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Grappa has a reputation for being little more than pure firewater. It’s a tough assumption to dispute — unless you’ve spent time in Bassano del Grappa, a small town in northeast Italy where they take their grappa very, very seriously. Like seriously enough to actually dedicate a civic museum to the history of the liquor.

Last spring, I spent a drizzly, overcast day wandering Bassano, a couple hours inland from Venice and nestled below Mount Grappa. The town’s most central attraction, the large wooden bridge that spans the Brenta River, also houses a small tavern, where the shelves are lined with bottles and bottles of grappa — flavored with different fruits and aged from zero to 25 years. Order one and it comes in a simple shot glass, which you tip back quickly while sitting at a heavy workman’s table next to a small window overlooking the quick-flowing Brenta.

What does grappa taste like? Well, put me in the column of those who can’t differentiate it whatsoever from grain alcohol, but aficionados cite the aromatic qualities the liquid derives from its source material. After wine producers press their grapes, grappa makers distill the leftover stems, seeds, leaves and juice to create their product. Only in recent years has the specialty grappa business taken off, as producers sought to mellow the liquor’s considerable alcoholic power and change grappa’s reputation as the spirit of choice for long-in-the-tooth drunks and hard-living blue-collar workers.

In my household grappa has one primary purpose, and that’s to make a classic spiked coffee concoction popular all over Italy. Caffè corretto — literally “correct” or “corrected” coffee — can be made with any liquor really, but you most commonly find it with grappa, probably because the lack of a definitive strong capital-G grappa flavor leaves room for the coffee taste to remain dominant. Here’s how to make your very own caffè corretto at home:

Brew one pot of coffee using a Bialetti or other comparably sized stovetop espresso maker. Distribute the espresso evenly between two demitasse cups, add sugar to desired amount, then fill to the rim with grappa. Serve after a meal with small anise-scented biscotti.

Everybody likes a small taste of coffee after dinner; caffè corretto helps you — to coin a phrase — kick it up a notch.

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