Bacaro unveils a summer drink menu -- with housemade cellos

Bacaro Venetian Taverna, the Italian bar and restaurant that boasts a raucous nightlife,just unleashed a summer cocktail menu filled with sangria and other fruity cocktails, perfect for sipping on the rooftop patio on the West End of Boulder's Pearl Street, as the sun sets over the Flatirons.

But while we'll never say no to a crisp, cooling libation, we're more excited about owner Corrado Fasano's enhanced cello program: The new lineup includes organic limoncello, orancello and mentacello, three traditional digestivo liqueurs, all made in-house.

Fasano is originally from Turin, where having a housemade limoncello on the menu is almost a prerequisite. "I've been in the wine business a long time, and I'm very familiar with this," he says. "We've always had limoncello on the menu."

The Bacaro limoncello, he explains, is made by combining the top layer of organic lemon skin -- "not the white part" -- with equal parts Everclear, water and sugar. Those ingredients are added in a step-by-step process that takes about a month and half.

A few weeks ago, though, he used the same process but added organic mint leaves and orange pith -- and now his orancello and mentacello are ready for consumption, available on the menu by the pour.

"They've been doing really well," Fasano says. And because of that, he's thinking about unveiling new flavors -- like watermelon, pomegranate or apple -- in the next few weeks.

We'll drink to that.