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New Fernets in the San Francisco Chronicle

In the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday, December 18th, I have a story on the category of fernet.

Leopold Brothers has a modern formulation of fernet that should be hitting story shelves this Wednesday afternoon, and Tempus Fugit Spirits has a vintage recreation of fernet coming in the new year.

(Photo by John Storey)

From the story:

While many people call for the bitter liqueur Fernet-Branca by the shorthand "Fernet," they should probably specify "Branca." Fernet is not a single product but a type of spirit, and its ranks are about to become more populated.

Angelico Fernet, from local importers Tempus Fugit Spirits of Novato, launches early next year, while Fernet Leopold, from Leopold Bros. of Denver, should be available this week. They join examples from Stock, Luxardo and R. Jelinek.

At the end of the story, there is a delicious cocktail from Darren Crawford of Bourbon & Branch  and Tony Nik's and Scott Brody of Per Diem. It contains fernet, Carpano vermouth, Domaine de Canton, lime juice, and ginger beer.

Go read it!

(Photo by Erick Wong)

Fiery Winter Drinks at the Starlight Room in San Francisco

Last night I went to sample a few of the new cocktails at the Starlight Room in San Francisco. 

One of them is the Pitch Black Amsterdam, made with brandy, genever, ROOT liqueur, and a splash of Frangelico. Bar Manager Joel Teitelbaum tops it with a vanilla foam (vanilla, eggwhite, lemon juice) and then brulees that with Angostura bitters lit on fire. (You may remember this technique from Jeffrey Morgenthaler.)

Here is a video of that at the Starlight Room. 

 

We tried that drink (good, but mostly notable for the pyrotechnics), the Prize Pumpkin made with both pumpkin liqueur and pumpkin ale, and my favorite of the trio, the Winter Flip made with cinnamon-infused pisco, calvados, apple juice, and a whole egg. 

It's a drink and a meal. 

 

Book Review: Bitters by Brad Thomas Parsons

This is a review of the new book Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All, with Cocktails, Recipes, and Formulas by Brad Thomas Parsons. 

It contains pretty much just what you want out of a bitters book - the history of bitters, recipes for bitters, and recipes for cocktails that use bitters. 

It first delves into the history of bitters as cure-all medicines before the were regulated by the Pure Food & Drug act of 1906. It's not a huge discussion and I'm fairly up on my history of bitters so I can't say I learned much that I didn't already know here.

The book then describes the history of some classic bitters brands including Abbott's, Angostura, and Peychaud's, before moving into the modern era. It has an excellent list of about 20 new bitters brands launched since Regans' Orange Bitters in 2005.  I've found myself referreing to this section more than once already. The book describes each brand, who makes it, and what flavors are available.

The next section is on making your own bitters. It has a list of bittering agents - the first time I've seen that list in one place - along with information on where to buy ingredients and tips on drying your own citrus peels for later infusions. There are recipes for about 15 types of bitters ranging from Apple to Root Beer.

There are then recipes for more than 80 cocktails split between vintage ones and modern creations by well-known bartenders. There are a few food recipes too. 

The book finishes with a resource guide of books to read and the websites of bitters makers, retailers, and "spirited sites" including Alcademics. Hey, thanks for the shout-out! 

 

 

Rome and Amalfi Miscellany

Here are some random pictures and notes from my trip to Rome and the Amalfi Coast with Pallini Limoncello. 

Rome is a very, very crowded city, especially around tourist attractions. On our second day there we had a guide who was amazing and knew all the ways around the lines. That's the only way to do it. 

I had a gelato at San Crispino, supposedly the best in the world. I can't vouch for that, but my two flavors - whisky and honey- were delicious. 

The view from the King Victor Emmanual II memorial is great. 

(Look kids, it's the Vatican!)

The Colliseum is a lot bigger than I had imagined. I was thinking it was about three stories tall and could fit a couple thousand people. Nope. It's huge, you can see it from everywhere, and it sat 55,000 people.

 (This is the view from my hotel room on the last night, the Hotel Palazzo Manfredi. Wowza.)

(Seating went all the way up to the top. The stage at the end used to cover the whole floor. The stuff below is where the animals and gladiators were kept between fights.)

We went to a bakery called Panella that makes old Roman-style bread once used for travelers. Naturally, they were out of it on the day we went. 

Fried artichokes are a thing in Rome. We had them a few times. 

The Pantheon is an architectural marvel. This and other ancient temples only survive today because they ripped out all the pagan stuff and replaced it with Christian stuff. Good thing gods are interchangeable. 

(At night, outside.)

(Inside, daytime. There is a hole in the roof. This acts as a sundial as well.)

We stopped for an espresso nearby at Eustachio, again supposedly one of Rome's best. Their trick is to use some sort of sugar foam. Maybe they run it through the milk steamer. 

Pallini also used to make a fernet!

I bought a Crodino on the Amalfi Coast. It tastes like a non-alcoholic Campari & Soda. Delicious!

I also bought something called China Martini, which I'm guessing is a sweet vermouth derivative using quinine. 

And speaking of bitter, while at a restaurant called Sol De Riso, I tasted all the amari on the menu that I previously hadn't tried. 

• Amaro de Capo - a locally made amaro with notes of quinine, orange, and saffron. Pretty good. 
• Radis - Tastes like cola, quinine, orange. You could imagine mixing it with soda water to make a cola.
• Don Baioro - Very Chrismassy. Tastes of prune/raisin, clove, molasses, and coffee.
• Petrus - Perfumy yet incredibly bitter. We took pictures of everyone's expression while tasting it. Here was mine. 

What is Fernet?

By far the most famous type of fernet is Fernet-Branca, but there are other fernets on the market. So what is fernet, generally speaking? 

(Thanks to commenter Scott who wrote in on the "Shhh It's a Secret" seminar at Tales of the Cocktail write-up for asking the question that I never thought to ask.) 

I asked John Troia, co-founder of Tempus Fugit Spirits. They have a fernet coming out, Angelico Fernet. Here's what he says.

I’m sure there may be varying degrees of opinion, but we feel that the following is reasonably consistent with our research and that of others:

Although categorized under Italian Amari (Bitters), Fernet is its own bitter category and is most often listed underElixir/Elisir in Italian liquor manuals, when not simply called ‘Fernet’.The extremely bitter (amarissimo is an apt description) concoction has its origins most often attributed to Bernadino Branca, who commercialized it in 1845, but conflicting data conjectures its creator(s)as : a mythical doctor/collaborator of Branca from Sweden named Fernet (possibly as an off-shoot of the older and better tasting ‘Swedish Bitters’); Maria Scalia, the wife of Bernadino Branca who was a master herbalist and self-taught doctor; a monk named Frate Angelico Fernet  who may have been responsible as the origin of many herbaltonics and elixirs (Fernet being a historical French Burgundy  surname - pronounced Fair-Nay- and which underwent many spelling transformations); and a modern Italian liquorist text-book reference to it having originated somewhere in Hungary. 

Fernet was most likely created to counteract the effects of Cholera and Malaria, but went on to be used for everything from a laxative to hangover cure. Today, as in the past, there are many Fernet producers (with the largest making so much of the world’s production that some actually believe Fernet is a brand-name), but mostly made in tiny quantities for local rural Italian consumption. The various known recipes most typically share ingredients such as Aloe, Saffron, Quinquina, Gentian, Anise, Angelica, Mint and the odd Larch/White Agaric, a type of tree-bark loving mushroom (once also known as Spunk) rarely used or even found commercially outside of Italy. This latter ingredient (along with Saffron) seems to define and create the backbone of the best Fernets; Agarico mondo has an odd, bitter taste that becomes lightly mentholated on the mid-palate and was used to treat night-sweats.

According to Abruzzo’s local doctor, pharmacist, wine-maker, distiller and bitter-maker Marchese Dottore Egidio Niccolo Antonio d'Alesasndro di Trasmondi, the best Fernets have little or no sugar in them as it impairs digestion.

Thanks John - any questions? 

Shhh! It's a Secret

These are notes on the Shhh! It's a Secret seminar at the Tales of the Cocktail convention.

• For alcohol products you have to list your ingredients, method, etc. to the TTB before approval - the whole recipe, in gernal. This isn't the same for non-alcoholic products. 
• Lillet is in a category of tonic wine, rather than vermouth. 
• In 1886 John Pemberton released a syrup with cola nuts and coca- Coca Cola. But one year before that there was John Pemberton's Nerve Wine Coca, a "tonic wine". This was changed based on the coming backlash against alcohol.  In 1863 in France, Vin Mariani (containing both coca and quinquina/quinine) was also a tonic wine, that may have been the inspiration for Pemberton.
•  Before the discovery of the new world, Europe didn't have cinchona.  (Or phyloxera, but that's another story.) Tonics and medicines from local communities in both the new and old world start to become branded medicines/health tonics. 
• Cinchona name comes from the name of a Spanish governor to Peru, the Marquee of Quinquon (sp?) whose wife was ill and this tonic helped her. 
• Quinquina was a selling point for tonic wines. 
• Back in the day, Lillet made many products, not just the fortified wine we know today. 
• Lillet contains wine from 3 grapes, macerations of cinchona, sweet and bitter orange peels from Haiti, Morocco, and Spain, and several additional (SECRET!) Boredeaux fruits. There are ten  ingredients. 
• Jackie Patterson says you can see the size of the word "Kina" or "quinquina" getting smaller over the years in advertising. This indicates the brands coming into their own rather than advertising the base ingredient (so, similar to Pepsi-Cola becoming just Pepsi), so they promote the brand name versus the ingredient. 
• Rumor has it that Lillet has changed; that the quinquina/bitterness decreased when it changed from Kina Lillet to Lillet in name. Patterson says the blender says "it's never been a bitter, what it adds to the flavor of Lillet is something akin to roundness and depth."  That said, they aknowledge that the alcohol percent was lowered and it became less sweet. 
• To make Gran Classico, they pour alcohol over a big sort of funnel filled with herbs to slowly extract the flavors. It gets its color and flavor from percolation. Then it is lightly filtered and sugar is added. "This is very typical to what you would have tasted a couple hundred year ago."
• Fernet is a spirit category, not a brand name. 
• It is possible that fernet was originally created by one monk with a name something like Frangellino Fernet. 
• Fernet contains a mushroom that sucks the flavors off the trees that it grows on, usually larch trees. 

Laptop running out of power - I'll add more later!

Visiting Trinidad: Doubles, Butterflies, Sharks, and Parties

Luckily on my recent trip to Trinidad we didn't spend the whole time inside the distillery. We took our rum to go and this is what we did.

The only bar I was able to visit was Shaker's, on my first night on the island. It was an indoor/outdoor place with lots of Angostura branding and food.

One street food in Trinidad is Doubles: taco-sized bread with Indian chic peas. I added hot pepper sauce to mine - and every time after that. So good.

The night after our distillery visit, we went to a welcome party at Wayne Yip Choy's little house by the water.

There they gave us a Carnival preview with stilt-dancers,

India-meets-Africa professional dance troupes,

and the requisite bevy of beautiful babes in butterfly wings.

The next day the journalists took a trip to the beach. Trinidad, unlike most Caribbean islands, doesn't need your tourist dollars: it is an oil-rich nation. Port of Spain is the large city on the island, and all the big hotels are business hotels, not resort hotels. Residents of Trinidad (at least where we were) live in the city then head to the beaches on the weekends. 

On the way there we stopped at a coconut stand to drink fresh coconut water from the shell. They split it over with a machete then hand you a straw. After you drink the water they'll split the coconut open you can eat the white meat. I tried it and the texture was very clingy and slimy like an oyster.

When we got to the ocean - a little under an hour drive over a windy mountaintop road- we had a great time by the ocean. We were at Maracas Beach, apparently one of the most popular. The waves are really fun to bodysurf on.

The local delicacy is Bake 'N Shark, pronouced like "bacon shark" and sometimes called Shark 'N Bake, but meaning fried shark. Shark apparently is an inexpensive fish so this is a cheap-ish snack. You eat it like a hamburger with a big station of sides and sauces.

As a vegetarian I did not partake of this delicacy. Most of the time I ate roti and other Indian foods, which were available at pretty much every meal. But one snack I tried on the beach was this fresh pineapple in a mild pepper marinade sauce. It was amazing and I want to learn to made the marinade at home.

Later that night we took in this massive steel drum competition called Panarama. It was in a giant stadium and the bands were massive - the "medium" sized bands probably had 50 people in them.

After the Angostura Global Cocktail Challenge competition the next day, we went to a pre-Carnival party at Brian Lara's house. Brian Lara is a famous cricket player from Trinidad, and from the size of his house and property a very rich one too. There things just got goofy.

And then it was time for me to leave early the next morning. Thanks much to Angostura for hosting a fantastic trip. When you invite me back (hint, hint) I'll make sure to stay for Carnival. If it's anything like the warm-up, that is one heck of a party.

Angostura Rums Distillery Visit

In my last post I talked about the history and production of Angostura Bitters. In this one I'll talk about the history and production of Angostura Rums. I visited the distillery on Trinidad in March 2011.

History of Angostura Rums

The House of Angostura was in the bitters business since 1824, but didn't enter the rum business until after their move to the island of Trinidad in 1875. At first they were dealing with bulk rums rather than distilling their own, but in 1945 they purchased their own distillery. It wasn't until the 1960s that the profits from rum outsold those of bitters. In 1973 they purchased the Fernandes Distillery located next door and incorporated those brands (including Vat19) into their production.

According to the film we watched at the distillery, in 1991 they had a production capacity of 22 million liters of alcohol per year. According to their website, it's now 50 million liters. Wow! The distillery takes up 20 acres of land. They make both their own brands, rum for other people, and sell bulk rum. More on the other brands later.

Production of Angostura Rums

Currently all the products are made on enormous column stills. They say they've been experimenting with some pot still stuff, but they're not making anything yet.

No sugar has been produced on the island since 2003, so all the molasses to make these rums is purchased on the open market. (10Cane, which is also made on Trinidad but I don't believe at this distillery, uses some fresh local sugar cane juice in their rum blend.) We tastes molasses off the grate where it is poured into the system- it reminded me of old-style black licorice.

(Grate through which molasses is poured.)

For different rum products made at the distillery they use different strains of yeast. Their barrels are ex-bourbon barrels. These are reused to age rum three times before they're discarded or recycled. We weren't allowed to enter the aging warehouse as they said it's a bonded property. From outside, it didn't look nearly big enough to age all the rum produced here, but they said it's their only aging warehouse it turns out they have five other aging warehouses also.

For further reading, I suggest Ed Hamilton's write up on MinistryOfRum.com. 

The Line of Rums

After the distillery tour we did a tasting of some of the rums with Master Distiller Jean Georges. Oh, by the way, the line of Angostura rums is finally coming to the US soon, and they are tasty. 

The 3-year reminded me (keep in mind my tasting notes aren't supposed to make sense to anyone but me) of the insides under-ripe banana peels, with a soft creaminess that wasn't too vanilla-y. 

The 5-year, interestingly, is actually filtered to remove some of its color. It has the caramel-vanilla notes you'd expect from a rum of this age, but with a nice fuzzy texture. I was also picking up a lot of notes of liquid limestone. The finish had some mint/oregano spice to it and it was just a touch tannic. 

The 7-year rum is actually the 5-year rum which is blended and then put back into casks to marry for 2 years. The nose is all warm caramel apple and cheesecake pie crust on this one, with a spicier mouth with notes of peppermint. It's also oily in texture and slightly ashy. 

One thing Jean Georges said about all of their rums is that they have a short finish. "None of our spirits overstay their welcome. They do their thing and move on, leaving you to want another sip."

I am not sure if their "single barrel" is coming to the US or not, but I enjoyed drinking that during my visit. Most of the time I drank that or the 7-year-old. When I wanted a mixer, I'd mix it with their soft drink Lemon Lime & Bitters, locally known as LLB. (Note to Angostura: you should consider bringing this to the US also in select markets.)

Angostura also produces Zaya rum, The Kraken spiced rum (according to MinistryOfRum), Vat 19, and White Oak (which is very popular in Trinidad).