Bitter is a spirit drink flavoured with medicinal plants and herbs, the botanicals and production methods used are many and very different from each other, and its minimum alcohol volume must be 15%.
In the Italian food and wine culture, amaro is a product spread indiscriminately from north to south and is considered a digestif to sip at the end of a meal.
Despite the existence of evidence from the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans, who used botanicals in wine to cure several illnesses, the ancestor of the modern bitter dates back to the 1300s.
It is said that the Catalan doctor Arnaldo da Villanova, during the first jubilee ever instituted, cured Pope Boniface VIII’s kidney stones with an herbal infusion. That mixture of herbs and roots can be considered the first medicinal ‘bitter’ in history.
The recipe was transcribed in the pharmacological research book ‘De Aquis Medicinalibus’ by Villanova himself.
The news spread quickly and soon monasteries and abbeys contributed greatly to the creation of new recipes, again for curative purposes.
A cocktail with simple elements that blend in an explosion of freshness and give life to a complex symphony: Amaro 1904, vodka and fresh-squeezed orange juice.
Use a tall tumbler filled with ice: pour 90ml freshly squeezed orange juice, 45ml Amaro 1904 and 22ml Vodka Classics Bad Spirits.
Finish the cocktail by adding seltzer or heavily carbonated water, and stir gently.
Finally, garnish with an orange slice.
