The last time Max Rudsten was in the Marin IJ he was a member of the 2002 Branson Bulls basketball team during the MCAL tournament. After graduating that year he went to Tulane University in New Orleans and then onto a career in finance. Somewhere along the way he discovered a product called Fernet Branca.
Friends in the bar business introduced him to the “mysterious brown elixir” and says Rudsten, 33, says, “I ended up falling in love with it.”
For those who don’t know Fernet Branca, it is an Italian amaro or “bitters” that has come to symbolize the food and beverage scene in San Francisco. A running joke is that if someone orders “fernet” you then ask what restaurant he or she works for.
Amaro is a wide category of digestif bitters that includes the subcategory of fernet. There are many fernets produced in Europe besides the one produced by the Fratelli Branca Distillerie, but few are as popular.
In 2012, Rudsten was taking stock of his corporate job and noticed something: “We love Fernet Branca in San Francisco. We consume more of it then any city in the country, but we don’t have our own version of it,” he says.
The entrepreneur in him spent the next year scouring the internet, visiting local farmers markets and filling mason jar after mason jar with herbal concoctions in his backyard. “I knew the flavor really well,” he says. “But I didn’t know the herbs.”
Before joining forces with his team at Fernet Francisco, Rudsten catalogued more than 70 herbs and botanicals as a result of those backyard experiments.
“There were times I was worried we weren’t going to produce a spirit people wanted to drink. Then, all of a sudden, we hit the perfect flavor profile. From that point on, we just kept refining and refining until we settled on the Fernet Francisco we know today,” Rudsten says.
The big turning point was when the team decided to source the botanicals “hyper locally” — within 100 miles of Marin County and San Francisco.
“We decided to focus on the herbs we really loved but also ones that thrived in Northern California,” he says.
Fernet Francisco is drier, meaning less sweet, than traditional Fernet Branca, but still retains all the punch expected in a fernet. It is 80 proof and has that big rich mouthfeel like traditional fernets.
“Our biggest differentiating factor is that we are probably the driest fernet on the planet which is why we’re technically classified as a bitters. Our product doesn’t surpass that residual sugar per liter threshold that makes you a liqueur. We are less than 3 grams residual sugar per liter where Branca is upwards of 20 grams and some others can get as high as 300,” he notes.
Fernets are not known for their mixability. In fact, there are few mixed drinks that use traditional fernet as an ingredient. Rudsten took this into consideration when formulating his.
“You can always add sugar to something but you can’t take it away,” Rudsten says. “Our fernet can be the star of the cocktail without overpowering like Branca tends to do.”
In 2013, Rudsten enlisted the aid of Farid Dormishian, master distiller at Falcon Spirits in Richmond, who applied his gin-making experience to the fernet-making process.
“The lightness and brightness on the palate is the result of vaporing infusing a core of botanicals (similar to gin) and then blending it back with the various direct herbal infusions,” Rudsten says.
Among the 12 botanicals used in Fernet Francisco and that Rudsten is willing to divulge are rhubarb root, gentian, bay leaves, chamomile, orange peel, cinnamon, chamomile and cardamom. As with many proprietary elixirs the actual recipe is a closely guarded secret.
Fernet Francisco hit the market in 2015 for around $40 a bottle, and now sells a few hundred cases a month. There have been several special bottlings and he’s introduced a new barrel-aged fernet program, utilizing locally sourced wine and beer barrels. The newest version, just released, is aged in used malbec casks from Sonoma’s Highway 12 Winery.
“Fernet Francisco is a way us locals can show our pride and still let everyone know we’re different,” Rudsten says.
True dat brother.
Learn more at www.fernetfrancisco.com.
Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender” and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at www.jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffb@thebarflyonline.com.
