The Piedra Is Mexico’s Hard-Hitting Hangover Cure

“Tibio, culero, a ojo de buen Cubero, en copa cognaquera.”

“Warm, nasty, measured by the eye, in a Cognac glass”—so goes the cheeky, rhyming recipe for the Piedra, a Mexican cantina cocktail that’s known as a hangover cure. Whoever invented the forceful blend of equal parts tequila, fernet and anis (aka anisette or anise liqueur) could clearly drink. Eschewing dilution and exactitude, the Piedra, or “rock,” is an unflinching blow.

“Personally, I find it super challenging to drink,” says Claudia Cabrera, chief bartender at the Mexico City bar Kaito del Valle and brand ambassador for Fernet-Branca in Mexico. “But will it cure a rotten hangover? Absolutely.”

Piedras, like carajillos and banderitas, gained traction in Mexico in the mid 19th-century. These cocktails were popularized in cantinas, the traditional (decidedly male, at first) watering holes of Mexico where regional ingredients and the spark of improvisation meet. In modern-day Mexico City, cantinas remain the backbone of the drinking culture—everyone has a favorite cantina, often close to their workplace, each filling up by 5 p.m. Their menus, meanwhile, continue to be mined for dusty classics by new generations of bartenders.

The Piedra, whose inventor is lost to time, is of an era that believed in the illusory benefits of alcohol consumption. The tequila is there, to warm the heart. The anis, for health. The fernet, for digestion—it was the ultimate cure-all. And sipping one, sweet as it is, allows you to feel the full length of the esophagus, like warm gravel pouring down the throat. Fernet-Vallet, a Mexican brand created in the capital in the 1860s by Henri Vallet, a French immigrant and chemist, is one of the oldest amaro-style spirits made outside of Europe. Less viscous and minty than Fernet-Branca, it lends a pronounced cardamom note to the cocktail.