aperitif and digestive are the English equivalents for the French apéritif and digestif and the Italian aperitivo and digestivo, terms designating a spirit or other drink taken before a meal to stimulate the appetite or after one to aid digestion. On the one hand, these can be just about anything—a cold glass of crisp lager beer, a balloon glass of rich old Armagnac, a Dry Martini, a Stinger. The terms are also, however, applied to two dedicated, if overlapping and closely related, categories of spirit- or wine-based alcoholic tonics that are infused with bitter botanicals (in many cultures, bitter substances are believed to facilitate digestion, not without some scientific basis). In general, aperitifs are less sweet than digestives and lower in proof (they range from about 10 percent to 25 percent ABV, while digestives range from 25 percent to 45 percent, and sometimes as high as 70 percent), although some are quite sweet and some digestives are quite low in proof. The use and production of these drinks, it must be noted, are by no means confined to France and Italy: although those countries might be their most ardent advocates, such drinks also have, or have had, a place in the drinking cultures of many other countries, notably including Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the Czech Republic, China, Argentina, and even England. In the European tradition, these tonics stem from the
Aquae compositae were highly complex medicines, and expensive. The six detailed by Michele Savonarola (ca. 1385–ca. 1466) in the fascinating study he made in the 1440s of distilling in northern Italy are a good example. These used an average of 21.5 botanicals, as well as precious stones, silver, and gold. Nonetheless, the formulae for such remedies were circulated widely, particularly after the introduction of printing. By the seventeenth century, they were being collected in “pharmacopoeias”: apothecary’s manuals pulling together all of the various medicinal formulae circulating in a town or country. At the same time, the sheer number of botanicals used began to diminish somewhat as formulae became more focused. Nonetheless, in 1690, when the young London apothecary Richard Stoughton (1665–1716) wished to make a bitter stomachic elixir—combining aperitif and digestive properties—he apparently used twenty-two ingredients (alas, he kept his precise formula a secret). His spirit-based “bitters,” as people came to call them, were (or so he claimed) “of a delicate pleasant bitterish taste” and sold well, not just in London but throughout Britain, in Britain’s North American and Caribbean colonies, and in several other European countries. In 1712, he obtained a royal patent to protect his formula and its packaging from the many imitators who had arisen, thus making his elixir the first branded spirit. See Stoughton’s Bitters.
By the 1730s, however, formulae for Stoughton’s Elixir were appearing in pharmacopoeias and recipe collections. These had radically reduced ingredient counts—the first one to circulate widely used but four ingredients: brandy, bitter orange peel, gentian root, and cochineal for color. Such formulae, which relied more on ingredients of proven efficacy and less on ones chosen according to medieval medico-alchemical theory, were much easier and cheaper to prepare than the older ones, and generally tasted better as well. Even if their medical value was small, as was still too common, at least taking a dram of one just in case, as it were, could be a pleasant thing to do. Stoughton-style bitters, with gentian and/or one or two other bittering agents (wormwood, quinine-rich cinchona bark, Virginia snakeroot, etc.), plus a flavoring agent or two, such as rhubarb or hyssop, and some citrus peel to freshen up the taste, became extremely common. These “aromatic bitters” were still very concentrated, as they were meant to be taken mixed with water, wine, tea, spirits, or some other diluting, softening medium. See bitters. Some apothecaries, however, took to adding water (or more spirit) and a big splash of sugar syrup to balance out the bitterness and bottling them as potable bitters, particularly once books such as the influential Il confetturiere Piemontese (The Piedmontese confectioner) published in Turin in 1790, spread the idea of compound spirits as epicurean drinks rather than strictly medicinal ones. (Of course, some makers kept to the older tradition and used many more botanicals, but they were increasingly in the minority.)
It is at the end of the 1700s that we see the rise of absinthe, essentially a strong wormwood bitter, and vermouth, a light wine-bitter. Vermouth was essentially a pre-bottled version of Wine and Bitters, a preparation already recommended by Richard Stoughton in 1690 and a standard pre-dinner aperitif in Britain and its American colonies, at least. In 1783, when the British were negotiating the surrender of New York City to George Washington and his army, at the end of the first day of talks (as William Smith, a member of the British delegation recorded in his diary) “Washington pulled out his watch, and observing that it was near Dinner Time, offered Wine and Bitters.” But the British already appeared to have a preference for mixing their drinks to order, while the French and the Italians and the Spanish preferred to have them premixed and bottled (indeed, Martini Cocktails, the first cocktail booklet published by the Martini & Rossi company, contains recipes only for bottled cocktails). See
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, aperitif and digestive drinks were, with few exceptions, the products of enterprises like the typical Italian distillatore-liquorista, who compounded liquors for sale both by the drink over the bar and in bulk for the local market. But with the opportunities for increased distribution and the move toward branding and trademarking that came in the 1860s and 1870s, one after another of these enterprises took their versions of the traditional formulae and essentially privatized them, enclosing the commons as it were. In France, this trend resulted in aperitifs such as the quinine-spiked Dubonnet (created in 1846), Lillet (1872), Byrrh (1866), and Suze (registered in 1898) and digestifs such as Amer Picon (created in 1840; trademarked in 1872). See Picon and Suze. In Italy, seemingly every town in the peninsula ended up with its own aperitivo and bitter digestive amaro. The path followed by Gaspare Campari can be taken as typical: taking a standard formula for a “Stoughton di Holanda,” or “Dutch Stoughton bitters,” he adapted it in stages, making it lighter and more palatable—and selling more of it—each time. Eventually, it just became “Bitter Campari,” the iconic aperitif. Averna and Fernet Branca underwent similar evolutions. See Averna; Campari; and Fernet.
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw branded aperitifs and digestives thrive and proliferate beyond France and Italy. Some notable examples include Germany’s Jägermeister, now the most popular spirit in that country; Hesperidina Bagley, Argentina’s bitter-orange-flavored aperitif, invented in Buenos Aires in 1864 (Melvin Sewell Bagley, the American who invented it, talked the Argentine government into passing a trademark law to protect it); and Chile’s Amargo Araucano (invented in 1920 by Fritz Hausser, a German, based on local botanicals).
Today the medicinal value of these drinks pales compared to the products of the modern pharmaceutical industry, and they are enjoyed mostly for their gustatory value—although with a few of the digestives there is some dispute whether they have that at all (Fernet, for example, is notoriously polarizing). Campari and some of the other aperitifs were adopted as cocktail ingredients in the early twentieth century. See Aperol Spritz; Dubonnet Cocktail; Negroni; and Vesper. The attempt made then to treat digestives the same way didn’t take root until the early twenty-first century: now, they are a mainstay of modern mixology.
The Complete Family-Piece and Country Gentleman and Farmer’s Best Guide, 2nd ed. London: 1737.
Jones, Andrew. The Aperitif Companion. London: Quintet, 1998.
Martini Cocktails. Torino: Martini & Rossi, ca. 1900.
Parsons, Brad Thomas. Amaro. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed, 2016.
Piccinino, Fulvio. Amari e bitter. Torino: Graphot, 2019.
Savonarola, Michele. Excellentisimi medici Michaelis Savonarolae libellus singularis de arte conficiendi aquam vitae. Grossenhain: 1532.
By: David Wondrich