L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 18 L'Italo-Americano W hen I was a k i d , there was a l w a y s a b o t t l e s o m e w h e r e i n t h e f r i d g e , b r i g h t g r e e n , m o s t o f t h e time. You didn't need much, just a splash into a glass of water, a quick stir, and that was it: the water changed c o l o r , t h e s m e l l c a m e u p immediately, and suddenly it felt like something way more l u x u r i o u s a n d d e l i c i o u s . M i n t , u s u a l l y . S w e e t , b u t with that slightly sharp edge if you got the proportions wrong. Some people – me included – put it in milk too: odd perhaps, but a quintes- sential flavor of my genera- tion's childhood. Adding a splash of mint syrup to your summer drink was a simple thing, one of t h o s e g e s t u r e s y o u d i d almost automatically: you didn't think about it, you just did it. And yet, without really knowing it, it belonged to a much older way of drinking, one that had very little to do with bottles or brands, and much more to do with what you had at hand, what you mixed, and how you adjusted it to make it taste good. Before soft drinks as we know them became ubiqui- tous, Italians enjoyed their soft drinks differently; if you wanted a tasty refresher, you needed to, so to speak, "work for it;" you had to add some- thing to water, a syrup, an extract, something aromatic. Y o u m a d e i t s w e e t e r , o r f r e s h e r , o r m o r e i n t e n s e , depending on the moment. It wasn't a fixed thing, rather, it depended on place and sea- s o n , o r e v e n o n p e r s o n a l taste. Orzata is probably the best way to begin our excur- sus into that world. Today, most people think of it as an almond syrup: white, slightly opaque, sweet, something you dilute in water or milk. But the name comes from barley, orzo, because the original drink was made with t h e c e r e a l , c r u s h e d a n d m i x e d i n t o w a t e r , t h e n s w e e t e n e d . O v e r t i m e , a l m o n d s a n d s e e d s t o o k over, but the name stayed. But it wasn't just about t a s t e : i n F l o r e n c e , f o r i n s t a n c e , t h e o r z a t a p r e - pared by the Oblate, women connected to the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, was u s e d a s a k i n d o f g e n t l e , soothing drink. Not medi- c i n e e x a c t l y , b u t n o t j u s t refreshment either, it sat somewhere in between, part o f a d a i l y r h y t h m t h a t i n c l u d e d c a r e , r e s t , h e a t , recovery. In much of Italy, that way of drinking faded, or at least b e c a m e l e s s v i s i b l e , b u t t h e r e a r e p l a c e s w h e r e i t remains pretty popular. In Catania, for example, it's still there, right in the mid- d l e o f t h e c i t y , a t t h e chioschi. If you stop at one of them, you'll be amazed by h o w s i m p l e e v e r y t h i n g looks: no elaborate setup, no sense of performance, noth- ing branded, really. And yet t h e r e ' s a w h o l e l a n g u a g e behind it, and it has to be very precise! Seltz, limone e sale, for instance: sparkling water, fresh lemon juice, a pinch of salt. That's it: it c o m e s t o g e t h e r q u i c k l y , stirred just enough, and it's exactly what you want when the heat is pressing down. But that's only one of the options. There's orzata, of c o u r s e . T a m a r i n d o , tamarind, darker and slight- ly tangy. Mandarino al limone, which has a sharp- e r , a l m o s t b r i g h t e r n o t e . Each one is simple on its own, but together they form a kind of shared repertoire, s o m e t h i n g p e o p l e k n o w w i t h o u t n e e d i n g i t explained. But what really counts is not just the drinks themselves, but how they're m a d e b e c a u s e n o t h i n g i s pre-mixed; nothing sits wait- ing in a bottle, ready to be handed over. It all happens there, in front of you, in a few seconds. If you move to Palermo, you find something similar, a c q u a e z a m m ù : water and anise. Sometimes, with a coffee bean dropped into the glass, the mosca, a small detail that people recognize immediately, another way of s a y i n g t h i s i s n o t o n l y a refreshing drink but almost a shared city ritual. When you look at them together, these practices feel almost obvious, and yet they point to something that has largely disappeared in other p a r t s o f t h e c o u n t r y : nowhere else, perhaps, you still find this idea that water is not final, but a starting point, something you adjust, depending on what you feel like, what the day is like, how hot it is, how sweet you want it. T h i n k i n g o f i t , t h i s i s probably what changed with industrial drinks. They made e v e r y t h i n g e a s i e r , o f c o u r s e … Y o u o p e n , y o u drink, it always tastes the same. But they also removed that small moment of inter- vention, that quick decision. Y o u n o l o n g e r m a k e t h e drink, you choose it, and you know how much we Italians love to make stuff. And so, what remains of that older habit survives in f r a g m e n t s : i n a b o t t l e o f mint syrup in the fridge, or i n a g l a s s o f o r z a t a o n a summer afternoon. In the chioschi of Catania, where n o t h i n g h a s r e a l l y b e e n " b r o u g h t b a c k , " b e c a u s e n o t h i n g e v e r f u l l y d i s a p - peared, but also on some Palermitan balcony, where a coffee bean is dropped into a f r e s h w a t e r a n d z a m m ù glass. That childhood gesture we read about at the beginning – the quick pour, the stir – was already a simplified ver- s i o n o f s o m e t h i n g m u c h older, perhaps not a tradi- tion in any formal sense, but certainly an old way of doing things that we, somehow, carried within our memo- ries. And that's what makes it linger with us, I think: not the recipes themselves, but the idea behind them. That w a t e r d o e s n ' t h a v e t o b e taken as it is, but it can be c h a n g e d a n d r e i n v e n t e d based on what we feel like and how creative we are. FRANCESCA BEZZONE The habit of adding anise (zammù) to water is typical of Palermo, and is part of the wider Italian tradition of flavored waters (Image generated using Adobe Illustrator AI) O r z a t a , Z a m m ù , a n d t h e l o s t a r t o f flavored water LA VITA ITALIANA TRADIZIONI STORIA CULTURA

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