The mystery of Fernet-Branca

SF Weekly is running a great piece on how Fernet-Branca has become a cult phenomenon in the bars of San Francisco. I'd never heard of this peculiar classic before:

As a bitter Italian aperitif of more than 40 herbs and spices, it most often gets compared to Campari and Jägermeister, though by measure of accuracy, it's equally similar to Robitussin or Pennzoil.

Sound appealing? The description of the beverage's taste is no less welcoming:

If you can imagine getting punched squarely in the nose while sucking on a mentholated cough drop, you'll have an idea of Fernet-Branca's indelicate first impressions....

"I thought I was going to die the first time I tasted it," says Antoinette Cattani [the West Coast's Fernet-Branca marketing impresario].... "I thought I was going to die. I actually might have gagged. It was terrible."

Even in the crowd of Fernet zealots her story is standard.

"I have to admit, my first experience was like, 'What the fuck?'" says 26-year-old Becky Licu, who with Cattani co-owns Barfly Promotions, a company that works with Fernet-Branca. "I wasn't prepared for something like that."

But since before Prohibition, Fernet-Branca has enjoyed a carefully cultivated reputation as a miracle aperitif, curing a range of maladies and actually surviving in drug stores during the height of Prohibition (needless to say, it was extremely popular). With the passing of the Drug Regulation Reform Act in 1978, the BATF was forced to step in and demand one of the few changes in the secret recipe of the drink in its history, substantially lowering opiate levels to just a trace amount.

And as for that secret recipe?

But on the ingredients, he has less to offer. "Oh, boy," he says. "Fernet-Branca has in it many wonderful things!"

Precisely which wonderful things has been a closely guarded secret of the Branca family for generations, but it's known that the grape base is infused with aloe, myrrh, chamomile, cardamom, and a hearty offering of saffron, a key ingredient. By accounting for an estimated 75 percent of the world's saffron consumption, the Branca family essentially controls the market price of the spice -- which at about $900 a pound is easily among the most expensive edibles in the world. A spice that also, in great enough quantity, can be made into a little something called MDMA, known to club kids as Ecstasy.

The wonderful things rumored to be in the liqueur include codeine, mushrooms, fermented beets, coca leaf, gentian, rhubarb, wormwood, zedoary, cinchona, bay leaves, absinthe, orange peel, calumba, echinacea, quinine, ginseng, St. John's wort, sage, and peppermint oil. If you ask most self-schooled Fernet authorities to list the 40 ingredients, you'll get 100 certain answers.

"Part of the reason no one has ever been able to replicate it," says Cattani, "is because you can't just get all the ingredients in one area. It comes from around the world."

Regardless of what's actually in it, SF seems to find itself a local epicenter of Fernet-Branca aficionados. Like absinthe, whose fans participate in creating an aura of underground cult inclusion about the substance, it certainly sounds like Fernet-Branca holds a unique place in the liqueur firmament. Anyone want to organize a tasting?