Many bartenders use covert currency
The person mixing your drinks might be a member of a secret society
Some weeks ago in downtown Halifax, I told my companion about a bit of bartending lore I had heard in Los Angeles. Serious bartenders all over the world were in possession of a certain coin — a precious token meant to represent distinction in the field.
“So,” my companion beseeched our bartender, “do you have one of these special coins?” Without hesitation, he withdrew from his coat pocket a medallion, roughly the size of a dollar, and slapped it on the table like a gambler revealing a winning hand. “You mean this?” The coin bore two words in a flourish of cursive: “Fernet-Branca.”
Fernet-Branca is an amaro, a dark Italian liqueur made of herbs, created in Milan over a century and a half ago. Intensely bitter, with a strong, unmistakable flavour, the drink is beloved by bartenders and aficionados of spirits, who admire it exactly because to the uninitiated it seems so abstruse. Fernet-Branca can be taken on its own as an after-dinner digestif, or in a tumbler on the rocks, with a splash of mineral water or soda; it’s found in a number of classic cocktails, most famously the Toronto (with rye whisky) and the Hanky-Panky (with gin).
But ordering a Fernet-Branca is also a symbolic gesture. At any serious cocktail bar in the world, a Fernet-Branca is a kind of handshake. It tells the bartender that the person ordering is a man or woman with an affinity for excellence and an understanding of drinks. The Fernet-Branca coin is simply an extension of this bond. It’s an emblem of an affection that already thrives throughout the business, shared by bartenders from France to Germany, from Austria to Japan.
Fernet-Branca coins have been in circulation in the bartending world since 2013. They are distributed to select bars by the brand’s portfolio managers, and may be won, earned through skill, at bartending competitions and pop-up challenges. You can’t buy a Fernet-Branca coin. For each region — the United States, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Greece, Canada and others — the company mints about 175 coins, for a total of no more than 1,500 worldwide. Counterfeit versions sell on eBay for hundreds of dollars. “It is an honour to own a coin,” reads the official Fernet-Branca website. It speaks of those who are “worthy of being the owner of a coin,” an elite group of bartenders “who have shown their devotion” to the Fernet-Branca brand.
But with the coin comes responsibility. In the United States military, veterans have long prided themselves on carrying “challenge coins,” which are issued as proof of membership in a unit or experience in a particular tour of duty. It is a tradition that a veteran must be able to produce their coin for inspection when asked; if it isn’t readily accessible or they don’t have it on them, they are obliged to stand the other man a drink.
Fernet-Branca coins work the same way. Holders must keep the coin on them at all times. If challenged to produce it, the coin must be retrieved “without having to perform more than four steps to get hold of it,” according to the official rules of the game. If the bartender fails to show the coin, he must buy the next round. If he shows it, the next round is on the one who asked.
A coin-holder can ask to see a bartender’s coin at any bar in the world.
How has this game captured the imagination of bartenders everywhere? It has something to do with the industry’s abiding fondness for the drink itself.
“It’s a drink that is not for everybody,” Edoardo Branca, sixth-generation descendant of Fernet-Branca inventor Bernardino Branca and the company’s current managing director, explained to me recently. “So if you put down that coin, the bartender will know who you are and what you like — and that you’re a little bit crazy as well, because if you like Fernet-Branca, you have to be a little bit crazy.”