Do you know which Abruzzese invented Centerbe, the famous Abruzzese liqueur?

Take 100 aromatic herbs and mountain herbs, infuse them and you will get Centerbe, one of the best known aromatic liqueurs from Abruzzo.

The name is not well defined. Sometimes we speak of Amaro Centerbe, or Centerbe or Centerba up to Antico Centerbe or Rosolio Centerbe, however all variants that can be traced back to a similar recipe. However, these are various liqueurs with both commercial and artisanal production. Currently it is also used as a “corrective” to coffee and pastry.

Centerbe reaches very high alcohol levels (around 70 ° vol) and the Story says that was invented by the pharmacist Beniamino Toro, from Abruzzo of Tocco da Casauria, who originally used it as a medicine against cases of plague. Centerbe was then also used as an alcoholic beverage which became very famous first throughout Abruzzo and then also exported to Rome.

The name, as you can imagine, would derive from “one hundred herbs”, or the one hundred types of plants that would be used in the preparation following the traditional recipe from which we began to speak from the thirteenth century until the seventeenth century in the abbey of San Clemente in Casauria.

Photo by A7N8X – Opera propria, CC BY-SA 4.0, Collegamento