Bartram’s Bitters

Bartram's Bitters are based on a 180-year-old recipe that fell out of an 1846 edition of A.B. Strong’s The American Flora, or History of Plants and WildFlowers in 1995. Like its more familiar counterparts (Peychaud’s and Angostura), Bartram’s Bitters would have been originally intended as a curative tonic, and was infused from a variety of herbals and aromatics. This resurrected (and slightly adjusted) recipe comes in numbered bottles produced by the local Philadelphia Distilling Company. The recipe includes gentian root, orange peel, wild cherry twigs, and prickly ash—also known as the “toothache tree”—among other ingredients.