Art In The Age: Root

So, maybe drinking Amaro straight isn't the most popular past-time amongst alcohol enthusiasts. I get that. But it has a following, maybe a cult following, really. Those of us who love Amaros, cherish Amaros. We like that it's old world; it's tradition, it's often mysterious in ingredients - secret recipes and the like. It invites the sort of drinker that wants to come to conclusions on their own. Amaros like Fernet Branca or Santa Maria al Monte can be offputting to those who want their liquor easy, accessibly sweet and readily identifiable. Others like Averna can be equally as off-putting to those who avoid sweetness at all costs.

That brings me to Art In The Age's "Root" liqueur. It really defies almost everything I've just mentioned, and yet manages to bring everything full circle and embrace the spirit of this particular tradition in a pretty commendable way. The company that's released it is, by it's full name, Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction. Their entire goal is to provide funding and support to artists and artisans who are trying to do something unique. From their own statement of intent:

"In this troubling epoch of industrial commodification, standardization of reproduction, and fomentation of a society of shallow spectacle, Art In The Age issues a challenge and rally cry. We fight fire with fire, subsuming the onslaught of watered down facsimiles and inaccessible displays with thought-provoking products of real cultural capital."

It's a manifesto, more than a statement of intent, really, and appropriately lofty as such. Root is one of two Amaros launched early last year by AIA, and it is essentially a liqueur brewed using the original Native American recipe for Birch Tea, an alcoholic tonic which was passed down to our colonial forefathers and eventually became the non alcoholic Root Beer, when Prohibition reared it's head.

So, here we have a problem: a decidedly non-old world Amaro made using a recipe that existed in Pennsylvania before Pennsylvania was even a state. Part of me wants to say "screw you, hipsters, get away from my beloved Amaro!" The other part of me says, "well, that sounds pretty awesome and legitimate."

The blend itself is almost exactly the same in ingredients (a total of 13 according to the label), except for sassafras, which was banned by the FDA a few years ago, and which AIA subbed with wintergreen, citrus and spearmint. It is all organic, USDA approved. Another point for Art In The Age. Part of me tingled a little bit at the idea of an all organic Amaro, I'll be honest. And yes, that part of me was my mouth. Sicko.

And now to the drinking experience itself: the color is a very dark, almost opaque brown, and the nose hits you with anise, but rounds it out nicely with birch bark. Somehow it's that perfect way of chiseling off the edges of anise that is often hard to achieve. Similar to the way root beer smells if you really shove your nose in a great microbrew batch, but without the vanilla overtones.

Unlike most traditional Amaros, it prints the ingredients on the label. No secret as to what's in this one. Part of me dislikes this, as it is somewhat leading to the drinker, defying much of what I enjoy about Amaros and bitters in general. Part of me understands it though: this is a traditional recipe; an intelligent homage to Native American culture. It would be almost disingenuous to try and claim it as some secret recipe. Maybe it even invites one to work a little harder: yes, there is cardomon, black tea, orange, nutmeg, allspice...but what do you taste?

For me, it's the salt. Somewhere in the background, hiding behind the cinnamon, cowering under a leaf of spearmint, is a dainty little dollop of burnt salt. I enjoy finding that; pushing my way past all of the other ingredients and getting to that, feels a little bit like getting the bottom of a philosophical problem.

And I guess that's what this spirit really boils down to for me: a philosophy. It's not an Amaro. It's 80 proof. It's a liqueur, but the way it's put together, and the attention to tradition (though a decidedly different tradition) is very Amaro like, and while Art In The Age has never claimed it as such, nearly every one else is. It prints the ingredients on the bottle; are they forcing you to go deeper? Or are they taking the fun out of it and dumbing it down? It's complex, and it's very upfront about being so.

I've done some digging and I still can't figure out who is distributing this particular spirit, though I've read several allusions to the fact that it is being distributed. This would probably be a big seller for us at the red room, just based on packaging and gimmick-value alone, and it might really be a way to get people to get their feet wet in the world of bitters.