A Bitter Education: How Amaro Became the Thinking Drinker's Aperitivo

The bar is called Radice, the Italian word for root, in honour of the gentian that gives so many Italian bitters their bracing edge, and it occupies a narrow former pharmacy in the old centre of Turin. The original walnut shelves are still there, lined now with more than four hundred bottles of amaro, many of them produced by tiny family distilleries in the Alps and the Apennines. Its owner, Ludovica Sarracino-Welsh, pours me a small glass of something dark, herbal and almost medicinal. “Do not think,” she says. “Just let it be bitter.”

Amaro, the family of bittersweet herbal liqueurs traditionally drunk after dinner in Italy, has undergone a remarkable transformation. For decades it was the preserve of grandparents and old-fashioned trattorias, a digestif knocked back at the end of a long lunch. Today it is one of the most dynamic categories in the drinks world. Bartenders build entire menus around it, small producers are reviving forgotten regional recipes and a new generation of drinkers is learning to love a taste that most of us spend childhood avoiding.

Bitterness is the most divisive of the basic tastes. Our aversion to it is often explained as an ancient defence against poison, and small children reject bitter foods almost universally. Learning to enjoy it is therefore an act of cultivation, a slow retraining of instinct through repetition and curiosity. It is no accident that the most bitter foods and drinks, from black coffee to dark chocolate to radicchio, are often described as acquired tastes. They reward patience, and they flatter the palate that has put in the work.

The pleasure of resistance

Sarracino-Welsh believes the amaro revival is part of a broader cultural shift away from sweetness. After years of sugary cocktails and fruit-forward everything, drinkers are seeking complexity: flavours that unfold, change and resist easy description. A good amaro may contain dozens of botanicals, including roots, barks, citrus peels, flowers and resins, each contributing a layer that becomes apparent only over several sips. It is a drink that asks for attention, in an age when very little does.

Sweetness tells you everything at once. Bitterness makes you wait for the story.

The revival has also brought welcome attention to craft. Small producers such as Casa Lunardi, a Valtellina distillery that still macerates its herbs in chestnut barrels according to a recipe from 1887, now export to bars in Tokyo, Copenhagen and New York. Others are experimenting with local botanicals far from Italy: amari made with Scottish heather, Mexican chiles or Japanese yuzu peel. Purists grumble, but the category has always been regional, shaped by whatever grew on the nearest hillside.

Mixed drinks have helped enormously. The spritz, in its various bitter forms, introduced a generation of drinkers to amaro's cousins, and bartenders have since used bitter liqueurs as the backbone of increasingly sophisticated cocktails. But at Radice, Sarracino-Welsh encourages guests to try amaro the traditional way first: neat, at room temperature or slightly chilled, in a small glass, ideally after a good meal. Only then, she argues, can you understand what the bartender is doing when they mix it.

There is something quietly philosophical in all this. To enjoy bitterness is to accept that pleasure is not always immediate, and that some of the most rewarding experiences begin with a moment of resistance. By my third small glass at Radice, the medicinal shock had softened into something layered and almost tender: orange peel, a hint of mint, a long, dry finish like the memory of a mountain walk. Sarracino-Welsh nodded approvingly as I finished it. “Now,” she said, “you are starting to listen.”