Lindsay Marie Morris

Fast Penny Spirits Founder and CEO Jamie Hunt is on a mission. She wants to change the way we drink, and part of that means tapping into tradition. In Jamie's case, that translates to her Sicilian roots. Her grandparents came to the U.S. from Caltanissetta and Palermo. Her grandfather made wine, and her mother introduced her to the art of spirit-making.

 

American-made amari just couldn't compare to the complex flavors Jamie experienced in Italy, so the "mostly Seattle" native concocted her own, launching flagship varietals: Amaricano and Amaricano Bianca.

I recently had the chance to chat with Jamie about amari origins, Fast Penny Spirits' start, the company's generous give-back program, some of the 46 botanicals in the Amaricano recipe, and what she'd like to see and hear from customers.

 

 

What exactly is amaro?

It just means bitter in Italian. It's a bittersweet Italian liqueur. Other countries make it, but Italy is most well-known for it. It's made by macerating botanicals like flowers, roots, herbs, spices, and fruits. The botanicals are then put into either a high-proof spirit, which is the most common, or wine. 

 

 

What is the history of amaro?

Preserving the health benefits of plants in alcohol has been done for centuries because there wasn't refrigeration and no way to freeze or sustain whatever those properties were. It's just interesting to see how it evolved from this liquid to help treat ailments into adding a little bit more sugar to make it more pleasant for people and eventually becoming more of an elixir or something you would drink whether you were sick or not.

 

There's also an interesting story about amaro with the Prohibition in the U.S. Because it was considered medicine, it could be sold in pharmacies in the U.S. So fernet and other Italian amari came in as medicine, and people could buy it at their local drugstore. That's the time when the Hanky Panky cocktail was created with fernet. 

So, there are interesting little moments throughout history when this comes alive. When we were in the Averna factory in Sicily, we went to the abbey where the monks created the recipe. It was fascinating to explore the gardens and see many of the ingredients used in the Averna recipe.

 

 

How did you get started producing Amaricano?

I have been an amaro lover for a very long time since traveling to Italy in my twenties. I've been drinking it ever since. My family is Italian, and my grandfather used to make wine. My mom used to make Galliano and other Italian liqueurs, like limoncello. So I kind of grew up just used to being around people making beautiful things, whether it was food or liquid.

I worked as a consultant in the digital tech industry for over twenty years. I was looking for a new chapter and trying to figure out something I was passionate about that would be a real product, like a physical product. Because I've been doing so much that didn't have a physical element to it. 

I also wanted to create something that allowed me to give back. From the start, I knew I wanted to become a B Corp because I believe in business as a force for good—for people, the planet, and our environment.

Being raised in an Italian family teaches you the importance of welcoming, engaging, and building a sense of community. It's about being a place where people love to gather, enjoy good food and drink, and experience genuine hospitality. That's the spirit I wanted to create.

One night, I was having an after-dinner amaro with my husband at a local bar here in Seattle. For whatever reason, that night, I got curious about whether there was an American-made amaro. I had never really thought about it before. 

They had a few bottles behind the bar and offered us samples, as about half a dozen amaro makers are in the Seattle area. We tried them, and while they were good, they didn't have the same complexity as the Italian styles I was used to. That sparked my interest in researching the market and experimenting with my own recipes. 

Six months later, I launched the business and began developing the recipes, a process that took about two and a half years. During that time, I was also working full-time as a partner in the digital business at Ernst and Young.

In March 2020, when the realization came that COVID was here and we were in lockdown, I had to change my whole launch strategy. I planned to launch in July 2020 but could no longer launch with a distributor because distributors didn't want to pick up any new brands then. 

Restaurants and bars are typically the way you launch a spirit. And most of those were shut down and doing takeout. 

With all of that in mind, I made a decision about the direction I wanted to take in both life and work. I resigned from EY and dedicated myself full-time to Fast Penny. We launched in July 2020 and have been growing ever since.

Tell us more about Fast Penny's give-back program.

It's called Pretty Penny, and we focus on several initiatives. Our main program is a quarterly 3% giveback from bottle sales to nonprofits that support women, the community, and the hospitality industry. We also volunteer our time with various nonprofits as part of this effort, and we frequently offer in-kind donations. Giving back is a core value for us.

 

How does Amaricano compare to Sicilian amari?

We use wooden casks and filtration methods similar to the amari facilities I visited in Sicily. We've also incorporated some of the same botanicals. My recipe includes sweet and bitter orange, as well as saffron, which is a traditional ingredient. 

 

Staying true to Italian tradition, I focused on sourcing local ingredients to highlight the terroir of where our amaro is made. I discovered saffron grown in Washington State, which was exciting. We also have Rainier cherries, named after our local mountain, which are stunning, as well as hazelnuts. Even truffles, foraged by dogs right here in Washington, are part of the mix.

 

I have a truffle dog as well. He's a Lagotto Romagnolo, the truffle dog of Italy. His nickname is Fiori. His longer name is Draco Fiorano. We call him Fiori because that would be a lot to get out! 

We work with a local forging company called Truffle Dog Co., and the founder, Alana McGee, sometimes comes by and grabs Fiori for a hunt. Unfortunately, I'm so busy with the business that I can't go truffle hunting on my own. So, she'll take Fiori along with her dogs, and they'll head out to find truffles, then bring them back to us.

 

 

How do truffles factor into Amaricano?

It is beautiful. I dehydrate them, and when you dehydrate them, it concentrates the flavor and changes it a bit. So instead of that funkiness that we associate with truffles, which I love, it turns into more of a cocoa, fruity, earthy flavor, which really melds a lot of the other botanicals that are in the mix. 

At one point, I considered removing truffles from the main products to cut costs and reduce the price of the amari, but since they were integral to the recipe, it really didn't hold together without them. It creates a nice flavor profile and body. 

We also include hops in our product since Washington is the largest grower and exporter of hops in the U.S., producing over 75% of the country's supply, most coming from Yakima Valley where ours are grown. We thought, "We definitely need to incorporate that ingredient!"

 

 

You give tours of your distillery. Tell us what those entail.

We share the story of Fast Penny, explaining the process of making amaro and how I developed the products they're tasting. Guests get to sample our limited releases, and we tailor the experience based on their interests. Typically, this includes tasting the limited releases, learning about our production process, and exploring the rich history of amaro, as many people are unaware that it has been around for centuries. Then, we end the tour with a cocktail made with our amaro in local spirits to highlight its versatility in entertaining. 

 

 

What kind of feedback have you gotten about your products?

I wanted people to think, "Wow, I never realized I liked amari until I tried yours, and now I have a whole collection!" I've actually had several people approach me, unsolicited, to say just that.

 

I want people to love our product and keep using it, but I also aim to broaden the category as a whole. I don't view other amari brands as competitors; we're a small segment compared to the larger spirits industry. Instead, we can support one another and elevate the entire category together. 

 

 

What is your ultimate goal with Fast Penny Spirits?

My goal is to create fun and memorable experiences that incorporate amaro. One way to do this is through cocktails or as a pre-meal drink, but if you've just enjoyed a big meal and want the night to continue, it's all about introducing people to the concept of a digestif.

We also host many events here at Fast Penny. We've organized a summer concert series, chocolate-amaro pairings, and mushroom happy hours. We're always looking for ways to connect people and create memorable experiences and community, whether at the distillery or in their own homes.

 

 

 

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When you think of Italian wines, your first thought may be northern Italy or Tuscany. But Emilia Aiello is on a mission to challenge that instinct and educate wine connoisseurs on the virtues of southern Italy. 

The Oakland, California, native cut her teeth in New York restaurants, serving as wine director and then leading the beverage program at Greenwich Village's Lupa Osteria Romana. Her interest in wine led her down a rabbit hole to working at a winery through a harvest season in Sicily's Mount Etna region and creating her own regional wine map. She wished to share her experience and introduce more people to the area, leading her to launch her own online wine retailer/educational resource, Cittavino & Co.

Emilia is Italian on both sides, but her passion for southern wines partially stems from her drive to reconnect with her Sicilian roots. Her paternal grandparents emigrated to Pittsburg, California, from Isola delle Femmine.

I spoke with Emilia about her background, life-altering experiences, and what motivated her to launch Cittavino. She also shared career advice for those wishing to pursue a similar path and what she hopes to provide through her wine education.

 

 

Tell us about your professional background.

My experience with wine initially was my experience in restaurants, and I don't see them as different, at least in the first part of my life. I never intended to be in restaurants or wine. Most people fall into it and find that they're good at it. Growing up in my Italian culture, however local it was, I naturally understood how things work in Italy. It gave me a one-up. I was also very curious. I was trying to dance in New York then and support myself with restaurants. I just found I liked learning about wine.

I started bartending. Also, my cousin owns a restaurant here in Oakland, and I started getting interested there, but it was just kind of an interest, not really a career option for me. Then as the restaurant industry does, it definitely sucked me in. One, it's very demanding, and two, it pays your bills.

I started venturing into southern Italy more because there was just less about it and less available, so I wanted to know more. I had already traveled to Italy in college. I took some time off school, which started my interest in the South, and it was just another opportunity to bring it somewhere and have some structure around it.

I took over the wine program at Lupa Osteria Romana. I made it my objective to organize southern Italy like we had organized northern Italy and have more representation.

I could only do so much. Not much was happening in the way of seminars or marketing campaigns. When a marketing campaign for an Italian region makes it to the United States, there's a lot of effort, organization, and money behind it. We're seeing more with Etna, but as a whole consorzio campaign, we're not really seeing it.

So, I started traveling to southern Italy, but specifically with wine as the objective, so I could learn more. I kept learning more. I felt there was space for that kind of information in the wine industry and maybe among consumers. And I did that for a couple of years while working at the restaurant. I worked a harvest, and when I left the restaurant, it happened simultaneously with COVID. I had a lot of time to think.

 

I have Italian citizenship, so I was able to get to Italy during peak pandemic, and I stayed stuck there working a harvest and thinking a lot. I now know what I do to be more niche than I realized. I thought there'd be a little bit more of an audience for it. Within New York and now California, there are two totally different wine consumers, but it started with the restaurant and having to go to the source to understand things. Nobody was coming to me to present me with information or classes or whatever. And while it's changing, I still find that to be true, especially when you look at credentials like master sommeliers and people with higher levels of certifications; nobody specializes in southern Italy—maybe Italy in general, but often it's northern or maybe Tuscany. It's still a bit of a hole.

 

Describe your wine harvesting experience.

That was my first harvest-time experience. I just needed to take a break from work and figure things out, and they let me go for a couple of months. 

When I first started being interested in wine, Mount Etna wines were really coming onto the market. So, I've been able to follow that trajectory. They really started gaining momentum around that time. There was a demand from people asking about them. I also wanted Lupa to be at the forefront, focusing on southern Italy.

 

So I had a bunch of wines, and we were talking about them as if we were talking about other more well-known regions like Barolo, but not really anybody knew what they were talking about. Even just the simplicity of needing to organize it on the wine list, I was like, "Wait a second, we're comparing these two regions, but I don't even know how to put these on the wine list."

People were asking me the difference between these sectors. I had no clue, and here I was supposed to be the professional. So, I went to Etna for my first harvest experience to learn more. And I ended up with Biondi and stayed with them for a few weeks. I just started my journey of being on the ground there and tasting wines with other producers. So, I was able to finally wrap my head around the location.

 

I met an expat who lives there and has become the Etna wine expert. He was also the first to really take an interest in the region in a more analytical or organized way, and we became friends. So, he has been a great resource to me as well.

 

I didn't quite realize how much I was gaining in the moment. I kept asking people about maps. I used to always do that: ask about maps of the region, and sometimes they would be able to give it to me, but in the Etna region, there was nothing to give. So when I went back to the United States, I thought, "Well, I'll do some research online." Nothing was coming up.

 

But that was my moment of being like, "Gosh, I learned so much in just three weeks of being there on the ground, and I get to tell my colleagues so much." I brought back a map of the geology, which everybody was very keen on looking at. I was like, "Interesting. This means something."

That started my trajectory of not just going back to Etna but also the way I approach it now, learning about other regions. I really like to work a harvest or best I can, even if it's not months' worth of time, get some kind of physical movement in there and then just get a little bit more of an inside view with the producer. It's helped me tremendously, not just to gain an understanding of the area but also to understand the human's connectedness to it, why people do what they do, and maybe why we're kind of obsessed with it from afar. So that was incredible. And it was kind of my first adventure into approaching wine that way.

 

What motivated you to start Cittavino?

Probably recognizing when I was working in the restaurant that wines were coming out of the market, but there was not representation in the same way. And then kind of asking myself questions about why and then wanting to find the answers why. So, going there to Italy and starting to talk to more people who actually live there and make wine.

 

I had already planned to take a break from the restaurant, and then the pandemic hit, and I was kind of everywhere. But I just knew that I needed to get back for a harvest because that's where things happened for me. This was also when I started questioning quite a bit.

We still are in this natural wine movement, but at the time it was a new conversation. It'd been a couple of years. We were all still kind of wrapping our heads around it, asking, "Do we like it? What is this?" And I remembered drinking some wines, particularly this one from Calabria, that, as I was reading about it, hit all the criteria of what a natural wine was, but it didn't tout itself as a natural wine. I was like, "What's going on here? I need to go to the source to understand what this is." So I intended to go to Calabria, and then, because of the pandemic, I just ended up spending four months in Calabria. 

It was just a reckoning of my personal life, things happening in my career, and then the pandemic, but I mulled it over a lot. When you're in it, you don't quite realize what you're in.

 

When I got back home, things started circulating quite quickly, and I thought this was valuable to me and may be valuable to others. From the professional side of things, having a lot more information to offer people, the map, and drawing from a consumer side of things, just trying to communicate that inside view people don't get. They could connect with it more because I found for myself how enriching it was to take that time with people, as well as working outside in the vineyards, and how it grounded me. And I was like, "Well, maybe that could be grounding for others, too."

 

We're especially obsessed with wine in place, but do we really know what that means? We're just kind of obsessed with checklists and soil types as if we really know. But we're missing pieces to make it a more rounded experience. I think that about a lot of things, not just wine.

 

I started thinking I could be a resource for southern Italy, a promoter for people who don't have the funds and the Italian system to promote what they do. And there are some really excellent wines that I taste from small producers. So I am working with what you would call more natural (but I also don't like using that term), a certain type of wine that I feel is most connected to the person and the place. And that is my platform; I really only sell a particular type of wine.

Maybe because I've been there and I had the experience, but drinking that type of wine makes me feel a different way than just drinking to drink. That was the whole basis. It's certainly evolved since then. I had a very specific idea of what it was going to be, and it's taken on its own journey for better or worse.

 

I don't know how sustainable it is, but I keep coming back to what keeps me in it: that connection with the people who are making this thing and how important it is to connect with those people. I see it now as a lifestyle because of the wines I end up liking and the people I connect with who have made it their lifestyle. 

Certainly, there's business and finances involved like anything, but for them, it's their entire way of life. Maybe it's just me feeling like I'd like to give back more of that connection to agriculture and that way of life that we've become disconnected from. But that's what keeps me in the game. One could do that with other products and things. I just happen to do it in southern Italy, where I feel most connected, where I started this journey, and where that connection really is for me, that more agrarian kind of lifestyle. 

 

What sets Cittavino apart from other online wine retailers?

The focus, for sure, and the reality is now that, with being so niche, for better or worse, I can represent a lot of one region. With Italy, things are so diverse, and so much is going on. I really like being able to offer that diversity of Lazio, for example. I mean, who has a huge selection of Laziale wines?

 

My platform isn't just about drinking wine. It's trying to engage people on all levels of it and be interested in it, in the person, and in the hope that I'm giving, again, a grounding experience through wine. I'm not sure if everybody's taking it that way, but that's what I'm trying to present. And with this product that I'm giving, there's so much more in it than just your alcohol and grapes; they're charged. It sounds woo-woo, but I really believe it. And I've taken a little bit more of a clear approach to why my palate likes these wines better. And yes, there's kind of a checklist I could go down, but I just keep finding that when people have an entire lifestyle built around what they do agriculturally, their wines taste better.

I keep trying to shoot out different means of getting people to be attracted to that for whatever reason. We're so disconnected, and as we continue to advance in the new age and technology, we're getting further and further away from that. The best way I can pull us back a bit is with wine—farmer wines.

 

What advice would you give someone looking to start a career in the wine industry, especially around less-represented regions?

This might be advice for anybody regardless of what they will do. Again, as I said, things are about money, and we live in a world that constantly shows us that. Especially as we get older, we need to weigh the finances, but there has to be a why greater than just trying to get in something niche, being a figure, and being reputable. There has to be something that connects you and grounds you to what you do beyond that, or else it will get really hard, really fast. And even when it does ground you, you're constantly thinking about the way out, or should I just give this up? You hit those really hard moments. And so what is your purpose beyond money, reputation, whatever? How are you connected to what you're doing in a more fundamental way? Ultimately, what's going to keep you showing up for it?

You are definitely going to have to do things you don't like in anything. At some point, a job is a job, so being able to reconcile a bit of that is not always just going to be fun and creative. The hustle shows up everywhere. So, for me, it's been important, and it changes sometimes, but it's just getting more profound as to why I am even doing this. Would I still do this? If the possibility of making money on it was zero, what parts would I give up, and what parts would I keep? In the wine industry, it feels very glamorous, especially to the outside, and people want to get into it because there are a lot of cool perks to it, but there are a lot of things that are hard as well. And yeah, making sure you're at least along for the journey. That might also be my advice for anybody just starting a business.

 

For underrepresented regions, you're going to have less support. You're going to be doing a lot on your own. Things just come up that you can never anticipate. There's a lot of confrontation of the self for me, especially being alone. I speak Italian, and I am Italian. Still, it's not my native language, and still, every time I go, there's this jolt of getting acclimated again and being in an unfamiliar area culturally, too. It's very clear to me that I'm American when I'm in southern Italy, even if I'm hanging out speaking Italian and speaking wine language and getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. Especially in the places where they are unknown, and you're trying to be a pioneer in them, there's a lot of shooting in the dark and figuring out what your support system is when you go off and do those things alone.

 

What experience do you hope to offer people through your wine education?

I want to open doors for people, and people are traveling a lot now, and wine helps as kind of opening a door. So curiosity, definitely passion, and vigor. If I am just thinking about doing an event, it's getting people energetic again about what they do. And it's not just about listing facts on things; it's bringing in this more rounded human experience. I want people to take away the human experience from whatever it is I do. And if I can transmit that experience just by sending you a bottle, cool. If it's with an event with me, if you're in the wine club, or whatever, it's about trying to create some connectedness between all of us. That would be the best takeaway if somebody felt more curious about what they're purchasing.

 

For me, learning about wine and being with these farmers has totally bled into me. It's now a lifestyle of "I want to go to the farmers market in my local area. I want to meet that person. I want to be curious about what they do and how they do it because that's the closest I'm going to get to my consumption." And we're really missing that in pretty much everything else that we consume or purchase. So, hopefully, they'll have that curiosity and want to connect more.

 

 

 

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