Fernet Branca, and the Hanky Panky Cocktail
There are many different products that you may have heard of, yet have never really tried, Fernet Branca typically falls into this category for most people. It is also one of those products that when some people try it they wonder what on earth made them do that.
To the uninitiated, Fernet Branca can frankly seem rather hideous, although I expect their marketing material would never say that. The issue is, that Fernet Branca is another one of those “how many different herbs can we shove into a bottle” type of products. From that standpoint it is similar to other products such as Jagermeister, Campari, and Chartreuse.
Fernet Branca was originally formulated by Maria Scala (who then married into the Branca family) in 1845 as a medicine, and its manufacture is still controlled by the Branca family. As you might expect, it is another one of those “secret family recipes” sorts of products. While all of its ingredients are not known, it is known to include aloe, cardamom, chamomile, cinchona bark, columbus, galangal, gentian, myrrh, rhubarb, saffron, and zedoary. Like many such Italian bitters, it is intended to be taken after a meal as a digestive, but when encountered by the younger crowd it often turns into a manly “right of passage” type of drink which is downed quickly as a shot. Today, Fernet Branca is extremely popular in San Francisco, where they drink more of it than anywhere else in the world. So if you are planning a trip there anytime soon, you might want to pick up a bottle and get a little acclimated to it first.
Myself, I’m not a big fan of doing shots of these exquisitely, if not overly complex, flavored digestives. I’d prefer to attempt to tame its powers within a cocktail. There are unfortunately few cocktails which have survived to modern day which utilize Fernet Branca. This most likely is due to its rather authoritative flavor, which can quickly dominate anything it is put into. The secret however is to treat it more as a “bitters” then as a regular ingredient.
There is one drink which I have recently re-acquainted myself with that I feel does a pretty good job at illustrating how to properly use Fernet Branca in a drink. The Hanky Panky first shows up in The Savoy Cocktail Book, which was compiled by Harry Craddock. Harry however was not the inventor of this drink, that distinction goes to Ada Coleman, who was Harry’s predecessor, and the first head bartender at the American Bar in the Savoy. Ada Coleman relates the story of its creation for us herself in England’s “The People” from 1925:
“The late Charles Hawtrey … was one of the best judges of cocktails that I knew. Some years ago, when he was overworking, he used to come into the bar and say, ‘Coley, I am tired. Give me something with a bit of punch in it.’ It was for him that I spent hours experimenting until I had invented a new cocktail. The next time he came in, I told him I had a new drink for him. He sipped it, and, draining the glass, he said, ‘By Jove! That is the real hanky-panky!’ And Hanky-Panky it has been called ever since.”
As listed in The Savoy Cocktail Book the recipe is essentially as follows:
Hanky Panky Cocktail
- 1 ½ oz. gin
- 1 ½ oz. sweet vermouth
- 2 dashes Fernet Branca
Shake well and strain into cocktail glass. Squeeze orange peel on top.
I recently visited the American Bar at the Savoy, along with my friend Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh, and of course we asked the bartenders to mix us up a couple of Hanky Panky Cocktails. I wasn’t terribly surprised that they didn’t know this drink, but undaunted they quickly looked up the recipe in a well-worn copy of The Savoy Cocktail Book, and mixed them up. The crowd being a little on the light side, we took to chatting with the bartender in order to provide them the necessary background of this cocktail since it was so deeply associated with the bar. Upon telling him it was made by Ada Coleman, he indicated that he didn’t know who that was, so we related that she was the bartender just prior to Harry Craddock. Unfortunately, the bartender didn’t know who this was either, even though his book was their primary source of recipes behind the bar. Oh well.
My first knowledge of Fernet Branca came when I was still a boy, from a Bill Cosby album that had my cousins and I rolling on the floor. Cosby relates his own first encounter with the stuff, served to him as a digestive while traveling in Italy. To hear him tell it, it is quite effective stuff!
Since then I have read about it in other cocktail esoterica, but have never even seen a bottle. Between that vivid first impression as delivered by Cosby and Robert’s own description, I’ll be eager to try it when the opportunity arises.