A Spirit of Adventure

There are moments when a dose of liquid courage can do wonders. When it comes to exploring the diverse flavors of amaro, however, just tasting the liquid sometimes requires courage in itself. “The category of spirit is challenging to get into,” says craft cocktail specialist Joaquín Simó. “There’s deliberate obfuscation from the producers. None of them want to talk about their ingredients or what their processes are. Everything is a family secret and very hush-hush.” Simó helped open Death & Co. in New York City in 2006 and later spent a decade at the helm of Pouring Ribbons, also in Manhattan’s East Village. “Cocktail drinkers should be confused,” he says, “but not uninterested. They should just know going in that it’s going to be challenging. It’s not going to be easy to find information or transparency.”

Unlike other categorical spirits like bourbon or Scotch whisky, which are strictly regulated and defined by resolute parameters, the classification of amaro (or plural, amari) is largely lawless. Formal regulation is limited to just three words: bitter, sweet, liqueur. Says restaurateur Sother Teague, “if it’s got a bittering agent, a sweetening agent, and it’s alcoholic, you can call it amaro.” In 2011, Teague threw all caution to the wind and opened Amor y Amargo, an amaro- and bitters-focused cocktail bar in New York City.

Even the term “amaro,” Italian for bitter, is somewhat misleading. Beginning in the 15th century, members of monastic orders, including Franciscans, Marists, Benedictines, and Dominicans, began macerating botanicals for their medicinal uses and combining them with alcohol as a means of creating tinctures. Such practices occurred across Western Europe, but it was the Italians who passionately embraced these liqueurs centuries later, adopting them into their gastronomic cultures. Consequently, the word “amaro” is an eponym for the entire category of bittersweet liqueurs. Italians may claim that only bittersweet liqueurs made in Italy can be called amari or opine that only those designated as digestifs qualify, but the category is too broad and loosely defined to warrant these narrow classifications.

In the United States, mixology has been a welcomed gateway. Walk into most reputed craft cocktail bars today and you’ll likely find a menu peppered with concoctions that require measures of various amari. But mixology can also be challenging for the home bartender when amari are involved, since very few are interchangeable. “There’s literally dozens of ingredients in every single one of these, so it’s not so much of how is this going to play with the bourbon or tequila or rum,” says Simó, “but how is it going to play with that fortified wine that might [also] contain 40 ingredients?”

In other words, don’t try this at home without the correct ingredients. If you come across a cocktail recipe that calls for an amaro you can’t find, you’re better off waiting until you can source that specific liqueur before attempting to mix the drink because you cannot assume that an amaro produced in the same region will deliver similar flavors as the one you cannot find. With Italian amari, regional proximity doesn’t produce flavor equality. As Simó explains, Italians are fiercely loyal to their own regions and typically don’t venture outside of them when it comes to food and drink. For that reason, examples of a particular category of liqueurs will be diverse within a single region because, as Simó says, “that’s the only variety those Italians are going to get.”

Despite the enigmatic nature of the category, there’s an amaro out there to suit every taste. Here, we’ve broken them out into groups that align with the consumer’s level of experience. Whether you enjoy them neat before or after a meal, or as a complex component in a cocktail, these amari—and plenty more—will deliver a welcome moment of warmth as the cold weather rushes in this winter.