From the very beginning, the drink became widely popular precisely because it was made from wheat alcohol with various characteristics, tropical sugar, star anise as the main ingredient, extracts of elderberry or elderflower, and a set of various spices and aromatic herbs.
For more than half a century, many young winemakers have tried to repeat the triumph of the pioneers, but the exact composition, recipe, and content remain secret, as they were centuries ago. After all, in its time, the winemaking process and the recipe composition of alcoholic beverages were almost a state secret and were carefully guarded by medieval laws. Disclosure of winemakers' secrets was equated to economic espionage and punished in the strictest manner – by death. Indeed, wines in Italy to this day are the pride of the country; their recipes can truly be called a golden reserve for all ages.
The Birth of the Tempting Aroma
The appearance of this wonderful drink was quite unexpected, namely due to the clumsiness and careless handling of dishes by a simple Italian peasant. Actually, he, whose name has not even been preserved in history, was considered the best producer of anisette. It was even his peculiar business, because anisette was extremely popular at that time even in neighboring towns and provinces.
The birth of the world-famous aromatic wine drink with the alluring and mysterious name Sambuca Extra Molinari was extremely trivial. There is simply in Italy, as everywhere in Europe, the elderberry, which is dried and preserved. This careless owner accidentally dropped the collected sambuca berries – Italian elderberries – into a barrel of anise infusion. Perhaps he forgot to pour out what today is called a substandard product, perhaps he was greedy, like many local businessmen.
So his invention would have remained in a dark corner of the barn, if at a drunken party, which takes place noisily and cheerfully in the Italian countryside, they hadn't remembered that there weren't enough drinks. Almost like our contemporaries, they began to look for a way out of the situation – and found the ill-fated jug. And so the worldwide fame began.
Experiments and Their Remarkable Result
The glorious history of Sambuca Extra Molinari became more exotic compared to the creation of an unknown Tuscan farmer, however popular he may have become in the nearby surroundings. That is how in 1945 the company Molinari named liqueurs based on noble anise, the recipe of which was developed through a fairly civilized experimental process.
The basis of the developed new recipe was an innovative approach for that post-war time. To make the drink a transparent sweet liquid with specific aromas and a content of wheat composite alcohol of 38-42%, a huge number of experiments were conducted to select wine bases, infusions of various herbs, and alcohols of various origins.
Later, Signor Molinari founded a company producing sweet drinks, which then grew into a wine concern in the tiny town of Civitavecchia on the coast of the warm sea, fifty kilometers north of Rome.
Thanks to the exceptional efforts of Angelo, and then his brothers Mafaldo, Marcello, and Antonio, and the fertile raw material base of this region, sambuca liqueur today occupies 70% of the Mediterranean sambuca market. After all, only through perseverance and love does the best appear.