Nonino Amaro Quintessentia (700 ml)

When Giannola Nonino and her daughters set out to build an amaro, they refused to use neutral spirit — the standard industry shortcut. Instead, Amaro Nonino Quintessentia® uses ÙE®, the house's own whole-grape distillate (skins, pulp, and juice fermented together in vacuum-sealed stainless steel, then batch-distilled in handcrafted copper steam discontinuous stills at Percoto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia) as its base — a foundation no other major Italian amaro employs. That base is then macerated with a proprietary blend of 12 botanicals: gentian, saffron, licorice, rhubarb, sweet and bitter orange, tamarind, quassia bark, cinchona bark, thyme, wormwood, and galenga. The result undergoes double aging: the ÙE® distillate matures a minimum of 12 months in small oak casks before the finished amaro rests a further 24 months in barriques — Nevers, Limousin, ex-Sherry, and ex-Sauternes wood among the options across Nonino's seven aging warehouses. Bottled at 35% ABV with zero colorants added. The special feature here is structural: the ÙE® base carries genuine Friulian grape character — fruit-derived esters and terroir texture — that neutral-spirit amari simply cannot replicate, giving the bitterness of gentian and cinchona a fruited, almost vinous lift. Non-vintage by nature; the 36+ months of cumulative aging mean each batch arrives at the bottle with notable integration between botanical sharpness and oak-derived softness.