the bitter digestivo of Ischia: wild rocket gathered from the island's volcanic tufa, steeped with lemon peel in spirit for forty days, then sweetened and rested until the heat turns to bitterness
Origin: Ischia, Campania, Italy
From the journey of Rocket.
Rucolino is what the islands of the Bay of Naples do with a plant they cannot avoid. Diplotaxis tenuifolia, wild rocket, grows unattended across the volcanic tufa of Ischia, Procida, and Ventotene in quantities no one has ever had to cultivate, and the practice of steeping the gathered leaves in spirit to make a bitter after-dinner drink is a household tradition of considerable age on the island, of the same family as the limoncello made from the lemons growing beside it. It passed into commercial production in the twentieth century, most familiarly through the Savastano family's Ischia Sapori, and has since travelled a good deal further than the island. What makes it worth making rather than merely drinking is that the process demonstrates something about the plant. Raw rocket is hot: a volatile, mustardy pepperiness that hits the front of the mouth and leaves quickly. Alcohol extracts that heat, but over several weeks it also extracts the heavier, slower bitter compounds that a mouthful of salad never stays in contact with long enough to release. The finished liqueur is therefore not a peppery drink at all. It is a genuine amaro, herbaceous and dark and faintly resinous, in which the rocket is recognisable mostly as a green note underneath the bitterness. The island drinks it very cold in small glasses after a meal, and it has the useful property of tasting far less sweet than its sugar content suggests.
Wild rocket is genuinely necessary here and garden rocket is a poor substitute: the wild plant is hotter and more resinous, and it carries the bitter compounds that make the drink an amaro rather than a peppery cordial. If you can only find bagged rocket, look for the narrow, deeply cut leaves sold as wild rocket rather than the broad soft ones. Use only leaves you know to be unsprayed. The finished liqueur lands at roughly 30% alcohol, in line with the commercial version; using vodka at 40% rather than high-strength spirit will give something closer to 20%, which is pleasant but shorter-lived, so keep it refrigerated and drink it within a few months. It keeps essentially indefinitely at full strength.
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