WHAT IS FERNET?
Fernet is a style of amaro — the Italian family of bitter herbal liqueurs — set apart by how bitter it is and by a cooling menthol finish.
There is no legal definition. No Italian or European regulation says what a fernet must contain, so the category holds together by convention rather than rule. The botanicals most consistently cited are aloe, myrrh, chamomile, mint and saffron. Traditionally it's built on a grape-spirit base, left unsweetened, and colored with burnt sugar.
Fernet also runs stronger than most amari — usually 35 to 45 percent alcohol — which is part of why many people treat it as a category of its own rather than a subcategory of anything.
Letherbee produces fernet, absinthe and bësk — three traditions built on bitterness, from Italy, Switzerland and Sweden. Fernet is the Italian one.
IT WAS SOLD AS MEDICINE
Fernet-Branca was created in Milan in 1845, and it was sold as a remedy — for worms, for fever, for cholera, for menstrual pain. Fernets were still being sold in pharmacies well into the twentieth century.
Where the word itself comes from is unsettled. The most repeated theory derives it from Milanese for clean iron, after a red-hot rod said to have been plunged into the infusion. Another credits a Swedish doctor named Fernet who supposedly handed over the recipe — a story drinks historians treat as unlikely, not least because it puts him in Italy several years after the drink already existed. Nothing is confirmed.
ARGENTINA DRINKS MOST OF IT
Argentina accounts for roughly 75 percent of the world's fernet — a figure from IWSR, the drinks-industry research firm. Fernet con coca — fernet and Coca-Cola over ice — is close to a national drink there. That isn't a novelty serve; it's how an entire country drinks the category.
In the United States, fernet found its footing behind the bar rather than in front of it. San Francisco bartenders took it up in the early 2000s, and a shot of fernet became the bartender's handshake — the drink one industry person buys another, part password and part solidarity. That is still how most Americans meet it.
OURS IS SOFTER, ON PURPOSE
Most fernet is bottled around 80 proof. Ours is 70.
That was a decision, not a shortcut. It makes the bottle more sippable — something you can sit with rather than survive. As we put it when the fernet launched in 2014: "We didn't want it to feel drying or harsh."
The recipe was primarily developed by Nathan Ozug as he joined Letherbee as an assistant distiller. Saffron leads, the way it does in the fernets most people have already tasted. Rhubarb root and myrrh gum hold up the middle so the bitterness has something to sit on instead of running away with the glass. Spearmint and eucalyptus close it out with a light menthol. Licorice, fennel, cardamom, wormwood, gentian and aloe fill in behind them.
It won a Good Food Award in 2022.
LETHERBEE FERNET
70 proof. 750 mL. Available year-round.
Rhubarb root, warming spice, mint, cola. Tannic, earthy, savory, long.
HOW TO DRINK IT
Neat, after dinner. The Italian way, the one the category was built for, and the way we drink it here.
In coffee, or beside an espresso. Stirred into the cup or sipped alongside it — the bitterness and the roast are doing the same job, and they get along.
With cola over ice. The Argentine way, and the reason three quarters of the world's fernet gets drunk at all.
With a ginger ale back. How American bartenders take it.
In a cocktail. A quarter ounce is enough to cut through bourbon and ginger beer and still be the thing you taste.