Rupes Amari

The legend of the bitter Rupes begins in the early 19th century, at the foot of the famous Rupe of Roccella Ionica, Calabria. Here, a young merchant named Vincenzo secretly distills herbs and aromatic roots to make a bitter following his mother's recipe; and also here, one night, the young man meets a group of intellectual forerunners of the Carbonari, with whom he strikes up a friendship that lasts until the capture and execution of the young men.

Frightened, Vincenzo stopped making the bitter, which one of those patriots renamed Rupes, later leaving the recipe to his son only at the point of death. The same recipe, handed down through four generations and entrusted to an established Italian distillery that has been in operation for 75 years, has come down to us after nearly two centuries, in the form of an intensely flavored and refined digestive bitter whose roots merge with great Italian history.