March 14, 2023 • 53 mins
Amaro is a delicious traditional liqueur, usually from Italy, that has delighted diners and drinkers for centuries. Tune in to learn all about this wonderful digestif.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everybody, it's me Josh and get this. Our newest
upcoming live shows are being announced right now by me.
I'm May fourth. We're going to be at the Warner
Theater in Washington, DC. And on May fifth, we'll be
in Boston at the Chevalier Theater, very fancy. And on
May sixth, in a total surprise twist, we're gonna be
(00:21):
at Massey Hall in our beloved Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Planet Earth.
You can get tickets right now. From Tuesday March fourteenth
until Thursday, March sixteenth, we have a pre sale going
just use the password sysk live, and then we have
general on sale tickets starting on Friday, March seventeenth at
(00:42):
ten am Eastern time. Go to Ticketmaster for your DC tickets,
go to the Chevalier Theater website for Boston, and then
go to ticketmaster dot CA for the Massey Hall show
in Toronto. We'll see you guys, May fourth, fifth, and sixth,
and I can't tell you how excited we are. Welcome
to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
(01:09):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and Chuck's here too.
It's just the two of us flying solo up in
the friendly skies. Yeah, and that makes the stuff you
should know. That's right, I've had the Do you ever
make up dumb songs in your head? No, actually I don't.
(01:30):
I have other people's songs in my head a lot,
but I don't make up my own. Typically, I make
up dumb songs in my head all the time, like what,
oh well, I mean in this case, it's about tomorrow,
but it can be anything. Just something will happen, or
there will be a brand or something in the house,
and I'll sometimes it's uh, sounds like something else in
(01:53):
a song, and so I'll just kind of do like
a weird al version of that. So make it up.
Are they like ballads? Like in your A Marrow songs?
A Marrow falling in love and then jilted and then
you know, no, no, no, no, this is a riff.
I'll go ahead and sing it if you'd like. Yeah.
This one was because Dave Ruse helped us with this one.
And when Dave sent this in, he said, you know,
(02:15):
Dave's I know much of a drinker, so he said,
but he tried tomorrow for this, and he said it
tasted like robot us and I did not see that
he tried it. He tried drinking for this. That's amazing
way to go, Dave. I think he wanted to see
what it was like, you know, so he had little
sip and said it. You know, I had that. And
of course amorrow is known for its sort of medicinal taste,
(02:35):
and so I've been singing. Here's a good example, and
it's so dumb. When the bitter hits your tongue like
a robata son, that's a Morrow. That was great. So
I do things like that all the time around the house,
and my Emily and Ruby both think I'm just sort
of strange. I think it's very pleasant. And I wish
(02:58):
you'd sing around me more. You want to move in,
you and you me could move in, and you'd be like,
this guy's got a quit singing. We quickly move back out.
I'm having a Morrow right now. Actually, oh yeah, I
don't have any tomorrow, and I would like some. I
don't I haven't decided which kind yet. I'm just gonna
start with one. But it's been a while for me.
(03:20):
I just I thought, you know, I poured up a
little geez, what is the big side of a jigger?
Is that an ounce or a half ounce? I mean
it depends. You can get two ounce and one ounce,
three quarter ounce and half ounces. It just depends. This
looks like about a half ounce. I mean it's just
a couple of SIPs. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's nothing. Yeah,
what kind? Uh? This is milletti And I'll get to
(03:44):
how I acquired this at some point in the podcast. Okay, Well,
for those of you who are like, what the heck
is amorrow, we'll prepare to learn, because we're going to
teach you what tomorrow is. And to put it in
very basic terms, it is a bitter suite. Oh. Some
people would to say just bitter liqueur, which means a
liqueur is any kind of alcohol that is sweetened with sugar,
(04:07):
and so amorrow is a specific kind of liqueur, a
bitter liqueur, that's right. And it is a digestif. It
is largely Italian, although there are plenty of countries who
make there are amorrows. And I never really thought of
Jagermeister as an amorrow, but apparently it's it's considered a
German amorrow, yeah, an herbal amorrow. Yeah, but it's generally Italian.
(04:33):
The history is Italian and there. If you go to
the Amarrow section, you're going to see a lot of
Italian words. Yeah, and you're gonna be busting out your
Italian x and quite a bit in this episode. I
think here and there, I don't want to overdo it.
So Amorrow has been around. It's been a big hit
in Italy and Europe France since the nineteenth century at least,
(04:53):
possibly back into the eighteenth century in some places. But
in America wasn't until like the cocktail renaissance of the tens.
I guess yeah, that amorrow really kind of found its place,
and I mean it's been here for a while. Kampari
is a type of Amorrow called a bitter red and
it's I mean, everybody knows what Kampari is, and maybe
(05:14):
slightly fewer people know what Apperall is. But both of
those are technically amorrow. But when you get into the
world of amorrow, you realize, like, oh, there's like a
whole galaxy out there. But the one thing that they
have in common is there they have an alcohol base,
a lot of bitter bittering agents, and then all sorts
of other botanical ingredients, and each one is proprietary. Each
(05:37):
one is typically a secret and each one is its
own blend. Like, there's very few, if any people making
the same kind of a morrow. Like I think every
single kind of amorrow, even ones in the same group,
are are just different. They're not the same thing. Yeah,
and there are hundreds of amari and amari it's the plural.
You wouldn't say different amorrows. If you want to get
(05:59):
it right, you say amari. And there are hundreds of
amar all over Italy. And like you said, they they're
all proprietary, proprietarily blended. And what you'll usually see because
you know, they still want to sell their stuff and
market some of the taste. Yeah, so if you look
up how they taste, they'll usually include like a handful
of the botanicals and then say, and you know, and
(06:21):
the rest are you know, only for us to know
that kind of thing, right, we'd have to kill you, right,
we can tell you, but just prepare to die. That's right.
I don't know if it's right, but sure. Um So,
to make a marrow is actually very easy. You just
take like a base alcohol usually between fourteen and I've
(06:42):
seen as much as like forty forty five percent proof
or forty five proof, I should say no percent that's right.
Proof is double the percentage, right, eighty to nine proof, okay.
And then you just soak some some bittering agents and herbs,
whatever your proprietary blend is. You let it soak for
a little while. Sometimes you might redistill it with the
(07:03):
with the herbs and botanicals in it, but a lot
of people just let it sit for a while. And
then I think that's called mass rating or infusing, when
you just basically say here, gentiin meat, moonshine essentially, yeah,
and then you add a little sugar after you filter
out the solids, and then you let it age for
(07:24):
several years, many years, however many years you want to wait,
and then you've got yourself a bitter liqueur known as amorrow. Yeah,
And that base alcohol can vary. A lot of times.
It will be grappa, which is great brandy, but not
always see Dave putting most. But I don't even know
if I would say most, or would you say most,
(07:45):
I couldn't see. I have the impression that most Italian
amorrow is or amari is grappa, yes, or wine. Well,
but what they don't do is like that kind of
stuff isn't on the label because it doesn't really matter,
like it. But when you get something like this, the
bottle won't say, you know, with a base alcohol of
(08:05):
like plain spirits or with grappa, or with white wine
or whatever, or white lightning exactly. And the bitter is
really sort of what it's all about. Italians are big
on bitter. Um they you know, espresso is very bitter,
ridicio a arugula there. They've always sort of been on
the leading edge of bitter things. Yeah. I saw chok
(08:28):
an Italian saying I couldn't find the Italian, but it
translates to because of bitter, we know sweet? Oh really? Yeah,
they like their bitter. They appreciate it for sure, And
then it says, give us a kiss. Does did you
already say that amorrow meant to bitter an Italian? I
don't think we did. Actually, Yeah, so there's the giveaway
(08:49):
right there. And bitter is something I'm not sure if
we even if I was even on too bitter when
we talked about the tongue episode. I don't think I was,
because my bitter appreciation has really come on strong in
the last like two or three years. Yeah, I don't
know why I always hated bitter things age, I would
say maybe because I have noticed like different flavor profiles
(09:13):
are hitting me in these in my elder years. Right,
But things like espresso and like I don't sweeten um
any like coffees or I used to like sweeten lattes
and things like that. But I love espresso now, and
I love arugula and ridicio, and I love amorrow and
so bitter or something I've really kind of grown grown,
(09:35):
It's grown on me. I guess, yeah, I mean same here,
especially as I've aged. I've always despised bitter stuff. Yeah.
Now I can sometimes choke down a bite of grapefruit even.
Oh you know what, I haven't tried grapefruit in a
while because I always said I didn't like it because
it was bitter. I like fresh. Maybe it's time grapefruit
juice with fresh squeeze orange juice about one to one ratio.
(09:56):
That's a really good jam um. But just eating the
grapefruit is a completely different experience than drinking the juice,
and it's really for me. Yeah, all right, I'll go
to try that. I can only think of my mom,
who you know, seventies mom that half a grape fruit
on the kitchen table in the morning, and the little
uh was that weird little sort of two sided knife
(10:19):
thing that would carve out the sections? Did the grapefruit spoon? Well,
it's not. It wasn't a spoon though, it was a knife. Oh,
I don't know what you're talking about. Then maybe she
saw it on TV. It was. It was a little
knife with a very short blade, and both sides of
the blade had a sort of odd serrated edge, but
not like a steak knife serrated edge right right, like well,
(10:41):
like a micro serrated edge almost right, Yeah, and then
you would just sort of carve your way around it.
And that's why both sides were done, because you would,
you know, loop around the slice or whatever. So I've
seen spoons with that same serrated edge that are grapefruit spoons. Okay,
I have to check that out. Seen the knife, though,
I wonder what the grape root fork looks like. I
(11:01):
have no idea. So should we talk about a few
of the bittering agents. There's like a big three, but
the list is really extensive. Yeah. So you have gentin,
which may be the most popular of all of them.
It's a root that grows in the alpine or it's
a plant that grows in alpine regions and its roots
(11:23):
are prized for their bitterness. Um. And it shows up
all over the place, um, everything from kapari to some
of the more like um arcane, hardcore m amari. UM.
It's just in a lot of different stuff. And we
should say it's not like you have to pick just
one bittering agent. A lot of people do, but you
(11:43):
can kind of mix it up for your own proprietary blend.
There's no rules. There are rules, and we'll get into
him late. Well, that's true wormwood, which we talked about
in the Absent episode where we also mentioned the gypsums
milord the that's so bitter and there's other things going
on in there, like that's even too much for me.
(12:05):
But the wormwood is a classic bittering agent. H. And
it is I'm not sure if we mentioned this in
the Absence, but it is an herb, a small leaved herb. Yeah.
It's kind of all over Europe, yeah for sure. UM.
And then you've got Chinchona. I think it's Sinchona. Sinchona, Yeah,
I looked it up. We I think we said Cinchona
a lot in the Gin and Tonic episode and we
(12:26):
were wrong. Okay, So sinchona, which is I mean how
it spelled, but it comes from It's a it's a tree.
It's a bark of a tree in South America. It's
where you get quinine, which they used to treat malaria
and is what gives tonic water. It's very bitter taste. Yeah,
so a lot of a lot of Amari use sinchona
in it. And um, you'll see on a label something
(12:48):
that says China, but it's actually I think, actually I
think it's pronounced kinda kina. Oh really, yeah, because the
cch It took Italian in college and the sound is right, yeah,
just to see I would be the sound. Wait you
took Italian? Yeah, I took Italian. Why aren't you doing
(13:09):
the voice? I never got it down years is way
better than mine. I could converse in it. I just
couldn't offend them. He sounded like a guy by Italian
by way of Toledo pretty much pretty much. I oh,
this is I have a story about that. So I
took French for like three years in high school and
never never cracked, like the first layer of my brain cells.
(13:31):
It just would not sit. Yeah, and then I got
to college and I took Italian and it clicked, like
I was Italian in my last life and lived one
hundred and ten or something like. It clicked like that,
And I made it all the way to the final.
And this has never happened to me. Before I sat
down to take the final and it was gone, all
of it gone. It was one of the most surprising
(13:52):
things that's ever happened to me. Yeah, I couldn't believe
it and I couldn't get it back. So I did
terrible on the final. I did all enough in class
to still make a good grade, but it was more like,
I don't like that. My brain is capable of doing that, right,
just crapping out when you must need it. Yeah, it
was like, sorry, pal, i'm sick today. Oh that's too bad.
I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah, me too. I got
(14:15):
accused of cheating on my German final in college and
was not able to prove my innocence. Oh no, I
didn't cheat chat GPT, you know. I just now remember
that memory, and I don't remember what the rub was
or why Fraul whatever her name was, thought I cheated,
(14:35):
But it was a thing, and I don't even remember,
you know how you just block stuff out, right, I
don't remember the result of it, to be honest. Well, no,
I didn't cheat. That's the only thing I know. Maybe
one of her students is listening, and we'll get in
touch with her, and she can get in touch with
you and say, like I believe you now, like you
like your Shakespeare teacher. Yeah, I should get advance on it, right. Uh.
(14:57):
But they didn't mess around, you know, English professor, don't
go over to the foreign language departments. That's just not
something you do, I guess not. Um, So let's talk
about some of these um botanicals that can go in
there too, because we'll talk a little bit more, you know,
throughout about the digestive properties of this. Not only digestif,
(15:17):
but I guess what is it appertif as well? Uh? Yeah,
you know, like not all a mari are digestifs. They're
appertifs as well, or you can use them both. It
just depends on what side of a meal you drink
it on, really, but they're they're supposed to be the
same thing, like they're they're supposed to aid in digestion
either before the meal or after the meal, right, and
(15:38):
there are all kinds of great botanicals you can put
in there. Uh, Chuck, do you mind speaking of singing? Oh? Oh,
do you have a song for this? I mean I
was just going to read them off in kind of
a sing song. Way, please do We may or may
not leave this in Okay artichoke, orange peel, caraway and
(15:58):
camomeal core under coal, nut, megan, liquorice, marjorom, cloves, cinnamon
and fennel keynoto in Italian orange variety, rhubarb, angelica, muran, cardamom,
carmea green stara niece and sasaparilla not only the flavor
of root beer, but a traditional treatment for syphilist mint
rust and yopa and holly and evergreen shrub native to
(16:20):
the American Southwest. Wow, I wish you could have done
that as megal. I think the microphone would have exploded. Inecstasy,
the stuff you should know would have just like folded
in on itself or something we'd wake up in some
weird dimension. You talked about the ABV. You know, generally
(16:41):
it's known as um like you, I mean, you said
you can get one that packs a punch, it's like
a full you know, eighty proof or so. But amarro
is generally known as a slightly lighter weight liqueur. And
if you're looking for a not quite as boozy drink,
you can have like an amaro spritzer or something like that,
and it's usually a little tame down from like a
(17:02):
big liquor drink. Yeah, definitely, I mean it's the point
isn't to get hammered off of a Morrow? Now? I
mean you can and if you want to, but that's
certainly not the point of it. Well, I've learned recently
that too much amorrow in one sitting is like there's
a digestif quality and then there's a digestive quality, you
(17:23):
know what I'm saying. Sure, I know what you mean. Yeah, So,
like what do you want? That's not the point you
want to attain? No? One or two is great? Sure? Yeah.
So I'm sure some people are out there thinking, like,
I know all this. You're talking about cocktail bitters, you morons.
Why don't you just call them cocktail bitters? Well that's
because cocktail bitters are actually different. They're very, very very similar,
(17:48):
but they're different. Cocktail Bitters are usually made using much
higher proof alcohol, much higher amounts of bittering agents. I've
seen as much as fifty percent of the total content
could be a bittering agent. So they're super bitter, and
oftentimes there's no additional sugar, so they wouldn't constitute a liqueur.
(18:09):
What's more, you're only supposed to use a few drops
a dash or two of cocktail bitters, whereas with an
Amorrow you actually drink like an ounce or two, like
it's a drink. It's not something you add to a drink.
But they're so close that the people differentiate cocktail bitters
and a Mari by by calling a mari potable or drinkable,
(18:29):
bitters or just bitter liqueur. Wait is there alcohol in bitters? Oh? Yes,
like you usually start with something like moonshine or white lightning,
or like one fifty one proof from Yeah, how do
they get away with selling that in grocery stores? Or
do they because you you drink so little of it?
I mean, even even anybody who needed to drink more
(18:51):
than anybody else would not turn up a bottle of bitters.
I would put money on it never having happened. My
granddad probably would have. Oh yeah, he was he was
one of those alcoholics. Well, anyone who's ever made a
bet with me knows I'm really good at making terrible bets. Well,
he was one of those like nineteen forties alcoholics that like, hey,
the mouthwash has booze in it and there's nothing else
(19:12):
in the house. That kind of thing. Yeah, but Obey
still wouldn't have drank a bottle of bitters. I don't
think you could. You know, they may not sell it
in grocery stores here. They know that I think about it.
They do, okay, because I know people like in Los
Angeles you can you can buy you know, their liquor.
There's liquor in grocery stores, right, there's liquor in their
(19:32):
drug stores. It's so bizarre. It is very strange. It's
super convenient, though it is very COMMUNI but in grocery
stores you can buy angostura usually, which is like, I mean,
that's the the universal bitter. Yeah, which is great. I
love it. Vermouth, now, this is where I'm gonna lean
on you a little bit. But Vermouth and Tomorrow do
have a lot in common, and it is also an alcohol.
(19:55):
It is also infused with bitters and botanicals and It
is also a bitter sweet and used as a bitter
sweetening agent in cocktails. It is very wormwood forward, but
in fact, I believe it's the French spelling of the
German word for wormwood, which is w e r muth
(20:15):
ver vermouth right with a W. Right. Does that makes sense? No,
it totally makes sense. And vermouth it bears a striking
resemblance to tomorrow because, like we said earlier, some some
amarium have wine as their base, not groppa or another spirit.
So I mean the distinction between a vermouth and a
(20:36):
vno Amorrow as it's called, is found in the fact
that your vermouth is actually spiked with booze, typically brandy,
So that right there differentiates it. But by spiking a
wine with booze, you've created what's like a class called
a fortified wine, yea fortified with booze, meaning sherry vermou port.
(21:02):
And then there's a whole bunch of other like specific
wines like Bonal is really good fortified wine. But there's
a subclass of fortified wine called an aromatized wine, and
vermouth is technically an aromatized wine because that is a
fortified wine that has many of the same botanicals and
bittering agents that you'll find in Amari. Right. The difference
(21:24):
again is that in Amari they don't spike it like
a veno Amorrow with an extra bit of booze. It's
that extra booze and vermouth that is the only thing
that differentiates it from some kinds of Amorrow, Right, And
vermouth always has to have the wine component, and amorrow
doesn't necessarily have to. Right. No, that's right. I'm gonna recommend,
(21:46):
and I hope people that are into this kind of
thing have their pencil and pad out to write down
some of these wrecks. But for you as well, my friend,
I found a very nice sweet vermouth that is made
in Napa Valley, Oh yeah, called the Massi and it
is really tasty. I will check that out. I'm a
Carpano antiqua um person myself. Yeah, I mean those are classics,
(22:08):
but this is a nice, small batch, made in America
kind of thing. I will definitely try it. I will,
I will try, especially if they mail it to us
for free. We should try a break hmm. Yeah, yeah,
it's like twenty minutes in. We got so excited. Wait,
what are you drinking. I'm drinking lemon water, okay, spiked
(22:29):
with moonshine. All right, we'll be right back everyone. You know,
(22:57):
I was going to make the joke that I'm a
method podcaster but having this tomorrow, and then I remember
that that was the very one of the very first
things I said on the show. You did you do
you remember that? Yeah, of course I remember. I think
that was your first first episode, right, very first episode,
Orange Juice and Toothpaste. Right, you are, and you long
(23:17):
have been a method podcaster. I mean you were talking
about eating honey butter in the honey episode. Yeah, eating
honey butter in the toast episode. Uh, yeah, you're a
method podcaster for sure. Should we talk about the pretty
interesting history of Tomorrow, Yeah, because a trek pretty closely
the history of spirits and booze as in general essentially. Yeah,
(23:40):
and shout out because Dave used this book for a
lot of this research from a mixologist from Italy named
mateo Z called the Big Book of Amorrow. No colon,
that's it. It's awesome. I love that so refreshing. Who
is not dead? He was like, oh, you can use
a colon. He didn't even know I don't want these
(24:02):
jackasses to use that stupid cold thing again. You sounded
like Italian by way of the brons. That's what I'm saying.
I don't do it very well. That's why you're the
you're the Italian accent. Guy thought about to say the
Italian stallion. I'll call you that too, especially if you
sing around me more. All right, So if you want
(24:22):
to talk about um basically distillation as a whole, you
need to go back to Arab alchemists in the seventh
and eighth centuries, which is who learned how to do
this stuff. And pretty soon after they learn how to
get ethanol going, they said, you know what, we'll just
start infusing it and drinking it. Because infusing things is
(24:45):
you know, probably as old as time, because not only
does it impart flavor to something that you're drinking, but
in many cases, and that's true with amorrow early on,
it was a way to actually preserve the botanicals and
the herbs. It makes them last longer. Right. They all
also figured out that they could they could distill more
than just fermented alcohol or alcohol from fermented liquid. They
(25:08):
could distill the essential oils from all those things too,
and then mix that together and they're like these essential oils.
They really pack a punch. They must be incredibly medicinal.
And so the earliest cocktails, the earliest reason that people
were putting together spirits and botanicals was for medicinal purposes.
And they think that the first cocktail was probably a
(25:31):
ju lip or jew lab, which means rose water, which
ironically was probably an infusion of violets rather than roses,
with sugar and alcohol, which would make it liqueur because
there's alcohol that sugared and it sounds a lot like
kreme to violette, which is a great kreme liqueur. I've
never had that something. Oh chuck, it's so good. Have
(25:52):
you ever had an aviation? I've had aviation gin, but
not an aviation. Okay, so it's gin, probably pretty good
aviation gin and creme to violet and I think a
little Maraschino liqueur, and it is beautiful, but it's this
gorgeous violet light purple color. It's it's really gorgeous. And
I think there's another one called Blue Moon that uses
(26:13):
it too, but those are like the big two. But
it's a krem liqueur, not a cream liquor. Kreme liquor.
And I found out from this research that they call
it krem because these types of liqueurs have so much
sugar in it that it gives it almost a creamy texture.
Oh interesting, Yeah, but a cream liqueur would actually have
some sort of cream to it. This is a krem liqueur,
(26:35):
so creme to vilet, krem to men. It just means
there's so much sugar in it that you could stand
a straw up in it. Basically I never knew that.
I didn't either until like yesterday. Yeah. Oh interesting, So
you did you think there was a dairy agent to
those things. I didn't because it's clearly not there, you know.
But I thought maybe they like creamed the violets or
(26:57):
something like it was part of the process. Yeah, yeah,
kind of what I thought. Now my eyes are wide open.
I said, just go milk that flour and bring me
some cramp from it. So, these the things that these
Arab alchemists were doing eventually, of course, found their way
to Italy. And this is like twelfth thirteenth century, and
(27:21):
if you want to get some booze made, there are
a lot worse places to go than your local monastery.
For sure. They've always been big on it, and the
monks got a hold of it, and then the year
thirteen hundred, a very sort of lucky, unlucky thing happened
at the same time, which is Pope Boniface the eighth
(27:41):
got kidney stones and was at least thought cured in
part by this alcoholic confusion of bitter roots and herbs.
And if you want to like really market your product
in thirteen hundred, say this is the stuff that saved
the pope, right exactly. And a lot of those monks too,
were alchemists, and this is definitely where that comes together,
(28:05):
alchemy and monasteries creating their own blend of aquavite or
elixir of life. And again they're taking this stuff to
do all sorts of curative or therapeutic stuff. They were
medicinal drinks, but it didn't take them very long to
figure out it gives you a pretty pretty good buzz too,
And by the sixteenth century, I believe people were like,
(28:28):
just just give me that. I want to drink it.
I don't have anything wrong with me. I'm trying to
do anything different. I want a prescription. I just want
to drink this stuff because it's pretty good. Yeah, exactly.
And then when the sugar from the New World arrived
in Europe and the spice trade was so robust, and
all these spices were coming in from the East and
South America and from the South, all of a sudden
(28:51):
you had everything you needed. And I think in the
seventeenth century Venice and Florence had a really robust by
trade going on, and of course they kind of spread
that to the different monasteries that were making this booze,
and so all of a sudden you had this sugary
component and more spices. And this is kind of when,
(29:13):
like tomorrow as we know it today, feels like it
was really born. Yeah, for sure. One of the reasons
it was born in Italy was because it was such
a crossroad, Like you were saying, there's all these spices
making their way to it, and they already had this
tradition that they'd gotten from their Arab friends of making
these medicinal liqueur, so they were just making them better
and better. And then by the nineteenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
(29:36):
apothecaries and pharmacists were like, give me those, I'm going
to start selling these. And then eventually it transmuted from
which is appropriate because we're talking about alchemy from a
medicinal drink again or some sort of elixir that was
meant to make you feel better to just straight up booze.
And at that point it became like it really took
(29:58):
off in the nineteenth century. Yeah, and that's if you
if you look at not all of them, but like
most of the classic amari that you'll find from Italy
in the modern liquor stores today will have some sort
of nineteenth century date on the bottle, very proudly. They've
been around for a long time. Kimpari, like you said,
is kind of like if you're putting together a bar
(30:21):
for the first time, you look up, like what kinds
of different things should I get? That aren't just like
you know, the main liquors, kim Pari will probably be
on that list. It's that it's that red in the
clear bottle, that red liqueur that you see that when
you don't know what it is, You're like, I've seen
that thing at every bar I've ever been to, and
I just never knew what it was. And Gaspardi Campatti,
(30:45):
who was from Nevada, Italy, started experimenting in the eighteen
forties with the recipe didn't finalize it till close to
twenty years later in eighteen sixty and opened up Cafe
Kempari and Milan, and that's where the drink the Americano
was born, which is very simple as campari, Italian vermouth
and some soda water. Right, And in this case the
(31:07):
Americanos not named after US Americans. A mayor is the
French word for bitter, so this is a play on
that Americano is a bitter drink. And you mentioned how
bright red kampari is actually comes from carmine the big
red goo, which is a natural dye that they make
(31:28):
from a certain kind of insect, the cochineal insect. They
crush it up, they dry it out, crush it up
and increases red powder that's been used as a dye
for centuries. Yeah, and they did that all the way
until two thousand and six, which is really surprising. Now
it's synthesized, but I believe you know there are some
sort of small batch of mai that are made around
(31:50):
the world that still used this method of crushing the bugs.
Definitely there's one. So that whole thing, remember apperall kampari
they're called red bitters. That's their classification. There's a whole
bunch of red bitters out there, and one of them, Cappelletti,
um has been using carmine the whole time and still does.
And I read that it's actually a much better ingredient
in a Negroni, because um, it's less sweet than campari,
(32:13):
so it has like a more balanced finish. And I
don't think I've ever read many more words that made
me want to try a liqueur more than that. Oh,
because do you usually not in like a Negroni. I
love a Negroni. That's the okay I got. That's I'm into,
like an improved Negroni. I mean, give it to me
a Negroni. Plus I love it Negroni too. It's a
(32:34):
great drink. And then Negroni actually came from uh where
did they come from? I don't know. It came from
somebody's cafe. I want to say it came from Cafe Campari. Yeah,
but there was a count whose name was Negroni and
I can't I can't remember his first name. I can't
find him anywhere, but he Oh, I'm sorry his name.
(32:56):
It was a cafe COMPARI can't Camillo Negroni in nineteenth twenty.
He was a customer there at Cafe Campari said I
like this Americano. Yeah, pretty good. Can you give me
something different? And the bartender swapped out the soda water
with gin, and the first Negroni was made, and Count
Camillo Negroni was canonized the very next day. Oh that's
(33:17):
an interesting trade. I'll swap out the soda water for gin. Right,
this soda water is a waste of space. There's Amorrow averna.
It's a very popular Morrow. It's much sweeter. This is
from eighteen sixty eight, was when they first started bottling
this stuff. And this was one that came straight from
Sicilian monks to a guy named Salvatore Averna, and it
(33:41):
was like sort of the thing he did for friends
and family for a little while. And then his son said, hey, Papa,
we should sell this stuff. And he said, go go
with God if you want to. I'm just gonna be
sitting over here in the shade. What about Montenegro, that's
your jam? Right? Yeah, I love it. It was originally
called Elica lunga vita, the Elixir of Life. It's made
(34:04):
with forty botanicals which is a middling amount of botanicals.
Typically for a Merrow, it's like right there in the middle,
which is appropriate because a Mero Montenegro is like a
really good introduction to like real amari. But it came
from Bologna, Italy back in eighteen eighty five, created by
a guy named Stana Solokobianki, and he was so enthralled
(34:25):
with Princess Elena of Montenegro, who became Queen of Italy
nineteen hundred, that he renamed his Amari Amarrow Montenegro. I
love that story, and that is um. I saw a
couple of great there at least two really good YouTube
videos from from Amarrow enthusiasts, and they one was this
(34:47):
guy I think he was originally from Italy, and then
one was this Scottish woman who of course loved that accent.
And they're like nine ten eleven minutes each and they
do a really good job of sort of you know,
if you've never tried amar, then here like ten different
kinds that range from what the guy referred to as
sort of like pastry esque all the way to super
(35:11):
medicinal tasting, right. And the one they had in the
middle is when I have on myself called the Lucano,
but they both described Montenegro as a really good gateway
omarrow for someone who's never really tried it, which makes
me think, I still don't have a bottle. I'm going
to get one soon. But oh yeah, that's that has
an accessibility factor to it definitely, and it's really useful
(35:33):
in cocktails too because it's it's very sweet as far
as amari go, it's a pretty sweet Tomorrow. And like Montenegro,
like many others, got a golden rich golden color, some
of the caramel color, some are brownish, and a lot
of them really kind of sharing common like they have
a brown taste, like you could taste it and if
(35:53):
if if somebody who had already had it before, if
you described it as brown, they would probably get what
you were talking about. It's not just the color of
the taste too. But there's another kind of a Morrow
that's been around. It might be the oldest surviving continuously
made a Morrow recipe and it comes from France chartrouss oh,
which there's another thing you've seen on American bars for
(36:16):
decades and decades, huge firm bar thing, but chartreuse vert
in particular is green. Yeah, and it's been It was
first brewed in like the seventeen thirties, but it came
from a recipe in sixteen oh five. And again it's
monks in a monastery making these recipes. And still to
the state check, there's only two two monks at any
(36:36):
given time who know the exact recipe. And they're the ones,
again still to this day, who order and blend the botanicals,
and then they hand the blended herbs and spices off
to the distillers who then take it and use it.
But only two of them know. What's amazing, And there's
one hundred and thirty two botanicals in chartreuse. That is
really something. And then here's the fact of the podcast
(36:59):
for me. The color Chartrusse got its name from the
liqueur chartrouss, not the other way around. It's older than
the color, isn't that neat? Yeah? That's pretty cool. Yeah.
So that chartrous blouse you're wearing, it's named after Chartrousse.
Vert the amorrow. All right, let's take a break. I've
spilt some momorrow on my blouse and I need to
(37:21):
go put the hair dryer on it, and we'll be
right back, Okay, so we're back. And one of the
(37:50):
things you mentioned very early on and repeatedly is that
amari is typically used as a digestive. You have a
big old meal, eat a big steak, eat three four
dozen oysters, have a lobster the size of a VW
beetle that you just ate. All sounds so good, A
bunch of tacos. You might want to do a shot,
(38:11):
but don't do a shot. You could do a shot,
but you don't really want to do a shot. You
want to sip amorrow right and really enjoy the taste
of it, but you'll you'll be aiding in digestion. True
or false? Chuck, Yeah, I mean kind of true. I
don't know there's that there's been like lab studies, but
the reasoning behind it is pretty sound. I think. I
(38:34):
don't think it's like a big reach and it's like, oh,
it's good for you, so it's fine to drink. But
it sounds like it probably does what other bitter things
do to your body. When the body you know gets
a bitter taste in its mouth, we have evolved to
think that might be poison because there are so many
bad plants in the world that are bitter and that's
a sure sign like, hey, don't eat this thing. And
(38:57):
so the logic is basically, you get a little tomorrow
and your body says, hey, this is a low level
poison kind of coming into my body, So let me
kick this digestion off and see if we can work
that through our system as quickly as possible. And then
you've got all these like herbs and botanicals and things
that also can you aid in digestion and have natural
(39:19):
anti inflammatory properties. And yeah, that's why it sort of
has that medicinal taste to it is because it is
slightly medicinal. I don't think it's some snake oil cure
all or anything, but I believe it's a legit digestive.
Plus also, um, a lot of those herbs are like
hepato protective, so it helps your liver while it's processing
(39:41):
all of that alcohol. It's I mean, if you're going
to drink a booze, it's you could do a lot
worse as far as like your systems are concerned. But
on the other hand, there is a lot of criticism
of drinking some amorrow after a meal, especially a big meal,
because alcohol actually slows digestion should by as much as fifty, right,
(40:02):
So it's actually slowing now your digestion, making you feel
fuller longer. Plus it's extra calories that you have to
now to now process. But on the other hand, alcohol
is a vasodilator, so it keeps your muscles from from tightening,
which means that your stomach can expand a little more
to make you feel a little more relieved if you're
(40:22):
super full. So the net and net is it does nothing.
I don't know, it might I think I get the
impression that appertifs do more to stimulate appetite and get
your juices going literally and a digestive, and that what
I saw was that you're much better off just spritzing
some actual bitters like cocktail bitters before a meal, and
(40:43):
that that would be that would probably be the best
way to actually do it. Yeah, Emily, it will spray
bitters in her mouth and stuff, Yeah, occasionally, and that's
that's probably the way to do it. Yeah, before the meal. Yeah,
But like I said, you're not even if you're drinking
AMR the right way, you're not drinking a ton of it.
So like in tomorrow after a meal probably isn't like
the worst thing in the world for you. No. But
(41:05):
also it's not like if you're even if you're drinking
it as a digestive, what you're really doing is just
finishing this meal in a really like luxurious calm way. Yes,
that's really the point of it. Yeah, So I promise
my Amorrow history and I will shorten the story to this,
which is I hadn't had it very much at all until,
(41:28):
like in various drinks like Negrons and things, but not
on its own, and it wasn't something I really kept
in stock until about two wish years ago. I follow
the actor Walton Goggins on Instagram and he makes his
own Looker. He makes mulhalland whiskey and gin, which are
both great. Really love the whiskey, and I'm a huge
(41:48):
fan of his. And he made a cocktail of just
half Bourbon and half Amorrow to Angus Stora. Angus Stora
makes their own like full size of Tomorrow. Same company
makes the bitters and a little like orange peel. I think,
express those oils in there and rub it around the rim,
then just drop it in. And so I bought a
(42:09):
bottle of it and I tried it, and I loved
it and then started collecting another ormorrow here or there,
and then this year at Christmas, we had an open
house on Christmas Day this year for the first time,
which have you ever had an open house type of party?
My parents have, I never have. I think it was
an Ohio thing because I got this from Emily's parents.
(42:30):
They used to do it too. And if you don't
know what it is, it's basically when you host a party,
that's not like show up at six and leave at midnight.
It's like, hey, the house will be open from noon
to six, drop by for a drink, stay if you want,
but you can just breeze through as well. And we
did that this year when we had so much fun.
(42:52):
And my friend Thomas, who is the father of one
of Ruby's friends and has become a friend of mine,
brought as a very generous gift three different Amaros for me. Wow.
And he's the kind of guy that just really loves
to He's very generous and loves to share knowledge and
turn people onto things. So he brought me a four
O F O R O which is sort of it's
(43:14):
very much sweeter, has like a coffee taste to it. Yeah,
there's definitely coffee Amari. Yeah, that's one of him. He
brought me Miletti, which I'm having now, which is sort
of your standard dark bitter. And then the one I
like the most is the Lucano. It looks sort of
like the Saint Paul girl in the Baha. You've probably
seen it before. Yeah, I've seen like old vintage posters
(43:35):
of Lucano stuff I've never Yeah, and Lucanor's super bitter. Um,
I don't think I've never had any of the Frenetts.
That's next on my list. As you're you're not going
to like them really because I'm into the bitter. Is
it's it's not bitter, it's not good bitter. It's a
whole it's a whole other class of things. It's not pleasant.
I don't understand people who like Frenette. Is it like
(43:56):
the Malort thing a little bit but mentally oh interesting.
I mean it is interesting and people do like it,
but I I mean, I'll be surprised if you're a
Fernette guy. Okay, you know, let me know for sure,
but I'll be surprised. I think it. Bronca is the
most popular. Yeah, let's talk about this. So Fernett is
(44:16):
at the end of your story because it was a
good story by some Amari. Yeah, big thanks to Toma
and also to make friends with Thomas. But um, yeah,
Fernet is it's um class called a Bronca or no,
it's called a Fernet. Yeah. Bronca is the brand of Fernett.
That's the most popular fern at Bronco. That's right. And
(44:37):
it is mental flavored, uh, super bitter. It's a really
really weird drink, but it is life blood in Argentina.
Yeah right. Yeah. In fact, one of the most popular
cocktails in Argentina. Argentina is a Fernando or Fernandidom, which
(44:57):
is I think a one to three so two ounces
of net with six ounces of coke and that's it. Wow.
And it's a great hangover cure and people are nuts
for it, and um, they're so crazy for it. Argentina
consumes seventy five percent of Furnet Bronco made worldwide. Wow,
how much seventy five percent? Three quarters of the fur
(45:19):
Net Bronco made in the entire world. It's drunk in Argentina, Wow,
because they love that drink so much. All right, If
I ever go to Argentina. I'll try it out. I
think I want to try that. I mean it sounds
like something way more than just the fur net, like
they combine together to make something really special. So I
would try that. But if I never have like a
sip of fur net bronco again, I won't be it.
(45:40):
It'll be too soon. Well, there is a Cola esque
element to some Amorrows, so I can't I can't wait
till we start getting all the emails there. Like you
guys said, you you never say a Morrow was used
to say a Mari and then you proceed to say
Amorrow's like ten times. Did I just say, yeah, we
both have that's right. What about the artichoke? When I
(46:04):
saw it pronounced China chinaar chinnar. That is the one
that you've probably noticed the bottle because it has an
artichoke on the front of it, and you might be thinking, well,
that's a weird thing to have on the front of
a liquor bottle, but that's what it's made from. It's
from Venice, created in the nineteen fifties, so it's a
I guess as far as amri ego, it's a newer
(46:25):
Amar or Amar see there I go, And that is
artichoke is a Mediterranean thistle and I have not tried this,
but I'm eager to. It's fine. It doesn't taste like
artichoke at all, but I find the label off pudding.
Oh you don't like that artichoke looking at you? No,
I really don't. Again, it doesn't taste anything like artichoke.
(46:47):
But right, you know, to make artichok the mascot of
your amorrow. Clearly they're doing fine because Chinnar is another
really popular one in the US, but I just I'm
not crazy for it because of that stupid artichoke on
the lab. Well, I think it looks cool. I think
it looks like a seventies something or other, definitely, But
it's still an artichoke and you're drinking an art of choke,
(47:08):
is what it seems like. On the lighter side, we
did mention Montenegro. But there's another one I wanted to
shout out that's very popular called no Nino. You'll see
in a lot of shelves, and if you've ever had
a paper plane, you've probably had no Nino in it. Yeah,
a paper plane is no Nino. Apper all bourbon and
lemon juice. I think equal parts Oh apper all is
(47:30):
well interesting, yeah, or red bitter but yeah apperl okay,
they double up on it. They definitely do. But but
I mean that just goes to show how different amorrow
or a mari is because you can put two amari
in a drink and it's not like just two of
the same thing. You know. How about this? I love
the description of the a liser Nova Salis. It's the
(47:54):
alpine amorrow, I think very piney. And Dave dug up
the great quote from a writer named Chuck Taggart, a
cocktail writer, that set a sip of alser Nova Salis
tastes like you're getting kicked in the crutch by a tree. Yeah.
I love descriptors like that that are weird but totally
(48:16):
nail it. Yeah, it's supposed to be so bitter it's
just crazy, which is all the more surprising that it's
a vino Amorrow, so it's vers is wine. But like
you said, it's alpine and the alpine class of amorrow is.
It definitely has like a piney tree kind of thing
going on woods And my favorite is one called zerbin
(48:38):
Stone pine Liqueur. Okay, And if you if you look
at descriptions, So go onto. If this is like floating
your boat at all, going to house alpens alpe nz
dot com and just start following links and you'll end
up in the coolest rabbit hole ever. But they are
one of them suppliers of zerbins be the only one
(49:01):
and the other descriptions of Amari. They'll say, like, enjoy
it on its own, or with it just a little
citrus twist or whatever, and then they'll go into all
the other things you can use that tomorrow for With
their benz they say basically like you should mix this
with other stuff. You don't really one and drinking on
its own because it's so piny. They literally make it
(49:21):
from pine cones. That's how piny it is. But it's
really good, it's really weird. It's its own thing. It's
like it's just its own thing. I strongly recommend just
trying it at least once. Interesting. All right, I got
nothing else is where they're any other Amari's we need
to go over That time was purposeful, wasn't it. I
(49:44):
don't think so we should give a shout out to
American Amari. That's starting to kind of make a thing.
I know Leopolds has one, and yeah, I think Saint
George has one. There's a bunch of other ones too. Yeah,
I mean I love it. There's all kinds of creating
of things happening in the United States with in terms
of distilling things. So of course they're on board with amorrow.
(50:06):
So what's your next bottle? Well, I guess I gotta
get a bottle of Montenegro. Okay, yeah I did buy that,
But then also, what's your other next bottle? Like you,
you're gonna want not just that one because you'll taste
you and be like, oh this is good. I've already
kind of passed this point. Well, I think the Piney
when you were just talking about does their bins. Yeah, okay,
and then you might actually want another one too. You
(50:29):
might because you might be frustrated with those two. If
those are your two next ones, well you tell me that.
I feel like you're leading me to a choice. I'm not.
I'm honestly not. Oh well, those are the two, and
then I should try for neat. Okay, you're about to
have like a losing streak of Amorrow. Oh no, that
will negate my winning streak. You'll come out the other
(50:49):
end though. All right, okay, well, since Chuck said all right, everybody,
that means it's time for listener, ma'am. I'm gonna call
this honey PSA, which was pretty interesting, and this is
from Taylor Hadden. They said, hey, guys, toward the end
of the episode on honey, you listed off all the
(51:11):
amazing properties. I don't know if this came up in
your research, but for people with fructose intolerance like my husband,
it also has the major property of being anti not
in the bathroom, or I guess that would be pro
not in the bathroom now they think about it. So
few people know that you can be intolerant to fructose anyway,
(51:31):
just like so many of a certain intolerance to lactose,
and honey is one of the worst substances that he
can eat, along with a gabby syrup. It's even worse
than high fructose corn syrup and fruits that are high
in fructose like apples and tomatoes. Took him such a
long time to figure out what was causing his stomach
troubles because a few people know that they can be
(51:51):
effective like this, and fun fact, because fructose pears with
dextrose to make glucose. A person who is fructose intolerant
can take dex stros to negate some of the consequences,
just like a person with lactose intolerance can take lactid. Wow,
and get this, it gets even better. There's a great email. Conveniently,
(52:13):
Smarties candy is one hundred percent dextros, so my husband
has stashes of them everywhere, and it's always a funny
moment when we're eating pizza with new people and they
wonder why he's snacking on Smarties as an appetizer. Crazy.
That is great. Thanks for the show as seriously wonderful.
You bring joy and excitement so many topics, and your
well research style gives me inspiration when teaching my ninth
(52:35):
grade English students how to find sources. And that is
a teacher Taylor Haddon and hello to your ninth grade
English class. Yeah, hello Miss Haddon's ninth grade class, right, yeah,
and your hubs Yeah, and Chuck. We should also say
a few people rode in or like you probably should
have also mentioned that you shouldn't feed honey to a
(52:56):
baby under one year of age, Yeah, which I think
we talked about in some other episode before but yes,
it bears repeating because their little immune systems are so
fragile and batulin can be found in honey, but they
can suffer botulism, which you do not want a baby
to have. Yeah, I think we added that. It was
in the episode, Hey don't feed that baby that thing? Right,
(53:19):
that was a great, great episode. We're like in what
about this thing? Oh yeah, I feed a baby. They
would do it. Well. Thanks a lot, Taylor, and if
you want to be like Taylor, you can get in
touch with us via email at stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
(53:39):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening to your favorite shows.
Hey everybody, it's me Josh and get this. Our newest
upcoming live shows are being announced right now by me.
I'm May fourth. We're going to be at the Warner
Theater in Washington, DC. And on May fifth, we'll be
in Boston at the Chevalier Theater, very fancy. And on
May sixth, in a total surprise twist, we're gonna be
(00:21):
at Massey Hall in our beloved Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Planet Earth.
You can get tickets right now. From Tuesday March fourteenth
until Thursday, March sixteenth, we have a pre sale going
just use the password sysk live, and then we have
general on sale tickets starting on Friday, March seventeenth at
(00:42):
ten am Eastern time. Go to Ticketmaster for your DC tickets,
go to the Chevalier Theater website for Boston, and then
go to ticketmaster dot CA for the Massey Hall show
in Toronto. We'll see you guys, May fourth, fifth, and sixth,
and I can't tell you how excited we are. Welcome
to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
(01:09):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and Chuck's here too.
It's just the two of us flying solo up in
the friendly skies. Yeah, and that makes the stuff you
should know. That's right, I've had the Do you ever
make up dumb songs in your head? No, actually I don't.
(01:30):
I have other people's songs in my head a lot,
but I don't make up my own. Typically, I make
up dumb songs in my head all the time, like what,
oh well, I mean in this case, it's about tomorrow,
but it can be anything. Just something will happen, or
there will be a brand or something in the house,
and I'll sometimes it's uh, sounds like something else in
(01:53):
a song, and so I'll just kind of do like
a weird al version of that. So make it up.
Are they like ballads? Like in your A Marrow songs?
A Marrow falling in love and then jilted and then
you know, no, no, no, no, this is a riff.
I'll go ahead and sing it if you'd like. Yeah.
This one was because Dave Ruse helped us with this one.
And when Dave sent this in, he said, you know,
(02:15):
Dave's I know much of a drinker, so he said,
but he tried tomorrow for this, and he said it
tasted like robot us and I did not see that
he tried it. He tried drinking for this. That's amazing
way to go, Dave. I think he wanted to see
what it was like, you know, so he had little
sip and said it. You know, I had that. And
of course amorrow is known for its sort of medicinal taste,
(02:35):
and so I've been singing. Here's a good example, and
it's so dumb. When the bitter hits your tongue like
a robata son, that's a Morrow. That was great. So
I do things like that all the time around the house,
and my Emily and Ruby both think I'm just sort
of strange. I think it's very pleasant. And I wish
(02:58):
you'd sing around me more. You want to move in,
you and you me could move in, and you'd be like,
this guy's got a quit singing. We quickly move back out.
I'm having a Morrow right now. Actually, oh yeah, I
don't have any tomorrow, and I would like some. I
don't I haven't decided which kind yet. I'm just gonna
start with one. But it's been a while for me.
(03:20):
I just I thought, you know, I poured up a
little geez, what is the big side of a jigger?
Is that an ounce or a half ounce? I mean
it depends. You can get two ounce and one ounce,
three quarter ounce and half ounces. It just depends. This
looks like about a half ounce. I mean it's just
a couple of SIPs. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's nothing. Yeah,
what kind? Uh? This is milletti And I'll get to
(03:44):
how I acquired this at some point in the podcast. Okay, Well,
for those of you who are like, what the heck
is amorrow, we'll prepare to learn, because we're going to
teach you what tomorrow is. And to put it in
very basic terms, it is a bitter suite. Oh. Some
people would to say just bitter liqueur, which means a
liqueur is any kind of alcohol that is sweetened with sugar,
(04:07):
and so amorrow is a specific kind of liqueur, a
bitter liqueur, that's right. And it is a digestif. It
is largely Italian, although there are plenty of countries who
make there are amorrows. And I never really thought of
Jagermeister as an amorrow, but apparently it's it's considered a
German amorrow, yeah, an herbal amorrow. Yeah, but it's generally Italian.
(04:33):
The history is Italian and there. If you go to
the Amarrow section, you're going to see a lot of
Italian words. Yeah, and you're gonna be busting out your
Italian x and quite a bit in this episode. I
think here and there, I don't want to overdo it.
So Amorrow has been around. It's been a big hit
in Italy and Europe France since the nineteenth century at least,
(04:53):
possibly back into the eighteenth century in some places. But
in America wasn't until like the cocktail renaissance of the tens.
I guess yeah, that amorrow really kind of found its place,
and I mean it's been here for a while. Kampari
is a type of Amorrow called a bitter red and
it's I mean, everybody knows what Kampari is, and maybe
(05:14):
slightly fewer people know what Apperall is. But both of
those are technically amorrow. But when you get into the
world of amorrow, you realize, like, oh, there's like a
whole galaxy out there. But the one thing that they
have in common is there they have an alcohol base,
a lot of bitter bittering agents, and then all sorts
of other botanical ingredients, and each one is proprietary. Each
(05:37):
one is typically a secret and each one is its
own blend. Like, there's very few, if any people making
the same kind of a morrow. Like I think every
single kind of amorrow, even ones in the same group,
are are just different. They're not the same thing. Yeah,
and there are hundreds of amari and amari it's the plural.
You wouldn't say different amorrows. If you want to get
(05:59):
it right, you say amari. And there are hundreds of
amar all over Italy. And like you said, they they're
all proprietary, proprietarily blended. And what you'll usually see because
you know, they still want to sell their stuff and
market some of the taste. Yeah, so if you look
up how they taste, they'll usually include like a handful
of the botanicals and then say, and you know, and
(06:21):
the rest are you know, only for us to know
that kind of thing, right, we'd have to kill you, right,
we can tell you, but just prepare to die. That's right.
I don't know if it's right, but sure. Um So,
to make a marrow is actually very easy. You just
take like a base alcohol usually between fourteen and I've
(06:42):
seen as much as like forty forty five percent proof
or forty five proof, I should say no percent that's right.
Proof is double the percentage, right, eighty to nine proof, okay.
And then you just soak some some bittering agents and herbs,
whatever your proprietary blend is. You let it soak for
a little while. Sometimes you might redistill it with the
(07:03):
with the herbs and botanicals in it, but a lot
of people just let it sit for a while. And
then I think that's called mass rating or infusing, when
you just basically say here, gentiin meat, moonshine essentially, yeah,
and then you add a little sugar after you filter
out the solids, and then you let it age for
(07:24):
several years, many years, however many years you want to wait,
and then you've got yourself a bitter liqueur known as amorrow. Yeah,
And that base alcohol can vary. A lot of times.
It will be grappa, which is great brandy, but not
always see Dave putting most. But I don't even know
if I would say most, or would you say most,
(07:45):
I couldn't see. I have the impression that most Italian
amorrow is or amari is grappa, yes, or wine. Well,
but what they don't do is like that kind of
stuff isn't on the label because it doesn't really matter,
like it. But when you get something like this, the
bottle won't say, you know, with a base alcohol of
(08:05):
like plain spirits or with grappa, or with white wine
or whatever, or white lightning exactly. And the bitter is
really sort of what it's all about. Italians are big
on bitter. Um they you know, espresso is very bitter,
ridicio a arugula there. They've always sort of been on
the leading edge of bitter things. Yeah. I saw chok
(08:28):
an Italian saying I couldn't find the Italian, but it
translates to because of bitter, we know sweet? Oh really? Yeah,
they like their bitter. They appreciate it for sure, And
then it says, give us a kiss. Does did you
already say that amorrow meant to bitter an Italian? I
don't think we did. Actually, Yeah, so there's the giveaway
(08:49):
right there. And bitter is something I'm not sure if
we even if I was even on too bitter when
we talked about the tongue episode. I don't think I was,
because my bitter appreciation has really come on strong in
the last like two or three years. Yeah, I don't
know why I always hated bitter things age, I would
say maybe because I have noticed like different flavor profiles
(09:13):
are hitting me in these in my elder years. Right,
But things like espresso and like I don't sweeten um
any like coffees or I used to like sweeten lattes
and things like that. But I love espresso now, and
I love arugula and ridicio, and I love amorrow and
so bitter or something I've really kind of grown grown,
(09:35):
It's grown on me. I guess, yeah, I mean same here,
especially as I've aged. I've always despised bitter stuff. Yeah.
Now I can sometimes choke down a bite of grapefruit even.
Oh you know what, I haven't tried grapefruit in a
while because I always said I didn't like it because
it was bitter. I like fresh. Maybe it's time grapefruit
juice with fresh squeeze orange juice about one to one ratio.
(09:56):
That's a really good jam um. But just eating the
grapefruit is a completely different experience than drinking the juice,
and it's really for me. Yeah, all right, I'll go
to try that. I can only think of my mom,
who you know, seventies mom that half a grape fruit
on the kitchen table in the morning, and the little
uh was that weird little sort of two sided knife
(10:19):
thing that would carve out the sections? Did the grapefruit spoon? Well,
it's not. It wasn't a spoon though, it was a knife. Oh,
I don't know what you're talking about. Then maybe she
saw it on TV. It was. It was a little
knife with a very short blade, and both sides of
the blade had a sort of odd serrated edge, but
not like a steak knife serrated edge right right, like well,
(10:41):
like a micro serrated edge almost right, Yeah, and then
you would just sort of carve your way around it.
And that's why both sides were done, because you would,
you know, loop around the slice or whatever. So I've
seen spoons with that same serrated edge that are grapefruit spoons. Okay,
I have to check that out. Seen the knife, though,
I wonder what the grape root fork looks like. I
(11:01):
have no idea. So should we talk about a few
of the bittering agents. There's like a big three, but
the list is really extensive. Yeah. So you have gentin,
which may be the most popular of all of them.
It's a root that grows in the alpine or it's
a plant that grows in alpine regions and its roots
(11:23):
are prized for their bitterness. Um. And it shows up
all over the place, um, everything from kapari to some
of the more like um arcane, hardcore m amari. UM.
It's just in a lot of different stuff. And we
should say it's not like you have to pick just
one bittering agent. A lot of people do, but you
(11:43):
can kind of mix it up for your own proprietary blend.
There's no rules. There are rules, and we'll get into
him late. Well, that's true wormwood, which we talked about
in the Absent episode where we also mentioned the gypsums
milord the that's so bitter and there's other things going
on in there, like that's even too much for me.
(12:05):
But the wormwood is a classic bittering agent. H. And
it is I'm not sure if we mentioned this in
the Absence, but it is an herb, a small leaved herb. Yeah.
It's kind of all over Europe, yeah for sure. UM.
And then you've got Chinchona. I think it's Sinchona. Sinchona, Yeah,
I looked it up. We I think we said Cinchona
a lot in the Gin and Tonic episode and we
(12:26):
were wrong. Okay, So sinchona, which is I mean how
it spelled, but it comes from It's a it's a tree.
It's a bark of a tree in South America. It's
where you get quinine, which they used to treat malaria
and is what gives tonic water. It's very bitter taste. Yeah,
so a lot of a lot of Amari use sinchona
in it. And um, you'll see on a label something
(12:48):
that says China, but it's actually I think, actually I
think it's pronounced kinda kina. Oh really, yeah, because the
cch It took Italian in college and the sound is right, yeah,
just to see I would be the sound. Wait you
took Italian? Yeah, I took Italian. Why aren't you doing
(13:09):
the voice? I never got it down years is way
better than mine. I could converse in it. I just
couldn't offend them. He sounded like a guy by Italian
by way of Toledo pretty much pretty much. I oh,
this is I have a story about that. So I
took French for like three years in high school and
never never cracked, like the first layer of my brain cells.
(13:31):
It just would not sit. Yeah, and then I got
to college and I took Italian and it clicked, like
I was Italian in my last life and lived one
hundred and ten or something like. It clicked like that,
And I made it all the way to the final.
And this has never happened to me. Before I sat
down to take the final and it was gone, all
of it gone. It was one of the most surprising
(13:52):
things that's ever happened to me. Yeah, I couldn't believe
it and I couldn't get it back. So I did
terrible on the final. I did all enough in class
to still make a good grade, but it was more like,
I don't like that. My brain is capable of doing that, right,
just crapping out when you must need it. Yeah, it
was like, sorry, pal, i'm sick today. Oh that's too bad.
I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah, me too. I got
(14:15):
accused of cheating on my German final in college and
was not able to prove my innocence. Oh no, I
didn't cheat chat GPT, you know. I just now remember
that memory, and I don't remember what the rub was
or why Fraul whatever her name was, thought I cheated,
(14:35):
But it was a thing, and I don't even remember,
you know how you just block stuff out, right, I
don't remember the result of it, to be honest. Well, no,
I didn't cheat. That's the only thing I know. Maybe
one of her students is listening, and we'll get in
touch with her, and she can get in touch with
you and say, like I believe you now, like you
like your Shakespeare teacher. Yeah, I should get advance on it, right. Uh.
(14:57):
But they didn't mess around, you know, English professor, don't
go over to the foreign language departments. That's just not
something you do, I guess not. Um, So let's talk
about some of these um botanicals that can go in
there too, because we'll talk a little bit more, you know,
throughout about the digestive properties of this. Not only digestif,
(15:17):
but I guess what is it appertif as well? Uh? Yeah,
you know, like not all a mari are digestifs. They're
appertifs as well, or you can use them both. It
just depends on what side of a meal you drink
it on, really, but they're they're supposed to be the
same thing, like they're they're supposed to aid in digestion
either before the meal or after the meal, right, and
(15:38):
there are all kinds of great botanicals you can put
in there. Uh, Chuck, do you mind speaking of singing? Oh? Oh,
do you have a song for this? I mean I
was just going to read them off in kind of
a sing song. Way, please do We may or may
not leave this in Okay artichoke, orange peel, caraway and
(15:58):
camomeal core under coal, nut, megan, liquorice, marjorom, cloves, cinnamon
and fennel keynoto in Italian orange variety, rhubarb, angelica, muran, cardamom,
carmea green stara niece and sasaparilla not only the flavor
of root beer, but a traditional treatment for syphilist mint
rust and yopa and holly and evergreen shrub native to
(16:20):
the American Southwest. Wow, I wish you could have done
that as megal. I think the microphone would have exploded. Inecstasy,
the stuff you should know would have just like folded
in on itself or something we'd wake up in some
weird dimension. You talked about the ABV. You know, generally
(16:41):
it's known as um like you, I mean, you said
you can get one that packs a punch, it's like
a full you know, eighty proof or so. But amarro
is generally known as a slightly lighter weight liqueur. And
if you're looking for a not quite as boozy drink,
you can have like an amaro spritzer or something like that,
and it's usually a little tame down from like a
(17:02):
big liquor drink. Yeah, definitely, I mean it's the point
isn't to get hammered off of a Morrow? Now? I
mean you can and if you want to, but that's
certainly not the point of it. Well, I've learned recently
that too much amorrow in one sitting is like there's
a digestif quality and then there's a digestive quality, you
(17:23):
know what I'm saying. Sure, I know what you mean. Yeah, So,
like what do you want? That's not the point you
want to attain? No? One or two is great? Sure? Yeah.
So I'm sure some people are out there thinking, like,
I know all this. You're talking about cocktail bitters, you morons.
Why don't you just call them cocktail bitters? Well that's
because cocktail bitters are actually different. They're very, very very similar,
(17:48):
but they're different. Cocktail Bitters are usually made using much
higher proof alcohol, much higher amounts of bittering agents. I've
seen as much as fifty percent of the total content
could be a bittering agent. So they're super bitter, and
oftentimes there's no additional sugar, so they wouldn't constitute a liqueur.
(18:09):
What's more, you're only supposed to use a few drops
a dash or two of cocktail bitters, whereas with an
Amorrow you actually drink like an ounce or two, like
it's a drink. It's not something you add to a drink.
But they're so close that the people differentiate cocktail bitters
and a Mari by by calling a mari potable or drinkable,
(18:29):
bitters or just bitter liqueur. Wait is there alcohol in bitters? Oh? Yes,
like you usually start with something like moonshine or white lightning,
or like one fifty one proof from Yeah, how do
they get away with selling that in grocery stores? Or
do they because you you drink so little of it?
I mean, even even anybody who needed to drink more
(18:51):
than anybody else would not turn up a bottle of bitters.
I would put money on it never having happened. My
granddad probably would have. Oh yeah, he was he was
one of those alcoholics. Well, anyone who's ever made a
bet with me knows I'm really good at making terrible bets. Well,
he was one of those like nineteen forties alcoholics that like, hey,
the mouthwash has booze in it and there's nothing else
(19:12):
in the house. That kind of thing. Yeah, but Obey
still wouldn't have drank a bottle of bitters. I don't
think you could. You know, they may not sell it
in grocery stores here. They know that I think about it.
They do, okay, because I know people like in Los
Angeles you can you can buy you know, their liquor.
There's liquor in grocery stores, right, there's liquor in their
(19:32):
drug stores. It's so bizarre. It is very strange. It's
super convenient, though it is very COMMUNI but in grocery
stores you can buy angostura usually, which is like, I mean,
that's the the universal bitter. Yeah, which is great. I
love it. Vermouth, now, this is where I'm gonna lean
on you a little bit. But Vermouth and Tomorrow do
have a lot in common, and it is also an alcohol.
(19:55):
It is also infused with bitters and botanicals and It
is also a bitter sweet and used as a bitter
sweetening agent in cocktails. It is very wormwood forward, but
in fact, I believe it's the French spelling of the
German word for wormwood, which is w e r muth
(20:15):
ver vermouth right with a W. Right. Does that makes sense? No,
it totally makes sense. And vermouth it bears a striking
resemblance to tomorrow because, like we said earlier, some some
amarium have wine as their base, not groppa or another spirit.
So I mean the distinction between a vermouth and a
(20:36):
vno Amorrow as it's called, is found in the fact
that your vermouth is actually spiked with booze, typically brandy,
So that right there differentiates it. But by spiking a
wine with booze, you've created what's like a class called
a fortified wine, yea fortified with booze, meaning sherry vermou port.
(21:02):
And then there's a whole bunch of other like specific
wines like Bonal is really good fortified wine. But there's
a subclass of fortified wine called an aromatized wine, and
vermouth is technically an aromatized wine because that is a
fortified wine that has many of the same botanicals and
bittering agents that you'll find in Amari. Right. The difference
(21:24):
again is that in Amari they don't spike it like
a veno Amorrow with an extra bit of booze. It's
that extra booze and vermouth that is the only thing
that differentiates it from some kinds of Amorrow, Right, And
vermouth always has to have the wine component, and amorrow
doesn't necessarily have to. Right. No, that's right. I'm gonna recommend,
(21:46):
and I hope people that are into this kind of
thing have their pencil and pad out to write down
some of these wrecks. But for you as well, my friend,
I found a very nice sweet vermouth that is made
in Napa Valley, Oh yeah, called the Massi and it
is really tasty. I will check that out. I'm a
Carpano antiqua um person myself. Yeah, I mean those are classics,
(22:08):
but this is a nice, small batch, made in America
kind of thing. I will definitely try it. I will,
I will try, especially if they mail it to us
for free. We should try a break hmm. Yeah, yeah,
it's like twenty minutes in. We got so excited. Wait,
what are you drinking. I'm drinking lemon water, okay, spiked
(22:29):
with moonshine. All right, we'll be right back everyone. You know,
(22:57):
I was going to make the joke that I'm a
method podcaster but having this tomorrow, and then I remember
that that was the very one of the very first
things I said on the show. You did you do
you remember that? Yeah, of course I remember. I think
that was your first first episode, right, very first episode,
Orange Juice and Toothpaste. Right, you are, and you long
(23:17):
have been a method podcaster. I mean you were talking
about eating honey butter in the honey episode. Yeah, eating
honey butter in the toast episode. Uh, yeah, you're a
method podcaster for sure. Should we talk about the pretty
interesting history of Tomorrow, Yeah, because a trek pretty closely
the history of spirits and booze as in general essentially. Yeah,
(23:40):
and shout out because Dave used this book for a
lot of this research from a mixologist from Italy named
mateo Z called the Big Book of Amorrow. No colon,
that's it. It's awesome. I love that so refreshing. Who
is not dead? He was like, oh, you can use
a colon. He didn't even know I don't want these
(24:02):
jackasses to use that stupid cold thing again. You sounded
like Italian by way of the brons. That's what I'm saying.
I don't do it very well. That's why you're the
you're the Italian accent. Guy thought about to say the
Italian stallion. I'll call you that too, especially if you
sing around me more. All right, So if you want
(24:22):
to talk about um basically distillation as a whole, you
need to go back to Arab alchemists in the seventh
and eighth centuries, which is who learned how to do
this stuff. And pretty soon after they learn how to
get ethanol going, they said, you know what, we'll just
start infusing it and drinking it. Because infusing things is
(24:45):
you know, probably as old as time, because not only
does it impart flavor to something that you're drinking, but
in many cases, and that's true with amorrow early on,
it was a way to actually preserve the botanicals and
the herbs. It makes them last longer. Right. They all
also figured out that they could they could distill more
than just fermented alcohol or alcohol from fermented liquid. They
(25:08):
could distill the essential oils from all those things too,
and then mix that together and they're like these essential oils.
They really pack a punch. They must be incredibly medicinal.
And so the earliest cocktails, the earliest reason that people
were putting together spirits and botanicals was for medicinal purposes.
And they think that the first cocktail was probably a
(25:31):
ju lip or jew lab, which means rose water, which
ironically was probably an infusion of violets rather than roses,
with sugar and alcohol, which would make it liqueur because
there's alcohol that sugared and it sounds a lot like
kreme to violette, which is a great kreme liqueur. I've
never had that something. Oh chuck, it's so good. Have
(25:52):
you ever had an aviation? I've had aviation gin, but
not an aviation. Okay, so it's gin, probably pretty good
aviation gin and creme to violet and I think a
little Maraschino liqueur, and it is beautiful, but it's this
gorgeous violet light purple color. It's it's really gorgeous. And
I think there's another one called Blue Moon that uses
(26:13):
it too, but those are like the big two. But
it's a krem liqueur, not a cream liquor. Kreme liquor.
And I found out from this research that they call
it krem because these types of liqueurs have so much
sugar in it that it gives it almost a creamy texture.
Oh interesting, Yeah, but a cream liqueur would actually have
some sort of cream to it. This is a krem liqueur,
(26:35):
so creme to vilet, krem to men. It just means
there's so much sugar in it that you could stand
a straw up in it. Basically I never knew that.
I didn't either until like yesterday. Yeah. Oh interesting, So
you did you think there was a dairy agent to
those things. I didn't because it's clearly not there, you know.
But I thought maybe they like creamed the violets or
(26:57):
something like it was part of the process. Yeah, yeah,
kind of what I thought. Now my eyes are wide open.
I said, just go milk that flour and bring me
some cramp from it. So, these the things that these
Arab alchemists were doing eventually, of course, found their way
to Italy. And this is like twelfth thirteenth century, and
(27:21):
if you want to get some booze made, there are
a lot worse places to go than your local monastery.
For sure. They've always been big on it, and the
monks got a hold of it, and then the year
thirteen hundred, a very sort of lucky, unlucky thing happened
at the same time, which is Pope Boniface the eighth
(27:41):
got kidney stones and was at least thought cured in
part by this alcoholic confusion of bitter roots and herbs.
And if you want to like really market your product
in thirteen hundred, say this is the stuff that saved
the pope, right exactly. And a lot of those monks too,
were alchemists, and this is definitely where that comes together,
(28:05):
alchemy and monasteries creating their own blend of aquavite or
elixir of life. And again they're taking this stuff to
do all sorts of curative or therapeutic stuff. They were
medicinal drinks, but it didn't take them very long to
figure out it gives you a pretty pretty good buzz too,
And by the sixteenth century, I believe people were like,
(28:28):
just just give me that. I want to drink it.
I don't have anything wrong with me. I'm trying to
do anything different. I want a prescription. I just want
to drink this stuff because it's pretty good. Yeah, exactly.
And then when the sugar from the New World arrived
in Europe and the spice trade was so robust, and
all these spices were coming in from the East and
South America and from the South, all of a sudden
(28:51):
you had everything you needed. And I think in the
seventeenth century Venice and Florence had a really robust by
trade going on, and of course they kind of spread
that to the different monasteries that were making this booze,
and so all of a sudden you had this sugary
component and more spices. And this is kind of when,
(29:13):
like tomorrow as we know it today, feels like it
was really born. Yeah, for sure. One of the reasons
it was born in Italy was because it was such
a crossroad, Like you were saying, there's all these spices
making their way to it, and they already had this
tradition that they'd gotten from their Arab friends of making
these medicinal liqueur, so they were just making them better
and better. And then by the nineteenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
(29:36):
apothecaries and pharmacists were like, give me those, I'm going
to start selling these. And then eventually it transmuted from
which is appropriate because we're talking about alchemy from a
medicinal drink again or some sort of elixir that was
meant to make you feel better to just straight up booze.
And at that point it became like it really took
(29:58):
off in the nineteenth century. Yeah, and that's if you
if you look at not all of them, but like
most of the classic amari that you'll find from Italy
in the modern liquor stores today will have some sort
of nineteenth century date on the bottle, very proudly. They've
been around for a long time. Kimpari, like you said,
is kind of like if you're putting together a bar
(30:21):
for the first time, you look up, like what kinds
of different things should I get? That aren't just like
you know, the main liquors, kim Pari will probably be
on that list. It's that it's that red in the
clear bottle, that red liqueur that you see that when
you don't know what it is, You're like, I've seen
that thing at every bar I've ever been to, and
I just never knew what it was. And Gaspardi Campatti,
(30:45):
who was from Nevada, Italy, started experimenting in the eighteen
forties with the recipe didn't finalize it till close to
twenty years later in eighteen sixty and opened up Cafe
Kempari and Milan, and that's where the drink the Americano
was born, which is very simple as campari, Italian vermouth
and some soda water. Right, And in this case the
(31:07):
Americanos not named after US Americans. A mayor is the
French word for bitter, so this is a play on
that Americano is a bitter drink. And you mentioned how
bright red kampari is actually comes from carmine the big
red goo, which is a natural dye that they make
(31:28):
from a certain kind of insect, the cochineal insect. They
crush it up, they dry it out, crush it up
and increases red powder that's been used as a dye
for centuries. Yeah, and they did that all the way
until two thousand and six, which is really surprising. Now
it's synthesized, but I believe you know there are some
sort of small batch of mai that are made around
(31:50):
the world that still used this method of crushing the bugs.
Definitely there's one. So that whole thing, remember apperall kampari
they're called red bitters. That's their classification. There's a whole
bunch of red bitters out there, and one of them, Cappelletti,
um has been using carmine the whole time and still does.
And I read that it's actually a much better ingredient
in a Negroni, because um, it's less sweet than campari,
(32:13):
so it has like a more balanced finish. And I
don't think I've ever read many more words that made
me want to try a liqueur more than that. Oh,
because do you usually not in like a Negroni. I
love a Negroni. That's the okay I got. That's I'm into,
like an improved Negroni. I mean, give it to me
a Negroni. Plus I love it Negroni too. It's a
(32:34):
great drink. And then Negroni actually came from uh where
did they come from? I don't know. It came from
somebody's cafe. I want to say it came from Cafe Campari. Yeah,
but there was a count whose name was Negroni and
I can't I can't remember his first name. I can't
find him anywhere, but he Oh, I'm sorry his name.
(32:56):
It was a cafe COMPARI can't Camillo Negroni in nineteenth twenty.
He was a customer there at Cafe Campari said I
like this Americano. Yeah, pretty good. Can you give me
something different? And the bartender swapped out the soda water
with gin, and the first Negroni was made, and Count
Camillo Negroni was canonized the very next day. Oh that's
(33:17):
an interesting trade. I'll swap out the soda water for gin. Right,
this soda water is a waste of space. There's Amorrow averna.
It's a very popular Morrow. It's much sweeter. This is
from eighteen sixty eight, was when they first started bottling
this stuff. And this was one that came straight from
Sicilian monks to a guy named Salvatore Averna, and it
(33:41):
was like sort of the thing he did for friends
and family for a little while. And then his son said, hey, Papa,
we should sell this stuff. And he said, go go
with God if you want to. I'm just gonna be
sitting over here in the shade. What about Montenegro, that's
your jam? Right? Yeah, I love it. It was originally
called Elica lunga vita, the Elixir of Life. It's made
(34:04):
with forty botanicals which is a middling amount of botanicals.
Typically for a Merrow, it's like right there in the middle,
which is appropriate because a Mero Montenegro is like a
really good introduction to like real amari. But it came
from Bologna, Italy back in eighteen eighty five, created by
a guy named Stana Solokobianki, and he was so enthralled
(34:25):
with Princess Elena of Montenegro, who became Queen of Italy
nineteen hundred, that he renamed his Amari Amarrow Montenegro. I
love that story, and that is um. I saw a
couple of great there at least two really good YouTube
videos from from Amarrow enthusiasts, and they one was this
(34:47):
guy I think he was originally from Italy, and then
one was this Scottish woman who of course loved that accent.
And they're like nine ten eleven minutes each and they
do a really good job of sort of you know,
if you've never tried amar, then here like ten different
kinds that range from what the guy referred to as
sort of like pastry esque all the way to super
(35:11):
medicinal tasting, right. And the one they had in the
middle is when I have on myself called the Lucano,
but they both described Montenegro as a really good gateway
omarrow for someone who's never really tried it, which makes
me think, I still don't have a bottle. I'm going
to get one soon. But oh yeah, that's that has
an accessibility factor to it definitely, and it's really useful
(35:33):
in cocktails too because it's it's very sweet as far
as amari go, it's a pretty sweet Tomorrow. And like Montenegro,
like many others, got a golden rich golden color, some
of the caramel color, some are brownish, and a lot
of them really kind of sharing common like they have
a brown taste, like you could taste it and if
(35:53):
if if somebody who had already had it before, if
you described it as brown, they would probably get what
you were talking about. It's not just the color of
the taste too. But there's another kind of a Morrow
that's been around. It might be the oldest surviving continuously
made a Morrow recipe and it comes from France chartrouss oh,
which there's another thing you've seen on American bars for
(36:16):
decades and decades, huge firm bar thing, but chartreuse vert
in particular is green. Yeah, and it's been It was
first brewed in like the seventeen thirties, but it came
from a recipe in sixteen oh five. And again it's
monks in a monastery making these recipes. And still to
the state check, there's only two two monks at any
(36:36):
given time who know the exact recipe. And they're the ones,
again still to this day, who order and blend the botanicals,
and then they hand the blended herbs and spices off
to the distillers who then take it and use it.
But only two of them know. What's amazing, And there's
one hundred and thirty two botanicals in chartreuse. That is
really something. And then here's the fact of the podcast
(36:59):
for me. The color Chartrusse got its name from the
liqueur chartrouss, not the other way around. It's older than
the color, isn't that neat? Yeah? That's pretty cool. Yeah.
So that chartrous blouse you're wearing, it's named after Chartrousse.
Vert the amorrow. All right, let's take a break. I've
spilt some momorrow on my blouse and I need to
(37:21):
go put the hair dryer on it, and we'll be
right back, Okay, so we're back. And one of the
(37:50):
things you mentioned very early on and repeatedly is that
amari is typically used as a digestive. You have a
big old meal, eat a big steak, eat three four
dozen oysters, have a lobster the size of a VW
beetle that you just ate. All sounds so good, A
bunch of tacos. You might want to do a shot,
(38:11):
but don't do a shot. You could do a shot,
but you don't really want to do a shot. You
want to sip amorrow right and really enjoy the taste
of it, but you'll you'll be aiding in digestion. True
or false? Chuck, Yeah, I mean kind of true. I
don't know there's that there's been like lab studies, but
the reasoning behind it is pretty sound. I think. I
(38:34):
don't think it's like a big reach and it's like, oh,
it's good for you, so it's fine to drink. But
it sounds like it probably does what other bitter things
do to your body. When the body you know gets
a bitter taste in its mouth, we have evolved to
think that might be poison because there are so many
bad plants in the world that are bitter and that's
a sure sign like, hey, don't eat this thing. And
(38:57):
so the logic is basically, you get a little tomorrow
and your body says, hey, this is a low level
poison kind of coming into my body, So let me
kick this digestion off and see if we can work
that through our system as quickly as possible. And then
you've got all these like herbs and botanicals and things
that also can you aid in digestion and have natural
(39:19):
anti inflammatory properties. And yeah, that's why it sort of
has that medicinal taste to it is because it is
slightly medicinal. I don't think it's some snake oil cure
all or anything, but I believe it's a legit digestive.
Plus also, um, a lot of those herbs are like
hepato protective, so it helps your liver while it's processing
(39:41):
all of that alcohol. It's I mean, if you're going
to drink a booze, it's you could do a lot
worse as far as like your systems are concerned. But
on the other hand, there is a lot of criticism
of drinking some amorrow after a meal, especially a big meal,
because alcohol actually slows digestion should by as much as fifty, right,
(40:02):
So it's actually slowing now your digestion, making you feel
fuller longer. Plus it's extra calories that you have to
now to now process. But on the other hand, alcohol
is a vasodilator, so it keeps your muscles from from tightening,
which means that your stomach can expand a little more
to make you feel a little more relieved if you're
(40:22):
super full. So the net and net is it does nothing.
I don't know, it might I think I get the
impression that appertifs do more to stimulate appetite and get
your juices going literally and a digestive, and that what
I saw was that you're much better off just spritzing
some actual bitters like cocktail bitters before a meal, and
(40:43):
that that would be that would probably be the best
way to actually do it. Yeah, Emily, it will spray
bitters in her mouth and stuff, Yeah, occasionally, and that's
that's probably the way to do it. Yeah, before the meal. Yeah,
But like I said, you're not even if you're drinking
AMR the right way, you're not drinking a ton of it.
So like in tomorrow after a meal probably isn't like
the worst thing in the world for you. No. But
(41:05):
also it's not like if you're even if you're drinking
it as a digestive, what you're really doing is just
finishing this meal in a really like luxurious calm way. Yes,
that's really the point of it. Yeah, So I promise
my Amorrow history and I will shorten the story to this,
which is I hadn't had it very much at all until,
(41:28):
like in various drinks like Negrons and things, but not
on its own, and it wasn't something I really kept
in stock until about two wish years ago. I follow
the actor Walton Goggins on Instagram and he makes his
own Looker. He makes mulhalland whiskey and gin, which are
both great. Really love the whiskey, and I'm a huge
(41:48):
fan of his. And he made a cocktail of just
half Bourbon and half Amorrow to Angus Stora. Angus Stora
makes their own like full size of Tomorrow. Same company
makes the bitters and a little like orange peel. I think,
express those oils in there and rub it around the rim,
then just drop it in. And so I bought a
(42:09):
bottle of it and I tried it, and I loved
it and then started collecting another ormorrow here or there,
and then this year at Christmas, we had an open
house on Christmas Day this year for the first time,
which have you ever had an open house type of party?
My parents have, I never have. I think it was
an Ohio thing because I got this from Emily's parents.
(42:30):
They used to do it too. And if you don't
know what it is, it's basically when you host a party,
that's not like show up at six and leave at midnight.
It's like, hey, the house will be open from noon
to six, drop by for a drink, stay if you want,
but you can just breeze through as well. And we
did that this year when we had so much fun.
(42:52):
And my friend Thomas, who is the father of one
of Ruby's friends and has become a friend of mine,
brought as a very generous gift three different Amaros for me. Wow.
And he's the kind of guy that just really loves
to He's very generous and loves to share knowledge and
turn people onto things. So he brought me a four
O F O R O which is sort of it's
(43:14):
very much sweeter, has like a coffee taste to it. Yeah,
there's definitely coffee Amari. Yeah, that's one of him. He
brought me Miletti, which I'm having now, which is sort
of your standard dark bitter. And then the one I
like the most is the Lucano. It looks sort of
like the Saint Paul girl in the Baha. You've probably
seen it before. Yeah, I've seen like old vintage posters
(43:35):
of Lucano stuff I've never Yeah, and Lucanor's super bitter. Um,
I don't think I've never had any of the Frenetts.
That's next on my list. As you're you're not going
to like them really because I'm into the bitter. Is
it's it's not bitter, it's not good bitter. It's a
whole it's a whole other class of things. It's not pleasant.
I don't understand people who like Frenette. Is it like
(43:56):
the Malort thing a little bit but mentally oh interesting.
I mean it is interesting and people do like it,
but I I mean, I'll be surprised if you're a
Fernette guy. Okay, you know, let me know for sure,
but I'll be surprised. I think it. Bronca is the
most popular. Yeah, let's talk about this. So Fernett is
(44:16):
at the end of your story because it was a
good story by some Amari. Yeah, big thanks to Toma
and also to make friends with Thomas. But um, yeah,
Fernet is it's um class called a Bronca or no,
it's called a Fernet. Yeah. Bronca is the brand of Fernett.
That's the most popular fern at Bronco. That's right. And
(44:37):
it is mental flavored, uh, super bitter. It's a really
really weird drink, but it is life blood in Argentina.
Yeah right. Yeah. In fact, one of the most popular
cocktails in Argentina. Argentina is a Fernando or Fernandidom, which
(44:57):
is I think a one to three so two ounces
of net with six ounces of coke and that's it. Wow.
And it's a great hangover cure and people are nuts
for it, and um, they're so crazy for it. Argentina
consumes seventy five percent of Furnet Bronco made worldwide. Wow,
how much seventy five percent? Three quarters of the fur
(45:19):
Net Bronco made in the entire world. It's drunk in Argentina, Wow,
because they love that drink so much. All right, If
I ever go to Argentina. I'll try it out. I
think I want to try that. I mean it sounds
like something way more than just the fur net, like
they combine together to make something really special. So I
would try that. But if I never have like a
sip of fur net bronco again, I won't be it.
(45:40):
It'll be too soon. Well, there is a Cola esque
element to some Amorrows, so I can't I can't wait
till we start getting all the emails there. Like you
guys said, you you never say a Morrow was used
to say a Mari and then you proceed to say
Amorrow's like ten times. Did I just say, yeah, we
both have that's right. What about the artichoke? When I
(46:04):
saw it pronounced China chinaar chinnar. That is the one
that you've probably noticed the bottle because it has an
artichoke on the front of it, and you might be thinking, well,
that's a weird thing to have on the front of
a liquor bottle, but that's what it's made from. It's
from Venice, created in the nineteen fifties, so it's a
I guess as far as amri ego, it's a newer
(46:25):
Amar or Amar see there I go, And that is
artichoke is a Mediterranean thistle and I have not tried this,
but I'm eager to. It's fine. It doesn't taste like
artichoke at all, but I find the label off pudding.
Oh you don't like that artichoke looking at you? No,
I really don't. Again, it doesn't taste anything like artichoke.
(46:47):
But right, you know, to make artichok the mascot of
your amorrow. Clearly they're doing fine because Chinnar is another
really popular one in the US, but I just I'm
not crazy for it because of that stupid artichoke on
the lab. Well, I think it looks cool. I think
it looks like a seventies something or other, definitely, But
it's still an artichoke and you're drinking an art of choke,
(47:08):
is what it seems like. On the lighter side, we
did mention Montenegro. But there's another one I wanted to
shout out that's very popular called no Nino. You'll see
in a lot of shelves, and if you've ever had
a paper plane, you've probably had no Nino in it. Yeah,
a paper plane is no Nino. Apper all bourbon and
lemon juice. I think equal parts Oh apper all is
(47:30):
well interesting, yeah, or red bitter but yeah apperl okay,
they double up on it. They definitely do. But but
I mean that just goes to show how different amorrow
or a mari is because you can put two amari
in a drink and it's not like just two of
the same thing. You know. How about this? I love
the description of the a liser Nova Salis. It's the
(47:54):
alpine amorrow, I think very piney. And Dave dug up
the great quote from a writer named Chuck Taggart, a
cocktail writer, that set a sip of alser Nova Salis
tastes like you're getting kicked in the crutch by a tree. Yeah.
I love descriptors like that that are weird but totally
(48:16):
nail it. Yeah, it's supposed to be so bitter it's
just crazy, which is all the more surprising that it's
a vino Amorrow, so it's vers is wine. But like
you said, it's alpine and the alpine class of amorrow is.
It definitely has like a piney tree kind of thing
going on woods And my favorite is one called zerbin
(48:38):
Stone pine Liqueur. Okay, And if you if you look
at descriptions, So go onto. If this is like floating
your boat at all, going to house alpens alpe nz
dot com and just start following links and you'll end
up in the coolest rabbit hole ever. But they are
one of them suppliers of zerbins be the only one
(49:01):
and the other descriptions of Amari. They'll say, like, enjoy
it on its own, or with it just a little
citrus twist or whatever, and then they'll go into all
the other things you can use that tomorrow for With
their benz they say basically like you should mix this
with other stuff. You don't really one and drinking on
its own because it's so piny. They literally make it
(49:21):
from pine cones. That's how piny it is. But it's
really good, it's really weird. It's its own thing. It's
like it's just its own thing. I strongly recommend just
trying it at least once. Interesting. All right, I got
nothing else is where they're any other Amari's we need
to go over That time was purposeful, wasn't it. I
(49:44):
don't think so we should give a shout out to
American Amari. That's starting to kind of make a thing.
I know Leopolds has one, and yeah, I think Saint
George has one. There's a bunch of other ones too. Yeah,
I mean I love it. There's all kinds of creating
of things happening in the United States with in terms
of distilling things. So of course they're on board with amorrow.
(50:06):
So what's your next bottle? Well, I guess I gotta
get a bottle of Montenegro. Okay, yeah I did buy that,
But then also, what's your other next bottle? Like you,
you're gonna want not just that one because you'll taste
you and be like, oh this is good. I've already
kind of passed this point. Well, I think the Piney
when you were just talking about does their bins. Yeah, okay,
and then you might actually want another one too. You
(50:29):
might because you might be frustrated with those two. If
those are your two next ones, well you tell me that.
I feel like you're leading me to a choice. I'm not.
I'm honestly not. Oh well, those are the two, and
then I should try for neat. Okay, you're about to
have like a losing streak of Amorrow. Oh no, that
will negate my winning streak. You'll come out the other
(50:49):
end though. All right, okay, well, since Chuck said all right, everybody,
that means it's time for listener, ma'am. I'm gonna call
this honey PSA, which was pretty interesting, and this is
from Taylor Hadden. They said, hey, guys, toward the end
of the episode on honey, you listed off all the
(51:11):
amazing properties. I don't know if this came up in
your research, but for people with fructose intolerance like my husband,
it also has the major property of being anti not
in the bathroom, or I guess that would be pro
not in the bathroom now they think about it. So
few people know that you can be intolerant to fructose anyway,
(51:31):
just like so many of a certain intolerance to lactose,
and honey is one of the worst substances that he
can eat, along with a gabby syrup. It's even worse
than high fructose corn syrup and fruits that are high
in fructose like apples and tomatoes. Took him such a
long time to figure out what was causing his stomach
troubles because a few people know that they can be
(51:51):
effective like this, and fun fact, because fructose pears with
dextrose to make glucose. A person who is fructose intolerant
can take dex stros to negate some of the consequences,
just like a person with lactose intolerance can take lactid. Wow,
and get this, it gets even better. There's a great email. Conveniently,
(52:13):
Smarties candy is one hundred percent dextros, so my husband
has stashes of them everywhere, and it's always a funny
moment when we're eating pizza with new people and they
wonder why he's snacking on Smarties as an appetizer. Crazy.
That is great. Thanks for the show as seriously wonderful.
You bring joy and excitement so many topics, and your
well research style gives me inspiration when teaching my ninth
(52:35):
grade English students how to find sources. And that is
a teacher Taylor Haddon and hello to your ninth grade
English class. Yeah, hello Miss Haddon's ninth grade class, right, yeah,
and your hubs Yeah, and Chuck. We should also say
a few people rode in or like you probably should
have also mentioned that you shouldn't feed honey to a
(52:56):
baby under one year of age, Yeah, which I think
we talked about in some other episode before but yes,
it bears repeating because their little immune systems are so
fragile and batulin can be found in honey, but they
can suffer botulism, which you do not want a baby
to have. Yeah, I think we added that. It was
in the episode, Hey don't feed that baby that thing? Right,
(53:19):
that was a great, great episode. We're like in what
about this thing? Oh yeah, I feed a baby. They
would do it. Well. Thanks a lot, Taylor, and if
you want to be like Taylor, you can get in
touch with us via email at stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
(53:39):
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