Don't Sound Like a Tool: How to Pronounce Semi-Arcane Spirits, Part II

​Don't Sound Like a Tool is SFoodie's series of audio pronunciation guides to sort-of-common-but-not-obvious words we keep encountering on wine lists and menus. No more shame, no more pointing, no more godawful imitations of a language you don't speak.

SFoodie has successfully proven to ourselves that we'll taste anything ― the bitterest digestifs, the sickliest schnapps, the highest-proof rums. Call us the Andrew Zimmern of the booze world. But the thing we don't know how to do with some of these alcoholic ephemera is pronounce their names. Last week, SFoodie's cocktail guy, Lou Bustamante, demonstrated how to pronounce kinds of spirits such as aguardiente and xtabentún. This week, we set him the task of calling all his bar contacts to come up with comfortable-for-Americans-to-say pronunciations for some of the most mangled brand names appearing on bar shelves.

Hip-no-TEEK or hypnotic? We don't want to order it, we just want to know how to pronounce it.

​
Take it away, Lou:



Aperol
Averna
Becherovka
Chartreuse
Cointreau
Courvoisier
Cynar
DeKuyper
Dubonnet
Drambuie
Fernet Branca
Herbsaint
Hpnotiq
Marie Brizard
Noilly-Prat
Parfait d'Amour
Peychaud's Bitters
St-Germain
Qi
Tuaca