By Patrick Garrigan

In my first/previous/only guest post I whinged on about getting berated for not liking beer or wine. Well, to begin this post-of-two-halves, a retraction. I recently drank two things that call my ramblings into question. Firstly; Prosecco. Bellinis are nice and, by extension, this substitute for champagne is not too awful. Secondly; Veuve Clicquot. I won’t get into the circumstances under which I was allowed to freely pour many bottles of a well priced vintage of this down my throat, and you can feel free to call out my working class roots if it takes your fancy, but come on! This stuff was simply yummy. As I can’t be considered to even be from the same gene pool as a connoisseur, I have no further tasting notes on either of these grapes. Sorry. 

What I am here to talk about though is amaretto. And to begin, a quote from the masters, Disaronno, themselves: 

“Disaronno is produced with only carefully selected ingredients such as the pure essence of 17 selected herbs and fruits soaked in apricot kernel oil. It is characterised by an unmistakeable amber colour due to caramelised sugar…” 

Now doesn’t that sound just lovely? And they haven’t even changed the recipe since 1525 so they must be doing something right. The name, amaretto (and I can promise you my knowledge is so full that this required zero minutes on Wikipedia until I wanted to corroborate my story, and I cross my heart and swear on my one litre bottle that I haven’t changed a word) translates literally as “a little bitter” as the almonds from which it is made taste so. Anyway, I digress. 

The reason I’m bringing it up is because Disaronno Originale is the only alcohol I’ve ever truly loved. And I’m not using loved in the “can’t live without” sense, you should have a wife for that, but in the “above all beverages,” this is the one. The king. The last taste I would wish upon my dying lips. Forget about a witty epitaph, I want an amaretto drip as I slip drunkenly out of life in old age. 

I can’t join in with people when they start liking a really good bottle of wine or find a stunning Bavarian ale, but if what happens in their mouths is anything like what happens when I swill some amaretto around then, well, crikey, it turns out there is a heaven. There’s a smell of sweetness before you drink it, and that’s the initial flavour but it goes slightly bitter on your tongue, before becoming almost too intense to hold in your mouth and so you swallow it and it is warming and suddenly sweet again and you are glad you chose to drink it with ice because you can imagine that even being slightly warm would ruin it (it does) - and right here is where the potential to lose me to not finishing this paragraph but having a drink of it lies…

 …Nice. So, next time you’re out, and you see the square bottle peeking out from behind the bar, try an amaretto with some ice. Or, if it does sound too much - it can be quite harsh if you’re not prepared - then get it with some coke. An Italian restauranteur once told me off for doing this, but you get snobs everywhere and if you like it, have it. And with coke, amaretto works just fine. (But only Coca-Cola, with Pepsi it goes all horrible and too saccharine - don’t say you weren’t warned). But whatever you do with it I promise, promise, you’ll find a way to drink it that you can enjoy. And if you don’t, I’ll have what’s left.

*Within one paragraph I already regretted not working harder than to end up with a Queen reference for a title.