Italians are known for a rather extensive array of high-quality craftsmanship—fast cars, fashion, design, hand gestures and, of course, countless regional dishes and alcoholic beverages. Wine is so central to Italian culture that it’s not even subject to excise duty.
Italian beer may have begun as a colonial import under the former Austro-Hungarian rulers, but the craft revolution that’s now well into its fourth decade elevated it to a national treasure. As for the heavier stuff, grappa—wine’s distilled relative—remains the country’s most representative spirit, while amari, liqueurs, and vermouths are widely produced and consumed across the peninsula.
International spirits such as vodka and gin are popular, too, but domestic production has historically been limited or nonexistent. Unlike whiskey and rum, however, gin has more of a claim to call Italy home than it might appear at first sight.
Italian Connection
While we generally associate the development of modern gin with Dutch and British history, the earliest documented origins of juniper-infused spirits go back much further.
We can trace those origins to the Schola Medica Salernitana—the Salerno Medical School—in southern Italy. Between the 10th and 13th centuries, it was a leading center of medical learning in Western Europe. There, historians believe the Benedictine monks used the maceration and distillation of juniper berries to prepare remedies.
Botanical geography helps explain why. Then, as now, juniper grew in abundance across the Italian peninsula, particularly in the central and inland areas, Sardinia, the western coast, and the Alps. And it’s not just a question of abundance: These berries are renowned for their high concentration of essential oils. That explains why Italian juniper has long been popular with distillers around the world, including major brands.
If that rich historical pedigree still sounds only tangential to the modern gin industry, it’s worth noting that Italy has, in fact, produced plenty of the liquid within its borders. Bosford Dry Gin, for instance, was once a sizable brand owned by Martini & Rossi and widely consumed in Italian bars. Buton Red Hills was another popular label produced by the same distillery, also responsible for the now-better-known Vecchia Romagna brandy and Amaro Montenegro.
Italian Craft
However, those were mostly unassuming spirits designed as alternatives to major British brands and destined primarily for the domestic market. It was only with the (relatively) recent global gin boom that Italian producers began to look at the category with interest and respect. Toward the mid-2010s, the shift toward modern, botanical-forward, small-batch gins began gathering pace.
“Over the past few years, we have seen tremendous growth in the category and the emergence of countless producers, each with their own interpretation,” says Nino Mason, third-generation winemaker and distiller of Silvio Carta.
“This has brought research, curiosity, and greater attention to ingredients and their provenance,” Mason says. “From the beginning, we have tried to follow a path that is closely tied to our identity. We didn’t simply want to make a Sardinian gin, but a gin that was genuinely an expression of Sardinia. For us, that means starting with the raw material, its origin and its quality, and trying to bring those qualities to the fore without obscuring its identity.”
Mason’s approach translates into distinctive bottlings such as Grifo Limù, made with wild botanicals that grow by the Sardinian coast, and Giniu 517, which features single-plot juniper.
Mason isn’t alone in that focus on local identity. In fact, his production philosophy of representing a particular land and place—one that’s rooted in Italy’s wine culture—has come to define the very identity of Italian gin more than any specific botanical, style, or flavor profile.
In Tuscany, distillers use native plants such as sage or olive leaves. Ginepraio, for instance, is made with local wild juniper, helichrysum, and orange peel. In the Alpine north, meanwhile, they may favor elderflower and glacier water. Wolfrest, made in Piedmont—also the home of Nutella, the famous chocolate-hazelnut spread—uses hazelnuts. Marconi 46, produced in Veneto by renowned grappa maker Poli, integrates not one but two different types of local pine.
This Italian approach isn’t limited to the botanicals. Rather than relying strictly on industrial neutral alcohol, numerous craft distillers use locally grown grains or grapes to create a spirit base that honors the liquid’s origins.
Ginepraio, for example, makes its spirit from Tuscan cereals. Winestillery relies on its vines, going so as far as to issue a “grape-to-glass” manifesto that advocates for the use of local raw materials throughout the production process.
The Mediterranean Profile
Amid all this diversity and hyper-regionalism, people often associate Italian gin with a “Mediterranean” profile—one that might involve herbs such as rosemary, thyme, and wild fennel, alongside citrus fruits such as bergamot, Amalfi lemon, and Sicilian orange.
Portofino Dry Gin, for instance, has an approach deeply rooted in the Ligurian Riviera and its vegetation, with a recipe built around citrus, lavender, rosemary, marjoram, sage, iris, and rose. 25Zero14, meanwhile, features basil, rosemary, thyme, Sicilian lemon, and other citrus fruits.
“The way I look at the Italian gin category is that you’ve kind of got these Mediterranean profiles that are a bit more savory,” says Kyle Harder, a U.S. importer of Italian spirits. He says he’s currently hunting for an Italian gin to add to his portfolio.
“That’s largely about botanicals such as rosemary, sage and olive, whether it’s the leaf or the fruit,” he says of the profiles. “But also citrus. That’s predominantly lemon, but you also have blood orange, grapefruit, and bergamot.”
This association may well stem from the fact that the Mediterranean landscape is what most consumers already associate with Italy—certainly more so than its mountains or rural interior. Yet the global success of Malfy Gin—the first brand to truly break out of Italy, launched through a partnership between veteran British drinks exec Elwyn Gladstone and Torino Distillati—has certainly played a key role, too.
“The idea for Malfy was first conceived around 2010, and the first release came a few years later,” says brand ambassador Duncan Iredale. “So, it’s super, super young in general gin terms. The first expression was the lemon one, Limone, and only later did we move into dry gin with Originale. At the time, ours was the first gin to be exported outside Italy.”
Launching with a lemon-flavored expression was a deliberate choice, as it allowed the brand to leverage the aspirational image of the quintessential Mediterranean lifestyle. The strategy proved successful. It helped Malfy demonstrate the commercial potential of Italian gin on the global stage—ultimately leading to its acquisition by drinks giant Pernod Ricard just a few years later—paving the way for the growth of Italy’s wider gin category itself.
Italian Appeal
The result is a landscape now believed to comprise more than 800 different labels, driven by passion, opportunism, or both. These originate from dedicated gin distillers, brewers, winemakers, historic grappa producers, and other distilleries branching out into juniper spirits.
Not all these products have international relevance. Most are very small players operating at a regional or hyperlocal level; local industry watchers speculate that the export value of Malfy alone exceeds that of the rest of the Italian gin market combined. The relative youth of the category is certainly a major factor in stifling growth, as is Italy’s notoriously impervious bureaucratic and economic landscape.
Yet, all things considered, Italian gin has ample potential for future success. If centuries of world-class gastronomic tradition and decades of innovative craft brewing are anything to go by, Italian makers tend to place a strong emphasis on quality and creativity—fundamental when building an entirely new industry from scratch.
There are positive market forces at play, too, from the popularity of the aperitivo and the wider cocktail culture to the enduring appeal of the stereotypical Italian lifestyle itself.
“If you look at the growth of Italian restaurants in the United States, paired with the growth of Italian tourism and people being interested in Italian drinking culture in general,” Harder says, “I think it’s a natural confluence of all of those trends to where people are going to be seeking out Italian gins.”
The category may still be comparatively small, but if stirring a negroni built with Campari, Cocchi vermouth, and an Italian juniper spirit sounds like a perfectly coherent choice, then Italian gin may soon find its rightful place on backbars around the world.