CITY DESTINATION: Fabulous Drinks from the nightly Buenos Aires

By Jorge Jefferds January 31, 2020

Crawling around the obelisk, struggling with the first tango steps, and sailing on La Plata River at sunset are not complete without stepping on one of these exquisite Buenos Aires bars. If you want to return home telling millions of stories about their flavors, do not skip the Bonaerense streets. The thirst for unique cocktails can embezzle anyone's curiosity, especially those who have never been in Buenos Aires before. Take a look about the most sophisticated offers by this beautiful city at night.

Doppelgänger is a darkened cove painted in deep shades of green and red. It may be the best place in town to order classic cocktails with a menu enlisting about 100 of them served in finely cool crystal glasses. Of course, “classic” can mean something different here. Take the Old-Fashioned, the bar’s biggest seller. As with pizza, locals make this international staple their own way. A mixture of sugar and plenty of Angostura bitters is muddled at the bottom of the glass, then swirled about until it coats the entire inside. At Doppelgänger, an orange slice is then lightly muddled at the bottom. This is covered with ice, and then bourbon. The result is basically an Old-Fashioned crusta, an old genre of cocktail that involves a sugar rim. The first sip is strong. You’ll want the spoon they serve it with to stir the drink and integrate that sugar coating into the spirit. The Gibson is a good bet here, too, as it is the favorite of the owner, Guillermo Blumenkamp. They prepare a dry version with little vermouth and three onions. The popular Bonaerense culture says that, if someone orders one, Mr. Blumenkamp will take one, too.

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Federico Cuco is the owner of Verne Cocktail Club, which is named after the author Jules Verne. He is a veteran bartender and an amateur cocktail historian. Mr. Cuco can serve you one of his house originals, such as the smoky Opium Old-Fashioned, or he can tell you about Buenos Aires’ rich mixological history, which includes mid-20th-century bartender celebrities like Santiago Policastro (1912-2010). Famous for his nickname “Pichin,” Policastro cut a big enough figure to appear on television and publish a book, “Tragos Magicos” (or “Magical Drinks”). Mr. Cuco was behind a campaign a decade and a half ago to “Save the Clarito,” the Clarito being a forgotten dry Martini riff by Pichin. It worked. You can order a Clarito anywhere in the city now. (The chief difference between the original Clarito and a Martini was a sugar rim. That touch, gratefully, has since been dropped.)If you ask for other historical Buenos Aires cocktails, there’s a good chance Mr. Cuco will know how to prepare them. Likewise, he is a committed advocate of local heritage brands like Amargo Obrero, a mild regional amaro, and Hesperidina, an orange liqueur that, in 1876, became Argentina’s first patented product. Oddly enough, Hesperidina was created by Melville Sewell Bagley, an immigrant from Maine.

Floreria Atlantico is Buenos Aires’ most famous cocktail bar, a reputation it may have secured solely through the energies of its owner, Renato Giovannoni, a charismatic man who knows how to fill up a room. He also knows how to paint up a room; the pictures of sea monsters on the walls are his creations. Mr. Giovannoni describes his bar as being a tribute to the multi ethnic history of the city’s population. Fittingly, the menu is divided by national influence, with sections dedicated to Spain (sherry drinks), Poland (vodka) and England (gin, Scotch). The bar’s signature drink is, naturally, a Negroni variation, but the dizzyingly complex Balestrini Negroni tells a distinctly Argentinian story. The Campari is locally distilled. The gin, Principe de los Apóstoles, comes from Mr. Giovannoni's personal palate, boasting botanical specimens such as yerba mate (a South American herbal tea) and eucalyptus. Averna amaro replaces the usual vermouth. A dash of seawater from the actual Atlantic Ocean provides a saline accent. (The bar is called Atlantico, after all.) This is all infused with eucalyptus smoke and garnished with pine nuts. The eucalyptus branches could conceivably have been fetched from the flower shop upstairs, which serves as a false front for the bar.

It is evident that money finds a sophisticated way into the Buenos Aires bar scene upon entering the chic Presidente, which opened a couple of years ago. The Presidente is extravagantly appointed, with chandeliers, high ceilings, a library-like private bar in the back and staff members who look like models. On the wall, there is a painting that portrays 19th-century American bartender Harry Johnson, who seems to be the bar’s spiritual guide, according to some folks. A LED counter above the bar tracks the number of Negronis sold. It’s a trick borrowed from Dry Martini, a Barcelona bar that depicts this count in a similar format. Certainly, you might choose the Milano Torino instead, a gin-less predecessor of the Negroni, which is just as good. And the Buenos Aires Zombie makes an impression, arriving in a tall, white, custom tiki mug meant to resemble the Obelisco de Buenos Aires, an inescapable city landmark.

Buenos Aires’ longstanding aperitif tradition extends to vermouth. Cinzano, the Italian vermouth company, has been a big presence here since the late 1800s; Argentina is, in fact, the top consumer of Cinzano in the world. La Fuerza — which was opened by Julián Díaz, a prominent local bar owner, the writer Martín Auzmendi and two partners, occupying a bright, cheery corner storefront — offers a traditional, yet fresh approach to the aperitif ritual. It is a vermouth bar, or vermutería, a sort of bar that was once common in Argentina, but is now scarce. La Fuerza sets itself apart in that makes its own vermouth, using wines distilled in Mendoza and flavored with botanical specimens handpicked around the Andes foothills. The owners tout it as the first vermouth to ever be produced in the Andean region. There’s a rojo and a bianco and both are on tap. Try them by themselves over ice with a twist; or, as porteños sometimes do, pair the rojo with fernet, and the bianco with Campari. The concise food menu has everything you’d ever want to nibble on while sipping a vermouth, including various olives, an assortment of cheese, fries, local salame from Tandil, lupin beans and pallares, which are like lima beans.

American whiskey presents a particular challenge to the city’s drink makers. Few bourbons are exported here; Wild Turkey was recently added to a short list that includes Jim Beam, Maker’s Mark and Evan Williams. And there is no rye at all. Flying in the face of these privations is Bourbon Brunch & Beer, an American-style honky-tonk. Yankee touches include a picture of Johnny Cash on the wall and a food menu that features hot dogs, mac ‘n’ cheese and bagels. Its casual-bar cred is further proven through its attitude toward that fernet and Coke habit, a drink that is shunned by some mixologists as too common, but heartily embraced here. (The Fernet Branca made in Argentina, by the way, is considerably drier and more astringent than the Italian version, which is what the U.S. gets. So the pairing with the sweet Coca-Cola makes more sense.) Bourbon Brunch & Beer was created by the same folks who own the over-the-top Uptown. The owner told me he wanted to open a more relaxed bar, a place to hang out. The back bar is lined with dozens of bourbon brands that the owner smuggled back from trips to the United States, and intends to sell by the glass. When asked how that was possible, legally, he shrugged. “It’s Buenos Aires,” he replied.

  

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