A little over twenty years ago, Giuseppe De Toma, the lively owner of the renowned Osteria del Gallo, started a line of artisanal liqueurs produced in a small liquoreria in Friuli that has continued the long tradition of Brunate bitters ever since. The result of years of study and experimentation, the first liqueur bitter, known as Cordiale Piz, was presented in 2011 in Brunate, at Villa Giuliani. The location was owned by the patron of the famous amaro of the same name, who generously made available his personal knowledge, and that of his team of professionals, to develop the perfect recipe. Another fundamental contribution was that of the Milan University's Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, which assisted Mr De Toma in identifying all the herbs contained in the original recipe for the Brunate bitter.
Cordiale Piz, with its low alcohol content, characteristic coppery hue, intense aroma of gentian and the more delicate Brunate wildflower honey, was followed by Galivél, made from olive leaves from a consortium of oil producers in the Lake Como region. From a sample of artisanal liqueurs from Val d'Intelvi comes Medeghétt, in which the aroma of wormwood, known by the dialect terms of seenz or seenzin, used in the local medicinal plant tradition for digestive distillates, plays the starring role. It is the reesult of the numerous experiments of Signor De Toma and the Spilimbergo company for a bitter liqueur with a high alcohol content of 25 degrees.
In 2016, Gallorange came into being. The liqueur has a deep orange colour, is more delicate than its predecessors, and is made from Sicilian orange peel. It is rich in essential oils and able to release its full aroma when drunk cold or accompanied by ice cream and chocolate. Four years later saw the arrival of Brugin, a reinterpretation of an ancient recipe made up by a pharmacist of Brunate. This particular liqueur has a soft but decisive aroma and comes in a bottle with a colourful label bearing the coat of arms of the municipality of Brunate.
The latest bitter presented by Giuseppe De Toma is his “Plinio”. It is no coincidence that the label of Cordiale Piz bears a sentence by Pliny the Elder that reads: “Mother Nature has inoculated medicines in even the most despised of herbs”.
Como liqueurs can be purchased at the Osteria del Gallo and at a number of restaurants and retailers in the area. Each and all of the bitters are characterised by their own particular aromas and fragrances, bestowed on them by the carefully selected natural ingredients. In this project of De Toma that has been carried out with dedication and passion for over twenty years, nothing is left to chance. Even the labels are the upshot of the meticulously designed graphic works of Paola Rovelli who, with her artistic hand succeeds in interpreting the flavours and fragrances as stylish images.