The Architecture of Brooklyn Amaro — What it Means to Make Amari in the New World

Fernet Branca—the dark, mentholated, Italian elixir that helped popularize amaro culture in the United States—contains zero Italian-sourced ingredients, or at least none that it admits to. In classic amaro tradition, Fratelli Branca maintains tight-lipped secrecy around its recipe, but what we do know is that it is composed of rhubarb from China, gentian from France, and galangal from Sri Lanka, among many other spices and aromatics. 

The brand’s logo—an eagle soaring over the globe, talon grasping a bottle—represents the drink’s international, spice-trade-driven existence, and quest to seek out the world’s greatest botanicals. When Fratelli Branca was founded in 1845, those flavors were less accessible and explored, requiring the eagle’s wide-ranging expeditions. But since then, the amaro category has changed dramatically—and so have its producers.

By the mid-to-late 2000s, Italian amaro had begun to seep beyond the confines of bartender circles and old-timey savants. Inspired by what they were tasting, new stateside producers were also starting to tinker with increasingly interesting formulations. From Leopold Bros. Spirits in Denver, Colorado to Elixir Craft Spirits in Eugene, Oregon to Tattersall Distilling in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the first generation of domestic amaro producers operated out of a sheer passion for an American expression—even if, with both a small market and small-batch products, few saw the category as a scalable money-maker. 

Since then, the category has become crowded with a new wave of distilleries, matched by an Aperol- and Campari-drinking public on the hunt for the next bitter spirit. The U.S. might be late to the amaro train, but it’s currently seeing some of the most exciting new additions to the traditional category. The best of the bunch are the ones that mingle tradition, and that globe-scouring hunger, with regionality—and that’s particularly true in Brooklyn. 

A GATEWAY TO THE NEW WORLD

It’s said that one in seven Americans can trace their roots back to Brooklyn: a hyperbolic claim and a fact checker’s nightmare. Similarly, a number of new-world amaro brands have ties with the borough. Take brothers Louie and Matt Catizone, whose family immigrated from Italy to Brooklyn in the 1970s—an era they look to for inspiration for their amaro brand, St. Agrestis.

“Of course it happened here, it had to have happened here,” says Louie Catizone about the brand’s birthplace. “Brooklyn is so important, not just for Italian immigration, but immigration in general. Brooklyn is a gateway into and out of the U.S., and I think that’s important for making such global and of-the-world spirits.”

Looking around the St. Agrestis tasting room, the space feels old-fashioned in a studied way. Retro amaro posters, a curved bar built by Matt Catizone, and grainy photos of 1970s New York all contribute to the ambiance.

“I think that there is an element of our branding that is very much Brooklyn,” says Catizone. “Our father is from Italy and moved to the U.S. in the ’70s, and as a result, I just have such a fascination with that era. Our packaging was very much inspired by 1970s New York. We try to have the brand capture that.”

But there’s not just a family connection guiding those branding decisions—St. Agrestis also looks to the borough’s own history with the spirit category. “There had to have been an amaro being produced on a small scale at some point in Brooklyn’s history, especially when there were so many more Italians than there even are now,” Catizone says. Step into many Italian restaurants in New York, and you’re still likely to see an unmarked bottle of housemade amaro on the bar.

St. Agrestis plays with that legacy, though it was also the product of happenstance. Originally founded in 2014 by sommeliers Nicholas Finger and Fairlie McCollough, the brand became Brooklyn’s first commercially available local amaro. It wasn’t until 2017 that Louie Catizone bought the company and took over production in tandem with Steven DeAngelo of Greenhook Ginsmiths; his brother Matt also came on board.

At the time, Catizone was coming off of stints learning about distilling from DeAngelo while also working for Skurnik Wines. “I started to see St. Agrestis when I was working at Skurnik,” says Catizone. “It was behind all the cool bars in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and I was a huge fan right from the start. I began gifting it for people and just thought it was so cool.”

Soon, though, Catizone realized the brand might not be around for much longer. “Suddenly I started hearing whispers that it might be disappearing and the company might not be carrying on with production. That’s when Steven and I spoke and decided that we had the capacity to also produce it in our space here at Greenhook Gins.”

With St. Agrestis, Catizone inherited a recipe that required fine-tuning—he describes it as having “great bones” but needing more consistency. The first order of operations was dialing back the sugar content, followed by exploring individual extraction rates for each botanical used, with an understanding that each herb and botanical extracts at different proofs and durations. 

The resulting amaro has a real coziness to it. In the depths of a New York freeze, its Christmassy spices—driven by cinnamon, clove, and allspice—give it the impression of a winter warmer. Yet when poured over ice and accompanied by a slice of lemon and a splash of soda water, the complex citrus notes and spearmint finish jump out of the glass. Catizone says he’s found joy in the ability to scour the globe in the pursuit of building the perfect flavor profile, and in sourcing rare ingredients to do so.

“We’re of the belief that if the best of the best is available, we’re going to use it,” says Catizone. “I respect the regional nature of making amaro, but today we use botanicals from five continents to make our products, and we’re really proud of the quality of the things that are going into making a world-class spirit as opposed to a spirit that is just local.”

One of the key botanicals used is gentian, a flowering plant primarily found in alpine habitats. The root of the plant shows up consistently in both traditional and modern amari, thanks to its bitter flavor profile and digestive properties. When St. Agrestis’ owners were searching for their perfect patch of gentian root, the quality of sourcing options came as a shock.

“When we honed in on which gentian root we wanted to use, we had dozens of samples,” says Catizone. “Like as hyper-specific as, this one is from this side of the mountain and this one is from the other side of the mountain. We have a pretty cool network of spice brokers and farmers that we get to work with around the world.”

More than its counterparts, St. Agrestis does have one ingredient in its amaro that makes it distinctly American: sarsaparilla. The North American native plant has become closely associated with root beer, a beverage rarely found across the Atlantic and considered strange in flavor to Italian clientele. But as Catizone says, the use of sarsaparilla wasn’t necessarily an attempt to make the product more American—it was just a flavor preference.

ENOUGH PIE FOR ALL TO EAT

The ability to build flavor in amaro with such a wide range of available ingredients is both daunting and an advantage; modern spirits producers have as much possibility in front of them as perfumers. That wealth subsequently encourages, or perhaps at times even forces, would-be distillers to nail down a formula that exactingly replicates their tastes.

“Not to talk shit, because I love talking shit—but I tasted stuff that was made in the U.S., and thought I could make something better,” says Patrick Miller, founder of Faccia Brutto. “I wanted to create magnifications or alterations of my point of view on existing styles. That’s why I started this business.”

Making its debut in 2020, Faccia Brutto is the newest amaro brand in Brooklyn. As the chef at Rucola, an Italian restaurant in the Boerum Hill neighborhood, Miller began exploring the world of amari as a consumer before graduating to homemade tinkering. What started out as “making orange bitters as a shitty Christmas gift” quickly evolved into creating five-gallon batches of homemade amaro that he’d share with local bartenders.“I would just ask people to tell me what they didn’t like about it, not what they did like,” says Miller. “It was through that process that I slowly started chipping away at the recipes.”

For Miller, painstaking trial and error was the only real way to learn about the amaro-making process. Fortunately, his affection for the traditions of amaro culture fueled the bitter spirits that would soon follow.

“None of these things are easy to make or come up with the recipe for because there is so little information on what actually goes into it,” says Miller. “Nobody likes to talk about it. Yet when I was just getting started, I began emailing the guy who owns Don Ciccio [& Figli, a Washington, D.C.-based distillery], Francesco Amodeo, to get some thoughts and tips. He was like, ‘Look, there is plenty of room in the U.S. and the world for each amari company to have a big ol’ piece of the pie.’”

Miller listened to the advice from Amodeo, put his head down, experimented, and ultimately created a line of spirits that thrives on familiarity. Currently, the catalogue consists of Fernet Pianta (a digestive substitute for Fernet Branca drinkers), a ruby-red Aperitivo (a more balanced and complex alternative to Campari), and Amaro Alpino (a bittersweet alpine spirit that can hang with the likes of Braulio and Amaro Gorini). Miller also produces a caramel-colored, Southern-Italian-style amaro that can be consumed like Averna, and most recently made a small-batch Nocino with foraged black walnuts, rivaling the likes of the elixirs produced in Emilia-Romagna.  

“Balance is what sets us apart,” says Miller when comparing his range not only to regional producers but to many of the commercial behemoths. “We want everything that we make to be well-balanced, which is honestly why I started this business—I didn’t think it was out there regionally.”

Balance aside, Faccia Brutto also differentiates itself with its openness, likely driven by Miller’s frustration with the barriers he experienced along the way. With only two current employees, including himself, Miller regularly puts out open calls for help when it comes to bottling, creating community around each batch.

“I’m taking the chef approach,” he says. “If world-famous chefs can write cookbooks and you can see the recipes that Ferran Adrià made, then why do we have to be so secretive? If anyone wants to know what’s in my stuff, I’ll tell ’em. I’ll tell them every ingredient. I won’t give them amounts, but I don’t understand the secrecy. Who cares? You’re not Willy Wonka. You’re not that fucking special. It’s just booze.”  

In 2019, after landing on successful formulations, Miller found himself spending more time than he would’ve liked waiting on permits to begin commercially producing his spirits, a process that Miller refers to as “every business owner’s fucking life in New York City.” It was during this time that he began to reach out to accounts where he could soon sell his products. However, his permits didn’t come through until the end of February 2020, just as the world began to shut down. Most of his accounts evaporated, creating an uphill start for the young business. 

“There were four places that really ended up helping me out by buying enough so I could pay rent,” says Miller. “Those shops kept my lights on.”

Unlike some of the more established spirits producers, Faccia Brutto does not have the licenses needed to sell through direct-to-consumer channels, which was a pandemic revenue driver for many businesses. However, the young distillery eventually got picked up by a distributor, helping to ease its financial stresses and support a focus on production.

“We’re in eight or nine states now, which is crazy to me considering I couldn’t get out of Brooklyn a year ago,” says Miller. “I was driving around in a Subaru making deliveries with a hand truck.”

A QUEST FOR THE BEST

In the context of typically hyper-regional Italian cuisine, amaro is a bit of an anomaly. Sure, you have some producers using what they can find within Europe’s boot—but then you also have contracted eagles sent out to gather all things non-Italian. Likewise, while modern distillers look to ingredients that offer a sense of locality, others cast a wide net when making American amaro.

“We didn’t feel that we needed to look around and see just what native plants were here to make amaro with,” says Aaron Sing Fox, co-founder of Forthave Spirits. “That wouldn’t be authentic to the way we were eating, the way we were cooking, or the way we were drinking.”

While founded in Brooklyn, Forthave Spirits’ journey isn’t tied to the Italian-American experience. Instead, painter Aaron Sing Fox and writer/producer Daniel de la Nuez established their brand out of their shared love of food and natural wine, and their deep-rooted curiosity about the origins of herbal medicine. 

Botanical spirits like amari were once primarily consumed in a medicinal context, used to ease digestion and treat a variety of other ailments. It wasn’t until the early-to-mid 20th century that they gained recreational popularity. During this era, many producers changed their recipes and began using additives, including artificial colorants and sweeteners, to make their products more commercially viable. 

Taking a page from natural wine producers, Sing Fox and de la Nuez began to explore the original recipes of now-popular amaro brands, knowing that Forthave would maintain a commitment to working without any artificial colors or additives, and rather with raw, organic, and foraged ingredients. 

“If you want to make wine, there are a lot of books teaching you how to make wine. If you want to make whiskey, there are a lot of books that teach you to make whiskey,” says de la Nuez. “In 2013, there were very few resources for making amaro, which led us down the path of herbal medicine, really teaching us how to extract aromas, flavors, and components from plants and botanicals. Then it just kind of melded with history.”

Early in their research, the two started collecting vintage bottles. “The further back we’d go, we’d find one from late-1940s, post-war Italy, and it’d say for medicinal use,” says de la Nuez. “This is something that would have been sold as a tincture at an apothecary, the early day pharmacy, not at a wine store.”

In the last year and a half, that medicinal aspect has been closer at hand than either of the founders envisioned. Not only is the distillery located in Brooklyn’s old Pfizer building, but the company’s logo depicts the beaked mask commonly worn by plague doctors during the Middle Ages.

Not unlike medieval European alchemists, the duo now has its own herbal library and botany lab. Bookshelves are lined with vintage herbal liqueurs and amari from around the globe; there are banks of dried herbs and botanicals sourced from both near and far; and there’s a constant search for something in the air. 

“When it’s grown best here, we get it here for sure,” says Sing Fox. “In our amaro, one of the main important things to it is this wildflower honey and we get that from Upstate New York. In the nocino, those are all regional walnuts that we wild forage ourselves.”

Like the natural wine that the pair grew to love together, each bottle of Forthave feels alive. Their signature Marseille Amaro contains 36 plants in various forms, from tree barks, roots, seeds, and berries, to leaves and flowers, including cinchona, eucalyptus, gentian, raw honey, rhubarb root, and spearmint. There is an unfiltered wildness to the spirit, as well as a tongue-coating sweetness, which is quickly followed by a refreshing minty and almost spicy sensation. As the story goes, it was based off of a secretive recipe originating from four medieval thieves who were caught stealing from plague victims in Marseille. In exchange for clemency, they were forced to give up their recipe—a win for the masses.

The two aren’t alone in their beliefs when it comes to regionality—that it’s good to source locally where possible, but not at the expense of wide-ranging exploration. While it might be tempting to join in on the farm-to-table movement and work exclusively with botanicals from the Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains, Brooklyn’s premier amari producers have opted to blend both local and global flavors.

MORE THAN AN ATTITUDE

If regional botanicals don’t define Brooklyn amaro, there is, however, one ingredient that remains a constant among the borough’s producers.

“We use a whole lot of New York water,” says Catizone. It’s an interesting point, drawing parallels to other prolific beverage cultures, like Japan, whose high-quality whisky, sake, and beer are often credited to the soft local water. “We have really good water here in New York. It’s good for making pizza, it’s good for making bagels, it’s also really good in a Negroni, spritz, or an amaro.” 

This notion goes to show that Brooklyn amaro tends to differentiate itself from Italian amaro more by attitude than style. In 2020, St. Agrestis launched its Negroni Fountain, a bag-in-box receptacle storing 20 Negronis, while Faccia Brutto faced criticism from Italians over the grammatical inaccuracies of the brand’s name.

“It technically should be Faccia Brutta, not Brutto, but I wanted it to lead into the ‘ugly face, ugly grammar’ aspect of it, and make it a little more tongue-in-cheek,” says Miller. “It turns out that Italians are really sensitive about their grammar, and I’ve even gotten phone calls from people asking why I decided to do this. I’m just like, ‘Cause it’s my fucking business, dude. I can call it whatever I want.’”

While nonnos, nonnas, and Italian purists might not approve of bag-in-box Negronis or grammatical inaccuracies, the Italian amari cognoscenti have still been won over by some of these New World iterations.

In October 2019, Catizone nervously traveled to Germany for Bar Convent Berlin, the world’s largest trade fair for the bar and beverage industry, to share St. Agrestis with drinkers well beyond his borough. To the distiller’s surprise, many Italians had already heard of his brand, saw his bottles behind many bars in New York, and were impressed by the young business’s hustle. According to Catizone, the Italians’ initial skepticism of the Brooklyn-made spirits was replaced with intrigue and approval upon tasting. That was particularly true for the brand’s Inferno Bitter. Similar in flavor to a vintage bottle of Campari, the Inferno Bitter has a blast of floral aromas and citrus notes (though none of the syrupy consistency found in modern-day Campari), making it ideal for elevating bitter classics like the Negroni, Americano, or Bicicletta.

Catizone then got to meet a hero: Orietta Varnelli, co-owner of Distilleria Varnelli, which produces Amaro Sibilla, Amaro Dell’Erborista, and several other storied Italian spirits.

“Orietta came up to me and said, ‘I love your amaro,’” says Catizone in his best Italian accent. “We quickly became friends on that trip, and to get a little approval from Orietta just made my life. It was super cool that she knew about my amaro without me showing it to her, and from just seeing it in New York. That trip was easily the best three days of my career because it kind of validated everything.”

A BITTERSWEET ROAD AHEAD

The American amaro scene is still so young, with the microcosm existing in Brooklyn composed of just three prominent brands. Though all three have distinctive styles, they seem to be living together harmoniously. There is a sense that a rising tide lifts all boats, both in New York City and beyond.

Francesco Amodeo of Don Ciccio & Figli made this clear to Patrick Miller when he was developing Faccia Brutto, and Amodeo continues to push the boundaries of an industry that he knows well. Born into an Italian family with a multi-generational history of spirits production along Italy’s Amalfi Coast, Amodeo shook things up in 2012 when he launched his iteration of his family’s brand 5,000 miles away in Washington, D.C. With the release of his flagship aperitivo, Ambrosia, Amodeo “Americanized” his family’s 1908 recipe by adding blood oranges from Florida and cantaloupes from Virginia. Though sacrilegious to some, it was a stroke of genius to others.

The strong dogmas of the industry are part of what makes amaro such a unique category, but so does that yen for experimentation, as well as the sense of communality. “The guys that started before me in Brooklyn really paved the way for me to come along and have my own point-of-view product,” says Miller. “I didn’t start anything; I happened to join the crowd at the right time.”

American amaro producers are today faced with an educational task. For many, these products will be the first sip of an amaro that they’ve ever tried. When a new customer brings home bottles of St. Agrestis, Faccia Brutto, Forthave Spirits, or the next producer to surface, they’re opening new doors. Soon, their bar carts or liquor cabinets might clear a space for more traditional European offerings—a tale of the past and the present coexisting. 

“Orietta Varnelli said to me that she has to thank American bars, restaurants, and bartenders for reminding the Italians about something so beautiful that they had,” says Catizone. “She wasn’t just referring to us as producers of amari, but I do think that this rising population of amaro globally has really stemmed from us here in the U.S., and more specifically Brooklyn, which is definitely a point of pride for me.”

Words by David Neimanis
Illustrations by Colette Holston