The story of how an obscure Italian liquor distilled in the mountains of Tuscany came to be the tipple of choice in Brighton and Hove is surprisingly simple.

How the couple who brought the drink to these shores hustled and bustled, and generally blagged their way to success, is straight out of Only Fools and Horses.

It started almost ten years ago, when Sammy Berry was introduced to the potent brandy-based drink while working as a masseuse on a ski resort in Colorado. She fell in love with it.

When she returned to England she was unable to find the sweet and spicy nectar on sale anywhere, so decided to get a few casks flown in for personal consumption.

Careful study of the bottle's label led her boyfriend Poul Jensen to an ancient family-run distillery headed by Enrico Tuoni, whom he now affectionately calls The Don.

Sammy, 35, recalls: "Poul's mum speaks fluent Italian so she rang up and ordered a couple of cases. They didn't last long so we ordered five more, and then ten more.

"He must have thought, crazy English people, what's going on?', but he was clearly chuffed the orders kept coming in and has repaid our loyalty."

Soon after, Sammy and Poul took over the St James Tavern in Kemp Town and the orders shot up. Customers loved the drink and soon other pubs were trying to get hold of it.

"We went around all the pubs in Brighton and they were so enthusiastic because they could see how passionate we were about the drink. Soon about 30 pubs were stocking it."

Part of the popularity of the drink can be attributed to its versatility. Mix it with ginger beer - something called a Tuscan Mule - and it becomes a refreshing alternative to Pimms.

Mix it with coffee and it becomes a Tuacaccino. It is now the core ingredient of more than 150 cocktails, almost all of them invented by bar staff in Brighton and Hove.

When the pair left the pub in 1999 they set up Danes Ltd - Poul is half Danish, his dad introduced Danish bacon and Lurpak to Britain - and started importing Tuaca as a business.

Other people had started to show an interest in importing Tuaca themselves, says Sammy, but by then the entrepreneurial couple had already paid a visit to Tuscany.

Poul, 40, says: "It was like joining the mafiosi. When we arrived I was taken into a room with all the men of the family and Sammy was left talking to the secretary.

"I remember shaking a lot of hands. In fact the first four years of our "exclusive distribution deal" was really all on a handshake. I half-expected to wake up with a horse's head in my bed.

"But it was as good as the written contract. The Don obviously liked us because he could see how passionate we were about the drink and didn't give anyone else a look in."

Sammy says: "At first we had nowhere to store the cases, so they were piled up under our double mattress. There were hundreds of them. I had Tuaca box steps up to my bed.

"If you sat up too quickly, you would whack your head on the ceiling. We started going into all the pubs we could find and bringing in Tuaca for them to try.

"I think we got a lot of people interested because they could see our enthusiasm. They could see how passionate we were. It helped that Brighton is such an openminded place."

"We were a pair of idiots, a pair of idiots!", Poul interjects. "We didn't know what we were doing. How this business got started was comical, mate, absolutely comical."

"We were starting to import more and more cases and we realised we would have to pay some sort of import tax. So we get in the car and bomb down to Newhaven.

"There we were knocking on the door at Customs and Excise saying: How much do we owe you?'

They didn't have a clue. No one had just turned up at their office before!"

"It had all seemed a bit too easy," he adds, rubbing his hands together.

"We were just putting in the order, then getting some bloke at Gatwick to pick them up. Lovely jubbly.

"When I had to pick the stuff up myself it was just a case of back seats down and pile it in. All you could see were these yellow boxes heading down the M23.

"People used to toot us in their car because they knew Brighton was going to be stocked up again."

Sammy reflects: "But there isn't a book telling you how to import, or classes you can go to. The whole thing was trial and error, learning by our mistakes."

Tuaca is now sold in almost 95 per cent of Brighton and Hove's bars, pubs and clubs. It is sold nationally but no other city has yet taken the drink to its heart in quite the same way.

"We tried our luck in London but the attitude there was completely different. We were not prepared to play games so we decided early-on not to target London.

"This year we have set our sights on Edinburgh, Leeds and Bristol, places with a big student population and their own sense of identity.

All three still have independent bars and pubs."

Danes Ltd is now run from a single-room office in a side street in Kemp Town. The business still has a wonderfully grassroots, seat-ofthe- pants feel about it.

Tuaca is now owned by Brown Forman - the owners of Jack Daniels and Southern Comfort - who agreed to give Sammy and Poul exclusive UK rights to Tuaca until 2008. Sammy says: "That was a real break for us. They could have refused to renew our contract but Enrico persuaded them to look after that couple in England'."

But the future is looking good for the couple.

Last week Poul proposed to Sammy in a helicopter flying over New York, an occasion which, fittingly, was not without it's comedy value."

"The helicopter was so loud I couldn't hear a word he was saying," says Sammy. "When I finally twigged, of course, I said yes'."

Danes Ltd now imports 6,000 boxes a year to the UK, with Brown-Forman handling the distribution arm of the business from a depot in Southampton.

That has given Poul and Sammy more time to concentrate on developing the brand, which they do through a series of events and consumer and trade shows.

You get the impression the couple have a protective instinct towards Tuaca.

Poul says: "The Don told us, Tuaca needs to meet the people. At the moment it's only a baby.' And that's one of the thing we are proudest of. We are bringing it to the people."

Sammy concludes: "The thing I am most proud about is the link with have made between Brighton and a drink. That's something that will not go away."

May 17, 2005