Why three Philly bars serve this rare Portuguese spirit

During a recent snowstorm, Philly bar owner Chris Fetfatzes dashed around the bustling bar at Sonny’s Cocktail Joint, delivering platters of burgers and fries alongside 1-ounce pours of house-made liqueurs served in tiny, cut-crystal glasses.

One liqueur in particular glowed ruby red, and a sip showed that it had a careful balance of sweetness and tang, its fruitiness cutting through the richness of Sonny’s cracker-thin pizzas. It served as both a pick-me-up and a digestif on a bitter-cold day.

This sunny spirit was a classic sour cherry Portuguese liqueur called ginjinha (“zhin-ZHEEN-yah”). In its home country, you can drink it at the sidewalk-facing counters of historic, pocket-sized stores scattered throughout Lisbon. In the Philly area, you’ll be hard-pressed to find it at most establishments — except for the bars owned and operated by Fetfatzes’ Happy Monday Hospitality: Sonny’s on South Street, Grace & Proper in Bella Vista, and WineDive in Rittenhouse.

The restaurants also make their own green alpine liqueur, chocolate liqueur, coffee liqueur, falernum, fernet, Swedish punsch, and pumpkin tequila, with more to come. (As with ginjinha and house-made amari and vermouth, these all involve steeping botanicals and produce in alcohol, not distilling fresh spirits.)

But the ginjinha is near and dear to Fetfatzes’ heart. The 44-year-old South Philadelphia native is a first-generation American whose mother was Portuguese and father was Greek, and the delicate glasses of liqueur served in his restaurant group’s establishments are part of a quiet legacy of Portuguese immigration to Northeast Philly.

Happy Monday’s ginjinha contains the DNA of Fetfatzes’ original batch, made in 2023 from the fruit of a morello cherry tree that a Portuguese friend planted as a sapling in the Northeast after migrating to the U.S. Fetfatzes and his team harvested 20 gallons of cherries from the tree, grown specifically for ginjinha, in 2023. The fruit was macerated with sugar in a blend of young, unaged brandy and Portuguese red wine for several days, with the occasional agitation to redistribute the cherries.

“It’s [somewhat] like a sangria, as it is a wine-based product,” said Fetfatzes, though it is much sweeter and stronger than typical, easy-drinking Spanish sangria.

The ginjinha recipe was developed through trial and error by Fetfatzes and his beverage director, Scott Rodrigue, who is also of Portuguese descent. “We got a base, messed around with it and branched out to make it our own,” Fetfatzes said. The sour cherry liqueur conjures up the big family parties he partakes in every year when taking his own family back to his mother’s home country.

After landing on a base recipe, subsequent batches of ginjinha — made every three weeks for Happy Monday’s bars — have used flash-frozen cherries sourced from wherever it’s cherry season, whether it’s California, Portugal, Central Europe, or the Middle East.

Fetfatzes and his staff employ the solera method of fractional blending, which is also used to make Champagne and fortified wines like sherry. The 2023 batch has become a “mother” for all of Fetfatzes’ ensuing batches, “like a starter yeast for sourdough,” he explained.

“Like the Italians, we’re peasants living off the land,” said Fetfatzes, whose own mother followed a similar migration path to that of the original batch’s tree. “My mom’s village town was Vergada in the Mozules. She came over solo as a seamstress in 1974.”

The ginjinha is popular at Sonny’s, where several customers who’ve traveled to Portugal like to order it, but it is perhaps best enjoyed at Grace and Proper, where there’s a rotation of homesick Portuguese regulars. They come in for the tiny pours of ginjinha, or have it shaken up with vodka and fresh lime juice for a cocktail called the “Pink Street” ($12), a Portuguese interpretation of a cosmopolitan, along with a bifana sandwich ($7) — one of the best sandwich deals in town — consisting of pork marinated with white wine, garlic, and paprika, and soaking through crusty Portuguese bread.

The ginjinha’a sweetness balances out the sandwich’s salt-kissed meatiness. The flavors, twisted together, balance one another. “Ginjinha has got this pomegranate-like tart-sweet punch that cuts through the garlicky richness of our bifana. It resets your palate, jiving with the bifana’s piri-piri heat and bite of mustard,” said Fetfatzes.

Sonny’s Cocktail Joint, 1508 South St., sonnyscocktailjoint.com; Grace & Proper, 941 S. Eighth St., graceandproper.com; WineDive, 1534 Sansom St., instagram.com/winedivephilly