It’s Good For You
By Abigail Gullo

Maybe those college kids doing shots of Jägermeister aren’t so stupid after all
(www.jagermeister.com). They might actually be onto something (though possibly going about it in the wrong way) – and that something is appreciating the restorative qualities that Amaros and bitters like Averna (www.avernausa.com), Jägermeister, Fernet (www.fernetbranca.com), and Underberg (www.underberg.com) all offer.

We have all downed these bitter drinks in a hurry, rushing to get it to our belly, hoping it will do some good…or maybe bad. But, after sitting through the recent Tales of the Cocktail (www.talesofthecocktail.com) seminar A Shot of Black Stuff – Amazing Amaros and Brilliant Bitters, to see if these traditional medicinal bitters had any positive pharmaceutical value, I think I’ve concluded that the answer is “yes.”

The traditional boundaries of Tales of the Cocktail seminars were stretched for the first time this year as due to the ever-growing popularity of the event it had to expand outside the confines of the Hotel Monteleone (www.hotelmonteleone.com). Just one block away, the ballrooms of the Royal Sonesta Hotel (www.sonesta.com/royalneworleans/) on Bourbon Street were put to good use for an overflow of cocktail geekery and knowledge gathering. The ballrooms at the Royal Sonesta were refreshingly easy to find, compared to the labyrinth of the Monteleone, and sitting in the coffee shop across the hall I found two Germans waiting for the seminar to start.

Stephan Berg and Alexander Hauck, founders of The Bitter Truth (www.the-bitter-truth.com), have advanced the field of bitters with their exhaustive research and newly released line

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