The Myth of Fernet:
The saga of Fernet, and its cultlike popularity, says a lot about San Francisco – Part 4 of 8
Nate Cavalieri - December 21, 2005
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 "I had a man who just called me who was 67 years old who stayed on the phone with me for an hour, talking about what the drink meant to him," says Cattani. "About how he always had to take it as a kid and it's been in his family as a medicine. He keeps one [bottle] in the kitchen and one in the bathroom."
Hemingway hated it, Hunter Thompson lampooned it, and Sean Penn told an interviewer that it treated him to the best shits of his life.
Like any urban legend, Fernet-Branca is anything you want it to be. But no one knows exactly what it is.
"There are only a small amount of people in the world who know the recipe to Fernet-Branca, and they are no telling," says Ricardo Destesano, the CEO of Branca Products' Argentine division and the Branca family spokesman, who probably knows but is no telling. He sounds, during this 7 a.m. call from Buenos Aires, a bit like a Fernet-addled Roberto Benigni. "Argentina loves Fernet! And then, San Francisco is loving Fernet very much also!"
 He's not kidding about Argentina, a part of the world that actually shames San Francisco with its devotion to the drink. There, a million cases a year are mixed with cola as the national cocktail -- one that comes complete with a synth-driven toe-tapper for a theme song, 'Fernet Con Coca,' by Vilma Palma, which spent weeks at the top of Argentine radio charts (a rough translation of the lyrics: "I'm half-crazy, but I don't want to end up in a cell without my Fernet with Coca-Cola"). Heading the only operational distillery outside of Milan, Destesano attributes his youthful vigor to a daily dose. "Fifty-eight years old and still the kid," he says of himself. "A kid of 58, oh!"
If you ask him for an ideal occasion for Fernet-Branca, his personal preference is "after the tennis game, before meal in the evening, after work, going out at night, with coffee, with cooking meat." But on the ingredients, he has less to offer. "Oh, boy," he says. "Fernet-Branca has in it many wonderful things!"
Precisely which wonderful things has been a closely guarded secret of the Branca family for generations, but it's known that the grape base is infused with aloe, myrrh, chamomile, cardamom, and a hearty offering of saffron, a key ingredient. By accounting for an estimated 75 percent of the world's saffron consumption, the Branca family essentially controls the market price of the spice -- which at about $900 a pound (use the following link to see the value in other currencies) is easily among the most expensive edibles in the world. A spice that also, in great enough quantity, can be made into a little something called MDMA, known to club kids as Ecstasy.
The wonderful things rumored to be in the liqueur include codeine, mushrooms, fermented beets, coca leaf, gentian, rhubarb, wormwood, zedoary, cinchona, bay leaves, absinthe, orange peel, calumba, echinacea, quinine, ginseng, St. John's wort, sage, and peppermint oil. If you ask most self-schooled Fernet authorities to list the 40 ingredients, you'll get 100 certain answers.
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