The true story of the bartenders who made Genoa the first capital of Italian mixology.

Genoa, the 1960s.
Ocean liners plied the routes to the Americas, always laden with passengers and crew. Amongst those working on the ships were the bartenders. And they were the first Italians to experience how people drank in the New World, learning things that nobody else in the rest of Italy knew yet. It was the beginning of a story that few remember today, but which marks the true origins of Italian mixology. For those bartenders who worked on the ocean, together with those who learnt from them whilst remaining on dry land, would build a network of venues, apprentices and offshoots in Genoa: the Shaker, Bar Lino, the Britannia, the Lord Nelson, the Frutteto and the King’s Bar. For years, each brought something the Italian market had not yet encountered: the lime, smuggled in; rum, which was more widely available in Genoa than in any other city in the country; and then the ice machine, the techniques, the recipes, and the very culture of the cocktail.

This book traces the history of that network through the first-hand accounts of those who built it, restoring to Genoa a distinction that no one had previously recounted: that of being the first and most authentic Italian capital of mixology.

Language: Italian