ABOUT

OLD SAILOR COFFEE LIQUEUR

The preferred drink of Italian sailors gets a modern upgrade.

When it came to creating an authentic Italian coffee liqueur, the founders of Levante Spirits—Enzo Brini and Fabio Macaretti, who met while studying wine business in Florence—obsessed over every detail. They based their formulation on a drink popular with sailors in the Adriatic port city of San Benedetto del Tronto, where Fabio grew up. They found an old photo of an Italian marinario (sailor) and handed it over to a well-known Milanese tattoo artist named Stizzo, who used it as inspiration for the striking, color-saturated label. They sourced a unique variety of anise found in the Marche to complement organic oranges from Tuscany and ground coffee from a historic Italian roaster, all of it blended with Colombian Rum to create the delicious concoction that is Old Sailor.

In our view, Enzo and Fabio nailed both the imagery and the formulation: Old Sailor is, like so many products in The Italian Spirits Company portfolio, a beautifully balanced liqueur. Sure, there is residual sugar—as in any liqueur—but Old Sailor, as its creators are keen to note, contains about half the sugar found in most coffee liqueurs on the market today.

Among the many prominent supporters of Old Sailor since its 2017 launch is Flavio Angiolillo, whose cocktail havens in Milan include MAG and its speakeasy sibling, 1930 (named one of the “World’s 50 Best” in 2020). Angiolillo’s “Negroni del Marinario” (into which Old Sailor is mixed with sweet vermouth, bitter, and mezcal rather than gin) has become one of his most-requested drinks. As for the Espresso Martini, well…if the coffee is Italian (as the cocktail’s name would suggest), the liqueur should be, too. Old Sailor, we think, is the new quality benchmark.