Colatura di Alici: Cetara's Anchovy Sauce Explained

A Cetara Tradition, Not an Amalfi Coast Condiment

Ask for colatura di alici in Positano or Amalfi and you may well get a blank look, or a bottle that turns out to be sourced, quietly, from somewhere else entirely. That somewhere else is Cetara, a small fishing village tucked between Vietri sul Mare and Amalfi on the eastern end of the coast. Colatura is not a dish that belongs to “Amalfi Coast cuisine” as a whole. It belongs to Cetara specifically, the way majolica belongs to Vietri and not to Positano, or the way handmade paper belongs to Amalfi and nowhere else on the coast. Treating colatura as a generic regional condiment you can pick up anywhere between Amalfi and Positano is the single most common misunderstanding visitors bring with them.

This distinction matters practically, not just historically. If you arrive expecting colatura on every table and in every gift shop along the coast road, you will be disappointed. If you understand it as a Cetara specialty with a narrow, artisanal supply chain, you can plan around that reality: visit Cetara itself, ask at a trattoria that sources it directly, or accept that a bottle bought elsewhere may not be the real thing.

What Colatura di Alici Actually Is

Colatura di alici is a clear to amber liquid, intensely savory and salty, made from anchovies caught locally in the waters off Cetara. The process is slow and entirely manual. Fresh anchovies are cleaned, gutted, and layered in wooden barrels (typically chestnut) with generous amounts of sea salt. Weighted lids are placed on top, and the barrels are left to sit, often for many months, sometimes closer to a year. Over that time, the salt draws liquid out of the fish, and this liquid, filtered and refined, is what eventually becomes colatura.

The result is not a “fish sauce” in the way that term might suggest from other cuisines. It is used a few drops at a time, most classically stirred into the hot cooking water of spaghetti alla colatura, or drizzled sparingly over bruschetta, boiled vegetables, or grilled fish at the very end of cooking. Its role in the kitchen is closer to that of a concentrated seasoning than a poured condiment, and a little goes a long way.

Colatura is widely believed to be a direct descendant of garum, the fermented fish sauce prized across the ancient Roman world and produced at sites not far from here, including near Pompeii. The connection is compelling and often repeated, but it is worth being precise: colatura as it exists today is a Cetara tradition refined by local fishing families over generations, not a literal reconstruction of a Roman recipe. The lineage is plausible and the techniques share real similarities (salting and pressing fish to extract liquid), but colatura is its own product with its own history centered on this one village.

Spaghetti alla colatura also carries a cultural association worth knowing before you go looking for it: in Neapolitan and coastal Campania tradition more broadly, dishes built around anchovies and other seafood are strongly linked to the Christmas Eve table, when meat is traditionally set aside in favor of fish. That association means colatura is not simply an everyday pantry item treated the way olive oil or vinegar might be; it carries a layer of ritual and family meaning in the towns where it is made, which is part of why producers have never tried to scale it into something sold in every supermarket along the coast.

Fresh anchovies themselves show up on Cetara menus in other forms too, most simply as alici marinate, raw anchovy fillets cured briefly in lemon juice, oil, garlic, and parsley rather than pressed for months into colatura. Ordering both side by side at a Cetara trattoria is a useful way to taste the difference between the fresh, bright preparation and the deep, aged intensity of colatura, and to understand that colatura is one product among several built on the same local catch, not the only thing Cetara does with its anchovies. The Cetara fishing village guide covers this wider food culture, and the notebook-style piece on Cetara and its anchovy sauce goes further into how the village’s identity is tied to the fleet rather than to any single bottled product.

Cetara Is a Working Port First

It is easy, reading about colatura, to picture Cetara as a village built around a culinary product for visitors. That would be a mistake. Cetara is, first and foremost, an active fishing port. Its economy has long depended on anchovy and tuna fishing, and the boats that go out from its small harbor are working vessels, not tourist props. Colatura and other anchovy-based dishes emerged from this fishing economy as a way of using and preserving the catch, not as a product designed with tourism in mind.

That working character shapes what a visit to Cetara actually looks like. Unlike some more polished stops on the coast, Cetara does not present itself as a themed food destination with matching signage and gift shops on every corner. It is a modest, lived-in village where the fishing fleet, the smell of the harbor, and the rhythm of the boats coming in still set the tone. A guided walk through the village, such as the one covered by the vietri sul mare: Guided Walking Tour with Enzo style excursions available for the area, or simply wandering the harborfront and the narrow lanes behind it, gives a much more accurate picture of Cetara than any marketing description of “the anchovy village.”

a guided walking tour through Vietri sul Mare with a local guide is one practical way to understand the wider area’s fishing and ceramics traditions side by side, since Cetara and Vietri sit close together along this stretch of coast covered in the Vietri, Cetara and Atrani area guide.

An Artisanal Product, Not an Industrial One

Because the pressing process takes months and depends on a limited local anchovy catch, colatura production in Cetara has stayed small-scale by necessity, not by branding choice. There is no large factory turning out colatura in bulk. Individual producers and family businesses manage relatively modest volumes each year, and stock can run low or sell out, particularly toward the end of a production cycle before the next batch is ready.

This means visitors should not expect colatura to be available on demand the way a bottle of olive oil might be. If you are set on buying colatura directly from a producer in Cetara, it is worth asking locally, on arrival, what is currently available rather than assuming supply is constant. Restaurants that use it seriously, both in Cetara and in a small number of establishments elsewhere on the coast, tend to name their source producer on the menu, which is itself a useful signal: a restaurant vague about where its colatura comes from may not be using the genuine article.

The “Salted Limoncello” Shortcut, and Why It’s Misleading

A common bit of marketing shorthand describes colatura as “the salty limoncello of the coast,” something to sample as a novelty stop on the drive between Amalfi and Positano, the same way limoncello tasting has become a near-universal activity on the coast. This comparison flattens two very different situations. Limoncello, made from the Sfusato Amalfitano lemon, is produced across the coast in far greater volume and is available in essentially every town, from dedicated tasting rooms to ordinary restaurant menus. Colatura is not that. It is a niche, low-volume product tied to one village’s fishing tradition, and outside Cetara itself, and the small number of restaurants that specifically source it, it is genuinely rare rather than a roadside curiosity.

If your itinerary has you moving quickly along the SS163 coast road between Amalfi and Positano, do not assume you will stumble across colatura along the way the way you might stumble across a limoncello stand. Finding it usually requires a deliberate stop in Cetara or a specific restaurant recommendation, not a passing glance at a shop window.

How to Actually Experience Colatura in Cetara

The most reliable way to taste colatura di alici is to eat at a trattoria in Cetara itself, where spaghetti alla colatura and other anchovy-forward dishes are a normal part of the everyday menu rather than a tourist showcase. Because Cetara has no train station, like the rest of the Amalfi Coast proper, most visitors arrive by SITA bus along the coast road or by seasonal ferry, and a stop here works well as part of a longer day that also takes in Vietri sul Mare or Atrani.

Beyond the table, Cetara’s harbor and waterfront are worth time on their own terms. Watching the fishing boats, some of them still rigged for the traditional lampara night-fishing method used to catch anchovies, gives a clearer sense of where colatura actually comes from than any bottle label can. For a more active way to see this stretch of coastline from the water, a guided kayak trip along the coast from Vietri to Cetara follows the same waters the anchovy fleet works, past coves and cliffs that are hard to appreciate from the road. A longer version of the same idea, a kayak and snorkeling tour between Vietri and Erchie, adds time in the water for those who want to linger rather than just paddle through.

For a different angle on the region’s food culture, one that goes beyond a single product, a home dining experience hosted by a local family in Vietri sul Mare puts colatura and other Cetara-area ingredients in the broader context of how people here actually cook and eat, rather than presenting it as an isolated souvenir item.

Buying a Bottle to Take Home

Because colatura is a sealed, shelf-stable liquid rather than something perishable, a bottle bought directly from a producer or a trattoria in Cetara travels reasonably well in checked luggage, which makes it a more distinctive souvenir than another magnet or postcard. It is worth treating it differently from the ceramics you might pick up in Vietri sul Mare: majolica is produced across many workshops and widely available to buy and ship, while a bottle of genuine colatura is tied to a single small producer’s limited yearly batch, so what is on the shelf when you visit is what there is. If a shop or restaurant cannot say which producer the colatura came from, that vagueness is itself worth treating as a warning sign, in the same way the blog piece on Vietri, not Positano, being the region’s real ceramics town makes the point that a specific place of origin matters more than a generic regional label.

Planning a Visit Around Cetara and Its Anchovies

Cetara fits naturally into a wider exploration of the coast’s eastern villages rather than standing alone as a single-purpose stop. Combining it with Vietri sul Mare, known for its majolica ceramics tradition, and Minori and Maiori, with their beaches and pasta-making history, makes for a fuller day that reflects how varied this end of the coast is, well beyond any single product.

Those planning a first visit to the region more broadly may find it useful to start with the Amalfi Coast first-time visitor guide or a budget-focused overview before narrowing in on food-specific stops like Cetara, since transport logistics (no train, seasonal ferries, SITA buses as the backbone of getting around) shape what is realistically possible in a single day. A five-day itinerary generally has enough slack to fit in a deliberate Cetara stop; a much shorter trip focused only on Positano and Amalfi may not.

Cetara’s position at the eastern end of the coast also makes it a natural stop on the way toward, or back from, Salerno, which functions as the region’s rail, bus, and ferry hub rather than a coastal resort town in its own right. Travelers already planning to extend a trip toward the Greek temples at Paestum, whether as a day trip from Salerno or as a dedicated Amalfi Coast and Paestum extension, can often fold a Cetara stop into the same stretch of coast road without a major detour, since Cetara sits between Vietri sul Mare and the rest of the coast rather than off to one side.

The Bottom Line on Colatura di Alici

Colatura di alici rewards curiosity precisely because it resists the coast’s usual tourist shorthand. It is not a “coast-wide specialty,” not an industrial product, and not something guaranteed to be sitting on a shelf wherever you happen to stop. It is a specific, artisanal tradition belonging to one fishing village, produced in modest quantities on a slow, seasonal timeline, and best experienced by going to Cetara itself, sitting down at a trattoria that takes it seriously, and understanding it in the context of the working fishing port that produced it in the first place.