Mirto is an Italian Myrtle liqueur made from myrtle berries from Sardinia. And I have my very personal Mirto experience. And no, it doesn’t have to do with me lying drunk on the floor.

In Umbria I was helping in the garden of my in laws to trim the trees and bushes. And of course I also trimmed the myrtle plant.

What I didn’t know was that the old Sardinian family friend Mario who owns sharp knives and still tells stories about the rough live as a sheepherder in the Sardinian mountains, had a special eye on that “Mirto”. Every year he waited until November to pick the dark blue berries and make his own Mirto liqueur.

My mistake ? I trimmed the myrtle. And you don’t trim a “mirto”. Mirto is a plant that grows in the wild and has to be left wild.

For one year he didn’t talk to me.

The year after in November I picked the berries and brought them home to him. Now we are friends again and I even got a bottle.