Amaro della Sacra Liqueur 750ml

Amaro della Sacra comes from Antica Torino, a Piedmontese company founded by Vittorio Zoppi and Filippo Antonelli to revive traditional regional aromatized wines, liqueurs, and spirits. After establishing their flagship vermouth, the pair turned to researching medieval monastic traditions, in which monks cultivated herbs and plants for tinctures, teas, and liqueurs alongside their manuscript work. The label, designed in 1925 by Piedmontese historian and poet Francesco Carandini, shows a Benedictine monk absorbed in study with the Sacra di San Michele, an abbey perched above Turin, rising in the background. That abbey lends the amaro its name.

The recipe draws on a wide range of botanicals, some native to Piedmont such as gentianella and hop flowers, others gathered from farther afield, including Madagascar vanilla, green cardamom from India, Middle Eastern myrrh, and South American cinchona bark. Each ingredient is cold macerated individually in neutral wheat spirit, then blended together with beet sugar. The finished liqueur rests in stainless steel for about five months before filtration and bottling, allowing the disparate botanicals to knit into a single profile.

The nose opens with green cardamom, lemon zest, and cinnamon. On the palate, bold gentian bitterness meets bright quinine and a return of cardamom, settling into a base note reminiscent of caramelized sugar and custard. It works well as a digestivo on its own or with a twist of lemon, and pairs nicely with dark chocolate or dried orchard fruit.