Birra Moretti

The moustached gentleman in an alpine hat on the Birra Moretti label, glass raised mid-drink, has fronted Italy's best-known heritage lager for the better part of a century — and the beer from Udine has been around far longer.

Luigi Moretti founded the brewery in Udine in 1859, up in Italy's north-eastern corner where the Alps lean toward Austria — lager country by geography as much as by choice. The famous face came later, and the brand's own telling is irresistible: in 1942 a Moretti spotted an older man drinking at a trattoria in Udine, asked to photograph him for the label, and asked what he'd take in return. All he wanted, the legend goes, was another beer.

Heineken bought the brand in the 1990s and turned a regional Friulian lager into a global one — Moretti is now as much a fixture of British pub taps and North American red-sauce restaurants as of Italian pizzerias. The moustache, wisely, has never been touched.

A bright gold lager with more malt presence than most of its peers: white bread crust, a hint of honey, and a balancing, faintly spicy hop dryness that keeps it from turning sweet. Medium-light body, fine steady bubbles, clean finish. It behaves beautifully next to pizza and fried things — which is exactly the job it was hired for.