Strega is a herbal Italian liqueur with saffron, mint, and 70 botanicals.
Why you are pouring this tonight
Strega is yellow Italian liqueur made in Benevento with seventy botanicals including saffron and mint, which is the most Italian sentence ever written about a drink. The spritz is the most direct way into it. Yellow as a Pavarotti scarf. Faintly menthol. Sweeter than Aperol but with more depth than the supermarket aperitivos. The drink for the second-friend’s-housewarming-of-the-week kind of Saturday.
Don’t let the colour scare you. Strega is bracingly aromatic, somewhere between a chartreuse and a herbal liqueur, and the prosecco lifts it into something brunch-friendly. Build in a wine glass over ice: Strega, dry prosecco, splash of soda. Garnish with a lemon wheel and a rosemary sprig you slapped first. The saffron and rosemary play together in a way that tastes accidentally professional. Pair with goat’s cheese, a grilled lamb skewer, or a roast chicken sitting on the bench cooling off.
What to pour it alongside
Roast chicken, herbed lamb, lemon-garlic prawns.
Notes
Strega is sweeter than most amari, so use the driest prosecco you can find. The saffron note pairs surprisingly well with rosemary.
The recipe
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