Fernet Branca
Milan’s medicinal amaro, 27 herbs deep and bitter as a verdict. It is the bartender’s handshake, the secret in a Hanky Panky, and the one bottle on the back bar most people have to be talked into twice.
Quick Facts
Flavour Profile
Primary Flavours
Tasting Notes
Menthol, bitter roots, saffron and something like the memory of cough syrup, in the best possible way: huge, cooling and impossibly long.
Storage & Handling
Sealed and upright, no refrigeration required, though a fridge-cold bottle serves better neat.
Usage
In cocktails it works in barspoon doses: the Hanky Panky’s famous seasoning, the Toronto’s whisky counterweight, a dash to darken a Manhattan. Neat and cold it is the digestif of last resort after a long dinner, and the traditional end-of-shift shot of the bar trade.
Milan, 1845
Fernet Branca has been made in Milan since 1845, invented, as the story goes, as a medicine, and it has never entirely stopped tasting like one. A secret recipe of some 27 botanicals including myrrh, saffron and aloe, aged in oak, it is the deep end of the amaro pool: bracingly bitter, mentholated and vast, the flavour equivalent of a cold plunge.
The recipe has never been published, and the botanicals that get named are named by Branca rather than confirmed by anybody else. That is part of the appeal rather than a complaint.
A Barspoon at the Savoy
Its cocktail immortality rests on a barspoon. Ada Coleman seasoned a sweet gin martini with it at the Savoy and created the Hanky Panky; the Toronto does the same trick with rye whisky. In both, fernet plays the role bitters play elsewhere, at ten times the volume.
Coleman is said to have taken the drink’s name from the customer’s verdict on it. Her spec pours a barspoon rather than a measure, and scaling that up does not give a more emphatic Hanky Panky. It gives a different drink, in which the gin has stopped being the subject.
The Handshake and the Coca
Around the bar trade it became a culture of its own: the bartender’s handshake, a shot of Branca shared between colleagues as a badge of belonging. Argentina, meanwhile, adopted the bottle as a national obsession, where fernet con coca, fernet lengthened with cola over ice, outsells almost everything else. Both traditions are correct.
Argentina takes the large majority of what Branca makes, which is a remarkable position for an Italian digestif and not one anybody in Milan planned for.
Fernet Is a Style, Not a Trademark
Fernet is a category of amaro rather than a brand, characterised by a dry, mentholated bitterness and very little sugar, and several houses make one. Branca is simply the bottle that became the shorthand. Branca Menta, from the same producer, adds a great deal of peppermint and sugar and is a far easier drink, though it will not stand in for the original where a spec asks for it. If a recipe says fernet and names no bottle, it means this one.
Top Tips
- Dose it like bitters, not like a liqueur: a barspoon seasons a cocktail, a full measure commandeers it.
- Keep it somewhere cold if you drink it neat: the chill files down its sharpest edges.
- If the first taste reads as medicine, give it three more tries across a month. It is a famously acquired taste, and famously acquired.
Possible Substitutions
- Another fernet-style amaro: the category has grown, though Branca remains the reference
- A dark amaro plus a drop of creme de menthe: an emergency approximation of the menthol-bitter profile
Production Method
A secret blend of some twenty-seven herbs, roots and spices from four continents, reportedly including myrrh, saffron, chamomile and aloe, macerated in spirit and rested in Slavonian oak. The Branca family still guards the formula.
Common Questions
What does Fernet Branca taste like?
Menthol, bitter roots and herbs, saffron and a long, cooling finish: imagine bitters promoted to a full spirit. It is a genuinely acquired taste, and most people need three or four meetings before the friendship takes.
Why do bartenders drink it?
The end-of-shift Branca shot became the trade’s handshake: bracing, restorative after a night of sugary drinks, and a signal of belonging. Order one in a good cocktail bar and watch the bartender’s expression change.
What is fernet con coca?
Argentina’s national serve: a generous pour of fernet over ice, topped with cola. The cola’s sweetness and the fernet’s bitterness meet in the middle, and the country drinks more Branca than Italy does.
Is Branca Menta the same thing?
No. Branca Menta comes from the same producer but carries a great deal of peppermint and a great deal more sugar, which makes it much easier to drink and much less bitter. It suits being poured neat over ice, and it does not substitute in a Hanky Panky or a Toronto.