GUIDES · METHODOLOGY · CITATION TARGET
How the Atlas defines amaro
VERSION 1 · UPDATED 2026-07-04
“Amaro” has no protected legal definition. EU spirits law recognises liqueurs and bitter-tasting spirit drinks; amaro itself is a cultural term, and every database that maps it makes editorial choices. The Atlas makes its choices in public. This page is the methodology — cite it, argue with it, correct it.
The system has four moving parts: an inclusion gate, concentric rings, a self-identification rule, and subcategories with facets. No binary in/out on a contested word.
1 · THE INCLUSION GATE — DOES IT GET A PROFILE AT ALL?
Permanently outside the gate: dashing/cocktail bitters (education pages only), all vermouth and aromatised wines, absinthe, non-bitter herbal liqueurs, and nocino.
Full disclosure on gate test 04: the Atlas’s creator, Asterley Bros, makes vermouth. The spirit-based line stands on production-family merits — aromatised wine is genuinely a different craft — and it also keeps our own vermouths off our own map, which is exactly where a conflict of interest should sit. We would rather state that plainly than have you wonder.
2 · THE RINGS — CORE / FAMILY / ADJACENT
Rings are editorial metadata, not visibility: the globe shows everything, filterable.
- · CORE — self-identified amaro, the Italian digestivo tradition, and modern world amaro: British amaro, US craft amaro. Fernet lives here as a Core subfamily.
- · FAMILY — bitter herbal liqueurs of other traditions that pass the gate but do not call themselves amaro: Kräuterlikör, Hungarian keserűlikőr, Scandinavian bäsk, French gentiane. The Family ring is what makes a global map honest — pins in Germany, Hungary, Chicago — without stretching the word amaro.
- · ADJACENT — passes the spirit of the family but fails a gate test or sits at the edge: wine-based digestivi like Barolo Chinato, sweet herbals where bitterness is not defining. Education-page presence; full profiles case-by-case.
3 · THE SELF-IDENTIFICATION RULE
If a producer calls their product amaro, it is Core — regardless of geography. If they call it something else, it is Family, and their tradition’s own name comes first: a Kräuterlikör page reads “Kräuterlikör — part of the global amaro family”, never “this is an amaro”. Amaro is the lens, not a label we impose. Every product record carries the producer’s own words in a self-identified-style field, so the data stays honest even where our taxonomy differs.
4 · EIGHT CORE SUBCATEGORIES
Locked v1 vocabulary. One primary subcategory per product; open style tags handle overlap. Subcategories apply within Core only.
- · Citrus-led (agrumi) and cinchona-led (china) expressions are recorded as facets of Classico, not subcategories — Vecchio Amaro del Capo is a Classico with an agrumi tag.
- · Botanicals are facets, not subcategories: gentian-led or rhubarb-heavy cross-cuts everything, including the Family ring.
- · Intensity is an attribute (bitterness/sweetness/body fields), and geography is a facet — neither makes a subcategory.
- · “Bitter” here means the aperitivo bitter tradition — not dashing cocktail bitters, which stay outside the gate entirely.
5 · CONFIDENCE — HOW WE SAY WHAT WE DON'T KNOW
Every fact carries a source; every source carries a grade: A producer-official or regulatory, B reputable published, C secondary, D community. Botanical bills are mostly secret, so ingredient edges carry their own labels: confirmed (the producer lists it publicly), probable (credibly reported), rumoured (folklore we refuse to launder into fact). Where we don’t know, the record says so.
6 · TRADITIONS — NAMED IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE
The traditions axis records cultural lineage, and each tradition keeps its own name: Amaro italiano · British amaro · World amaro · Amargo · Kräuterlikör · Keserűlikőr · Bäsk · Dansk bitter · Bylinný likér · Gentiane · Balsam · Hierbas. Geography lives on the separate regions axis — a tradition is a school, not a place. Locked v1 on 2026-07-04; new traditions are added as the archive reaches them, never renamed into English.
7 · VERSIONING
This is taxonomy v1 (2026-07-04): the gate, rings, self-ID rule, the eight subcategories and the traditions vocabulary above are locked. Changes are dated on this page, and disagreements are welcome through the corrections process.
8 · COMMON QUESTIONS
- What is amaro?
- Amaro is a broad category of bittersweet, botanically flavoured spirits, traditionally drunk as a digestivo. It has no protected legal definition. The Amaro Atlas includes a product when it is potable at bottle strength, has bitterness as a defining element, takes its character from botanicals (herbs, roots, barks and peels), and is spirit-based or a non-alcoholic analogue — whether sweetened or not.
- What is the difference between amaro and vermouth?
- Amaro is spirit-based; vermouth is an aromatised, fortified wine. Because they belong to different production families, vermouth — along with other aromatised wines such as quinquina, americano and chinato — sits outside the Atlas's inclusion gate.
- Is Fernet an amaro?
- Yes. Fernet is a dry, intensely bitter, low-sugar style of amaro, usually mentholated. On the Atlas it sits inside the Core ring as one of eight subcategories, alongside Aperitivo, Bitter, Classico, Alpino, Rabarbaro, Carciofo and Tartufo.
- Is Jägermeister an amaro?
- Jägermeister is a Kräuterlikör — a German bitter herbal liqueur. It passes the Atlas gate and sits in the Family ring: part of the global amaro family, recorded under its own tradition's name rather than relabelled as amaro.
- How does the Atlas decide what counts as amaro?
- Through a five-test inclusion gate, plus three concentric rings — Core, Family, Adjacent — and a self-identification rule: if a producer calls their product amaro it is Core; if they use another name it is Family, recorded under its own tradition.
- What do the A–D source grades mean?
- Every fact on the Atlas carries a source, and every source carries a grade: A is producer-official or regulatory, B is reputable published, C is secondary, and D is community or unverified.