Patrick Miller is presiding over the cramped space that serves as the HQ of his Brooklyn amaro company, Faccia Brutto, shouting instructions to a group of assembled friends who are helping with bottling day. One machine portions the spirits into the eye-catching bottles; another spits out labels.
A former chef who opened and led the kitchen at one of Brooklyn’s best neighborhood Italian restaurants, Rucola, Miller started the brand a few years back and has seen it become one of the best-known names in the growing category of American distillers of Italian-inspired spirits.
About the name: Miller is well aware that Faccia Brutto is grammatically incorrect in Italian, but he explains why he ran with it, and shares the story behind the increasingly popular line of spirits, in this condensed and edited interview.
Why did you start Faccia Brutto?
One Christmas season while I was working at Rucola, I made orange bitters as a DIY, poor line cook Christmas gift. The hobby slowly became more of a hobby. And my mom bought me this five-gallon barrel that we still have here. That spurred me on to play around.
Faccia Brutto's apaeritivo, as used in a Negroni.
Why did you eventually give up being a chef to launch Faccia Brutto?
I was like, what's my next move in life? What's my next chapter? I was about to turn 36 or 37 and I was getting tired of working seven days a week with three services a day. So I was like, maybe this could be something that I can transform into my next life path, and I can have my own hours and be my own boss.
So what’d you do?
I wrote a business plan, made a pitch deck—all that stuff kind of got put together and we got investors and got the space and submitted the paperwork.
When did you move into this space and start making amaro?
We got the space in 2019 and the paperwork [to start a liquor company] in February 2020.
Ah, right before the pandemic started. Was that good or bad for you?
It was both. It was good because people were at home and experimenting with cocktails and trying new things. And it was bad because obviously, I didn't have nearly as many people to sell to because restaurants and bars were closed. I had 300 accounts I wanted to talk to and I ended up with three.
Let’s go back further. How did you get into amaro and Italian spirits? Are you Italian-American?
My grandparents came from Piemonte. Asti and Genoa, specifically—all northern Italian. They were a huge part of my life. The fernet (Fernet Pianti) is named after my grandfather, one of the amari (Amaro Gorini) is named after my grandmother.
The Alpino is one of Faccia Brutto's bottle-aged spirits.
Did they teach you about amari?
No, I just got turned onto it by working at Rucola and being exposed to all the different products. After service, I would have a drink and try new things. My preferences changed as things went on.
Did you start with one type of amaro?
I started with five in mind: two that I could make in no time. The fernet and the aperitive take two weeks, start to finish. Two others, the amari, take a few months to age in barrel. (Though we’re switching over to a full solera system with aging soon.) Then the nocino takes a whole year.
You still have all of those in the portfolio. Anything else on the horizon?
We have two more products coming out soon that won’t require any aging, a centerbe, which is like a green chartreuse, and a carciofo, which is like a Cynar.
OK, so tell us the story behind the name.
So faccia brutta means ugly face, and it's a term of endearment or an insult depending on how the person is feeling when they say it. And I had been through a few names for the business when I first started but I was lukewarm about all of them. Then I was crossing the street one day and I just thought of one of my old chefs whose wife called him “faccia brutta.” And I was like [snaps fingers], “That’s it. That’s the name.”
Why did you change the expression to Faccio Brutto for the brand?
I wanted the business to have a slightly more masculine sound to it so I just changed the “a” in brutta to “o.” Which infuriates some Italians. But I'm like, listen, I was thinking, “ugly grammar, ugly face.” You know, it's just like a tongue-in-cheek sort of thing.
Has anyone actually complained about it?
I've had an Italian language grammar teacher from Washington, D.C. call me to ask me why my choice was to mess with the language. Long Instagram complaints to me from people and I'm like, “Do you guys have nothing better to do with your life right now?” So that's kind of where the name stemmed from, like a shower thought. You know, something that when you're not thinking actively about it, just pops into your head.