Cocktails with Fernet Branca liqueur
Fernet-Branca is an Italian brand of fernet — a bitter, aromatic amaro built on grape spirit and a formula of 27 herbs.
ABV35%
Taste profile
A cooling menthol finish trails behind an intense, almost medicinal bitterness, threaded with saffron and resinous myrrh over a medium body and very little sweetness.
How it's used
Bartenders reach for it either as a headline bitter measure, stirred, or dashed in a barspoon as an aromatic seasoning; at that smaller dose it works much like a bitters, adding menthol-saffron bite without sweetening.
Substitutes for Fernet Branca liqueur
As a barspoon accent another intensely bitter fernet or amaro stands in with tolerable loss, since its low sweetness and high strength are easily matched; but as a base or headline measure it is essentially non-substitutable, because the menthol-saffron-myrrh aromatic cannot be reconstructed from a different herb bill.
Often confused with
Fernet is a specific sub-style of amaro, drier and markedly more bitter and mentholated than most amari; a broad amaro label is correct but less precise than fernet.
