Amaro dell'Etna Liqueur 1L

Amaro dell'Etna dates to the early 1900s, when Giuseppe Calì Tabuso, a shipowner and wine lover in the village of Macchia di Giarre on the slopes of Mount Etna, developed the recipe as a remedy for local sailors and fishermen. He founded a distillery there in 1901, and the finished liqueur was shipped out from the nearby port of Riposto alongside wine and grape marc bound for markets across Europe. The Calì family ran the business for decades, eventually building a new factory directly on the Riposto waterfront in the 1960s. Around the early 2000s, production passed to Agrosan Sicilia, a Catania based distillery that continues to make the amaro today using the original recipe.

The liqueur is built from more than twenty six herbs and aromatic plants, many grown in the volcanic soil surrounding Etna, which is unusually mineral rich and imparts a distinct character to the botanicals raised in it. The distillery's location amid Sicilian orange groves also shapes the recipe, contributing a pronounced citrus element. The herbs and plants are washed and their aromas extracted before being blended into a water and sugar based syrup, a process that has remained largely unchanged for more than a century.

The color runs deep and dark, almost like a cool stream of lava in the glass. The nose offers orange peel, rhubarb, and licorice, while the palate unfolds bitter citrus, black tea, and a touch of anise, finishing with a smoky, mineral edge that nods to the volcanic terrain. It makes a fitting after-dinner digestif on its own or over ice with a splash of soda.