Strega Limoncello (700 ml)

When the Alberti family established their distillery beside the Benevento railway station in 1860, they encoded the formula for Strega into a locked herb cupboard — a legal trade secret passed parent to child, known to exactly two living people at any given time. That recipe has never changed. The distillery occupies the same 30,000 m² building in Benevento, at the tip of the Apennine Mountains roughly 50 km northeast of Naples — a position that gives direct access to wild mint harvested from the banks of the River Sabato and juniper from the Apennine slopes, two botanicals that define the liqueur's assertively menthol-resinous character. Approximately 70 herbs and spices — sourced from Europe, Central America, and the Orient — are macerated in grain alcohol, then distilled in traditional swan-neck alembic pot stills. Saffron (sourced from Abruzzo) and sugar syrup are blended in to deliver the signature gold colour, before the liquid is matured in large oak or ash vats and bottled at 40% ABV with no artificial colours or flavours. Where peers such as Galliano lean vanilla-sweet, Strega is more piney and menthol-driven, with a lightly viscous body and a long, resinous finish — a profile no other Italian herbal liqueur replicates. Drink neat over ice or in a Strega Sour; the botanical intensity holds across years of consistent production.