Abruzzo has a vast heritage of bitters, liqueurs and spirits of ancient herbalist, monastic and peasant tradition, transformed over time into expert and updated artisanal productions
Today the Giro, with the finish line in Prati di Tivo, on the north-eastern slopes of the Gran Sasso massif, enters Abruzzo, a strong land, like its people, its mountains, its flavours. Among these a vast heritage of bitters, liqueurs and distillates of ancient herbalist, monastic and peasant tradition, transformed over time into expert and updated artisanal productions.
A heritage so rich that it is impossible to find a “flagship” product, although there exists, produced by various brands, an Amaro d’Abruzzo, with a strong taste but at the same time tempered by fresh citrus nuances. One of the most long-lived productions, however, is Centerbe, invented as early as 1817 by Beniamino Toro, a liqueur maker with a shop in Tocco di Casauria. The invention was inspired by the peasant tradition of cianterba, which involved the collection of hundreds of spontaneous aromatic herbs that grew, and still grow, on the slopes of Gran Sasso, Monte Morrone and Maiella, to make domestic distillates with medicinal properties. The herbs were once harvested while still green and transported in large jute bags to places where the best parts were dried and selected, from leaves to berries. Then the maceration in alcohol took place with the addition of other spices for a period of three to six months. Finally, the pressing extracted the tincture, also called “the mother” of the centerbe, from the herbs. Diluted, slightly coloured, but unsweetened, then filtered to remove impurities, it was then left to age before being bottled. Beniamino Toro, after having made it known, through its production and marketing, first throughout the Kingdom of Naples and then in Italy, over the years has brought Centerbe to an elegant refinement of the traditional bitter: its strong alcohol content, which reaches 70°, it is also appreciated when tasting neat or in flavoring other drinks.
Centerbe has also entered the songwriting repertoirethanks to a nice text by Max Manfredi:
Centerbe, I know you’re green,
I know you don’t quench your thirst
six eyes of a forest wolf
and fir distances
to drink you I become a philosopher,
I speculate that the whole life
it’s all in this distillation of moorland herbs
drinking you makes me drunk
and I argue with the burning bush
at berti I become a poet
so I don’t say anything anymore.
It is impossible to talk about Abruzzo, and also about bitters and liqueurs, without coming across the omnipresent “imaginative” D’Annunzio. The poet Gabriel, at the height of his celebrity, baptized commercial products, naming them after a god dealing with the genesis of things. And since he undoubtedly knew how to use words, many of these inventions became famous: to remain within the sphere of liqueurs only, D’Annunzio was responsible for the naming – as they would say now – of the Pescara-based Aurum, a liqueur based on Italian brandy aged for eight years and distilled into orange alcohol: the linguistic game was to “mix” the Latin word for orange, Citrus aurantium, with the golden color of the liqueur: D’Annunzio in fact defined it “levis pondere aurum”, “gold of light weight”, referring not only to its chromaticism, but also to the lightness of its moderately alcoholic taste (40°).
Other typical Abruzzo liqueurs are Genziana, straw yellow to the eye and decidedly bitter in taste, but with strong digestive qualities; and Ratafià, which comes from the combination of black cherries and Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. Genziana and Ratafià recall somewhat the characters of two cyclists who thrilled the fans of the past on the roads of Abruzzo. The first, angular and sharp, to Vito Taccone who was a son of this land, a Marsican from Avezzano, to be precise: the “Camoscio d’Abruzzo”, despite never winning the Abruzzo stages in his eleven participations in the Giro, was literally a star performer in numerous editions of the Corsa Rosa between 1961 and 1967: eight stages, two victories in the climbers’ ranking (1961 and 1963) and endless duels with handlebar blows and words with opponents and reporters. Memorable, but for the sincere sweetness of the dialogue, the exchange of words between Taccone and Pier Paolo Pasolini in a Process at the stage of 1969:
Softer and more “accommodating”, like a Ratafià, or even better like a cherry liqueur from Marostica – which is also his hometown – Giovanni Battaglin from Vicenza who, in 1975, arrived first at the finish line in Prati di Tivo, the only other time, before today, that the Giro crossed the finish line in these parts. It was the third stage, the Ancona-Prati di Tivo, of 175, and Battaglin won with a 21” advantage over Francisco Galdos and 1’53” over another Spaniard, Miguel Maria Lasa, winning the pink jersey. However, he only kept it for one day, only to take it back ten stages later, in the Forte dei Marmi time trial, but to leave it again the next day on the shoulders of Fausto Bertoglio who, instead, carried it to the end.
