In a 400-square-foot brick building on South Jefferson, Jonathan Allinson, the creator of San Luigi Spirits, is channeling a personal history of serendipity into a new line of amaro for St. Louis. The name is a tribute to his grandfather, Luigi, and the city that Allinson now calls home.
The Background
Allinson’s interest in amaro began on a trip to Spain, where he discovered a culture that embraced low-ABV spirits as a vibrant part of social life. “It was eye-openingly fresh, botanical, and extraordinary,” he recalls. The experience sparked an exploration into the world of amaro, which he describes as “the wild West of spirits,” because “there’s no rule book, and everyone’s very secretive about their recipes.”
After years of experimentation, some good, some not very good, Allinson began making individual tinctures, from gentian root to chicory, to better understand each ingredient. Eventually, the process clicked with his first successful batch of nocino, a walnut liqueur inspired by his daughter’s love of walnuts and foraging. Positive feedback from friends and family gave him the confidence to pursue the idea more seriously.
The Expressions
The three expressions of San Luigi Spirits each have a personal connection for Allinson:
Golden Sambuca is an homage to his family, particularly his mother, who drinks sambuca as a digestif. When he was a child, the family would also host dinner parties, with everyone sipping digestif out of cordial glasses while his grandfather strummed the guitar. Golden Sambuca is his attempt to reintroduce a polarizing spirit by crafting a version that he believes in. “I want to change minds, in a way that pulls people into the fold,” he says.
Aperitivo marries Italian tradition with Mexican roots. Every year, Allinson takes his family to Mexico to visit his aunt, who tends a large garden in her backyard. She grows passionfruit, pomegranate, hibiscus, curry leaves, edible cacti, and more. After dinner one night, Allinson recalls, they wandered into the garden, where his aunt explained what was edible. What if Italy went to Central America for a few months, Allinson thought, and what would happen to those flavors? Back in the U.S., Allinson tested the theory by experimenting with various tropical flavors, including hibiscus and passionfruit, both of which can be found in the Aperitivo, adding both natural color (from the hibiscus) and tart tropical fruit notes (from the passionfruit).
Garden Amaro was a “happy accident,” Allinson says. He was inspired by the verdantly green, intensely herbaceous alpine liqueur centerbe (a close cousin to genepy and/or green chartreuse)—but it was missing something. “It was, like, mid-October one year, and we were having a long, extended summer. I still had a bunch of green tomatoes on the vine, but the first frost was coming that night,” he recalls. “I looked out at the garden, and was like, I’m gonna lose all these tomatoes tonight. They’ll just all go to waste if I don’t pick them. So I picked them and decided I was just gonna throw them in this herbal liquor. I didn’t want them to go to waste, so I threw it in, and it was exactly what it needed.” In addition to green tomatoes, Allinson grows many of the herbs steeped in the Garden Amaro including basil, Thai basil, thyme, tarragon, rosemary, and oregano.
One of the many challenges that Allinson faced was scaling the recipes. As he explains, “They don’t scale in a linear fashion. So figuring out how to go from tiny little kitchen batches to this size is a big challenge.”
The spices, herbs, and fruits all extract flavors differently in terms of length of time and potency, for example. It’s a delicate dance blending each ingredient to achieve a balanced flavor. Thus, there’s a purpose to every piece of equipment inside his lab. Large jars filled with dried herbs and citrus peels line a built-in shelf, while an industrial scale sits on a prep table situated next to two 300-liter tanks, where the maceration happens. Everything has wheels on it, so Allinson can transform the space from a spirits lab to a bottling and labeling line. This flexibility allows Allinson to maintain quality and consistency as San Luigi Spirits grows.
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