I’m bitter about this post, unfortunately.

Oh, how I hate you sometimes, Eee…

When I sat down to see six glasses of gorgeous looking amaros I was quite excited.? Mmm, nice bitter, dark loveliness.

Jacob Briars started up the session, talking about how really a lot of this stuff started with fraud, deception, etc., as people thought that they would soothe health concerns.? There were, for instance, the notions of the “humors” in the body.? Sebastian Raeburn (and I apologize if I misspell names, for reasons you’ll see in a second) came in, hawking his “health drink”, though never pouring it, since he said it had gin, chartreuse, Lysterine, NyQuil, and some other stuff in it.? I would’ve tried it anyways…

You see that netbook just at the bottom of the picture?? That’s the Eee I won in a contest and reformatted with Ubuntu.? I had a bit long post on this session written on it.? I kept track of what all of those amaros were, and how tasty they were, and even talked about the reishi mushroom bitter stuff that Jacob inflicted on us.

Jacob talks to us about drugs in our drinks.

About an hour into the session, I went to type, and it over-reacted on me, closing the tab and deleting everything I’d written.

Let that be a lesson to you, users of WordPress – even though down below, right there, I can see it saying “Draft saved at 4:00:24 PM” I know that this is NOT true, and that it’s never to come back if I get messed up, because my precious precious draft is gone forever, and thus, most of my brain cells.

Look, folks, this session was followed by the Diageo Happy Hour.? I sacrificed many a precious brain cell to bring you these words!? HEED? THE WORDS THAT I AM BRINGING YOU BECAUSE FOR SOME REASON THEY MATTER.

An Aussie AND a New Zealander?! Doing the same session?!

So, being that it’s a week later, and I’ve been thinking about this post but not, you know, writing the damn thing, here I am, your esteemed blogger, with all the serious journalistic integrity that implies (snicker), trying to put back together what I learned.

Here are some tidbits:

• Only two bottles of Bitter Truth Elixier were let in to the US.? They were delicious.
• I’d never had Luxardo Amaro before and now I shall buy some.
• Mmmmm, Fernet.

There was another Italian digestif included that isn’t available in the US but unfortunately I cannot recall it’s name.

Not as appetizing as it looks

So why do we drink these things?

Well, the obvious answer is that a number of us find them delicious.? I built up a taste for Fernet, I’m sure, like many of my fellow bloggers, perhaps egged on by the gregarious San Franciscan bartenders who seemed to have originally championed it on the US scene.? But a big thing for these – or like Underberg, my favorite post-meal digestif – is that they do make us feel better.

Jacob used an example that he takes every day.? His bitter, pictured to the right, features reishi mushrooms.? It was not tasty.? I do not want it in my drink.? However, he claims there are many health benefits to it, health benefits I wrote down and now don’t remember, so I’m guessing memory retention wasn’t one of them.

It is, perhaps, more scientific than it was back in the old days when they just dumped all kinds of wild, wacky things into a bottle of the black stuff, but for me – well, I think I’ll stick with my current doctor’s advice, and have a Fernet a day.

(Obligatory note: she said multi-vitamin.? I say Fernet.? I did not correct her.)