Peroni Nastro Azzurro

There may be no beer that leans harder on national style than Peroni Nastro Azzurro: a brilliantly pale, bone-dry premium lager from Rome that sells itself the way Italy sells suits and sports cars — and gets away with it because the beer underneath is genuinely elegant.

The Peroni brewery's roots reach back to 1846, but Nastro Azzurro is a child of Italy's postwar boom. Launched in 1963, its name means 'Blue Ribbon' — a salute to the Blue Riband, the Atlantic speed prize the Italian ocean liner Rex claimed in 1933. Naming a beer after a speed record tells you exactly what it wants to be: light, quick, and glamorous.

Since the global carve-up of SABMiller, the brand has belonged to Japan's Asahi, which leans into the aperitivo-hour image across Italy, the UK, the U.S., and Australia. It works: this is the rare mass lager people order partly for how the bottle looks on the table.

Very pale and polished, with spritzy carbonation and a dry, quick profile: light cracker malt, a lemon-pith and cut-grass hop note, and a clean, abrupt finish with no lingering sweetness. It behaves more like a dry white wine than a heavy lager — which is precisely the design brief.