What Is a Fernet Coin, and How Can You Get One?

Among bartenders and the cocktail-savvy, Fernet Branca is a bitter amaro with a reputation as a welcome shot, referred to affectionately as a “bartender’s handshake.” 

Fernet Branca didn’t coin that term, but it coined something else. Literally. 

The brand distributes collectible coins among the most loyal fans of the liqueur and its bitter, mentholated, herbal flavor profile. Over the last 13 years, the coin program’s status has grown alongside the Fernet Branca fandom.

While Fernet Branca’s recipe is a tightly guarded secret, sixth-generation Fernet producer Edoardo Branca is more than willing to discuss why he loves the challenge coin program. The coins have fostered connections for Branca and Fernet drinkers around the world, but there’s one coin that has so far eluded his grasp.

The history of the Fernet coin

The Fernet coin was soft-launched in 2012, but the initial offering wasn’t “authorized” by the brand. It was minted by brothers Bret and Tore’ Kragerud (the former a medallion producer, the latter a Fernet sales rep) for a mixology event in Las Vegas.

The friends-only keepsake was a hit, especially among Fernet’s execs. The idea struck a more resounding chord with Branca. The family has long displayed its own coins, a collection of gold medals that date to the 1840s, in the main distillery, back when the medals were “real.” 

“So, we said, ‘Let’s have a coin for the people,’” he says. 

In 2013, Fernet began to commission coins for markets like San Francisco, where the bitter herbal liqueur is widely popular.   

For more than a decade, coins have been commissioned for bartending competitions, industry trade shows and trade groups, bartending organizations, and pop-up events.

Who carries the coin

As the program’s popularity has grown, so have the identities of the holders and the meaning of the coins themselves, says Branca. 

“At the beginning, if you had the coin, you were a bartender from San Francisco,” he says. “Now, when you have the coin, it's like, O.K., you know Fernet Branca 100%, you’re a person who knows your liquids. You know how to drink your cocktails and things like this.”

Branca says that he doesn’t think the coin should be exclusive to bar industry insiders, but people who earn them tend to know the industry and Fernet well. “They need to know the liquid,” he says.

He says that he’s had coins “pulled” on him at points all over the world: Australia, New Zealand, and China among them. 

“[When someone pulls out a coin], I know immediately that apart from being a Fernet lover, [they can] speak about our industry in general,” he says.

How Fernet coins are put into circulation

Among bartenders and spirits nerds, the Fernet coin is a buzzy keepsake. That makes it vulnerable to imitation, as other spirit brands have since created coins. It could also make the Fernet coin vulnerable to oversaturation. 

Thankfully, Fernet’s marketing team hasn’t flooded the market. “When you have it,” says Branca, “you are part of a group of people that are a little bit different, a little bit crazy, a little bit willing to do the extra step.”

Branca admits that the brand has made it more of a challenge to get a coin over the years. A basket of coins was offered first-come, first-served at a party at the 2017 Tales of the Cocktail. Seven years later, the degree of difficulty to snare a coin has risen.

Last fall, Fernet Branca hosted a pop-up haunted mansion experience in New Orleans. To leave with a coin from Fernet’s “Eyeknow Manor,” attendees spent the better part of an hour attempting to solve escape-room-style puzzles, follow clues, and trade pass phrases with in-character staff and servers. People who completed the game didn’t earn a coin, but they received a special poker chip that you could wager to win a coin. Plenty of people didn’t hit the jackpot. 

That’s one way to create a bottleneck on supply, which rarely reaches above 200 coins. Branca says the brand keeps production small to make each one special. 

“It’s something that you need to have a challenge to get,” he says. “I’m not going to wake up tomorrow and make 20,000 coins. You need to work for it.”

Different styles of coins

The coins’ popularity means that Fernet’s various sales and marketing figures need to keep a coin on hand at all times, lest they be caught without one. Branca is arguably the highest-profile target for the coin’s gotcha culture.

He carries several coins, and he has his favorites. He typically carries the 175th anniversary coin, produced in 2020. It’s special not only because it marks the anniversary, but it’s also one of the first coins to be numbered along the coin’s edge, from No. 1 to 175. 

“That’s one of the two coins that is my go-to,” he says. “Then there is a second coin that was made for the Los Angeles market. It’s a coin that I really like because on the other side, it says, ‘In Branca We Trust.’ And then, normally, I carry another couple of coins.”

Branca gets hit up for coins regularly. “Sometimes you meet a person and you really want to give them [a coin], but I always have one spare coin.”

Playing the game

What you can do with a Fernet coin is, well, murky. You can show it off to your bartender friends, compare different coins, and try to collect them all. But its “challenge coin” DNA has also built a game for bartenders and consumers to play. The challenge is simple: produce your coin when asked, or pick up the tab.

This has led to perhaps the biggest misconception about Fernet coins, that one entitles you to a free shot if a bartender can’t produce their coin.

While Branca enjoys the game, he’s clear about why it’s never been made an official element of the program. “I don’t want to put a bartender on the spot to pay for the drink,” he says. “It’s more between friends, just a way of engaging and having a chat. What I love is to have a drink and a conversation with the person in front of me, [and the coin] is a conversation starter.”

The rarest Fernet coin

It’s probably not a surprise that the rarest coin out there is the first one. Branca says that the first batch was just 50 coins. “I have to tell you at this time, I don’t know how many of that first batch there still are,” he says. “But it’s the only coin that I don’t own.”

The last time that Branca saw one was in January 2020, when he crossed paths with one of the Kragerud brothers. “He came to me with one of the first coins ever made,” he says. “And it was ugly, not very well done, and I was like, ‘What the hell is this?’” 

Branca believed it might be fake, but the weight of the coin was the same as all the other Fernet coins in his pocket.

“I still remember it. I was like, ‘Holy moly,’” says Branca. “This [was] one of the first coins Fernet Branca ever made. It was one of the most incredible experiences I had, because it was something that was just made for close friends. Every batch of coins that is made, I always have three, and I have them in my office. But that’s the only coin I don’t have.”