Contratto Bitter

Proprietary red bitter aperitif liqueur. Known flavoring botanicals include aloe, hibiscus, wormwood and juniper. Red bitter aperitif liqueur is a genre of strongly citrus-forward bittersweet Northern Italian liqueur, aromatized and embittered with numerous Alpine botanicals, filtered, and in most cases, tinted red with carmine or substitute red dye. Rhubarb is a popular botanical ingredient, and the core bittering agent can be gentian and/or wormwood. Chinchona also appears in some examples. The genre is dominated by Campari and, today, Aperol as well, but many other examples exist. The general concept seems to have emerged in the mid-19th Century, but with no widespread commercial availability until the 1910s or 1920s. The genre appears to have been inspired by recipes for ersatz Stoughton’s Bitters, the proprietary 17th Century stomach bitters, reinterpreted through 19th Century Italian cafe culture. Recently, a de facto convention has emerged where lower ABV products (~18%) in this genre are referred to as “aperitivo” and higher ABV products (~24.0%) are referred to as “bitter”. This convention is not held to consistently, but explains some product naming.