A Benevento liqueur named after the town’s witches.

Strega is a yellow herbal liqueur from Benevento, in Campania, and its maker, Strega Alberti Benevento S.p.A., dates it to 1860, shortly before Italian unification. The company credits Giuseppe Alberti, whom it calls a Campanian entrepreneur, and says he quickly saw the value of a site next to the town’s railway station for sending his product across Italy. English Wikipedia names the founders as a father and son, Carmine Vincenzo Alberti and Giuseppe Alberti. The company says the historic plant near the station is still where Strega is made, and Italian Wikipedia notes that the label itself reads “Stabilimento G. Alberti presso la stazione ferroviaria,” the G. Alberti works at the railway station, with a round seal that shows the factory.

The name means “witch.” Benevento has long been tied to witchcraft: English Wikipedia dates the legends of the witches of Benevento back to the Lombard period, and the company tells of more than two thousand witches gathering at night around a walnut tree, the Noce Magico, and says the liqueur was named after this legend.

The recipe is the company’s to describe. It says Strega is made from about 70 herbs and spices, naming Ceylon cinnamon, Florentine iris, Apennine juniper and mint from the Sannio, that saffron gives it its yellow colour, and that it is aged for a long period in oak vats before it is bottled at 40% alcohol. English Wikipedia adds that it is used to flavour the torta caprese. From 1894, English Wikipedia says, control passed to Giuseppe Alberti’s four sons, Ugo, Vincenzo, Francesco and Luigi, and the company held a royal warrant as a supplier to the Italian king. The company says the business is still owned and run by the Alberti family, now in its sixth generation.

Dudovich, Depero and the yellow label.

Strega built its image on posters. Italian Wikipedia lists twentieth-century posters by Alberto Bianchi, Giuseppe Magagnoli, Osvaldo Ballerio and Marcello Dudovich, among others, with originals held at the Museo Nazionale Collezione Salce in Treviso, and says Fortunato Depero made advertising versions in 1928. The company names Dudovich and Depero among its poster artists, and English Wikipedia singles out an Art Nouveau poster of 1906 as an example of the colourful, artistic advertising Strega became known for.

Imitators shaped the message. In the 1920s, Italian Wikipedia says, leaflets warned customers against imitations, and one period poster told shoppers to look carefully at the bottle, because it was the only original and all the others were imitations. The same entry says the yellow-and-red label has stayed largely unchanged. Television came later: the company describes its Carosello spots of the 1950s and 1960s as innovative for their time.

The company still works with illustrators. Italian Wikipedia records later limited editions by Riccardo Guasco and Lucia Massari, and the company presents a Strega Design Collection on its website. For a newer line, it says, the labels draw on the bright colours and themes of the printed papers used to wrap oranges from the nineteenth century onward. Italian Wikipedia adds that special bottles marked Napoli’s league titles in 1987 and 1990.

Design and documentation.

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 liqueur that names Italy’s best-known literary prize.

Strega’s name is also carried by an Italian literary award. The Premio Strega was founded in Rome in 1947 by the writer Maria Bellonci and Guido Alberti, then owner of the liqueur company, Italian Wikipedia says; English Wikipedia and the company also name Maria’s husband, Goffredo Bellonci, as a founder. English Wikipedia calls it Italy’s most important literary award, and traces it to the Amici della domenica, the Sunday Friends, a post-war circle of writers, intellectuals and artists whose name the jury still carries; the company quotes Maria Bellonci dating those gatherings to 1944. The first prize, announced on 5 July 1947, went to Ennio Flaiano for Tempo di uccidere, and the final vote is traditionally held in the nymphaeum of the Villa Giulia museum in Rome, Italian Wikipedia says.

The prize has a younger sibling. Since 2018 a Premio Strega Mixology has run alongside it, judging bartenders’ cocktails made with Strega. The company also makes a confectionery line, I Dolci Alberti, including Torrone Strega, and says the Benevento factory produces sweets as well as liqueur; a museum, Spazio Strega, occupies the old factory premises. Beside the yellow liqueur the range includes Strega Riserva, aged in oak barrels, and a dark sambuca called Luna Nera. The company says its products are sold in more than 50 countries, including the United States, Argentina, Mexico and Australia.

For a design guide, Strega shows how a name, a place and a colour can hold together for more than 150 years: a witch legend, a works named on the label beside the station, and a yellow-and-red label kept largely unchanged. Compare Galliano and Fernet-Branca, two more Italian liqueur houses. For this guide we use saffron yellow, label red and night black with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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