Boozehound - Jason Wilson [47]
On that late afternoon in Milan, I found myself drinking an Americano cocktail (Campari, sweet vermouth, and a lemon twist, on the rocks) within the inner sanctum of the Dolce & Gabbana men’s store, sitting at a sleek black bar operated by Martini, the vermouth producer, with black leather sofas and a blood-red dragon on the dark mosaic floor and ambient techno music playing. When I entered from the Corso Venezia, one of Milan’s toniest shopping streets, the clerks eyed me and my shabby attire suspiciously. When I told them I’d come for happy hour, they dismissively waved me back to the Martini Bar past leather belts worth more than my entire wardrobe.
The Dolce & Gabbana store is in the middle of the Quadrilatero district, also known as the Golden Quadrangle, an area filled with posh designer stores. This is a dangerous neighborhood in which to begin happy hour, especially while the stores are still open. For instance, I’m generally shopping averse. At home, I buy all the clothes I need for the year—mainly T-shirts and flip-flops—in about an hour and a half. But when I’m in Milan, something strange happens. In the Miuccia Prada store, I might watch a Japanese teenager matter-of-factly buy a handbag for $17,000, and I start thinking about what I might buy. I once caught myself considering buying a pair of red pants that cost more than $300. Which meant it was time to move on to the next drink in a different neighborhood.
I walked toward the Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio to one of my old favorites, Bar Magenta, a high-ceilinged, wood-paneled Milan institution for more than one hundred years and one of the city’s best meeting places. All walks of life mingle here, from dreadlocked college kids drinking beers to professionals drinking Negronis to older men sipping vermouth on the rocks. At happy hour, there are always several types of housemade pasta available, and a guy behind the counter slices meats like prosciutto, speck, bresaola, and culatello. Then, at a certain point, I always try to end up on the Corso di Porta Ticinese, the main thoroughfare of Milan’s most bohemian neighborhood. The centerpiece of the neighborhood is the piazza of the Basilica of San Lorenzo. Here, hundreds of people congregate on warm evenings, drinking Campari and Aperol cocktails, prosecco, or beer. Most of the action takes place at Exploit, which sits directly under the so-called Diesel Wall, a gigantic fashion company billboard masquerading as art. The entrance to Exploit is deceivingly tranquil—under an awning, obscured by hedges. Inside, however, it’s a mob scene during happy hour. People crowd around the bar where waiters feverishly serve complimentary mini-pizzas, vegetable tortes, and panini. The best thing to do is get your aperitivo, fill up a plate, retreat outside to a sunny place in the piazza, and do what everyone else is doing: people watch. There are no tables outside, but people are sprawled everywhere, leaning against planters, sitting along the Roman walls, or standing in groups. As the evening wears on beyond happy hour, much of the crowd remains in the piazza, drinking, strumming guitars, or kicking a soccer ball with the illuminated ruins of Roman columns as a dramatic backdrop.
Wayne Curtis, the drinks columnist for the Atlantic, has described the first sip of Fernet-Branca as “akin to waking up in a foreign country and finding a crowd of people arguing in agitated, thorny voices outside your hotel window. It’s an event that’s at once alarming and slightly thrilling.”
I was thinking of that description in my hotel room on the morning of my visit to the Fernet-Branca distillery in Milan. I’d lost my phone the night before during some excessive post–happy hour revelries, and I had no alarm. I was finally awakened by a panicked call to my hotel room from the Fernet-Branca public relations person. Ragged, I quickly showered and taxied across the city, arriving at the gates of