Averna

The distillery was founded in 1868 in Caltanissetta by Salvatore Averna, a cloth merchant, in a building built on the remains of an old sixteenth-century Capuchin convent. The secret amaro recipe, based on Mediterranean herbs and citrus, was given to him as a token of gratitude by Friar Girolamo, a monk from the Abbazia dello Spirito Santo who had kept it since the nineteenth century. In 1912 the product received the royal seal of the House of Savoy, cementing its fame across Italy. The company museum, set up in the historic Caltanissetta plant, tells this story amid period machinery and production rooms.