Signature cocktail
The Brera Cocktail
Brera is not only a district. It is a way of living the city.
Some cocktails come from a recipe. Others come from a place. The Brera Cocktail belongs to the second kind.
When Bar Brera began a new chapter under new ownership, in February 2023, we asked ourselves a question as simple as it was ambitious: how is it possible that one of the most iconic districts in Milan has no cocktail to stand for it?
This is the place where art, design, fashion and culture have lived side by side for over two centuries. Where students of the Accademia sit at the same table as collectors, architects, entrepreneurs, photographers and travelers from all over the world. It is an elegant, creative, international Milan that still keeps a deeply authentic soul.
A place like this deserved a signature.
We did not want to add another drink to the cocktail list. We wanted to create a symbol. A cocktail that would tell the district as well as a walk through its streets. That idea started a long run of trials, tastings and second opinions.
Before the recipe, we looked for the meaning.
It was clear that the heart of the cocktail had to be deeply Milanese. The choice fell almost immediately on Branca, one of the companies that stand for the city. Founded in Milan in 1845, it still produces in its historic Milanese plant, turning a secret blend of twenty-seven herbs, roots and spices from all over the world into one of the best known and most appreciated Italian products abroad.
To us it captured the spirit of Milan exactly: a city able to take in influences from everywhere and turn them into excellence through its own craft. The recipe came from that conviction.
The recipe
The official recipe
- Stravecchio Branca3 cl
- Carpano Antica Formula4 cl
- Fernet-Branca1 cl
- Ginger Beer Schweppestop up
Served over ice, in a frosted glass, with orange peel.
The Stravecchio Branca, with its softness and its warm, enveloping notes, was chosen as the base of the cocktail. A great Italian spirit that gives structure without taking over.
Next to it, the Carpano Antica Formula, the vermouth that wrote a defining page in the history of the Italian aperitivo, adds elegance, aromatic depth and the refined spiced streak that recalls Milanese tradition.
The character of the drink is completed by the Fernet-Branca. A deliberately small amount, enough to leave a recognizable signature without covering the other ingredients. It is the detail that makes the Brera immediately different from any other cocktail.
Finally, the Ginger Beer Schweppes, which brings freshness, lightness and a pleasant sparkle, making the cocktail remarkably balanced: right for an aperitivo and right for a long evening in the streets of the district.
It looks like a simple recipe. In truth the work was all in the proportions: we changed the balance again and again, looking for a cocktail that was elegant but approachable, complex but immediate, able to surprise without becoming hard to drink.
Every version was tasted with the same question in mind: does this really taste of Brera? When we found the answer, we knew the cocktail was born.
We did not look for a clever name. We simply called it Brera.
Because we did not want it to be the cocktail of Bar Brera. We wanted it to become the cocktail of Brera. A small tribute to a district that for over a century has been one of the most compelling places in Milan, where history and the present live together naturally, exactly like the ingredients of this drink.
Every Brera served at the counter tells a piece of that story. Because sometimes the best way to know a city is not to visit it. It is to taste it.
The list
The Brera is the first. It is not the only one.
Classics of Italian mixology, house signatures and a selection of amari and spirits.
See the full list