As an essential ingredient in timeless cocktails like the Old Fashioned and the Pink Gin, Angostura Bitters is one of the most famous brands in the world of mixology. Beyond the cocktail community, the brand is also well known because of its prominent, over-sized label.
The largeness of the label is due to miscommunication between the sons of Johann Siegert, the creator of Angostura Bitters. One sibling was responsible for ordering the bottles, while another was tasked with sourcing labels. They never consulted each other on sizes, resulting in a label too large for the bottle.
The larger label attracted attention, and also helped to protect the contents from sunlight, so the company opted to keep it. Other than the size, another reason that the label is so iconic is because the design has remained virtually unchanged for much of its existence. There are certain motifs that have been on bottles of Angostura Bitters for well over one hundred years. Examples of this include Siegert’s signature and the Medal of Excellence that was awarded at the Grand Exhibition at Vienna held in 1873. One side of that medal bore the head of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria. This was the earliest instance of an association between Angostura Bitters and a monarch. The most important association with a monarch was yet to come.
In the early 1900s, Angostura would be appointed purveyor of Aromatic Bitters to the King of Prussia, and King Alfonso XIII of Spain. Angostura Bitters would then receive a Royal Warrant of Appointment from His Majesty King George V in 1912. Royal Warrants are marks of recognition for institutions that supply goods or services to the Royal Household. Companies or individuals that have been issued a Royal Warrant are allowed to advertise it through the use of a coat of arms on the packaging. Angostura has continuously held this distinction since 1912 and has featured the Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland on bottles ever since. The Royal Warrant was most recently renewed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 1955.
The year 2012 marked both the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and Angostura celebrating a century of being a Royal Warrant Holder. To mark the occasion, the company broke with tradition and made a major change to the Angostura Bitters label for the first time. The Platinum Jubilee Bitters traded the traditional label for a similarly oversized silver and blue one. The design itself was also different. Angostura used space on the label to explain that this was a limited edition version and that a portion of sales would benefit the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust.
This Diamond Jubilee Bitters and the Royal Warrant are not the only connection that Queen Elizabeth II has with the company. During her 1985 tour of the Caribbean, Queen Elizabeth II visited The House of Angostura to unveil an extension to the distillery and observe the launch of Angostura Royal Oak, which was at that time the latest addition to the company’s rum portfolio.
Over 24,000 bottles of the Diamond Jubilee Bitters was issued and some occasionally pop up on online auctions. The contents are the same as regular Angostura Bitters, but the packaging makes it a collector’s item.
