Boozehound (17 page)

Finally, we were joined by Lorenzo Vavassori, a regional marketing director who oversees the United States. That’s when I mentioned that many of the high-end cocktail bars in America were mixing with Italian spirits. “Just look at cocktail menus in New York and San Francisco,” I said. “Campari, Aperol, Punt e Mes, Cynar …”

“Cynar?” Vavassori looked at me, and then furtively at Reina. The look was clear: are you putting me on? “This is surprising to me,” he said. “It’s something I’m interested in investigating.”

“I really, really think you should bring Zucca into the United States!” I said, perhaps a little too exuberantly. “I know you’d have a lot of bartenders clamoring for it.”

Vavassori laughed and was now thoroughly convinced I was joking with him. Exporting Zucca to the United States was definitely not in the strategic plan. “Maybe I need to take you to my meetings with Bacardi,” he said.

After my unsuccessful plea to the Disaronno people, it was time to head to Milan. While I waited for a taxi, I drank a Zucca with sparkling water in Illva Saronno’s company bar. So what does Zucca taste like? It’s a weird yet entirely pleasant mix of earthy and delicate, vanilla and bitter, yam and coffee—to toss out some pretentious, winelike descriptors. What Zucca really tastes like, to me, is Milan itself.

I arrived in Milan just before happy hour. That’s what Milanese call it: “happy hour,” untranslated, in English. This, however, is where the similarities to our hallowed American institution end. For starters, look at what’s in the rail: Campari, Aperol, bianco vermouth, Punt e Mes, and bottles of prosecco on ice. It’s not exactly the high-octane stuff most American bargoers are used to.

Take a gander at the crowd. This is not a shot-and-beer crowd or a Captain-and-Coke crowd. Look at those coiffed men with red pants and brown belts, or crisp blue suits and brown shoes, or sweaters draped around their necks, all nursing bitter, orange-colored drinks. They spill outside the bar, onto the sidewalk, into the street, chatting up the lithe, tan, sunglassed women who drive Vespas in their high heels and puff on cigarettes, causing you to rethink your whole position on smoking. No one seems to be in any hurry, and happy hour usually stretches well into the evening. Finally, look at the prices. Milanese happy hour does not involve two-for-one Coronas. The prices actually go up a few euros during happy hour, when an Americano averages about eight euros. And, wait, you can’t pay the bartender directly. Be sure to go to the cashier—she’s the really bored woman dressed in Prada over there behind the counter—and get a receipt. Now you may have your aperitivo.

Once you have your Negroni Sbagliato or Aperol Spritz in hand, that’s when you realize what you’re paying for—the “complimentary” snacks. In Milan, at places like Radetzky or Bar Brera or Bhangrabar, they don’t just toss out a bowl of nuts or a tray of lukewarm hot wings. There are perfect little tramezzini and panini, made with the finest speck and bresaola and culatello and prosciutto. There are wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano, squares of polenta covered in Gorgonzola, and three kinds of olives. There are caper berries, slices of melon, and artichoke hearts. There are platters of risotto, tortelli di zucca in butter-sage sauce, and black linguini made with squid ink.

I spent a lot of time at happy hour years ago as a student in Italy. I’d join the crowds hopping from bar to bar and piece together an amazing meal on my meager budget. I’ve continued to mingle in the crowded happy hours on my return visits, but I’ve never been able to solve this one great mystery: with so much great food, how do the fashionable Milanese still fit into their chic clothes? In Italy, happy hour is an everyday ritual that illuminates two innately Italian traits at once: it involves an opportunity to enjoy excellent food and drink; and it provides a wonderful chance to be on display, to see and be seen in beautiful public spaces. In the fashion and culinary capital of Milan, this takes on interesting dimensions.

On that late afternoon in Milan, I found myself drinking an Americano cocktail (Campari, sweet vermouth, and a lemon twist, on the rocks) within the inner sanctum of the Dolce & Gabbana men’s store, sitting at a sleek black bar operated by Martini, the vermouth producer, with black leather sofas and a blood-red dragon on the dark mosaic floor and ambient techno music playing. When I entered from the Corso Venezia, one of Milan’s toniest shopping streets, the clerks eyed me and my shabby attire suspiciously. When I told them I’d come for happy hour, they dismissively waved me back to the Martini Bar past leather belts worth more than my entire wardrobe.

The Dolce & Gabbana store is in the middle of the Quadrilatero district, also known as the Golden Quadrangle, an area filled with posh designer stores. This is a dangerous neighborhood in which to begin happy hour, especially while the stores are still open. For instance, I’m generally shopping averse. At home, I buy all the clothes I need for the year—mainly T-shirts and flip-flops—in about an hour and a half. But when I’m in Milan, something strange happens. In the Miuccia Prada store, I might watch a Japanese teenager matter-of-factly buy a handbag for $17,000, and I start thinking about what I might buy. I once caught myself considering buying a pair of red pants that cost more than $300. Which meant it was time to move on to the next drink in a different neighborhood.

I walked toward the Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio to one of my old favorites, Bar Magenta, a high-ceilinged, wood-paneled Milan institution for more than one hundred years and one of the city’s best meeting places. All walks of life mingle here, from dreadlocked college kids drinking beers to professionals drinking Negronis to older men sipping vermouth on the rocks. At happy hour, there are always several types of housemade pasta available, and a guy behind the counter slices meats like prosciutto, speck, bresaola, and culatello. Then, at a certain point, I always try to end up on the Corso di Porta Ticinese, the main thoroughfare of Milan’s most bohemian neighborhood. The centerpiece of the neighborhood is the piazza of the Basilica of San Lorenzo. Here, hundreds of people congregate on warm evenings, drinking Campari and Aperol cocktails, prosecco, or beer. Most of the action takes place at Exploit, which sits directly under the so-called Diesel Wall, a gigantic fashion company billboard masquerading as art. The entrance to Exploit is deceivingly tranquil—under an awning, obscured by hedges. Inside, however, it’s a mob scene during happy hour. People crowd around the bar where waiters feverishly serve complimentary mini-pizzas, vegetable tortes, and panini. The best thing to do is get your aperitivo, fill up a plate, retreat outside to a sunny place in the piazza, and do what everyone else is doing: people watch. There are no tables outside, but people are sprawled everywhere, leaning against planters, sitting along the Roman walls, or standing in groups. As the evening wears on beyond happy hour, much of the crowd remains in the piazza, drinking, strumming guitars, or kicking a soccer ball with the illuminated ruins of Roman columns as a dramatic backdrop.

Wayne Curtis, the drinks columnist for the
Atlantic
, has described the first sip of Fernet-Branca as “akin to waking up in a foreign country and finding a crowd of people arguing in agitated, thorny voices outside your hotel window. It’s an event that’s at once alarming and slightly thrilling.”

I was thinking of that description in my hotel room on the morning of my visit to the Fernet-Branca distillery in Milan. I’d lost my phone the night before during some excessive post–happy hour revelries, and I had no alarm. I was finally awakened by a panicked call to my hotel room from the Fernet-Branca public relations person. Ragged, I quickly showered and taxied across the city, arriving at the gates of the palazzo-like building only about fifty minutes late. I felt awful. As I shook hands with the company president Niccolò Branca and mumbled my apologies, I realized that what I actually needed—truly needed—was a shot of Fernet-Branca. None was forthcoming. Instead I was handed a sterile gown and shower cap and led on a tour.

Despite my lateness and bad shape, Branca was a consummate gentleman. “Fernet-Branca is a very intelligent drink,” he told me. “It’s not for the situation of getting drunk. It’s very healthy. Drink one or two glasses and you’ll feel fresh. You won’t have a hangover.” Ugh, yes, and if you do have a hangover, Fernet is probably the best hair-of-the-dog ever invented.

Fernet was created in 1845 by Branca’s great-great-grandfather, a self-taught herbalist. Besides settling digestion, it originally was used to treat such maladies as menstrual discomfort, colic, and cholera. It survived Prohibition in the United States because it was sold in pharmacies for medicinal purposes. “We never change the recipe,” Branca said. “It’s passed down from father to son. It was only given to me eight years ago.”

“Now, we go into a locked room,” Branca said. “Behind this door, there are secrets.” Indeed, entering into this cavernous old warehouse room was like walking into a medieval spice bazaar, an alchemist’s laboratory, a temple of holy herbs. Stacks of cinchona bark, pallets of bitter orange, vats of aloe and chamomile, and—to get a little biblical—myrrh. Fernet-Branca’s secret recipe has more than forty ingredients in all, including Chinese rhubarb, orrisroot, cardamom, gentian, marjoram, mace, peppermint, and, of course, anise. I saw pallets and pallets of saffron, an ingredient so key to Fernet-Branca that the company reportedly controls 75 percent of the world’s saffron market.

After a quick pass through the corporate museum, where I noted the slogan
Fernet é vivere
, we returned to the conference room. Branca took off his sterile gear and excused himself for a meeting, leaving me with this thought: “Fernet, it is for the person who loves the life, the person who shares it with their friends, with a beautiful woman. It’s like a concert. It’s much more than a drink.”

That evening, after a very long afternoon nap, I ate a huge meal of saffron-tinted risotto Milanese and cotoletta alla Milanese. Afterward, with a full stomach, I decided to do an impromptu tasting of amari at my table. I wanted to see if I was getting better at snap judgments and at quickly writing tasting notes—just like Paul Pacult. First up was Fernet. To be perfectly honest, beginning your relationship with amari by drinking a shot of 80-proof Fernet-Branca is like starting to learn a language by reading its physics textbooks. The taste? How about a bracing smack in the face with a eucalyptus tree? Most other amari are much lower proof than Fernet, in the 30- to 60-proof range. Ramazzotti, for instance, is perhaps the easiest drinking, with its gentle, sweet notes of orange and cola … it’s like the Coca-Cola of amari. Amaro Meletti, with its floral aroma and tastes of saffron and violet, is like … a vase full of lily-of-the-valley that still have a day or so before you have to throw them away. Amaro Montenegro, from Bologna, is an excellent starter amaro: sweeter than the others, with orange peel and cinnamon and only a touch of bitter on the finish. Amaro Montenegro was called the “liqueur of virtues” by the famed Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio (though it should be noted that D’Annunzio ended up becoming a figurehead of Mussolini’s Fascists, so perhaps we should be wary of looking for virtues in a bottle of amaro). Finally, Averna, so dark and coffeelike and almost burnt tasting, with a hint of cloves and a musky scent that feels like, say, the nineteenth-century Sicilian equivalent of Starbucks with, say, a real-life castrato singing rather than Norah Jones or Neko Case. Or something like that.

The waiter was pretty amused by the fact that I’d ordered five amari. He kept checking on me to see if I’d really drink all five, then he finally sat down at my table and poured himself a glass of Amaro Montenegro, his personal favorite. “Why is it your favorite?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “This is what my family’s always taken after dinner.”