by Treve Ring | The first time you try Fernet Branca, you will hate it. The second time, perhaps assisted by a couple of cubes of ice, you’ll slowly start to warm to its black bitterness and mountain mint charm. The third time, you’re charmed. Your mind thinks clearer, your gut feels clearer and you’re already thinking about buying your own bottle of “the angriest of amaro”. You’ve become one of the countless that have become entranced by this special digestif, known for its healing ways since the late 19th century.
Fernet Branca | Milan, Italy | $30 for 500ml + 674119
Fernet Branca is an amaro – an Italian aromatic liqueur – concocted from 40 different herbs, including trendy St. John’s Wort (though most health tonics aren’t 80 proof / 40% alcohol). The secret recipe was created in 1845 in Milan by spice trader Bernandino Branca. Once the extracts from 4 continents are carefully blended, the heady liqueur sees 12 months in Slovenian oak barrels for balance and taming. Included in the mix are aloe, myrrh, gentian root, rhubarb, chamomile, cardamom, red cinchona bark, galanga, zedoary and saffron. Branca neat is intensely bitter, in the most positive way. I take mine with a cube or two of ice to mellow.
Pointedly herbal, with full-bodied dark bitter, complex spice and apothecary flavours it’s also employed by barkeeps as a heady base for cocktails. Enjoy it after a large meal to aid digestion, or, the following morning to help with the aftereffects. If that’s a bit too much bitterness for you, try a shot of Fernet Branca in a cup of real cola, as the Argentines do.
A newspaper advertisement from 1865 claimed this “renowned liqueur” to be “febrifuge, vermifuge, tonic, invigorating, warming and anti-choleric”, a drink which had furthermore helped the venerable Doctor Fernet (and several members of his family) to live for over a hundred years. It was also marketed as a cure for menstrual cramps, to aid digestion, impede nervous irritation, stimulate the appetite, treat troubles of the “splean,” cure anxiety, quell stomach aches and headaches, and arrest the effects of old age. The drink’s numerous medicinal claims came in handy during the American prohibition; as a medicine, Fernet-Branca was still legal.
Try a shot. Or, better yet, try three.
EVERY AWESOME THING WE DRANK
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AKA “bartenders’ handshake.”
While the original, Branca’s is not the only Fernet out there – Luxardo makes a nice (and nicely-priced) one, there is at least one Mexican version, and I’ve heard that the Argentines have their own Fernet Branca production facility, so popular is it there. Also worth a taste, if you can find it: Fernet Menta – an even mintier version of Fernet Branca.
The Hanky Panky is the only classic cocktail I know that has Fernet Branca as an ingredient. Juniper, mint, and every other flavour known to mankind – what’s not to love?
Some say that Fernet’s effectiveness as a hangover cure is that it tastes so awful that you immediately forget your hangover. There is both truth and lie in that claim – a little bit more lie than truth.
The original Italian way, is one ounce in morning coffee.