Italy · Langhe

Martini & Rossi

Vermouth and sparkling wine producer founded in Turin in 1863 by Alessandro Martini, Teofilo Sola, and Luigi Rossi; production has run continuously at Pessione, Piedmont, ever since.

The producer

Martini & Rossi is a Piedmont producer. The company was founded in Turin in July 1863 and its manufacturing has operated at Pessione, a small hamlet south-east of Turin, continuously since 1864. Luigi Rossi, an herbalist and liquorist, created the recipe for Martini Rosso, and that founding formula remains the core of what the company makes. Three years after opening, Martini won its first international award at the Dublin International Exhibition, and by 1871 it had received a separate certificate for sparkling wines. A Buenos Aires subsidiary with its own production plant followed in 1883.

The range today covers aromatised wines and sparkling wines. Martini Rosso is red-amber, herbal, warm, and dry on the finish. Martini Bianco sits at a sweeter, more floral register. Martini Prosecco DOC is dry and lightly sparkling with fresh acidity. Martini Asti DOCG is a low-alcohol Moscato Bianco sparkling wine from Piedmont with white peach, apricot, and natural sweetness kept in balance by the grape's own acidity. Bacardi acquired the company in 1993. Beppe Musso has led production as Master Blender since 2011; Alessandro Garneri became Master of Botanicals in 2023, overseeing botanical sourcing and quality control at Pessione.

Known for

Aromatised wines (vermouth) and sparkling wines including Prosecco DOC and Asti DOCG

Notable facts

The story

The Railway Villa

In 1864, when the Martini & Rossi founders were choosing where to build their first production plant, they were solving a logistics problem: how to move vermouth from the point of production to the port, and from the port to export markets. The villa they selected at Pessione sat beside the railway line connecting Turin to Genoa, with Genoa's port at the far end. That calculation made Pessione the centre of the operation from the first year. The plant opened in 1864 and never closed. The railway connection that made the site attractive in the nineteenth century has long since been superseded, but the Pessione building still processes botanicals and bottles vermouth more than 160 years after it was first commissioned.

The Railway Villa

In 1864, when the Martini & Rossi founders were choosing where to build their first production plant, they were solving a logistics problem: how to move vermouth from the point of production to the port, and from the port to export markets. The villa they selected at Pessione sat beside the railway line connecting Turin to Genoa, with Genoa's port at the far end. That calculation made Pessione the centre of the operation from the first year. The plant opened in 1864 and never closed. The railway connection that made the site attractive in the nineteenth century has long since been superseded, but the Pessione building still processes botanicals and bottles vermouth more than 160 years after it was first commissioned.

From the atlas

Martini & Rossi

At A Glance

The Producer

Martini & Rossi is a Piedmont producer. Not Veneto, despite occasional mislabelling in trade directories: the company was founded in Turin in July 1863, its production plant has operated at Pessione ever since, and its registered corporate address remains Pessione-Chieri, province of Turin. That geography matters because it places Martini inside the same regional tradition that produced Italian vermouth as a category.

The three founders each brought something concrete. Alessandro Martini supplied commercial ambition and a name. Teofilo Sola brought capital and organisation. Luigi Rossi was an herbalist and liquorist, and he created the recipe for Martini Rosso. Within months of the founding, the company moved its manufacturing to Pessione, a small hamlet connected by rail to both Turin and the port at Genoa. That connection was not incidental: it was the distribution network, and Pessione was chosen partly because of it.

Today Beppe Musso leads production as Master Blender with a team of around 30 people at the Pessione plant. Alessandro Garneri, appointed Master of Botanicals in 2023, oversees sourcing and quality control for the botanical ingredients that run through the entire Martini range. Each botanical arrives from different parts of the world and passes both sensory evaluation and chemical analysis before it enters production.

Place

Pessione sits in the hills south-east of Turin, in a part of Piedmont where the landscape opens toward the Po plain. It is not wine country in the sense of named vineyard appellations; its significance to Martini is logistical and historical. The plant that opened there in 1864 still operates. The railways that once moved finished vermouth toward Genoa's port and then to export markets shaped the company's early expansion, and the Buenos Aires subsidiary that opened in 1883 was a direct product of that infrastructure.

Martini's sparkling wines come from two appellations with legal addresses elsewhere in northern Italy. Martini Prosecco DOC is sourced from the Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia zones that define the appellation. Martini Asti DOCG is a Moscato Bianco sparkling wine from the Asti and Cuneo provinces of Piedmont, an appellation that requires low alcohol and natural sweetness from the grape itself. The vermouth range has no appellation in the same sense: it is classified as aromatised wine, and its character comes from the botanical recipe rather than from a named vineyard place.

Soil And Site

Martini & Rossi does not own named vineyards, and the packet does not establish parcel-level details for the base wine sourcing behind any bottling. The Pessione plant is a blending, botanical, and bottling facility rather than an estate winery. The relevant site details are botanical rather than geological: the herbs, roots, flowers, and spices that differentiate Martini Rosso from Martini Bianco come from multiple countries and are selected through a combination of sensory evaluation and chemical testing at Pessione.

For the Asti DOCG, the grape is Moscato Bianco, grown in Piedmont on soils that give the variety its characteristic stone fruit and floral lift at low alcohol levels. No specific soil or parcel data is available from sourced material.

Story

Luigi Rossi's background as an herbalist gave the founding a technical direction that a straightforward wine merchant would not have had. His recipe for Martini Rosso was the product that won the company its first international recognition: a prize at the Dublin International Exhibition in 1865, two years after the founding. The award certificate showed a victorious figure, and that image influenced the label design that followed.

By 1871 Martini & Rossi had received its first award certificate specifically for sparkling wines, which shows that the range had already moved beyond vermouth within the company's first decade. The Buenos Aires subsidiary opened in 1883, making Martini one of the earliest Italian food and drink companies to establish a foreign production plant rather than just an export route.

Bacardi acquired the company in 1993. The Pessione plant stayed open. Beppe Musso, who joined in the same year as the acquisition, has been Master Blender since 2011. The continuity of the production site across more than 160 years, through multiple ownership structures and a global expansion, is one of the more unusual facts in Italian drinks history: the building Luigi Rossi's partners chose in 1864 still processes botanicals and bottles vermouth today.

Vineyards And Cellar

The production process at Pessione is botanical blending rather than vineyard farming. The Martini range begins with base wines that are sourced rather than estate-grown, and those wines are then aromatised with herb, root, flower, and spice combinations that vary by bottling. Martini Rosso uses a recipe of botanicals, herbs, and spices with bitter herbal character, warm spice, and a red-amber colour. Martini Bianco uses a different botanical selection weighted toward floral and sweet notes, giving a pale amber to straw-coloured wine with a softer profile.

The Master Blender's role is to maintain consistency across those recipes and supervise the approximately 30-person production team at Pessione. The Master of Botanicals controls incoming raw materials: every botanical batch is assessed by smell and then submitted to chemical analysis before it is accepted into production.

For the Asti DOCG, the Moscato Bianco grapes are fermented under pressure at low temperatures to preserve their natural fruit character and keep alcohol low, typically around 7 percent. For the Prosecco DOC, the Glera grape is processed by tank method, producing the characteristic fresh, fruity, lightly herbal sparkling wine associated with the appellation.

Wines

Martini Rosso is the original bottling, red-amber in colour, with a botanical recipe with bitter herbal character, warm spice, and a dry finish despite some residual sweetness. It is an aromatised wine classified as vermouth, meaning its base is wine rather than spirit, with botanicals adding the aromatic and bitter complexity. Serve cold or over ice and the botanical character opens; the warmth comes from the base wine and the spice components rather than from alcohol alone.

Martini Bianco sits at a sweeter, more floral register than Rosso. The colour is lighter, the nose shows white flower and vanilla notes, and the botanical selection is weighted toward sweetness and complexity rather than herbal bitterness. It is a different product from the same facility, differentiated by recipe rather than by appellation or grape.

Martini Prosecco DOC is a dry, lightly sparkling wine with fresh fruit, a herbal edge, and a yeasty note from the Glera grape and tank fermentation. It follows the Prosecco DOC appellation rules and carries the characteristic light mousse and moderate acidity of the category.

Martini Asti DOCG is the sweetest bottle in the range. Moscato Bianco from Piedmont delivers white peach, apricot, and orange blossom at around 7 percent alcohol, with natural sweetness balanced by the grape's own acidity. It is a low-alcohol sparkling wine with genuine fruit weight rather than added sweetness.

In The Glass

Martini Rosso opens with bitter herbs, dried flowers, and a base of warm spice. On the palate it moves from herbal bitterness through a mid-weight body to a dry finish that lingers with quinine-like sharpness. The botanical recipe gives complexity without heat; the alcohol level sits low enough that the herbs and spice carry more presence than the wine beneath them. Cold serving sharpens the bitterness and makes the finish drier.

Martini Bianco reads differently: floral on the nose with vanilla and white fruit, and on the palate a softer, sweeter body that holds its shape through a gentler finish. Less bitterness than Rosso, more sweetness, and a rounder texture.

Martini Asti DOCG is aromatic immediately: white peach, fresh apricot, and orange blossom lift off the glass before the wine reaches the mouth. On the palate the sweetness is full but the acidity holds it in balance, keeping the finish from collapsing into cloying weight. The mousse is gentle, the alcohol low, and the fruit character is direct rather than constructed.

Martini Prosecco DOC is leaner and drier, with herbal and yeasty notes behind the fruit, fresh acidity, and a lighter mousse. The finish is clean and short.

A Bottle To Understand It

Martini Rosso. It is the founding product, made to Luigi Rossi's original recipe from 1863, and it is the bottle that shows what the company is built on: a botanical recipe applied to a base wine to produce an aromatised drink that is neither spirit nor still wine but something between them. Red-amber in the glass, herbal and warm on the nose, with bitter complexity and a dry finish that outlasts the sweetness. Serve cold, on ice, or with a single large ice cube and a slice of orange, which opens the botanical character and softens the bitterness slightly without obscuring it. Every other Martini product is a variation on the logic established here.

Anecdote

In 1864, when the Martini & Rossi founders were choosing where to build their first production plant, they were looking at a practical problem: how to move vermouth from the point of production to the port, and from the port to export markets. The villa they selected at Pessione sat beside the railway line connecting Turin and Genoa, with Genoa's port at the far end. That logistics calculation made Pessione the heart of the operation from the first year. The plant that opened there in 1864 never closed. The railway connection that made the site attractive in the nineteenth century has long since been superseded, but the Pessione building still processes botanicals and bottles vermouth more than 160 years after it was first commissioned.

Final Word

Martini & Rossi is a Piedmont producer with a 160-year production record at a single site. Its range runs from the founding vermouth recipe to Prosecco DOC and the sweet Moscato-based Asti DOCG. Martini Rosso is the founding bottle: an aromatised wine built on an herbalist's recipe, unchanged in its essential logic since 1863.

Sources

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