Does Amaro Actually Help with Digestion?

Amaro is rather ritualistic. It’s the decrescendo to a climactic meal, a salve to a rich dinner and a reason to linger around the table just a little longer.

The tradition stretches across Europe, where digestivos serve as the closing act to an indulgent evening. The French bookend meals with Benedictine, absinthe and pastis. In Spain, vermouth reigns. Croatians cheer with Pelinkovac; Hungarians with Pálinka.

All of these elixirs are renowned for their digestive qualities, supposedly soothing the stomach after a feast. But are these benefits real? Or just romantic?

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A Spoonful of Amaro

“The origins of amaro—the Italian word for bitter—extend to the beginnings of written human history,” says Ted Breaux, a research chemist and botanical expert who studies Victorian-era plant medicine. He also co-founded New World Amaro with legendary bartender Dale DeGroff.

In their earliest iterations, herb-infused drinks like amaro were made to act as preservatives. Producers used wine (or vinegar) to extract aromatics, concentrate botanicals and preserve raw ingredients.

Along the way, drinkers discovered that the mix, made well, tasted pretty good. “It was a popular practice in Greece to consume aromatized, sweetened wines before a large meal,” says Breaux. “It’s from the Latin verb ‘aperire’ (to open), as in to open one’s stomach, that we get the word ‘aperitif.’”

Around 100 B.C., King Mithridates’ intense fear of being poisoned led him to search the forest for botanicals that might fortify his body and protect him from the fatal effects of poisoning. He landed upon a “universal antidote:” sweet fig, acacia juice, cardamom, anise, gentian root, poppy tears, parsley, carrot seeds, saffron, ginger, cinnamon and turpentine. He took it daily with wine.

As distillation popularized in the 12th century, botanical beverages bloomed. “High-proof ethanol’s superiority over wine as a solvent for plant essences spawned a new age of botanical medicines, perfumes, preservatives and, of course, liquors,” says Breaux.

A few hundred years later, when thieves pilfered the bodies of plague victims for money, they covered themselves in a potion of herbs thought to protect against disease. The concoction included clove, lemon, cinnamon, eucalyptus and rosemary preserved in aromatic vinegars and alcohols.

As legend goes, the thieves were caught red-handed, but then released for clemency in exchange for the recipe. Those herbs—still known by herbalists as the “four thieves”—were believed to have antiseptic, antibacterial and fungicidal benefits.

By the 19th century, these herbal drinks had diverged into two categories: aperitivo, which prepares the stomach for food, and amaro, which helps food on its way down and out.

“The core flavor of amaro is generally anchored by strongly flavored, bitter and resinous plants, all of which have been long associated with stimulating digestion,” says Breaux.

Historically, producers have selected specific botanicals based on proximity, flavor and medicinal properties. Milk thistle, for example, is a hepatoprotective, meaning it can help prevent liver damage. Aloe ferox (from South Africa) and rhubarb offer laxative properties. Galangal aids digestion, as does gentian quassia amara (a bitter wood from Central America) and Cynara (an artichoke relative).

“Ginger tends to improve digestion because the compound responsible for the taste of ginger, gingerol, interacts with the cells in the intestinal wall and reduces inflammation caused by poor digestion and inflammatory microorganisms in the gut,” explains Dr. Bryan Le, a California-based food scientist at Mendocino Food Consulting and author of 150 Food Science Questions Answered. “Gingerol also increases blood flow to the gut by stimulating the blood vessels in the surrounding area. Similarly, both turmeric and peppermint can have similar effects on the gut and its microbiome.”

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Fact Versus Folklore

But as alcohol’s health halo continues to dim, amaro enthusiasts may wonder—are these benefits real, or merely wishful thinking?

Up until the 1940s, amaros were labelled for medicinal use and sold in apothecaries. Breaux notes that sales were spurred by a widespread belief that daily doses of botanical bitters fended off sickness.

“Unlike today, when various fruits and vegetables are available year-round, winter diets were heavy in dairy and meat,” says Breaux. “They lacked fiber. This created issues that botanical bitter libations promised to resolve by stimulating the digestive system and liver, ridding the body of ‘bad blood.’”

Amaro producers promised renewed health. In fact, early Fernet-Branca ads in America stated that the product was “strongly recommended to people suffering [from] intermittent fevers and worms.”

American bitters producers continued touting medical claims until 1906, when the Pure Food and Drugs Act was passed.

As medicine modernized, doctors distanced themselves from amaro.

“There are still things that tie medicine and amaro together,” says amaro distiller Aaron Fox. “Cinchona bark that we use to bitter our aperitivo is the same bark used for anti-malarial drugs that exist.”

Le notes that there is also evidence that taste receptors line the gastrointestinal system. “For example, sweet taste receptors have been found in the gut, which respond to sweetness in consumed food and initiate the release of enzymes that break down starch,” says Le. “Similarly, bitter receptors that line the gut may have beneficial effects on the surrounding gastrointestinal tissue that improve digestion as well.”

Ramazzotti, a herbal liqueur by Pernod Ricard, stands against a light blue backdrop — Adobe Stock

Bitter Equals Better

Today, the biggest buoy to amaro’s health claims is, of course, its bitterness. “Bitterness is one of the only tastes that doesn’t have a chemical relation to other things that taste bitter,” explains Fox, the co-owner of Brooklyn’s Forthave Spirits. “For example, sweetness is caused by sugar, sourness is acid levels or pH, saltiness is the amount of salinity [and] umami is the amount of amino acids.”

Alongside a full line of botanical spirits (including Genepy and amaros), Fox and his co-founder Daniel de la Nuez make several amaros based on historical recipes, including Mithridates’ poison-proof potion and the thieves’ plague remedy.

At the most fundamental level, our body’s relationship with bitterness is based on animal instinct. “Bitterness was really developed as a warning, a back-and-forth between plants that want to be eaten and ones that maybe we shouldn’t,” says Fox.

“Early humans developed a sensitivity to bitterness, which the body treats as a potential threat since many poisonous plants taste bitter, triggering the digestive system to break them down more efficiently,” says Amanda Britton, bar director of the forthcoming Spaghett in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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Amaro is a bit like a mock poison—it wakes up the body’s digestive system, while settling and protecting the stomach. A 2021 study corroborated this, showing that bracingly bitter drinks set off signals to our taste receptors.

“Amaro is a trick we play on the body, resulting in improved digestion,” says Ronald Andrés Moore, bartender at Armour House and Pogo Cocktail Club in Birmingham, Alabama. “Are we poisoning ourselves? No. But this reaction results in feeling better. This is the stock and trade of the bartender, ensuring that people feel better when they leave than when they first sat at our bar.”

Is amaro healthy? There are no studies that answer that question definitively, but amaro is alcohol, so the answer is largely … no. But it’s almost impossible to untangle amaro from its curative and cultural allure.

“While medicine has become more scientific and the medical need for these beverages has faded, people have already integrated them into their culture and diet,” says Fox. Snake oil or not, amaro feels curative.

“Can I speak to the medical benefits? No. But after decades behind the bar, I can speak with certainty that the feelings people get from a well-chosen digestif is rejuvenation and improvement,” says Moore. “The Italians have certainly gotten this right over the centuries. How lucky for us that amari also tastes so good.”