orange bitters are an alcoholic (usually) tincture of bitter orange peel and other supporting botanicals, including coriander, gentian, and chinchona. Originally a standard apothecary’s formula, they were created as a potable, mildly bitter digestive. A Dutch specialty, from the eighteenth century through the mid-twentieth Dutch oranjebitter were exported throughout Europe and the Americas and to much of Asia as well. Orange bitters have of late been making a comeback as a cocktail ingredient, a use for which they first became popular in the 1880s, around the same time that vermouth started to make a splash in bars. Although they were most likely the bitters used in the original manhattan, they achieved their apotheosis as an accent to the Dry martini and its countless gin-and-vermouth cocktail kin at the dawn of the twentieth century. See Manhattan Cocktail and Martini. But the Manhattan soon switched to other, more biting bitters and as the preferred amount of vermouth in the Martini began to dwindle to a drip in the 1960s, the orange bitters component soon disappeared altogether.
By the time the twenty-first century rolled around, the only commercial brand of orange bitters still in existence was an obscure version made by Fee Brothers of Rochester, New York—though cocktail historian Ted Haigh had been doing his level best to rescue it from obscurity after laboriously tracking it down. Fellow cocktail archaeologist Gary Regan, inspired by Charles H. Baker Jr.’s 1939 recipe published in The Gentleman’s Companion, started making his own orange bitters, and in 2005 he teamed up with Sazerac Co. to produce Regans’ Orange Bitters no. 6. See Baker, Charles Henry, Jr.; Haigh, Ted; Regan, Gary; and Sazerac Co.
Since then, several other companies have introduced their own brands of orange bitters, including the venerable Angostura, whose aromatic bitters have dominated that category for a century and a half. Enterprising bartenders have even taken to mixing different brands of orange bitters; the combination of Fee Brothers’ and Regans’ bitters has become common enough to earn it the sobriquet “Feegan’s.” See Angostura Bitters.
See also cocktail renaissance.
Parsons, Brad Thomas. Bitters. Berkeley: Ten Speed, 2011.
By: David Mahoney