A thousand apologies for the inexcusably long hiatus since my last post. In my defense, I have recently started a new job and have been unable to update as much as I would like. In addition, I have been spending a fair amount of time on the upcoming Il Digestivo App which is set to launch imminently.
Back in March, La ragazza, Il Marocchino, and I travelled to Budapest for a mega steam weekend, hitting up all the famous thermal baths on offer (Rudas was by far the best). But at night, after long dinners of hearty Hungarian food our digestivo of choice was always Unicum. This Hungarian digestivo is a dark, bitter blend of herbs, roots and spices, that tastes quite similar to many Italian Amari, but finishes with a notable hint of citrus that makes it so pleasurable.
It also has a quite a long and illustrious history which begins in 1790 when Jospef Zwack, Physician to the Hapsburg Emperor, combined 40 different herds and spices to create the famous Unicum for the Emperor. Shortly afterward, the family business prospered, eventually producing around 220 different drinks. Unfortunately, during WWII the factory in Budapest was destroyed and according to the Zwack website, “The retreating German army blew up the city’s bridges and the Russians used, among other things, barrels from the Unicum factory to build temporary pontoon bridges over the Danube.” The family rebuilt the factory after the war only to have it, and all their other possessions, confiscated by the newly installed Communist regime. As a result, “Jáno (an heir to the family) fled to the West sitting on his shooting stick under an upturned barrel with the Unicum recipe in his breast pocket, having bribed the Russian drivers to take him across the border.” From then on the brothers lived in Chicago and then moved onto to Milan. In 1987 they finally returned to Hungary to begin the next chapter of the Unicum story.
Famous drinkers: Luciano Pavarotti, Jacqueline Kennedy, Zubin Mehta.
Overall Rating: ★★★★☆
Il Digestivo 