Americano

Like a lot of people surviving through the joys of lockdown, we are finding ourselves raiding the cupboards for supplies that we did not know we had. I have to be honest and say that the array of unusual carbs sitting in my cupboards that I always secretly fantasised would be our saviour in my very gentle doomsday imaginings have not seen the light of day (A bowl of Powa anyone?) . What it has prompted though is to finally get me to bring to fruition a little project I started in the Autumn of 2019. You remember 2019 don’t you? It was the year we could leave our houses, walk with a few feet of complete strangers and not worry where our next loo roll was coming from.

In those heady days I embarked on an attempt to make my own Amaro. An Amaro is a fortified drink flavoured with combinations of herbs, roots, barks and other such botanicals. They vary in strength from 15% to up to 50% and offer a huge range of flavours. When you bear in mind that the plural of Amaro is Amari the name ‘Campari’ suddenly starts to make a little sense and indeed Campari is probably the most recognisable of its brethren, on the milder side both in strength and taste, Aperol is a well established form of Amari and at the other end of the scale the staggering Fernet Branca at a 40% alcohol with a flavour that would stop a charging Rhino at 30 paces is an example of how extreme Amari can be.

Amari can be flavoured with many ingredients all adding complexity and breadth to the drink and many new Amari are popping up all the time though not so much in the UK. Whilst the Negroni cocktail is extremely popular here, interest in the principle ingredient is not so huge. I believe that given the nature of Amari as an alcoholic infusion, cultural history and current market trends have resulted in a far greater focus on Gin which has a similar production process, a more definable market and place in British popular culture.

But to ignore Amari is to ignore the potential of richly flavoured complex and satisfying drinks. Amari are by definition bitter but paired with something to add sweetness such as vermouth we are doing the same thing as adding sweet sugar to bitter cocoa and we know how good chocolate can be.

But as ever I digress, last Autumn I set about collecting a variety of herbs, fruits and flowers from the garden, supermarket and the internet. Each thing I collected in a small preserving jar and covered with an Polish alcohol called ‘Spiritus’, you can buy it online but it can be found significantly cheaper in many Polish supermarkets. Now this is not the kind of stuff you take a sip of unless you have a desperate desire to go blind. This is as close to pure alcohol as you can buy. It is 95% alcohol and is designed to only be used in conjunction with other non alcoholic liquids. At 2.5x the strength of whiskey you might be thinking a half measure will be ok, the sheer concentration of this stuff makes it lethal. Ok safety warning over. The real benefit of an alcohol this strong is the speed with which it extracts the colour and flavour of the ingredients placed in it. Achieving in a couple of weeks what would take Vodka months with the cooresponding reduction in the freshness of the resulting product.

I bottled Elderberry, Lemon and Orange Peel, Bay Leaf, Hop, Rosemary, Rhubarb, and Beech Leaf. I also bottled Gentian root which is a very common Amari flavour and by far the most prominent taste in Campari.

I have to say, if for no other reason the exercise was worthwhile just for the sheer look of the stuff. Very satisfying.

But to best keep the colours vibrant I packed them away and forgot about them.

They would have been ready within a few weeks but fast forward to April 2020 and we are quite sensibly locking ourselves away to protect the NHS and save lives and I discover my little treasure trove.

Now as ever there was method in my madness, by bottling each individually I had an opportunity not just to try each flavour individually but to experiment with combinations to craft my ideal Amaro. Using an old Calpol syringe which conveniently measure 2.5 and 5ml I blended small amounts of each with a sugar syrup and water to bring them down to a comfortable 25% alcohol and tried each one. Some were lovely (The citrus and surprisingly the Bay), Some were virtually tasteless (Rhubarb and Beech) some were just a bit odd (Elderberry) But this gave me an insight into the inclusions and ratios that were going to give me my ideal Amari.

The results were a little unexpected in so far that the resulting liquid was a cloudy and green rather than clear and red but in truth I should not have been surprised. Just as with drinks such as Ricard, as the spirit is watered down, some of the extracts can no longer remain dissolved resulting in a cloudy appearance. Many Amari are black and so this is not visible clear commercial Amari have been chill filtered to remove these cloudy molecules but why on earth would I want to remove this extra flavour and complexity. As for the colour, I have no plans to dye my Amari bright red as with Campari or Orange like Aperol so cloudy and green is what we have.

What is wonderful is how much it tastes of what has gone into it, it is a little sweeter than Campari but also has a greater depth of bitterness, at first I thought I had overdone the Gentian but I quickly came to prefer this. There was a slight herbal element contributed by the Bay extract and a rich citrus tang from the Lemon and Orange, both could be tasted for their contributions separately. If Campari and Aperol had a child, albeit a green cloudy child then this would be it.

My favourite way of enjoying Amari is as an Americano, the existence of which I discovered from reading ‘A view to a kill’ by Ian Fleming, Americanos were James Bond’s favoured day drinking tipple whilst passing the time in Parisian cafes. They are composed of equal parts Amari, Vermouth and Sparkling water. They are not as strong or heavy as a Negroni and are more refreshing. Americanos make a great aperitif, a role that Amari are perfectly suited to waken the taste buds for the meal to come.