guide, Ramazzotti shows how a drink can borrow a city’s identity long after its production has moved elsewhere. See our note on the Ramazzotti font, and compare Fernet-Branca, another Milan bitter of the nineteenth century, and Unicum, a Central European herbal bitter. For this guide we use amber, a Milan red and cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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