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The bitter has a supply problem

Nevada made the Picon Punch its state cocktail in 2025 — the year the American bitter it is built on stopped being made. No factory closed: the recipe was given away, to Reno.

storyThe bitter has a supply problemNevada made the Picon Punch its state cocktail in 2025 — theyear the American bitter it is built on stopped being made. No

A malaria remedy, 1837cited

Gaétan Picon compounded the original in Algeria with the French Foreign Legion — quinine, bark, roots and orange, taken for fever. It reached the American West coast late in the century, right as Basque boarding houses were looking for a house pour.

It never got importedcited

Amer Picon from Marseille does not reach the United States in any dependable quantity. American bars pour Torani Amer instead — made in San Francisco, and made largely because Basque bars needed it. Torani made it for more than sixty years.

2024: the Picon paniccited

California required re-certification of one of the ingredients, and Torani Amer went off the market with no date for its return; by August the trade was told mid-August at the earliest. Reno press called it the Picon panic. Regulars in rural Nevada carried their own bottles into their own bars so the bartender could keep making the drink. That is the hoarding people remember, and the speculation that came with it.

What actually happened to Torani — no factory closedcited

The story circulates as a factory closure. It was not one. In December 2024 Torani announced it was handing the confidential Amer formula, and the global rights to it, to Ferino Distillery in Reno — free of charge, with the stated hope that they would carry it on. Torani stopped making Amer in March 2025 and turned to its syrup business. Ferino put it into production in April 2025 as Ferino Amer. Torani's plant did not shut; the company stopped making one product and gave it away.

2025: Reno takes it over, and the state makes it officialcited

The same year, Nevada named the Picon Punch its official state cocktail. The drink and the bitter it needs are now both made in Nevada. Gardnerville's bar names Ferino on its own page.

The glass is its own supply questioncited

Northern Nevada serves it in a six-ounce stemmed glass — usually a Libbey 8054 Georgian Irish coffee, a stock restaurant-supply item, and sometimes a custom one from the Louie Picon Glass Company of Sparks, a two-person firm incorporated in 2009. Everywhere else it goes into a highball or a Collins, which is twice the volume.

Not a Basque Country drinkcited

It barely exists in the Pyrenees. It belongs to the diaspora — southern Idaho, northern and central California, northern Nevada — and to nowhere else.

Kin

Picon PunchPicon Punchdrinkthe record with the build and the glassware← the long version of the bitter's supply problemThe Picon glasswordthe six ounces this all has to fit into← the bitter has the same problem as the glassDowntown Gardnerville, NevadaJ.T. Basque Bar and Dining Roomroomnames Ferino on its own pageThe Brass Railroompours one, 300 miles from RenoThe Star Hotelroompours one, and prints no drink list at allTitle: Gateway to the scenic west, Hotel Humboldt, Winnemucca, Nevada Subjects: Hotels Places: Nevada > Humboldt (county) > Winnemucca Notes: Title from item. Extent: 1 print (postcard) : linen Nevadaregionthe state that made it official
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  • whether Ferino Amer is in steady supply now, and what a bottle costs
  • whether any room in this directory still pours from a hoarded Torani bottle

Sources

Record provenance: cited · confidence high · updated 2026-09-17