From Medicine Cabinet to Cocktail Bar: The History of Amaro

Few drinks capture Italy’s relationship with food, place and tradition quite like amaro. Its name simply means “bitter” in Italian, but that description barely begins to explain the category. An amaro can be citrusy and gently sweet, dark and medicinal, smoky and earthy, or fiercely bitter enough to make a first-time drinker reconsider every decision that led them to the glass.

What connects these different styles is their use of botanicals. Herbs, roots, bark, flowers, fruit, spices and citrus peels are infused or macerated in alcohol, usually before the liquid is sweetened and sometimes aged. Traditionally served after a meal as a digestivo, amaro now occupies a much broader role, appearing in aperitifs, cocktails and modern drinks programmes around the world.

Before Amaro, There Was Herbal Medicine

Amaro did not begin as a recreational drink. Its distant ancestors were medicinal preparations.

For centuries, wine and alcohol were used to extract and preserve compounds from plants. Ancient Greek and Roman physicians prepared herbal wines, while later medical scholars experimented with roots, flowers, spices and bitter plants believed to stimulate appetite, settle the stomach or treat illness.

The development of distillation made these preparations more concentrated and easier to preserve. By the 12th century, the medical school of Salerno in southern Italy had become one of Europe’s most important centres of medical knowledge. Scholars there documented the use of distilled alcohol infused with plants, drawing on knowledge from the Mediterranean, the Byzantine world and Arabic medicine.

Monks produced tinctures, tonics and elixirs from ingredients such as gentian, wormwood, mint, chamomile, juniper and angelica.

Alcohol was useful not only because it extracted flavour and plant compounds, but because it preserved seasonal herbs long after they had been harvested. These early preparations were administered for poor digestion, loss of appetite, fever and numerous other complaints. Whether they actually cured such conditions is another matter. Medieval medicine was not burdened by clinical trials, regulatory approval or, occasionally, reality.

The Pope and the “First Amaro”

One of the most frequently repeated stories in the history of amaro concerns Pope Boniface VIII and the Catalan physician Arnau de Vilanova, also known as Arnaldo da Villanova.

According to popular drinks history, the pope suffered from severe kidney stones or renal colic around the time of the first Papal Jubilee in 1300. Arnau supposedly treated him with a bitter elixir made from alcohol, herbs and roots. The pope recovered, and the reputation of medicinal bitters spread across Italy. Some accounts describe this preparation as an early ancestor of amaro.

The documented history is slightly less convenient. Arnau really was a prominent physician who treated popes and European royalty, and Boniface VIII did suffer from renal problems. Medical historians, however, point primarily to a treatment involving thermal water transported from Fiuggi, along with an astrological gold seal worn near the affected area. Vatican records reportedly contain numerous payments for deliveries of the water.

It is possible that Arnau also used herbal or wine-based preparations, as these were normal elements of medieval medicine. But the claim that he invented amaro or cured the pope specifically with an alcoholic herbal liqueur should be treated as legend rather than established fact.

Still, the story matters. A remedy associated with a pope was the medieval equivalent of a celebrity endorsement, only with more robes and fewer social-media disclosures. It helped reinforce the idea that bitter herbal preparations possessed unusual healing powers.

From Monastery Elixir to Dining-Room Drink

During the Renaissance, herbal liqueurs gradually moved beyond monasteries and pharmacies. Trade brought a greater range of spices into European cities, while sugar became more widely available. Producers could now soften the aggressive bitterness of medicinal plants and create something people might willingly drink without first being diagnosed with a serious complaint.

By this period, herbal liqueurs were increasingly consumed for pleasure as well as health. Wealthy households served them after large meals, and Catherine de’ Medici is said to have offered herbal digestifs at the French royal court during the 16th century. The medicine was becoming a social ritual.

This transition established the basic identity of amaro. It remained connected to digestion and wellbeing, but its flavour became equally important. Local recipes developed around available plants: alpine herbs in the north, citrus and Mediterranean botanicals in the south, and combinations of roots, bark and spices in between.

As a result, amaro was never one single recipe. It became a family of regional drinks, each reflecting the landscape and traditions surrounding its production.

The Commercial Age of Amaro

The modern amaro industry emerged during the 19th century, when pharmacists, herbalists, pastry makers and entrepreneurs began turning local formulas into recognisable brands.

These products arrived at precisely the right moment. Italy was becoming more industrialised, cities were growing and bottled drinks could travel further than the pharmacy or monastery where they had originated. Producers promoted their amari as digestifs, tonics and respectable household remedies.

Fernet-Branca offers one of the clearest examples. Bernardino Branca began producing it in Milan in 1845 as a preparation made from herbs, roots and spices. The company originally promoted it for illnesses including cholera and malaria, claims that sound alarming today but were perfectly ordinary in 19th-century drinks advertising. Fernet-Branca soon expanded beyond Italy and developed a particularly strong following in Argentina through Italian migration.

Other famous names followed similar paths. Averna developed from a herbal recipe associated with the Benedictine Abbey of Santo Spirito in Sicily and entered commercial production in 1868. Braulio, created by pharmacist and botanist Francesco Peloni in the Alpine town of Bormio, began production in 1875. Amaro Montenegro appeared in Bologna in 1885, while Amaro Lucano was created in Basilicata in 1894.

Each represented its territory differently. Alpine amari tended to favour dry, resinous and intensely herbal flavours. Southern examples were often richer, sweeter and more citrus-driven. Fernet became a particularly bitter and aromatic subcategory, while other styles centred on ingredients such as artichoke, as in Cynar, or Chinese rhubarb, as in rabarbaro amari.

The Decline of the Medicine Claim

During the 20th century, improving medical regulation made it increasingly difficult for alcoholic drinks to present themselves as treatments for disease. Amaro’s identity shifted decisively from medicine to hospitality.

The language of digestion survived. Italians continued to drink amaro after lunch or dinner, sometimes after coffee as an ammazzacaffè, literally a “coffee killer”. Yet the supposed health benefits became part of tradition rather than a serious medical claim.

In many households, the bottle of amaro remained a fixture of the dining room. It was poured for guests, brought out after Sunday lunch and offered as an answer to the consequences of eating far more food than any sensible person required.

Amaro in the Modern Bar

Today, amaro is experiencing a life far beyond the traditional after-dinner pour.

Bartenders have embraced it because it can add bitterness, sweetness, spice and herbal complexity at the same time. Classic brands snow appear in drinks ranging from simple spritzes to modern cocktails such as the Paper Plane. Specialist bars offer amaro flights, allowing customers to compare lighter citrus-led expressions with smoky rabarbaro, alpine styles and intensely bitter fernets.

Modern producers are also taking the idea outside Italy. American distillers have created regional amari using ingredients such as local cherries, hazelnuts, honey, sage and native plants. California producers have developed expressions intended to represent forests, orchards and coastal landscapes, treating amaro as a liquid expression of place rather than an imitation of an Italian brand.

There is also growing interest in lighter, lower-alcohol and alcohol-free interpretations. Producers are using bitterness, acidity, herbs and spices to create sophisticated non-alcoholic aperitifs and digestifs without attempting to copy conventional spirits exactly.

Despite all this experimentation, the central idea remains remarkably familiar. Modern amaro still depends on the tension between pleasure and discomfort: sweetness followed by bitterness, citrus followed by roots, familiar flavours followed by something harder to identify.

It has travelled from the monastery garden to the pharmacy shelf, from the pope’s sickbed, at least according to legend, to the Italian dining table and the modern cocktail bar.

Amaro is no longer medicine. But it still performs a kind of cure: it slows down the end of a meal, encourages conversation and gives people one final reason not to leave the table.