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When one of the most influential bartenders of all time partners with one of the drink world’s most influential distillers, cocktail fans take note. Are they making a new whiskey? Boarding the celebrity-tequila boat so crowded it’s practically got its own lido deck?
We’re talking about Dale DeGroff, whose revamp of drinks at the Rainbow Room in the 1990s helped inspire the cocktail renaissance, and Ted Breaux, whose launch of Lucid Absinthe Supérieure marked the end of the 90-year U.S. ban on the spirit, so naturally the answer is more interesting.
The two collaborated previously to make DeGroff’s Pimento Aromatic Bitters, and DeGroff New World Amaro has strong echoes of that spicy cocktail component. Launched with a bitter aperitivo, the two bottles mark an inflection point in the growing number of American producers making amaro.
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Many European countries — none more so than Italy — have a tradition of bittersweet herbal alcohol taken before and after a meal, to stimulate the appetite and then ease digestion. These liqueurs evolved out of folk medicine, the alcohol used to extract flavors and properties of plants that produced effects in the body.
Distinct from cocktail bitters, those smaller bottles of concentrated flavors used as drink “condiments,” these liqueurs have long been consumed neat. They typically contain dozens of botanicals and can lean on either end of bittersweet, from cloying to bracingly acrid.
In Italy the word “amaro” — Italian for “bitter” — is applied to particular bittersweet digestives; in the United States, the term is often used to describe a wider range of bittersweet bottles. In a standard U.S. liquor store, you’re likely to find all those bottles — Campari, Averna, Cynar, Fernet-Branca — hanging out together, often adjacent to the vermouths, which share their herbal nature.
A rule of tongue that Francesco Amodeo, president of Don Ciccio & Figli in D.C., shared with me is that traditionally, if it’s red, it’s an aperitivo; if it’s darker, it’s a digestivo. While I refer broadly to “amari,” (the plural form) to avoid writing “amari, aperitivi and/or digestivi” every time, note that’s shorthand for a more complicated category.
Speaking of complicated: The two brands that have driven the greatest awareness in the United States aren’t referred to as “amaro” in Italy.
“In the past 10 years … we’ve gone from this class of product being pretty esoteric to pretty mainstream … and we definitely have Aperol and Campari to thank for that,” says Henry Tarmy, co-founder of Ventura Spirits in California, which produces bright, bitter orange Amaro Angeleno. “A lot of people now know what an Aperol Spritz is and what goes into a Negroni. … Now when we say, ‘Try it in a spritz,’ people have some idea of what that actually means.”
In the early 2000s, as the cocktail revival got legs and bartenders discovered the appeal bitter flavors brought to their drinks, their concoctions boosted awareness of amari and changed how these liqueurs are consumed. Back in DeGroff’s early days as a bartender, he says, “The joke was, ‘What’s going to last longer, your marriage or your bottle of Angostura bitters?’ Because no one was using it.”
Now bitters and amari are ubiquitous in the cocktail world. There have been panics about Angostura shortages. Many modern classics — the Black Manhattan, the Paper Plane, the Aperol Spritz, the Jasmine, the Little Italy — rely on the bittersweet complexity of amari. Twenty years ago, most American drinkers had never heard of a Negroni; last year the drink was the call, complete with origin story, in a mainstream Mark Wahlberg action movie. Americans needed cocktails to provide an entry point.
The same kids who teased him for drinking chinotto (a bitter Italian soda) when he was growing up are now ordering Negronis, jokes Louie Catizone of St. Agrestis in Brooklyn, a hotbed of domestic amari-makers, a prevalence that Catizone connects to the borough’s Italian immigrant history and maker culture. St. Agrestis makes alcoholic and nonalcoholic versions of their amaro and bottled Negroni.
As Americans, we’re still coming around on bitter flavors, Catizone says. “It’s changing quickly — we’re drinking coffee with less sugar and cream, eating a lot more dark chocolate. … But the culture of having an aperitivo and digestivo hasn’t yet become mass-appealing despite the fact that, in many ways, we’re eating more like Europeans.”
‘New World’ vs. old-school
With cocktails creating a growing market, American makers have been getting in on the category. Some producers hew closely to Italian traditions — traditions many grew up with — using the herbs, roots and citrus that long flavored those spirits. Amodeo’s line of spirits at Don Ciccio & Figli, for example, all derive from recipes made by his family on the Amalfi Coast, as far back as the 1800s. “Reborn, never reinvented,” the website proudly declares.
Others are taking the category to new places — often with more transparency than the European brands, known for secrecy about their botanicals.
“The whole amaro category has the same potential for the depth of self-expression that gin does, because the category itself is so loosely defined,” says Lance Winters, master distiller at St. George Spirits, whose Bruto Americano looks like a classic Italian red bitter but tastes dramatically different, its layers of woody spice inspired by the incense Winters’s parents used to burn when he was growing up in ’70s-era California.
Botanical spirits provide the chance to bottle a particular place. Hiking and foraging in the mountains outside Los Angeles inspired Greenbar’s bright and floral Poppy Amaro, flavored with the California state flower. Melkon Khosrovian, co-founder of the distillery, says they wanted a cocktail-friendly bitter liqueur “that wasn’t a copycat of Old-World amari.” Some amari “drank a bit too … like a 5 o’clock shadow. That bristliness, that prickliness. … It can be complex and add many dimensions to a drink, but did it have to be so, I don’t know, brooding?”
In Charleston, S.C., High Wire Distilling includes black tea, tangerine and Yaupon holly — one of the only naturally caffeinated native plants in the United States, happened upon during a foraging tour by distillery co-founder Ann Marshall — in their Southern Amaro Liqueur. In Seattle, Jamie Hunt includes Rainier cherries, Yakima hops and local truffles in her Amaricano at Fast Penny Spirits. Heirloom Liqueurs in Minneapolis was created so that co-founders Ira Koplowitz and Brandon Reyes could release their Pineapple Amaro, a fruity, lightly bitter liqueur inspired by Reyes’s memories of the botanical digestive teas his parents in Puerto Rico used to make.
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As far from the Italian tree as some of these bitter apples have landed, you could argue that makers turning to their own regional botanicals are hewing to the spirit of the tradition — that’s how amari evolved. “Italian amari is regional as well,” says Hunt. “It was made of what people had in their gardens.”
In their double launch, DeGroff and Breaux have found a way to have it both ways: Their Bitter Aperitivo is classically Italian style; if you mix a Negroni with it, Breaux says, you might get a sense of what the drink tasted like pre-Prohibition.
The amaro, though, is a dramatic swerve — rich, bitter and pungent, leaning in on an allspice flavor profile I’ve never encountered in the category. It’s a big swing, but one that reflects how cocktails have evolved. “If you look at where the cocktail has gone — the Oaxacan Old Fashioned, smoky margaritas, people are dashing Laphroaig Scotch on top of their cocktails and dashing smoky mezcals on top of a martini,” says DeGroff. “Big flavor is back and people are in love with it.”
“We make no claims to being traditional Italian amaro — it’s not,” says Breaux. “It’s totally New World.”
If you’re interested to see what American producers are doing to expand on — or divert wildly from! — Italian amaro traditions, here’s a (not remotely comprehensive) bottle list. Availability and prices will vary by region and retailer; many can be ordered online. If you’re hesitant to commit to a full bottle, see what distilleries are nearby; many have tasting rooms where you can sample first.
- Amargo de Chile from CH Distillery — medium bitter, chile pepper and baking spices
- Amaricano from Fast Penny Spirits — lightly bitter, dark fruit, cocoa and truffle
- Amaro Amorino from Letterpress Distilling — light-medium bitter, oranges and baking spice
- Amaro Angeleno from Ventura Spirits — lightly bitter, bright orange zest
- Ambrosia from Don Ciccio & Figli. The company makes a varied roster of traditional Italian bitter liqueurs; their bright orange, spritz-friendly Ambrosia is the most popular.
- Baltamaro from Baltimore Spirits Co. — makes a fernet-style, a coffee amaro and Szechuan, which includes mouth-tingling Szechuan peppercorns
- Bruto Americano from St. George Spirits — medium bitter, woody cinnamon spice
- Caffè Amaro from J. Rieger & Co. — a coffee-based amaro with flavors of cardamom and orange
- DeGroff New World Amaro from Clear Creek Distillery — medium bitter, assertively pungent and spice-forward
- La Boîte American Amaro from Cardinal Spirits — lightly bitter, herbal, citrusy
- Pineapple Amaro from Heirloom Liqueurs — lightly bitter, pineapple and baking spices
- Poppy Amaro from Greenbar Distillery — lightly bitter, floral, citrusy
- Southern Amaro from High Wire Distilling — medium-high bitter, black tea, licorice and mint
- St. Agrestis Amaro — medium bitter, notes of baking spices, sarsaparilla and mint
Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2023/05/18/amari-what-you-need-to-know/