Ferrari

The ultimate bartender's handshake: equal parts Fernet-Branca and Campari, stirred cold and served as a bold two-ingredient digestif.

The Ferrari — known in bar culture as the bartender's handshake — is a two-ingredient digestif of equal parts Fernet-Branca and Campari that became one of the most widely recognized insider drinks in the contemporary American cocktail industry. Fernet-Branca, created in Milan in 1845 by Bernardino Branca from a blend of 27 herbs, roots, and spices including gentian, myrrh, rhubarb, and peppermint, is among the most intensely bitter commercial spirits in the world and became the unofficial shift drink of choice for American bartenders from the late 1990s onward, particularly in San Francisco, which by the 2010s was consuming approximately 25 percent of the entire United States supply of Fernet-Branca. Campari, the vibrant red Milanese aperitivo bitters created by Gaspare Campari in 1860 and first produced commercially in Novara in 1904, brings a more accessible, fruit-forward bitterness alongside its signature color. The combination works because the two spirits' bitterness profiles complement rather than duplicate each other: Fernet's dark, minty, herbal intensity is softened and framed by Campari's brighter, citrus-and-berry bitterness, and Campari's sweetness rounds Fernet's astringency without eliminating it. The exact origin of the Ferrari combination is undocumented, but its adoption as a bartender-to-bartender greeting in San Francisco's bar culture established it as a drink whose knowledge was itself a form of professional identification.