A second “y” and a San Francisco sky.

SKYY was created by Maurice Kanbar, a San Francisco inventor who had already made his name with consumer gadgets, beginning with a sweater comb, the D-Fuzz-It, before he turned to spirits. Campari Group’s own press releases give the founding of Skyy Spirits LLC as 1992 and describe it as a company based in San Francisco; English Wikipedia also gives 1992 as the year the vodka was introduced.

The name came from the view. J. The Jewish News of Northern California reported in August 2022 that Kanbar had looked out at a blue sky and first thought of calling the vodka “Sky,” but decided the word was too generic, and so added a second “y.” The same report said the vodka was distilled four times, and the brand’s 2021 relaunch announcement, as reported by Cocktails Distilled, described SKYY’s 1992 launch as that of the first American quadruple-distilled and triple-filtered vodka.

Making the vodka was at first a contract job. English Wikipedia, citing Packaging Digest in October 2001, says production and bottling were originally outsourced to Frank-Lin Distillers Products in San Jose, California, where bulk spirit arriving by rail tank car was blended with filtered, deionized water and bottled; citing the Peoria Journal Star in 2008, it says the spirit was bought from MGP Ingredients, which distils from wheat. English Wikipedia describes SKYY today as an American vodka produced by Campari America.

Kanbar later founded other ventures, including film production — he produced the animated feature Hoodwinked! — and gave his name to institutions including the film school at New York University. J. reported that he died in San Francisco in August 2022.

A blue bottle, then a lighter blue.

The bottle has always done most of the work. English Wikipedia describes it as cobalt blue with a clear, adhesive label, so that the blue glass reads almost as the whole package, and Campari’s own releases write the name in capitals, as SKYY.

The bottle and the liquid were changed together in 2021. The Spirits Business reported in May 2021 that SKYY was relaunching with a new recipe, a new bottle and a new logo — what it called a complete brand overhaul. The company said it had worked with chemists, professional bartenders and a water sommelier, and that the new vodka used water from the San Francisco Bay Area, which it described as “enriched with minerals” to give a subtle salinity. The new bottle, inspired by the Bay Area, was lighter in tone, a more natural blue, with ridges meant to suggest waves. The Spirits Business quoted Andrea Sengara, then vice-president of marketing at Campari America, on the change.

The doubled letter later became a campaign. Marketing Dive reported in June 2024 that SKYY had launched a campaign called “Embrace Every Y” in May 2024 in the United States, Canada and South Africa, using the brand’s extra “y” as the starting point for taglines such as “Y Go Out?” The New York agency Small developed it, and the artist and photographer Nadia Lee Cohen shot the video work.

The New York Times reported in May 2025 that SKYY, previously a platinum sponsor of New York City’s Pride, had scaled back its commitment.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all gin and vodka names: The Botanist, Bulldog, Malfy, Gin Mare, Brockmans, Cîroc and Skyy. Gin and vodka brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from small distilleries that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a cocktail bar.

A gin or vodka brand’s identity is usually carried less by the spirit itself than by a bottle, a name and the place 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 gin or vodka is actually distilled 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 spirit is made and how its bottles and labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From a founder’s company to a Campari brand.

Campari came in stages, and its own press releases set out the dates. In a release of December 2001 the Milan group said it had first taken a minority stake in Skyy Spirits in November 1998, and that it had distributed SKYY outside the United States since that year, while Skyy Spirits distributed Campari, Cinzano and Ouzo 12 in the US. The same release announced that Campari would buy a further half of the company from Kanbar, giving it 58.9% and control; the deal closed in January 2002.

In February 2005 Campari exercised an option agreed in 2002 and bought a further 30.1% from companies belonging to Kanbar, taking its holding to 89%; the rest was held by the management team. In November 2006 it bought that remaining 11%, and Skyy Spirits became a wholly owned subsidiary. The 2006 release also listed SKYY’s flavoured vodkas and SKYY90 as part of the range.

The company then grew into Campari’s American arm. Campari completed its acquisition of the Kentucky bourbon Wild Turkey in May 2009, and in January 2012 Skyy Spirits changed its name to Campari America, according to a company release on Business Wire. The trade press reported in February 2018 that Campari America would move its headquarters from San Francisco to New York City that autumn, into offices in midtown Manhattan designed by Gensler. The vodka named after the San Francisco sky is now run from New York, for a Milan-based group.

The name needs care online: Skyy was also the name of an American R&B group, and the brand’s own site is skyy.com. For the typography of the wordmark, see our note What Font Does SKYY Use?

For a design guide, SKYY shows how a single colour of glass can carry a spirits brand for three decades, and how a redesign can lighten that colour without giving it up. Compare Wild Turkey, the bourbon Campari bought in 2009, and Appleton Estate, the Jamaican rum in the same group. For this guide we use cobalt blue, bay blue and fog white with a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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