Sounds worth a shot:

I recently brought a bottle of Cynar to a gathering of old friends whose collective taste in spirits tends toward the esoteric. Together we’ve toasted the winter holidays with cheese fondue and kirschwasser, celebrated birthdays with Goldschlager, marked one couple’s engagement with grappa and watched Fourth of July fireworks with rhubarb wine. I was fairly surprised, then, when the Cynar met with an underwhelming response. Hearing what it was made of, some individuals went so far as to refuse even a perfunctory sip. Undeterred, I turned to an expert, and that’s when it became clear that we were dealing with more than “an acquired taste.” Asked to say a few kind words about Cynar, Dennis Mullaly, a veteran bartender currently working at Otto Pizzeria, replied, “I can’t. It’s vile, unpalatable stuff.”

Fortunately, not everyone feels that way about the herbaceously bittersweet, cola-brown liqueur whose inaugural tagline was “Cynar: against the stress of modern life.” Introduced in Italy in 1949, Cynar is made from the leaves of the artichoke plant, or Cynara scolymus, and bottled at 16.5% alcohol by volume (33 proof). In recent years, thanks in part to Americans’ growing knowledge of Italian culture, Cynar and the like have begun to command a larger share of domestic bar shelves. According to Heaven Hill Distilleries, whose subsidiary, Premium Imports, Ltd., is responsible for it presence in the US, sales have gained by about 1% per year for the last three years. This may not seem like a significant increase, but it’s worth noting that the brand functions on a small case sales level, making even small gains meaningful.

“In 2004, worldwide production was well over a million cases, which is a benchmark number in the distilled beverage industry,” says Josh Hafer, director of corporate communications for Heaven Hill. “Obviously most of that goes to Europe and South America. Stateside it’s still more of a niche category.” Hafer reports that the bulk of domestic sales come from New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and California, possibly reflecting those states’ immigrant populations.

Cynar’s label features the familiar artichoke flower head associated with prickly challenge and soft vegetal pleasure, although the stuff inside is actually based on the plants’ leaves (not to be confused with the sepals, or the part of the artichoke commonly dipped in Hollandaise sauce). The plants are grown in Macerata and Iesi, in the Italian province of Le Marche. That area’s hilly contours and sweeping plains, along with its soil composition, make it as perfect a place for artichoke cultivation as Northern California’s Castroville, where nearly 100% of American artichokes are grown. After each plant has been relieved of the dozen or so flower heads it produces each spring, the leaves are cut and placed atop the open plant to dry in the summer sun. They are then distilled in a neutral spirit, along with 12 other botanicals whose type and relative proportions are a tightly guarded secret, as is always the case with “patent liqueurs.”

“Italians are crazy,” says Eben Klemm, staff mixologist for B.R. Guest restaurants, when asked to speculate on the use of artichokes as a beverage base. “I’ve heard that they make a liqueur out of radicchio, but I don’t know which one it is, because it’s all a secret.” Of the several barmen contacted for this story, only Dale DeGroff would hazard a guess as to what the other elements might be.

“Well, you know there’s quinine, and it has some of the same bitter notes as gin. I’d say there are lemon and lime skins in there, maybe coriander, gentian, anise seed, clove, cinnamon. It was developed after the discovery of the New World, so a lot of those herbs and botanicals and spices from the Caribbean and South America made their way back to Europe,” he explains. According to DeGroff, who is the author of The Craft of the Cocktail (Clarkson Potter 2002) and a renowned cocktail consultant, Cynar represents only a fraction of Europe’s vegetable and herb-based aperitifs. “If you go to Italy, you’ll find hundreds of Cynar-like products that never make it to our shores,” he says somewhat wistfully.

The experts I spoke to differed on the best way to serve Cynar. Scott Whitcomb, head bartender at the Biltmore Room, in New York, does not condone mixing it in cocktails, asserting, “I think the correct way to have Cynar is after dinner, in a snifter or a cordial glass. If you’ve eaten what you consider to be too much food, you should drink it with, or instead of, espresso.”

Klemm’s staff serves Cynar as a digestif, but he is also enchanted with its cocktail potential. “It’s so vermouthy, I’d treat it like a vermouth, maybe mix it with limoncello and ginger beer. It has some nice orange notes, so maybe also orange juice, or tangerines.” And, despite his personal aversion, Mullaly does use Cynar in a variety of cocktails that he originally developed to showcase Campari, its bright red sibling whose relative sweetness and strong citrus qualities have won it far more fans.

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