Silly me, I didn't even notice that my story on Count Niccolo Branca of Fernet-Branca was in this month's San Francisco Magazine. Here it is.
The count comes a-courting
By Camper English, Photograph by Cody Pickens
San Franciscans consume around 35 percent of all the Fernet-Branca
sold in the United States, thanks mostly to the local palate, which
tends to skew toward bitter. Recently, the chairman and CEO of Branca
International (and the great-great-grandson of Fernet’s creator), Count Niccolò Branca,
paid a visit to San Francisco to meet with bartenders and visit
high-selling accounts. We met him at Foreign Cinema, where he shared
some company lore and addressed a few persistent rumors about the brand.
Branca
says he hasn’t been to town for about 25 years, though San Franciscans
have repeatedly tried to visit his distillery in Milan, where all the
Fernet-Branca imbibed in the States is made. “Sometimes they come on
Saturday or Sunday, when the company is closed. Monday morning, we find
on the door a paper—they write, ‘I want to visit. I see where is born
the Fernet-Branca,’” the count reports. And now they can, since the
distillery and its museum have finally opened for tours (by
appointment).
Branca insists that his bitter liqueur has never
contained opiates, as some have alleged over the years. His evidence is
circumstantial but still convincing: Opiate possession is currently
prohibited in Italy, and he says the recipe for Fernet-Branca hasn’t
changed in the 164 years it’s been produced. But he assured us that a
couple of perceptions are true: one, that drinkers across the world ask
for Fernet-Branca served “San Francisco–style,” meaning a shot
accompanied by a ginger ale chaser; two, that Fernet-Branca remained
legal during Prohibition because of its medicinal qualities.
