CLASSIC CABINET: Cynar

From May 26th, 2022

Greetings from Italy. Am I currently swimming in the sea and/or eating caprese salad. But I thought you might appreciate in the meantime this vintage post from the Cabinet - which is like the Spirits but for the heads. This one is all about Cynar, a bitter Italian amaro that no fan of Italian bitter things should be without. There’s lots of excellent cocktails here and I would particularly draw your attention to Ce Soir, Eeyore’s Requiem, and The Art of Choke. But just about everything is better with Cynar in it.

~ CYNAR ~
Amaro. 16.5% ABV, ~£15 for 700ml
Friends with: gin, rum (light and dark), bourbon/rye and aggressively flavoured spirits like mezcal, cachaca and aquavit. Italian vermouth is a great bridge for it, as is maraschino. And Cynar always matches with earthy flavours, like cinnamon, coriander, chocolate and bitter orange. Goes particularly well with sherry too.

Cynar - pronounced CHI-NAH - is an extremely useful bitter liqueur invented comparatively recently, in 1952, as a remedy for the angst of modernity. I reach for it all the time; it’s one of the bottles I replace most and happily, there is an old-school Italian deli near me (Licata & Sons, Picton St, Bristol) that never runs out. It is part of a family of drinks known by the Italian name amari (amaro is the singular version). Traditionally, amari are made by infusing grape brandy (or a neutral alcohol) with various barks, spices and herbs and then adding sugar and, in some cases, ageing for a while.

There are approximately 3,583 amari but for cocktail purposes, I reckon we simplify it to two basic kinds. There’s the “aperitivo” family, including the Italian stalwarts Campari and Aperol (plus the French Suze), which are generally used in appetite-whetting pre-dinner drinks, like the Spritz and the Negroni.

And then there’s the “digestivo” family: Averna, Ramazzotti, Nonino and Montenegro are the famous Italian brands. Classically, these will be served after-dinner, to help your cacio e pepe go down. Fernet-Branca (worth a future post in itself) is also an amaro, albeit a very idiosyncratic one. And there are various non-Italian amari too, which are used in more or less the same way, with local variations. See: Jägermeister (German), Becherovka (Czech), Unicum (Hungarian), Gammeldansk (Danish), Balsam (Latvian) etc. They’re usually a bit love-it-or-hate-it and, as such, quite hip. I heard of a New York wedding that featured an amaro bar recently.

ANYWAY: Cynar? I think of it as an easy-going envoy between the pre- and post- dinner camps. (The French Amer Picon is similar in this respect). It works wonderfully in brooding after dinner drinks, notably Manhattan-variations like the Little Italy (see below). But it’s lighter and less syrupy than your standard amaro and works wonderfully at apero time, too; indeed, I reckon you could use it in place of Italian vermouth at a push. I first encountered it at a bar in Rome, where if you ordered a Spritz, you had a choice: Aperol, Campari or Cynar (NB: all three are made by Gruppo Campari). And its versatility has made it a great favourite among craft bartenders, particularly at the Violet Hour in Chicago, where three of the recipes below were first dreamed up. It’s pretty cheap, too, for an ingredient you will find yourself reaching for again and again - rarely more than £15 or so - and which is specifically designed to combat the “the stress of modern life”, as this excellent vintage advert shows:

It is named after the artichoke that is one of the 13 ingredients Venetian entrepreneur Angelo Dalle Molle lobbed into his original recipe - and it features one of these dangerous flowers on the label. However this is all but undetectable. Cynar does, however, have a certain violet vegetal quality and a pronounced taste of quinine (like tonic water). But mostly what you get are caramel and bitter citrus, warming spice like cinnamon and coriander, and just a touch of mint. The taste is, basically, Italy. Somewhere between a Ligurian pine forest, aftershave wafting from a passing Vespa, Marco Tardelli’s goal in the 1982 World Cup Final; contro il logorio della vita moderna, indeed.

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CABINET POSTS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

🐿️ Amaretto
🧡 Aperol
🍑 Apricot Brandy
🕊️ Bénédictine
❄️ Brancamenta
☕ Coffee Liqueur
🍌 Crème de Banane
🍫 Crème de Cacao
🫐 Crème de Cassis
🌷 Cynar
🌸Elderflower Liqueur
🏝️ Falernum
🦅 Fernet-Branca
🌿 Green Chartreuse
🐻 Kümmel
🍒 Maraschino
🌵 Mezcal
🦙 Pisco
🐂 Sherry
🌻 Suze

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THE COCKTAILS

Stirred

Cynar is so versatile that 10ml will lend complexity to just about any cocktail: a Pina Colada, perhaps? But the best place to star might just be Audrey Saunders’s classic Manhattan variation, THE LITTLE ITALY, which she created at Pegu Club in 2003: try 60ml rye whiskey (Rittenhouse 100 is best); 20ml Italian vermouth (Martini & Rossi), 15ml Cynar, stirred and served up with a cherry.

CE SOIR (below) is another complex after-dinner ponderer. I really like this one. 60ml brandy, 20ml Cynar, 15ml yellow Chartreuse, plus a dash each of Angostura and orange bitters. Serve up with a lemon twist.

Now for two heavenly pre-dinner drinks. REMEMBER THE ALIMONY is one I make a lot: it’s low-alcohol but doesn’t taste it and has a loose affinity with the Negroni. You make it in the glass over ice: 35ml fino sherry, 35ml Cynar, 20ml gin, stirred and garnished with an orange twist.

Then there is EEYORE’S REQUIEM (below), something of a cult drink among those whose palates incline to the bitter: 45ml Campari, 30ml sweet white vermouth (Dolin Blanc recommended), 15ml gin, 5ml Cynar, 5ml Fernet-Branca, 15 drops of orange bitters. Serve up in a coupe and twist copious amounts of orange zest over the top. Oooh.

Cynar is particularly good at standing up to strong flavours. There’s a great Brazilian cocktail called the RABO-DE-GALO which is two parts cachaca to one part Cynar. This works quite nicely with mezcal, too. Oh and if you happen to have any aquavit? Try THE TRIDENT. It’s an equal-parter, served over ice: 25ml aquavit, 25ml Cynar, 25ml fino sherry, plus two dashes of peach bitters. Sort of like a Nordic Negroni.

Sours

Cynar hasn’t found its way into so many classic sour-type recipes - besides, perhaps, a dark Daiquiri riff known as THE GETAWAY: 50ml dark rum, 15ml lime juice, 10ml sugar syrup, 15ml Cynar.

But there’s no reason you shouldn’t experiment yourself. Add a tot of the stuff to a basic WHISKEY SOUR: 50ml bourbon, 15ml lemon juice, 10ml sugar syrup, 10ml Cynar? (Egg white optional). Sours based on orange liqueur (e.g. THE SIDECAR) will particulalry benefit from this treatment.

Also of note: THE BITTER GIUSEPPE, which falls somewhere between stirred and sour. Into a glass filled with ice, pour: 60ml Cynar, 20ml Italian vermouth (Antica Formular recommended) plus two dashes of orange bitters. Now add copious lemon zest spray and about 5ml of lemon juice, and stir. Garnish with a lemon slice. You will find that just a touch of sourness sets this off rather like a punch.

Long

The classic Italian way to drink Cynar is with an orange wedge and fizzy water in the middle of traffic (see the advert above). I rather like it with tonic (as recommended on the label, in fact, with a slice of lime). And its affinity with sherry can be teased into an excellent and unnamed long drink that I often find myself making while cooking: 25ml fino sherry, 25ml Cynar, topped up with good tonic water.

Oh and don’t neglect THE CYNAR SPRITZ, an upgrade on the ubiquitous Aperol version. It’s: 75ml dry white wine (or prosecco), 50ml Cynar and 25ml fizzy water, served in a wine glass filled with ice and a grapefruit wedge.

NOW, drum-roll, please, for one of the finest Cynar cocktails of all, which doesn’t quite fall into any of these categories. Like the Bitter Giuseppe and Eeyore’s Requiem, it emerged from The Violet Hour in Chicago; I first picked it up via the wonderful avant-garde manual Beta Cocktails (2012) which a couple of the bartenders there had a hand in. It’s one of the rare modern drink that is not in debt to some old drink or other and somehow more than the sum of it delectable parts.

~ THE ART of CHOKE ~

A handful of fresh mint leaves
25ml light rum
25ml Cynar
10ml Green Chartreuse
A mere spritz of lime juice
5ml sugar syrup (2:1)

Gently bruise the mint leaves in the bottom of an old fashioned glass. Add all the other ingredients and stir. Garnish with a mint sprig.

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