- Michael Gebert
- Amaro and other spirits in the CH Distillery line.
Amaro is an Italian digestif, sweet and bitter at the same time, made by macerating regional herbs and botanicals into a neutral spirit. It’s become a popular ingredient as a bittering flavor in cocktails of late. CH Distillery’s signature spirit is their vodka made from Illinois grains, so it was an easy guess that it was the base for their amaro, which just went on sale a couple of weeks ago.
Tremaine Atkinson: The amaro was actually born from one of our bartender friends, because we sell to bars and restaurants throughout the city. So one of our bartender friends said, I really wish you guys would make an amaro. So we said, why not, let’s try it.
But when I started tinkering around with the amaro recipe, one of the first flavors I knew I wanted in there was a little bit of cocoa, so we have beautiful cacao beans that are a flavor component. I did a couple of test batches just using vodka as a neutral spirit, but when I added the rum, it added this beautiful richness.
In Italy, which is where amaros come from originally, each amaro has got a regional sort of flavor to it. So I knew that I wanted to include some local ingredients. So for example, the cocoa nibs are made in Woodstock, Illinois, and the honey, which is one of the really subtle ingredients, is from a little beekeeper in Marengo, Illinois. That was just thrilling, to be able to get his beautiful honey and make it unique.
