Earlier this week, I was thinking this email would be relatively straightforward. I knew I wanted to talk about bitter drinks. So I figured I’d break down the basics of Amari, toss out a recipe, and just like that, Ideas Over Drinks #17 would be complete.
Then some guy decided to go on a shooting spree at massage parlors in Atlanta, murdering 8 people, 6 of whom were Asian. This ugliness is on my mind now, it affects my family and friends, and so that’s what I’ll start off writing about. If you were hoping for a light read here this morning, I regret to say that this won’t be it.
But before I forget, if you’re new here, welcome. You’ll find out pretty quickly that I tend to hit a lot of different tones in my writing. As a result, you may, like me, want a drink when you’re finished with it.
First of all, Delaina Ashley Yaun, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Paul Andre Michels, and the other victims yet to be named: I wish you were still here. My heart goes out to the families of these victims, and to everyone in the Asian American community who is hurting right now. I cannot imagine the scope of your loss, your anger, your disappointment.
Second of all, I am disgusted. At the time of my writing, the Atlanta Police Department has neglected to charge the murderer, Robert Aaron Long, who is white, with a hate crime. He told police that he wasn’t targeting people on the basis of race. Claiming he had a “sexual addiction,” he said he killed women at multiple massage parlors because he wanted to rid himself of temptation. Congresswoman Marilyn Strickland, a Korean American Democrat from Washington, was quick to denounce this. “Racially motivated violence should be called out for exactly what it is—and we must stop making excuses or rebranding it as economic anxiety or sexual addiction,” said Strickland, speaking from the House floor on Wednesday.
The Chinese American author Celeste Ng had this to say on Twitter: “General rule: people don’t get to decide whether they are racist; other people decide this based on their actions.” Yes. 100%. Racism is built on self-interest. It’s a social construct that was developed centuries ago by White people so that they could justify enslaving people with darker skin. And while slavery was abolished in the US over 150 years ago, its residue is still with us in a myriad of ways, as is White Supremacy.
You know what a person who has just done (or benefitted from) something racist says?
I’m not racist.
The killer in this case was both racist and sexist. He knows that if he gets charged with a hate crime, he will face a longer prison sentence, and possibly even the death penalty. When this man says he wasn’t motivated by race, he is trying to save his life.
Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge that a lot of white people aren’t comfortable talking about White Supremacy. I myself have lost old friends talking about it. I often feel like I still have no clue how to talk to my White family members about it. It’s not easy. The moment you drop White Supremacy into the mix, a lot of white people get defensive as all hell. They/we often start picturing only white hoods and burning crosses and can’t see that racism is now more insidious than that. And yes, I’m speaking as a white man here; I too have been defensive when confronted with my own potential for racism. But if we can see, as writers like Ibrahm X. Kendi and Zadie Smith have offered, that racism is like a virus, perhaps we can also see that White Supremacy is the air that keeps that virus alive. It has to be dismantled.
Books alone won’t change the system. Fair policies will change the system. I do, however, believe in books as a place to start. A few in this context…
For anyone seeking a fuller understanding of the Asian American experience—keeping in mind that Asian Americans are not a monolith—I highly recommend reading Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings.
And if you’re looking for a place to start educating yourself on how White Supremacy works, check out Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad and I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown. (Note: in the initial version of this email, I suggested reading White Fragility by the White author Robin D’Angelo; it’s one of the books that got me started in understanding Whiteness, and yet I’m grateful to Jen Fry for suggesting the above books written by BIPOC authors, who are best suited for providing stories and analysis on the full impact of living in a White-centered world. Related: Jen is a social justice educator and is hosting a donation-based webinar about Racial Violence Against Asian American Communities this Sunday 3/21 at 7 pm EST. Please consider attending!)
Okay, turning the sharp corner now. Let’s talk Amari.
Here’s the quick 101. Amaro means bitter in Italian. In the context of alcohol, Amari (the plural of Amaro) are bitter liqueurs made by infusing neutral spirits with a blend of herbs and aromatics. Their bitterness is always balanced out by some degree of sweetness. Some Amari bring a lot of citrus notes to the party. Many of them are vegetal and funky. While there are over 50 different brands in Italy, the most popular ones in the States are Campari, Fernet-Branca, and Aperol.
A good Amaro can be sipped neat, or over a big cube of ice. Or you can splash it with soda water and add a twist of orange or lemon. Bolder flavors, such as the massive menthol and gentian root of an Amaro like Fernet, would likely be put into the digestif category, to be imbibed after dinner to aid in digestion. Less bitter, sweeter Amari like Aperol or Cardamaro might find themselves served as apertifs, before a meal, to warm up the palette without crushing it entirely. (Just as you wouldn’t want to drink a big bitter IPA before eating a light whitefish, you wouldn’t want to toss back an extremely bitter Amaro before eating either; the curl on your tongue would likely linger throughout the entire meal.)
In the past decade or so, as craft cocktails have become more popular, Amari have come to be used primarily as modifiers in drinks. A modifier does exactly what it sounds like: it modifies a drink, and if you know how to balance flavors, it also makes that drink more interesting. One of the main ways you can do this is by looking at the sweet components of a given drink, and asking yourself if you can drop those down or take them out, then sub in some Amaro to crank up the bitterness/herbaceous-ness/funk/etc.
I’ll definitely be talking more about these types of flavor substitutions down the road. For now though, I can’t mention strong, bitter drinks without talking about the Negroni and the Boulevardier.
The Negroni is a wonderfully bitter drink where all the botanicals in gin throw down with the grapefruit-on-crack explosion that is Campari. It apparently got its name from an Italian count who told a bartender to swap out the soda water in his Americano for gin. A lot of bartenders will tell you to make it as a 1:1:1 oz. ratio of gin to sweet vermouth to Campari, but I think the Campari takes over in that proportion. I prefer to pump up the gin and dial back the other two ingredients so that it’s a 1½ : ¾ : ¾ oz. ratio of gin to sweet vermouth to Campari.
A Boulevardier, then, is just a Negroni made with bourbon instead of gin. I like a good Negroni. I love a good Boulevardier. So here’s a little riff on the latter:
Boulevardier Remix # 4
Ingredients
1 ½ oz. bourbon
¾ oz. sweet vermouth
½ oz. Meletti Amaro
¼ oz. Campari
Orange twist
Directions
1. Add all liquid ingredients to a mixing glass.
2. Fill 2/3 with ice and stir.
3. Strain into a chilled coupe.
4. Garnish with the orange twist and enjoy.
Notes
Cocchi di Torino is my favorite affordable vermouth. Carpano Antica is a well-known higher-end vermouth, but you don’t need to put that into a Negroni or a Boulevardier, because the Campari will overpower all the beautiful layers of flavor in it. Save the Carpano for a Manhattan or for drinking on its own.
While Averna is one of my favorite Amari, if you’re looking for something that’s nearly as good and yet more affordable, I recommend Meletti. Less caramel-heavy and flat Coke-y than Averna, Meletti, at $22 a bottle (vs. $35 for the Averna), has more of a hit of orange and plum to it. If you can find it, give it a whirl.
And if, after all of this, the truth is that you hate bitter flavors in your drinks, well, at least I tried.
Thank you all for reading. If this post felt like a roller coaster to you, well, it’s been quite a week. One last reminder that 20% of the proceeds from subscriptions for this month are going to Stop AAPI Hate. They’re working harder than ever to track and respond to incidents of hate, violence, harassment, discrimination, shunning, and child bullying against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States. There’s no doubt they could use the financial support.
If you’re a subscriber, I’ll catch you next week, for some long-overdue swizzle making. Otherwise, I’ll catch you at the beginning of next month.
Sincerely,
J.