Strega Limoncello Di Sorrento (700 ml)

When the Alberti family sealed their botanical recipe in a coded herb cupboard in Benevento in 1860, they created a legal instrument as unusual as the liqueur itself — a trade secret passed parent to child, known to only two living people at any given time. That formula has never been altered. The distillery occupies the same 30,000 m² building adjacent to Benevento's railway station, at the tip of the Apennines roughly 50 km northeast of Naples — a position that gives direct access to the two botanicals most responsible for Strega's character: wild mint harvested from the banks of the River Sabato and juniper from the Italian Apennine slopes. Approximately 70 herbs and spices — including Ceylon cinnamon, Florentine orris root, gentian, wormwood, and saffron sourced from Abruzzo — are macerated in grain alcohol, then distilled in traditional swan-neck alembic pot stills. Saffron and sugar syrup are introduced at blending to fix the signature gold colour, before the spirit matures in oak or ash vats for a minimum of several months. Where peers lean vanilla-sweet, Strega is assertively menthol-resinous — a structural outlier in the Italian amaro category. Drink neat over ice or in a Strega Sour; the minty-piney backbone holds its line against citrus and egg white.