28 October

Established by our friends at Amaro Lucano in 2024, World Amaro Day celebrates Italy's tradition of bittersweet liqueurs enjoyed as an aperivito, digestive and increasingly in cocktails.

Amari (the plural of amaro) are usually deep amber-brown coloured liqueurs and range from 16% to over 40% alc./vol. and vary greatly in style and degrees of bitterness.

Established in 1894 by Pasquale Vena, Lucano is one of Italy's best-known amari and is still owned and produced by the Vena family to this day. Lucano will be celebrating at their Essenza Lucano Museum, next to their distillery in Pisticci, Italy, and they invite all to visit and spend the day with leading representatives of the amaro world.

Sadly, we won't be in Pisticci, but we'll be celebrating with a Lucinos Delight, our favourite Lucano cocktail.

The Volstead Act was passed this day

On this day in 1919, the US Congress voted the Eighteenth Amendment, AKA the Volstead Act, AKA the National Prohibition Act, into law, following a bill designed by the Anti-Saloon League's famously fun-loving Wayne Wheeler.

As an experiment, Prohibition was a famous failure. The first documented breach of the new law occurred at 12:59 am on 17 January 1920, under an hour after it had come into force, when armed men stole a hundred grand's worth of allegedly "medicinal" whiskey from a train. Things went pretty much downhill from there, launching the careers of such celebrated teetotalers as Al Capone and forcing drinks lovers with funds to relocate to Europe.

Today's cocktail, the Easy Speak remembers the Speakeasies that followed the enactment of the Volstead Act. Or you may prefer a Rum Runner, which recalls all those bootleggers who kept running liquor illegally into the country and across its state borders.

Today's also National Chocolate Day in the US

World Chocolate Day falls on 7 July, then there's International Chocolate Day celebrated by North America on 13 September. Indeed, the U.S. National Confectioners Association lists four primary chocolate holidays on their calendar. Chocolate is so delicious, we'd argue multiple celebratory days a year are acceptable and even desirable.

Some believe there's a wealth of health benefits that come with eating cocoa. Even more reason to indulge today, perhaps. Naturally, we're toasting a Death by Chocolate cocktail.