“John Deragon and I created this cocktail for the PDT menu in the fall of 2007,” explains Jim Meehan in his book, Meehan’s Bartender Manual. Brooklyn cocktail variations were all the rage at the time, he recalls, and rye whiskey supplies were dwindling thanks to overwhelming demand for classic whiskey cocktails in New York. “As Manhattanites are forced to do, we looked across the river for inspiration, and came up with this New Jersey apple brandy-based twist, which substituted Fernet-Branca for Amer Picon.” The bitter and boozy end result, they decided, was “worthy enough to be Newark’s namesake.”
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