What Is Amaretto? Disaronno, Price and What to Drink It With
Amaretto is the sweet almond-flavoured Italian liqueur that turns up in every bar and most kitchens, and Disaronno is the bottle almost everybody means when they say it. Here is what it actually is, what ours costs, and what to do with it once it is open.
What amaretto is
Amaretto is a sweet Italian liqueur built around an almond flavour. The name comes from amaro, Italian for bitter, with the diminutive on the end - so "a little bitter". That is the almond note doing the work: marzipan sweetness with a faintly bitter almond edge behind it, which is what stops it tasting like syrup.
It sits in the same part of the shelf as the other after-dinner liqueurs. If you want the neighbouring category, what is coffee liqueur covers the coffee side of the same idea, and the full liqueur shelf is here.
The thing most people get wrong: there may be no almonds in it
Disaronno is not made from almonds. It is built on apricot kernel oil, together with seventeen herbs and fruits. Apricot kernels carry the same benzaldehyde note that gives almonds their smell, so the flavour arrives without the nut ever being involved.
That is a genuinely useful fact and not just trivia - it comes straight off the bottle's own story, and it is the answer when somebody at your table asks about nuts.
Disaronno, and what it costs
Disaronno Original Amaretto is $39.99 for the 750ml. It has been made by the Reina family at ILLVA Saronno, in Saronno just north of Milan, and the house dates its recipe to 1525. The square bottle with the oversized cap is one of the most recognisable objects in any liquor cabinet.
In the glass: sweet almond and marzipan first, then vanilla, then a kiss of orange peel. Silky and round across the palate, with almond-cookie sweetness running through caramel and warm spice. The finish is long and warming and echoes almond and vanilla well after you have swallowed.
We keep it on the shelf and we ship it anywhere in the country. The rest of what we carry from the house is in the Disaronno collection.
What to drink it with
Neat, after a long meal. This is what it is best at. A small glass, room temperature, after a Friday night dinner that ran late. No ice needed.
Over rocks with a twist. Ice opens it up and cuts the sweetness; a strip of orange peel picks up the orange note that is already in there.
The Godfather. Amaretto and whiskey, roughly one part to two, over a big cube. Bourbon makes it rounder and sweeter, scotch makes it drier and smokier - both are correct and people argue about it. If you are choosing a bottle for it, bourbon vs whiskey lays out the difference, and how much is a bottle of whiskey covers what you should expect to pay.
Amaretto sour. Amaretto, lemon juice, a little sugar, shaken hard. It is a much better drink than its reputation suggests, and it is the one to make for people who say they do not like liqueurs.
Over ice cream. A spoonful over vanilla. Almost nothing else in the cabinet does this as well.
The short answer
Amaretto is sweet almond-flavoured Italian liqueur, usually made from apricot kernels rather than almonds. Disaronno is the benchmark bottle, ours is $39.99 for the 750ml, and it is at its best poured neat after dinner or stirred into a Godfather.
