“Strawberry and fernet are completely gorgeous bedfellows,” says Chicago bartender Tyler Fry. It’s a mixture that doesn’t make quick sense on paper, however bartenders are embracing the unlikely juxtaposition of berry sweetness and stark bitterness in quite a lot of drink codecs, from sours to tropical cocktails and past.
At its core, the mix evokes strawberry and mint, however roughed up with a bitter, brooding edge. Whereas the gentler, sweeter Branca Menta is the extra apparent companion for berries, some bartenders lean into the eucalyptus and menthol of extra austere fernets as properly.
Fry’s Rabbit Gap, for instance, created for Chicago’s Violet Hour, begins with a break up base of bitter, earthy Fernet-Branca and Chicago’s Letherbee fernet, which Fry describes as “a fernet cranked as much as 11”; he then swizzles the mix with strawberry syrup and lemon. “It’s an absolute grasp class for taking two issues which are polar opposites: ripe recent fruit, bitter brooding fernet,” he says. “They mirror one another properly.”
The fernet-and-strawberry combo isn’t precisely new. Bay Space bartender Matt Fleeger (now of beverage catering firm Rye on the Highway) recollects a fernet-strawberry drink he created for 15 Romolo at the least 10 or 15 years in the past. On the time, fernet was considered “the bartender’s handshake,” he remembers, and it was a specific obsession amongst San Francisco bartenders. Gifted a case of Branca Menta minis, Fleeger mixed it with a strawberry–balsamic vinegar shrub, sherry and citrus.
“Strawberry lemonade with mint as a garnish, that’s a well-recognized pairing for some folks,” says Fleeger. Whereas fernet by itself can overpower, pairing it with strawberry “created a bridge—it gave it someplace to go,” he explains. Including some acidity, a mixture of balsamic and white vinegars, balanced the drink. “As a substitute of the loner within the nook dancing by itself, large and highly effective,” Fleeger says, the fernet grew to become part of a harmonious entire.
Equally, bartender Devin Chapnick additionally homed in on Branca Menta’s minty tones for his Second Spring Punch, a Planter’s Punch riff he developed for Denver’s Poka Lola Social Membership, which he describes as possessing a “vaguely tropical soda fountain” vibe. He sought a late-spring drink that will remind visitors that summer season was shut, regardless of Denver’s tendency to get snow even into April and Could. “After I was considering of a ‘hopeful, but nonetheless caught in chilly climate’ drink, these flavors got here collectively,” he says. Set towards “darkish, bitter and mint[y]” Fernet-Branca, a strawberry syrup blended with pineapple and lime juice added a season-spanning, tropical tone.
Fernet additionally has the potential to shock. As a substitute of a predictable chocolate syrup, Columbus, Ohio, bartender Jesse Hubbard brewed fernet syrup, including an herbaceous counterpoint to his Ardour & Poise, an ice cream sundae–impressed drink made with muddled strawberries and olive oil–washed gin. “The botanicals give fernet an virtually medicinal high quality, which balances so properly with the sweetness of recent strawberries,” Hubbard explains. “Natural with the strawberry is a really nice expertise.”
Though he tried working with different berries—blackberry, blueberry, raspberry—strawberry was the pure companion to fernet, he recollects. “Strawberry was simply gentle sufficient,” he says. “It had sufficient sweetness, however doesn’t compete with the fernet,” whereas additionally bringing out the spirit’s “refined underlying sweetness.”
Curiously, it’s a combo that appears to work in each whispers and shouts. Whereas only a single muddled strawberry and a quarter-ounce of Fernet-Branca add nuanced complexity to Peter Arnone’s Treasure Trove, a sherry-spiked Piña Colada variation, different creators, like Fry, lean all the way in which in. Not solely does his Rabbit Gap double down on the fernet, he urges the strawberry syrup to exhibit “unapologetic fruity deliciousness,” channeling the heady aroma and sweetness of overripe fruit. With two potent substances, that is no time to go meek.
“Bashing these opposing issues towards one another,” he explains, means “you get one thing larger than the sum of its components.”
