She started swallowing the liquor toward the end of nights with friends because she liked “the refreshing and sweet taste of Coke.” This cookie is set by Rubicon Project to control synchronization of user identification and exchange of user data between various ad services. I’m a product of the U.S. university system, meaning I spent the better part of four years of my life drinking nauseatingly sweet grain alcohol mixed with Kool-Aid,” says Emily Sarah, managing partner of a financial advice company in Buenos Aires. Juan Chico, manager of BARTOK bar and restaurant in the upscale Palermo neighborhood in Buenos Aires, says Fernet is the most widely consumed liquor in the restaurant.

The flavour is overwhelmingly bitter, medicinal and herbal, dark and oily - its popularity endures and its especially popular in Argentina where 75% of the entire production is consumed. It had been two years since I’d seen anyone drink Fernet in Italy,” says Italian nightclub promoter Giovanni Digliardi, who did a double take the first time he stepped into an Argentine bar and was immediately offered a “Fernecola” – Fernet mixed with Coke.After three years in Buenos Aires, I now have a very strong and passionate relationship with Fernet,” she says.

Fernet owes its unconventional taste to a top secret recipe that involves about 40 different herbs including saffron, rhubarb, cardamom, myrrh, chamomile, aloe and gentian root. Although the bar displays an array of spirit and wine bottles, Chico sells on average 70 glasses of Fernet a day. He claims that the central Argentine city of Cordoba alone consumes more Fernet than all of Italy, largely because of its strong Italian heritage. Typically, the initial tasting is a hostile experience, but the drink eventually wins over its audience. Fernet-Branca is a bitter, aromatic herbal liqueur that was created in 1845 by Bernardino Fernet. It is made from a secret recipe of over 27 different herbs and spices, including saffron, myrrh, aloe, rhubarb, chamomile, and gentian root. The herbs and spices are macerated in alcohol and then aged in oak barrels for a minimum of one year.According to official courses, the Fernet Branca recipe is made of a mélange of 27 herbs, roots and spices. The exact ratio of those ingredients remains a closely guarded secret but some of the most notable include rhubarb, camomile, cinnamon, peppermint oil, and saffron. It’s that combination of peppermint oil and saffron which gives Fernet its toothpaste-adjacent menthol flavour. Some sourcesclaim that the Branca family is responsible for an estimated 75% of the world’s saffron consumption, controlling the market price of it like the spice mined on Arrakis in Frank Herbert’s Dune.

Digliardi, who moved to Buenos Aires in 2008, recalls his grandfather drinking Fernet as a digestif with a glass of hot water. Records the default button state of the corresponding category & the status of CCPA. It works only in coordination with the primary cookie. Totally disgusting,” she confesses, letting out a “bleargh” and lowering her eyebrows, still outraged by the memory.When psychologist Florencia Martinez, a native of Gualeguaychu in Argentina’s Entre Rios province, first sipped it, the verdict was straightforward: she poured it away in horror. Whatever Argentina’s drinkers are suffering from, clearly this “disgusting” Italian medicine is the cure. We met here for the first time, the womanizer Fernet I had heard so much about,” romanticizes Yasmin Simeonova, an architect from Macedonia working in Buenos Aires.