Did you know that Peru has more than 4,000 varieties of potatoes? It’s one of those region-locked bits of trivia that hardly makes sense out of cultural context, like how the Sami people of northern Scandinavia and Russia have at least 180 words describing ice and snow and how there are more than 2,000 types of tea in China.
Italy has a similar relationship with amaro. Commercially, there are hundreds and many more that are made at home to family-kept recipes. The endless variety of expression and complexity makes the category a treasure trove, or rabbit hole, for discerning drinkers.
“As an Italian, amaro is in our veins, it’s our DNA,” says Luca Missaglia, drinks consultant and managing partner of Amaro Santoni.
“Culturally, everything started back in Florence in the Renaissance. The Medici family were pioneers of medicine and had developed a knowledge of the beneficial properties of botanicals. In Italy, there are so many botanicals and spices and the doctors of Florence developed a knowledge of how to extract the essence from these ingredients to create elixirs.”
This incorporation of local aromatics and botanicals spread around what would become the country of Italy and with that, styles emerged packed with provenance. Each provincial interpretation of amaro tells the story of its region’s gardens, kitchens and palates.
“There’s still a dizzying number of subcategories,” says Hannah Lanfear, advocacy & content manager at Speciality Drinks. “They can be based on neutral spirit, a more flavourful spirit like grape brandy, or wine – the one constant should be a bitter botanical ingredient, if not many, be it a root, bark, leaf, or spice.
“It’s a mistake to think of amari as only bitter though. To soften the delivery of those mouth-puckering botanicals a heavy dose of sugar is often needed, and an array of other botanicals are included for their aromatic properties besides. Aside from that there are no rules that hamper creativity, meaning you can find a wildly broad array of styles that are the calling card of various Italian regions – from the coffee and citrus-forward Averna that calls Sicily home, to the Alpine freshness of Braulio from the mountainous north of Italy.”
A sense of place
That regionality speaks to the country’s diversity in ingredients. There’s good reason why Italy became one of the most influential food countries on the planet, and again good reason why so many of its dishes are named after towns and cities. Amaro follows that same sensibility while playing a specific role at the Italian table.
“I’m from Sardinia. When you finish lunch in a typical restaurant, they will put a bottle of amaro and a bottle of limoncello on the table for you to drink for free to help with your digestion,” says Elon Soddu, who after leaving his head mixologist role at The Savoy, opened a west London bar
called Amaro.
“We get to know this category from a young age because it’s a part of hospitality. There wasn’t a big cocktail wave in Italy when I was younger, but there was always amaro.
“When we opened the bar, we were looking for a name that connected us to the bar industry and we wanted to have a connection with Italian drinking culture, so we chose Amaro.”
As Italy’s culture went global so did amaro, albeit not at the pace of pasta and pizza, but the growth of the category internationally is married to another one of the country’s most important exports – bartenders.
“Today, Italians are everywhere in hospitality, there’s an Italian in every bar in every major city, and we feel proud of amaro as the Scottish feel proud of their whisky,” says Missaglia. “It’s like our signature, and it’s supposed to be convivial – it’s drunk with friends as an aperitivo before dinner, or as a digestivo after. It’s that lifestyle from home that’s encapsulated in liquid form. And that’s why bartenders around the world feel a connection to it.”
These tastemakers have now managed to influence the wider public, now it’s not just Italians that are evangelical about the category, bitter drinks have gone mainstream. In the inaugural Drinks International Cocktail Report, released last May, the Negroni topped the poll as the bestselling classic in the world’s best bars.
“The thunderfooted Aperol opened the UK’s awareness of amaro, coupled with the unexpected move of the Negroni into mainstream drinking culture,” says Lanfear. “Back in the early 2000s, ordering a Negroni was a signal to the bartender that you too were a bartender, but today the order of a Negroni earns you no hospo points at all.”
But while a Negroni won’t get you an invite to the lock-in, the category at large is still a bartender’s handshake, and in this role of hospitality shibboleth, one brand of Milanese amaro stands above all others.
“If you’ve been in the industry for some time, your palate is looking for more complexity,” says Claudia Cabrera, founder & bar manager of Mexico City’s Kaito and the region’s brand ambassador for Fernet Branca.
“Fernet is so complex. For older bartenders who love those flavours, that’s why they drink it and new bartenders want to feel part of that. Once you become a bartender, you’re part of a group. Taking Fernet shots at the end of a shift can make you feel part of something. I don’t know if anyone has taken their first shot of Fernet and liked it, but give it a second try, and try to understand it, it’s an amazing liquid. At Kaito, most of my bartenders hated it at first, but after some time, it became what we drink as a team. Now, they’re part of it.”
While mainstream in Italy, Argentina and Uruguay, in other markets, the brand has been active in curating an in-group among bartenders, producing and distributing regional Fernet coins in open secrecy. The coins are designed to be revealed in the company of other presumed coin-holders to initiate the drinking of potentially free Fernet shots. It’s practically masonic but whether it has tapped into an existing community of Fernet-loving bartenders or created one through a masterfully played marketing initiative, it does make it feel like a brand that is for the industry.
And that industry doesn’t only feel like the curator of the category, but increasingly the creator too. Who else but bartenders have a clearer sense of evolving tastes in the drinks world?
Changing trend
Farmily Group is a Milan-based hospitality company founded by six bartenders, which encompasses hospitality venues, including the World’s 50 Best Bars mainstay 1930, a range of amari and spirits, and a farm which specialises in the cultivation of aromatic plants for use in Farmily Group products, including Farmily Amaro which launched in 2018.
“The trend of amaro has changed a lot in recent years with customers’ tastes,” says Benjamin Fabio Cavagna, one of the founders of Farmily Group and bar manager at 1930.
“With Farmily Amaro, we wanted to maintain the historical tradition of amaro without neglecting those tastes, so we chose botanicals that broaden the range of flavour without going to extremes of sweetness or bitterness.
“So, the main botanicals that Farmily plays on are roasted cocoa and coffee – two botanicals with a bitter tendency but when combined with sweetness they can remind us of the smooth taste of chocolate or classic sweetened coffee.
“Then, we balance these botanicals and increase the freshness of the product with a variety of mint called glacial mint.”
In 2022, the group launched Tripstillery in Milan, the first Italian cocktail bar with a microdistillery, which not only allows customers to work with in-house master distiller Francesco Zini to produce small batches of bespoke creations in its alembic still but freedom of creativity for the Farmily team.
“Having a distillery at our disposal gives us the opportunity to create different products that can match the different palates of our customers,” explains Cavagna.
“For this reason, we created [at Tripstillery] three different amari. The most bitter and similar to historical amaro is Amaro Piramide, Amaro Sfera is a new-generation amaro, softer and more floral with some balsamic notes, and lastly, Amaro Cubo, which is fresh and herbaceous similar to French liqueurs.”
Amari produced by bartenders for bartenders feels like an organic extension of the tradition of homemade amari with regional specificity. Increasingly, mixability is important for drinks categories and vital if amaro is to continue its international spread, something understood by Stefano Santoni when he created the recipe for Amaro Santoni.
“Stefano Santoni is one of the most important herbalists in Italy,” explains Missaglia. “His father [Gabriello] was the first to make rabarbaro [rhubarb root amaro], which back in the ’60s was one of the most important liqueurs in Italy. In 2018, Stefano got in touch with Simone [Caporale] and me to help him develop the brand. He had a recipe that works and was a reflection of his family and he wanted to make it iconic. As bartenders, we thought about what bartenders would want as an ingredient. That’s the way we developed Stefano’s recipe, to a bartender’s palate and to something that works in mixology – two bartenders and one liqueur producer.”
Amaro is an unlikely world-beater. To mix metaphors, of the five basic tastes the bitter pill is the hardest to swallow. But with variety there is something for everyone and with complexity there’s something to keep returning to, and that’s the category’s trump card. All good things in life are an acquired taste, with amaro there are hundreds of different ones.
