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Córdoba Journal

Argentine City Aims to Stand Out With Rebellious Spirit (and Coke) in a Cup

Fernet, a bitter liqueur, became popular across the country when Argentines began mixing it with Coca-Cola.Credit...Martin Barzilai

CÓRDOBA, Argentina — Backstage at a dance hall, a percussionist, Hugo Núñez, unzipped his rucksack and pulled out two bottles: one of fernet, a bitter Italian liqueur, the other of Coca-Cola. After mixing them in a plastic pint glass, Mr. Núñez sank his lips into the sepia-colored froth and guzzled. That Friday night, the sequence would be repeated by young revelers in bars and dance halls across this city.

Buenos Aires dominates Argentina’s political and cultural life, but Córdoba, a city of 1.3 million in the interior, has been known for rebelling against the capital to project its distinct identity. This can be seen in the city’s voting trends, and in its emphasis on rally racing and cuarteto, a fast-paced music performed into the early hours at packed dance halls. Córdoba’s rebellious soul is even reflected in the city’s drink of choice.

The combination of Coke and fernet — a pungent, dark-amber liqueur that has a black licorice flavor — has emerged as one of this city’s cultural trademarks, making the drink the latest illustration of the city’s desire for distinction from Argentina’s influential capital and its push to influence the nation.

“Everyone has a fernet in their hand,” Carlitos Jiménez, 64, a well-known cuarteto singer known as La Mona, said about his frenzied audiences.

Mr. Jiménez — who was preparing for a concert with Mr. Núñez, 25, and other band members a little before 3 a.m. — said his father used to give him a dram of fernet before meals when he was a boy.

“It’s horrible on its own,” Mr. Jiménez said, sliding on a pair of red flared trousers. “But with Coke, it’s something else.”

The preference for fernet in Córdoba, Argentina’s second-largest city, demonstrates the extent to which people here, known as Cordobeses, revolt against the prevailing cultural and political trends in Buenos Aires, whose inhabitants are called Porteños.

“The Porteños control everything, but they can’t control us,” said Elvira Ispani, 54, a lawyer who, over a barbecue lunch with friends in the nearby Sierras de Córdoba, said that fernet reflected Córdoba’s unruliness.

People in Córdoba now drink so much fernet that they are fueling a national production boom. A little more than a decade ago, producers in Argentina slaked annual demand with just 2.4 million gallons, according to the national chamber of distillers. But by 2013, their output reached nearly 15 million gallons. Production dipped slightly in 2014, as inflation soared and people spent less, but it continues to be high.

The shift from sipping fernet neat as an aperitif, or as a remedy for stomach aches, to young people mixing it with Coke in copious volumes began about 20 years ago.

The reasons for their switch from other spirits, mainly gin, are a mystery. But the new trend soon gripped Argentina like the tendrils of a creeping plant, extending north from Córdoba through neighboring provinces and east to Buenos Aires, where cocktails made with vodka and whiskey had been the norm. Argentines now drink three quarters of the world’s fernet, according to IWSR, a research company that analyzes the global wine and spirits market.

While the drink is popular around Argentina, the passion for fernet has reached another level in Córdoba. With just 8 percent of Argentina’s total population, Córdoba and its satellite towns accounted for more than a third of national consumption of the liqueur, according to a 2013 report by Kantar Worldpanel, a consumer research company.

“I only drink fernet because I have friends from Córdoba,” said Martín Annese, 36, a professor of electrical engineering from Buenos Aires who was on a trip here to give a series of lectures. “They have fernet and cuarteto in their blood.”

Reflecting historic tensions between the capital and Argentina’s interior, rooted in civil war during the 19th century, Córdoba has been swift in staking its claim to having first mixed fernet and Coke.

Across Argentina, there is perhaps no place with a stronger sense of provincial pride than Córdoba. Cordobeses are known for their quick wit and sense of humor, traits that have fostered generations of gifted raconteurs from the surrounding sierra.

The city was transformed by the arrival of car factories in the 1950s. But it remains a magnet for students, and the campus of the National University of Córdoba, the country’s oldest, occupies a portion of its south side.

Córdoba’s location in the center of Argentina gives it a particular vantage point, and an influx of ideas stir mutinous undercurrents, said Walter A. Tolaba, 83, a former philosophy professor and prominent cultural commentator here. It was the birthplace of national uprisings, like university overhauls a century ago and, in 1969, a protest movement that led to the downfall of a military dictator.

The city prides itself on setting its own cultural trends. When cumbia music percolated across Argentina in the 1990s, Córdoba remained a bastion of cuarteto. And while the popularity of soccer is largely unrivaled nationally, every year, droves of car racing fans camp out here in the sierra to watch the local stage of the World Rally Championship.

There is also fernet and Coke.

“Humor, cuarteto, rally driving and fernet,” said Franco Linares, 23, an off-duty soldier at a downtown bar, proudly listing some of Córdoba’s defining elements.

The mix may bewilder in Italy, where fernet is still taken in the traditional manner as a digestif, mainly by older crowds. Sometimes, Italians add a drop to their espresso before work.

Fernet arrived in Argentina during the Italian immigration wave that began in the 19th century, and Branca International, a prominent producer from Milan, opened its first factory in Buenos Aires in 1941.

Theories swirl about who sparked fernet’s explosion. Most point to the large population of university students here. But others suggest it could have been the rock music fans who pack festival towns in the sierra.

There is little doubt, however, about the role today of the cocktail, which is often prepared in gallon jugs at weekend barbecues.

“Sharing a fernet and Coke is in many ways a pagan ritual,” said Pancho Marchiaro, the culture minister for the municipal government here, equating fernet-fueled cuarteto concerts to the pre-Columbian tradition of drinking chicha, a crude corn beer, at religious ceremonies.

At Rooftop, an upscale bar in Güemes, a bohemian neighborhood straddling a small, stone-walled river canyon lined with rosewood trees, the head bartender chafed at the increasing lack of variety since fernet and Coke has become so popular.

“It’s an unstoppable monster,” said the bartender, Daniel Estremadoyro, 47.

Souvenir shops here even sell carved wood molds that hold miniature glass bottles of Fernet-Branca and Coca-Cola.

Some Argentines in other parts of the country remain puzzled by the acclaim. “It’s the most disgusting thing in the world,” said Ramiro de Vooght, 33, a hairdresser from the city of Rosario who compared the liquor’s acrid taste to chicory leaves. “I don’t understand how people drink it.”

In recent years, other fernet brands have tried to establish a foothold, like 1882, which is distilled in Córdoba. The company invested heavily in developing a fernet specifically for mixing with Coke and in publicity campaigns that often tapped into local pride, including the city’s small river canyon, and the popularity of Mr. Jiménez and Jorge Recalde, a former world champion rally driver born at the feet of the sierra.

Threats to fernet lurk here: Cheap boxed wine mixed with a locally produced lemon soda has become popular at student parties, and classic alternatives have not been abandoned. But few in Córdoba think fernet and Coke, like the city itself, will lose its edge.

“There have been fashions,” said Ricardo Verón, 62, Mr. Jiménez’s bass guitarist. But after recalling past dance hall favorites such as gin and white wine, he gestured toward the fernet and Coke he was sharing with Mr. Núñez, the percussionist, and said, “This is going to endure.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: For a Taste of Argentine City’s Rebellious Spirit, Add a Splash of Coke. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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