Tapping Fernet's Roots in San Francisco

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Local flavor.

Mother's milk: TastingTable found a couple of Fernet taps in the city's north ― nitrogen-charged dispensers of the bitter, bracing liquid at sister Polk Street drinking establishments Bullitt and Tonic. "Around 35 percent of America's Fernet-Branca supply is consumed in San Francisco," TT writes, "so it's logical that if a bulk breakthrough were to happen anywhere, it would be here."

Of course, we like to think that the Italian digestif's current popularity is due in part to Nate Cavalieri's 2005 SF Weekly story, The Myth of Fernet. Cavalieri steeped himself in "Fernetonics," and "Fernightmares, and mined a San Francisco connection that goes back as far as your great-grandfather's pocket watch. Cavalierei:

When Prohibition laws were passed in the U.S. in 1919, the myth of Fernet-Branca was a salvation: Imported as a medicine, it was perhaps the only package liquor legally sold in the States. A year before the 18th Amendment was repealed, the demand for Fernet-Branca was so great that the Branca family, then in its fourth generation of ownership, opened an American distillery in New York City's Tribeca. The paperwork of the distillery lists deliveries to more than 40 San Francisco drugstores, most of which were in North Beach.