Mad dash: bitters—both commercial and house-made—define classic cocktails and inspire new libations as today's mixologists embrace this age-old ingredient

Cheers, March, 2008 by Jack Robertiello

Americans prefer dry but they drink sweet. Many popular restaulant beverages and most new flavored cordials--and even some vodkas--come to market with sweetness levels high enough to zing your molars.

So a backlash against cloyingly sweet drinks is not a surprise, especially given the interest among cocktail enthusiasts in old cocktail recipe books and traditional American drink styles such as shrubs and flips, fizzes and punches. It only was natural that a countervailing interest in bitters, once a sine qua non of good cocktail preparation, would surge in the wake of sweet Apple Martinis and Cosmos that recently swept the country, especially among bartenders interested in refining their craft.

Bitters have been used to calm the jangled stomach, speed digestion or liven the spirit since before the American cocktail was created. Bartenders once regularly were relied upon for cures to minor ailments, and bitters were key ingredients. Today, older bartenders still employ the age-old cure for hiccups--a wedge of lemon soaked in Angostura and covered in sugar. In cocktails, bitters provide a mildly astringent backbone to the sweet and acidic notes, much as tannins do for wine and hops do for lager.

Usually made by steeping herbs, spices and barks in neutral grain alcohol, bitters can contain virtually any botanical ingredient; the list typically includes cassia, citrus peel, cinnamon, gentian, quinine bark, turmeric, caraway, coriander, licorice root and sarsaparilla, among others.

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It's not just that bars once again routinely stock Angostura and Peychaud's, the two best known commercially produced brands. The six flavors made by the Fee Brothers--old fashioned, orange, peach, mint, lemon and grapefruit--now are joined by Whiskey Barrel Aged Bitters. This portfolio, together with Regans' Orange Bitters No. 6, has given bartenders a broader flavor palette to work with when creating cocktails. Going one step further, in cities such as New York, San Francisco and Portland, Ore., where bleeding-edge mixology is honed in the U.S., a culture has emerged where developing a variety of house-made bitters almost is required.

It's a welcome development because when bartenders create signature cocktails with products they develop, the results really can be, well, signature.

"People today expect a high-end bar to be coming up with its own ingredients," says Daniel Stern, who heads up mixology at Fenouil in Portland, Ore. "They don't just want creative combinations; they want to try something new. The challenge now is not to just make something that tastes good but to make something new and original."

Rising to the occasion, bartenders are busily swapping (or copying) recipes from each other, experimenting with orange, cherry and more complicated bitters combinations such as grapefruit hazelnut bitters. House-made bitters still mostly are highly specialized ingredients, outside the reach of most mixologists, but commercial brands such as Regans' provide plenty of opportunity for experimentation.

At both newer cocktail joints and restaurants known for good drinking, bitters have long been an important component in cocktails. At tiny PDT in New York, which quickly assumed a must-visit reputation among international cocktail enthusiasts, roughly one third of the drinks on the current list include bitters.

San Francisco bars are bitters-mad; at Nopa, head man Neyah White keeps about half a dozen house-made concoctions on his bar at any one time, along with Peychaud's, Angostura and Regans'.

Introducing bitters of any kind to a cocktail, especially painstakingly made house versions, is a careful process. No well-balanced cocktail should show its bitterness too overtly or it will find favor only with fans of Fernet or other spine-shaking amaros.

White at Nopa says he and his bar staff use bitters as a way to keep the restaurant's seasonal California focus sharp. He takes his cues from what's used in the kitchen, and he looks for new flavors that don't exist among the other ingredients. For instance, his signature sunshine bitters are made by soaking cardamom pods in vodka for a week and then adding saffron and soaking two more days. With drinks such as Girasol, made with fino sherry and St-Germain Elderflower Liqueur, the bitters add a brilliant golden hue from the saffron and a tangy zip from the cardamom.

The trend toward house-made bitters has subdivided some; White and Stern, among others, also make what they call tinctures, a step between an infusion and bitters. Like an infusion, tinctures can contain only one flavoring ingredient, such as cinnamon or, in the case of Stern, toasted cardamom. Like bitters, the flavor is too intense for mixologists to use more than a few dashes. Stern rims a winter warmer called L'Epice with his cardamom tincture, then dips the glass in sugar. The rim complements the drink, which is made with high-proof Austrian rum, chocolate liqueur, simple syrup, coffee, whipped cream and orange peel.