Spezzatina Rossa Licorice

Enjoy yr walk,

This is directed to my fellow American licorice aficionados: I have been guzzling down licorice, anisette, and anise products since an early age due to Italian ancestry. Amarelli, Tabu, and a slew of other concentrated licorice products abound in the smoke shops and apothecaries of Mediterranean Europe. I cannot explain to an American user who has never tried these products the intensity and to some degree, complexity, of flavor that comes out of these spezzata/tronchetti. There is nothing like it on the American market at present. Sen Sen, no longer manufactured, may have been the closest analog. Many US stores carry Swedish and German licorice products now and while this is an improvement over the American junk, the northern Europeans are basically cooking up a wheat compound and flavoring it with licorice root or anise oil and adding salt. Not a bad product but no comparison to the Italian goodness. Amarelli pellets are pure, concentrated, licorice root. I am not sure how this stuff gets made but each pellet looks like shimmering, black/brown piece of glass or obsidian. The flavor is unreal... dense licorice, smoke, nuttiness and sweet. The Amarelli Rossa spezzatina are smaller than the Amarelli spezzata but they are both delicious. If you crave licorice, get this. You'll never eat a Twizzler again.

The flavor is pronounced so if you don't like licorice, avoid these. They are not sweet. They last a while in your mouth and for me, they have the added benefit of soothing a sore throat. Even though their flavor is strong, you will still enjoy other flavors after eating one of these so if you're looking for something low calorie to occupy your mouth until meal time, these are great.

Not the same must be seconds all broken And awful taste. Not true.

Licorice had been crushed into small pieces, as it is quite brittle.