Despite humble beginnings, Birra Moretti has grown to become one of the most beloved Italian beers. Founded by entrepreneur Luigi Moretti in Udine, Italy, in 1859, Birra Moretti is one of the country’s oldest beer brands, and for decades, it was only enjoyed within the confines of its home region. But that didn’t do much to dampen its popularity. By the start of the 1920s, the brand had expanded annual production to well over 845,350 gallons — nearly 13 times more than its first year in operation.
While the brand is currently owned by Heineken, it has gone to great lengths to preserve its history. Since 1859, the recipe for Birra Moretti’s flagship lager “L’Autentica” has remained relatively unchanged, with the 4.6 percent-ABV beer still produced with its foundational recipe of water, malted barley, maize (corn), and hops.
From logos featuring mustachioed men to snafus with British supermarkets, here are seven things you should know about Birra Moretti.
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Birra Moretti is older than Italy itself.
While one of the country’s most successful beer brands today, Birra Moretti actually predates the formation of the modern Italian state. At the time of the brand’s founding, Udine and the surrounding Friuli region were a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, causing intense political turmoil. In the late 1850s and early 1860s, a powerful movement for the unification of Italian-speaking territories was underway. Udine was home to multiple military camps, and those military camps were occupied by soldiers with a thirst for beer. Before starting his own brewery, Moretti had fulfilled some of this demand by importing beer from breweries in the Empire. Still, he knew locally produced, Italian beer could potentially be even more lucrative — not to mention patriotic. In 1859, he opened his brewery, and the first bottle of Moretti was sold in Friuli just one year later. That’s two years before the genesis of the Kingdom of Italy and seven years before Friuli became a part of the country following the Third Italian War of Independence.
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The brewery originated as a ‘beer and ice factory.’
While some brewery owners opt to use their own names or pay homage to their hometowns when naming their facilities, Luigi Moretti chose a much more straightforward name: the Beer and Ice Factory. For the next 133 years, every batch of Moretti beer was produced at this beer and ice factory before production was moved approximately 50 miles away, to San Giorgio di Nogaro, to keep up with rapidly increasing demand.
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For most of its existence, Birra Moretti was family-owned and exclusively enjoyed locally.
For 130 years, Birra Moretti was a family-owned and operated brewery producing beer exclusively for the Friuli region. As regional demand was easily fulfilled with the brewery’s relatively small output, there was no real need for expansion. But things shifted in the 1980s when Moretti expanded to become available throughout Northern Italy. In 1989, the Moretti family made the decision to sell a 70 percent stake of the company to the Canada-based Labatt Brewing Company. Following the sale, Moretti expanded even further, finally reaching national distribution in the 1990s. By 1991, the brewery was producing over 26 million gallons of beer per year, and its growth made it an attractive target for larger breweries. Just five years later, Moretti was purchased by the Heineken Company. And it was Heineken that brought Birra Moretti to the world, distributing it to international markets in 2001. The brand, still Heineken-owned, is currently available in over 40 countries around the world.
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The brand’s legendary ‘mustache man’ has been printed on every label for seven decades.
Since the 1950s, every Birra Moretti label has featured an older gentleman with a mustache lifting a stein of golden beer to his lips. The brand affectionately refers to the “mustache man” as Baffo, and allegedly, he was a real person. The story goes that Luigi Moretti’s nephew visited a trattoria in Udine and saw a man drinking Moretti in a stein, just like the man on the label. Interested in the man, Moretti’s nephew asked if he could take a picture of him with his beer, and the man agreed. According to the brand, it’s this photo that was the reference image for the illustration currently gracing each bottle. It’s a nice story, but one that may not be entirely true. Other beer historians argue that the man in the drawing was a Tyrolean farmer who had his photo taken by Erika Groth-Schmachtenberger during a visit to Northern Italy in 1939. Some even go so far as to say the brand credited Groth-Schmachtenberger with the image in 1957, but rights to the image were signed away. Either way, Baffo is a crucial fixture of Birra Moretti’s marketing, with many consumers seeing themselves or their loved ones as the mustachioed man.
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Britain’s largest supermarket chain once pulled all Birra Moretti from its shelves.
In March 2017, British grocery store Tesco refused to stock Heineken products following proposed price increases as a result of the Brexit referendum. According to Business Insider, Heineken had allegedly proposed “unknown” price hikes as a result of the vote to leave the European Union in June 2016. A total of 24 Heineken brands (roughly 45 percent of the portfolio) were impacted by the ban, mainly via reduced supply. Eight brands, however, were not stocked at all: Tiger, Amstel, Sol, Kingfisher, Blind Pig Cider, Fosters Gold, Fosters Radler, and, of course, Birra Moretti. The ban lasted an entire year, with Birra Moretti reappearing on shelves in April 2018.
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The brand has launched multiple new beers to keep up with current trends.
Since launching over 160 years ago, Birra Moretti has introduced multiple styles of beer outside its traditional lager in an attempt to attract new consumers and compete in an ever-changing market. In addition to L’Autentica, Moretti also produces a golden lager, IPA, wheat beer, double malt, and two special ferments: Moretti Radler, a combination of lager and Sicilian lemon juice, and Grand Cru, an ale that undergoes a secondary fermentation in bottle. Sadly, the vast majority of these products are only available in Italy, with only L’Autentica and Malto Brunito, the brand’s double malt, distributed stateside. In the U.K., L’Autentica is available alongside the newly released Sale di Mare, a 4.8 percent-ABV unfiltered Moretti lager accompanied by a hint of sea salt that’s exclusively available in the country. U.K.-based fans also have access to Birra Moretti Zero, the brand’s non-alcoholic lager, which was launched in 2019 as a part of Heineken’s Say Yes campaign.
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Birra Moretti is the best-selling draft lager in the United Kingdom.
Despite living the majority of its life within Italian borders, Birra Moretti grew to become exceptionally popular internationally, especially in the U.K. It’s so popular across the pond that it overtook Molson Coors-owned Carling to become the best-selling draft lager in 2024. According to CGA, the Italian lager was up 9.6 percent year-over-year in Q2, amassing over $306 million in sales, despite an overall decline in beer consumption in the country.
