Amaro
Italy's bitter poetry: a whole family of herbal liqueurs, each a secret garden of roots, bark, flowers and spice, sipped to close a meal. Ingredients: dozens of botanicals — gentian, wormwood, orange peel, rhubarb, Alpine herbs — macerated in spirit or wine, sweetened, and rested; every house guards its recipe. Styles range from the honeyed Averna of Sicily to Milan's intensely bitter Fernet-Branca (1845). Method: 1) Pour neat, at room temperature, in a small glass after eating. 2) Or over one ice cube with an orange twist for a softer serve. The experience: bittersweet, medicinal in the best way — the meal settles, the conversation lengthens. History: monasteries and apothecaries infused digestive herbs for centuries; in the 1800s Italian firms turned the tradition into an industry, and no Italian dinner is truly finished without one.