I don’t take distillery tours much anymore. In the early years of my career as a spirits and cocktail scribbler, such visits were sought after as a wellspring of knowledge. I was learning about my subject. But, after fifty or so excursions, it grows old. Let’s just say that, broadly speaking, when you’ve seen one still, you’ve seen them all.
But the prospect of eyeballing the inner workings of certain unique liquor brands can still excite. One such is Fernet-Branca, the exceedingly bitter Italian amaro that has been steadily fetishized by bartenders and cocktail nerds for going on twenty years now. Its secret recipe of 27 herbs, roots and spices is as famous in booze circles as the Colonel’s 11 herbs and spices is in the fast food world. So, when I recently booked a trip to Milan, where Fernet has always been made, I knew I had to pay a call to see what I could see. With the help of friend and colleague Elayne Duff, I gained entry. Joining me were Elayne, her husband Philip and a collection of booze journalists from Spain and Greece.
Before taking in Branca’s present, some of us paid our respects to Branca’s past by visiting the Cimitero Monumentale. There, under an enormous monument, lies Bernardino Branca, who formulated the potion back in 1845, as well as various other assorted Brancas.
The Fratelli Branca Distillery takes up an entire block north of Milan’s city center. The building is half working distillery, half museum dedicated to Branca history. That history is considerable and takes up several large rooms, which are filled with past advertising campaigns, family portraits, vintage bottles, a diorama featuring a typical Branca office (Brancas! They’re just like us!), and a custom Branca roadster.
One room could have been named “A History in Swag.” Anyone who thinks liquor freebies are a new phenomenon will be disabused of that notion by a quick turn around this room. The Brancas knew how to market themselves. I doubt they had an equal in merchandising paraphernalia. The glass cabinets were chock full of vintage Branca pocketknives, corkscrews, rulers, pencils, pens, notebooks, teapots, fans, briefcases, clocks and elaborate calendars which were issued every year.
Another room was filled with old bottles of every variety. Here you could see that the Fratelli Branca—as was the habit of most 19th-century Italian distillers—once made many other products besides fernet, including Fiori Alpini, Doppio Punch al Rhum, an Americano, something called Bitter Franca, a dry vermouth and everyone’s favorite, Prunella, a prune liqueur. None of these are coming back. And, in regards to Prunella, let’s count our blessings.
Some cabinets served as penalty boxes for bottles that the Branca family considers fakes, pretenders to the fernet throne. The packaging of some of these rival fernets were slavishly imitative, copying the Fernet label in many details. Some, instead of using the famous Fernet logo of an eagle astride the globe, substituted other animals like dolphins. Somehow, these beasts didn’t have the same visual impact.
Today, the company is known for just two brands, the flagship Fernet-Branca, which is the most renowned fernet in the world; and Branca Menta, an easier-to-take mint-flavored version that was introduced in 1963. Menta was supposedly inspired by opera singer Maria Callas, who took her fernet with mint and sugar. It was once called Fernet Menta, but is now known as Branca Menta, with no “Fernet” in the name.
Branca Menta was brought about to get more people to drink Branca juice, because, as you might imagine, Fernet isn’t for everyone. Menta includes sugar, whereas Fernet does not, its minimal sweetness derived solely from what is found naturally in its botanicals. The strategy has worked. Our tour guides told us that, by the end of 2023, the company was on track to sell one bottle of Branca Menta for every bottle of Fernet Branca. This was surprising news to me. I’ve always thought of Menta as a distant also-ran in the Branca family of products.
Fernet Branca is, like most Italian bitters and amari, a secretive brand. This inspires questions in a journalist. And I asked my share. The fernet category of liqueur is not legally defined in Italy. This leads to confusion as to what, exactly, makes a fernet a fernet. One guide said it was an “infusion of herbs, spices and roots.” Well, yes. But so are most amari and bitters. What sets fernets apart from the herd? The guide concluded that, in the amaro world, fernets are more bitter than your average amaro and have less sugar. Fair enough.
Another thing that often sets fernets apart is the alcohol content. Fernets usually have a higher abv than other amari. But that’s has changed in certain markets. The current alcohol level of Fernet-Branca in most countries is 39%. However, the company has been testing a new abv of 35% in Germany, Greece and Albania.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: On the tour, I, along with the other journalists present, were told that by the end of the year, the 35% level will be uniform worldwide. However, on Feb. 1, I was contacted by Nicola Olianas at Fernet-Branca, who had read this article. Olianas, speaking for the Branca family, said there were no plans to change the abv on a global scale.]
I received another mild shock when I asked the tour guide if he had ever heard of a popular American drink called the Hard Start—a shot made of equal parts Fernet-Branca and Branca Menta that was cooked up by New York bartender Damon Boelte at the Brooklyn bar Prime Meats in 2010. The guide told me he hadn’t heard of the Hard Start. He added, however, that he’d been serving the same drink, under the name the Perfect Branca, for the past 17 years. That would put its birth at 2006, four years before the Hard Start. (The longer I cover the cocktail beat, the more I realize there’s nothing new under the sun.)
After a brief stop in the spacious tasting room, which has wall-to-wall carpeting the exact shade of Branca Menta’s label, we headed to the distillery. That day, they were making Caffè Borghetti, their espresso liqueur, which was launched in 2001. The air smelled overwhelmingly of coffee.
Fernet-Branca’s many botanicals are all infused separately, some by cold infusion in alcohol, some in hot water. (A few ingredients are infused together.) Branca is the largest buyer of saffron in the liquor industry and there was an entire room in the distillery dedicated to saffron infusions. For some reason, we had to leave our cell phones outside before entering this room.
Once the various liquid ingredients are blended by the Master Blender (there is only one Master Blender, and he’s been on the job for many years; I did not get a name), it is stored for 12 to 15 months in enormous wooden vats that rise up to the ceiling. The fernet is not aging per se—it extracts no additional flavor from the old barrels. It is, rather, maturing, the various flavors in the mix coming together as one.
There was another, much larger barrel in the distillery, big enough that it could be repurposed as a house. It had it’s own room, reached via a rickety, metal, spiral staircase. It is used to age the Branca brandy brand Stravecchio. Stravecchio was only the second product the Branca family released, after the Fernet. It only reached the U.S. in 2019. Every bottle of Stravecchio—so Branca says—rests for three months in the gigantic cask, which is the largest barrel in Europe used for aging spirits.
Classic Branca. Always has to be in a class by itself.
An Ensslin Addendum
In my recent post about the life of pre-Prohibition cocktail bartender and author Hugo R. Ensslin, I had figured out where the man was buried. But I didn’t have time to visit his gravesite before publishing the story. Yesterday, I made the time, driving to Gate of Heaven cemetery in Westchester County, New York, with fellow cocktail historian Martin Doudoroff.
My initial instinct was to look for the a plot named Quigley, after Ensslin’s in-laws. Ensslin’s death notices talked of him being buried in the family plot. Since Hugo immigrated from Germany as a teenager and had no blood relatives in America, I assumed “family plot” meant his in-laws’ burial plot. But I had been thinking about Hugo’s fate all backwards. Rather than Ensslin being buried in Quigley ground, the Quigleys were buried on Ensslin land. There was no Quigley headstone in the area where Gate of Heaven records indicated Hugo was supposed to be. But there was a simple stone with the Ensslin name.
As far as I can figure it, Ensslin must have bought a plot in Gate of Heaven in 1925 when his wife Margaret died at the age of 38 and then decamped to Wilkes-Barre, PA, with his mother-in-law to work at the Hotel Sterling. When Hugo killed himself in January 1929, he joined Margaret at Gate of Heaven. When mother-in-law Ellen Quigley died in 1931, she, too, was laid to rest in Westchester.
The stone doesn’t list any specific names beyond “Ensslin.” Nor are there any birth and death dates on the marker. There’s just a cross and the words “Rest In Peace.”
Odds and Ends…
Andrew Bohrer, noted Seattle bartender, will be stepping behind the stick at The Doctor’s Office one day a week, on Sundays… Little Jumbo, a neighborhood cocktail bar in Asheville, North Carolina, is a good place for warming winter cocktails of the brown spirits variety, including the Don Lockwood, Pendergast and a current special of a Nocino-laced Manhattan. There’s also a Manhattan Service, that serves two… Also recommended in Asheville is Cultura, a restaurant that is an extension of Wicked Weed Brewing and is focused on culture-based foods. Their tasting menu, served only on Fridays and Saturdays, currently features one of the best pasta dishes I’ve ever had, a Spaghetti with Manilla Clams, Stone Crab, Guanciale, and Sunburst trout bottarga… Brad Thomas Parsons is writing about one of my favorite subjects, regional potato chips, as well as other Seattle-based munchies over at his Substack newsletter Last Call… I also learned from another Last Call post that Dick Bradsell, the late godfather of the London cocktail scene, co-wrote the English Beat song “Twist and Crawl”! The more you know… I can testify that the Yonkers location of Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana, the only New York State location of the New Haven pizza icon, is doing a good job.
A Visit to the Fernet-Branca Distillery
I don’t feel the following statement is hyperbole:
The only mint liqueur you’ll ever need is Branca Menta.
I haven’t found a single drink (that calls for menthe) it doesn’t upgrade. The only downside—if it’s a downside at all—is that Branca Menta won’t dye your drink (or tongue) a lurid, worrisome green. I suspect this is why Branca Menta is eclipsing Fernet Branca: it’s quite useful. (There is one, totally different mint liqueur—peppermint, specifically—called Get 31, which I also hold in high esteem. It’s from France and makes a spectacular Stinger, but it’s unobtanium in nearly many markets.)
As for Fernet Branca monkeying around with their proof, an immediate backlash might encourage them to rethink their choices.
I applaud your diligence with finding the Ensslin grave. Good stuff! Thank you!