Campari begins in 1860 with Gaspare Campari, who'd been tending bar since age 14 and developed his bittersweet red aperitif in the cellars of his own Caffè Campari in Milan, before moving the business into the city's grand Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in 1867. The recipe — a secret infusion of roughly 60 herbs, roots, aromatic plants, and fruit peels, including gentian, quinine bark, and bitter orange — has reportedly stayed unchanged since, though its signature ruby color came from real cochineal-derived carmine dye right up until 2006. Bottled at 24-25% ABV, it's the essential backbone of the Negroni (invented in Florence in 1919), the Americano, the Boulevardier, and the modern Campari Spritz, and its intense bitter-orange character makes it a genuinely divisive first sip that tends to win people over. Beyond the flagship bitter, the range includes the Ricetta Originale Negroni — a bottled equal-parts blend of Campari, London dry gin, and the house Vermouth Rosso that earned 94 points at the Ultimate Spirits Challenge — and today Campari Group has grown into one of the world's largest spirits companies, owning Aperol, Wild Turkey, Grand Marnier, Espolòn, and Ancho Reyes among dozens of others. Still, nothing in that portfolio is more iconic than the original red bottle.

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