Boozehound (19 page)

Since I was already drinking my way through Italy, I decided to veer northeast and head to up to the Veneto, to Bassano del Grappa, a charming city at the foothills of the Alps on the Brenta River. The town is grappa’s spiritual home, and I visited two distilleries there.

But wait. You’re also afraid of grappa, right? Maybe you once had a bad sip of the stuff after dinner in an Italian restaurant, or maybe, if you’re of Italian descent, you had a homemade snootful at an old relative’s house. Don’t worry, I’m not going tell you that my first experience with grappa was exquisite or transcendent. When I was an exchange student in Italy nearly twenty years ago, many of the men in the village where I lived enjoyed a daily
caffè corretto
, meaning they “corrected” their morning espressos with a shot of grappa. Those guys were always keen to pour me a little, too, and much of it was of the white-lightning variety and burned the esophagus like kerosene.

“Many people once had that same harsh, aggressive experience, and you’ll remember that experience your whole life,” says Jacopo Poli, fourth-generation distiller of one of Italy’s finest grappas, Poli. “But the grappas we are distilling now are at least ten times better than the grappa we drank twenty years ago.”

Grappa faces the same predicament that has plagued tequila. Most people’s early experiences with tequila were with poor-quality
mixtos
that left a mean hangover. Good, premium grappa, however, can be a lovely and complex spirit, just like premium tequila. Yet, as with tequila, it will be an uphill climb to convince people of that. That’s why grappa distillers in Italy went ballistic in 2008 when senators in the right-wing Lega Nord party proposed legalizing homemade grappa. “It’s nonsense,” Poli said. “It’s taken decades to get rid of the image of the clandestine still, of moonshine, of lowbrow grappa. And now they want to go back to the past?” So far, the legislation has not passed.

For a brief time, from the late 1980s through the mid-1990s, grappa experienced a minor trendiness in the United States when Italian restaurants began offering a selection of grappas, many in showy, silly blown-glass bottles. But that small wave of popularity might have created an even larger long-term problem for premium grappa.

Around that time, some of Italy’s big-name winemakers, such as Antinori, Michele Chiarlo, Banfi, and others, jumped onto the grappa bandwagon, and a whole category of winery-branded grappas took off. A few are of decent quality, but many are not. Often they were created as a value add-on to restaurant wine orders (buy ten cases of our wine, and we’ll give you a free case of grappa) and also as brand reinforcement on their after-dinner menu; in other words, as a marketing gimmick.

“Just because the pomace came from a good winery doesn’t mean it’s going to make a good grappa,” Poli said. Grappa is not a brandy, as is often reported, and it’s not made with wine, but rather with grape pomace: the skins, seeds, and pulp of grapes that are left after the juice has been extracted for winemaking. The pomace must be stored in an airtight container to stop the fermentation process, and it must be kept fresh, moist, and free of mold.

“Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of making a good grappa is knowing how to handle the pomace properly,” said Antonio Guarda Nardini, whose family runs the Nardini Distillery, Italy’s largest producer of premium grappa. The Nardini family has been handling pomace and making grappa since 1779.

Most wineries, on the other hand, use a contract distiller who puts the winery’s label on a grappa, often with mixed results. Sometimes it’s even unclear whether the winery’s own pomace is used. Yet if you go to a liquor store today, grappas by wineries often crowd out the premium, artisan distillers.

In the glass, what separates a bad grappa from a good one? First, a bad grappa often has what could be described as a “pet shop” aroma. At a dinner on my trip, we tasted a very poor grappa, and my tablemate said, “I feel like I can hear puppies barking when I sip this.” That is often the telltale sign that moldy or stale pomace has been used.

To check quality, Nardini suggests a simple test: when a grappa is served, dip your finger in it and rub the back of your hand. When you smell your hand, the aroma should be instantly fresh and at least hint at grapes. Just as important, the grappa shouldn’t feel oily. There is always some oil in the pomace because of the crushed grape seeds, but good producers filter and distill in a way that minimizes it. Poorly made grappa contains a high percentage of oil. “The oil is what makes it hard to digest and gives you a headache,” Nardini says. “That’s the grappa that makes you say, ‘Ugh, I could feel that grappa going up and down my system for three days.’ ” Nardini avoids problems by filtering and triple distilling, and the result is cleaner, lighter, and smoother than you’d imagine a 100-proof spirit could be.

Nardini and Poli make excellent grappas, though each comes at the spirit from a different angle. Nardini has long been considered the gold standard in Italy, and its bianco is a great place to start if you’re looking for a traditional grappa. Poli, on the other hand, considers himself more of an artisan and innovator. He has begun producing grappas with fruit infusions, plus grappa made from single-grape pomace, such as Moscato or Merlot, and he experiments with different methods of barrel aging. When I visited, Poli was about to roll out grappas that had been aged in port and sherry barrels.

I’m glad I’ve revisited grappa, but I’ll stick to the distilleries that are committed to grappa as their main spirit and not as a sideline. The next time I’m in an Italian restaurant and the waiter comes around during coffee with little glasses of grappa, I’m checking to see. If it’s Poli or Nardini, or an artisan producer such as Nonino or Capovilla, I know what I’ll say to my dining companions: have no fear.

A Round of Drinks:
Improving the Negroni

As I entered one summer drinking season, that cynical line from Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”—the one I mentioned earlier—was rattling around in my head: “I wanted to try this new drink. That’s all we do, isn’t it—look at things and try new drinks?” I was full of a similar sense of ennui. Through the colder months I’d tried so many new spirits, a never-ending line of product launches ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime. Likewise, I’d tried so many new cocktails, invented almost daily by the growing horde of “mixologists,” all trying to out-innovate, out-clever, or out-classic one another.

When it came time to choose a summer drink, I was so sated with The New that I decided to go back to an old standby: the Negroni. For a long time, I’d considered the Negroni to be just about the perfect cocktail. Equal parts gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari, the Negroni is so simple that even the worst bartender can’t mess it up too badly. It’s more forgiving than a martini and certainly sexier than, say, a gin and tonic. It was one of the first cocktails I’d taken to drinking as a young man, and I was very much looking forward to getting reacquainted with my old friend.

NEGRONI

Serves 1

1 ounce gin

1 ounce sweet vermouth

1 ounce Campari

Orange peel twist, for garnish

Fill a mixing glass halfway with ice. Add the gin, vermouth, and Campari. Stir vigorously for 30 seconds, then strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with the orange peel twist.

But here’s the thing. When I mixed up a batch of Negronis, my reaction, to my surprise and chagrin, was pretty much, meh. In theory, I wanted a Negroni, but in reality, the Negroni was lacking something. That distressed me. What if all the fancy-schmancy tasting I’ve been doing lately has irrevocably rewired my palate? What if I can never again go back to being the young, carefree person who loved nothing better than the simple pleasures of a Negroni in summertime?

My solution: I would use my hard-won cocktail wisdom and experience to reengineer, and possibly improve, the Negroni. Starting with the classic Negroni formula and then deviating from it, I would illustrate how nearly all good new cocktails evolve. In doing so, I would also reclaim my old drink and perhaps a part of my youth. Or something like that.

At first I thought the Campari was the problem. I’d been tasting a lot of different bitter spirits lately, including several obscure local Campari competitors from Italy. Perhaps Campari now seemed a little too old hat? So, to start, I stirred up a Negroni alternative called the Cyn-Cin, which substitutes Cynar for the Campari. It was excellent.

CYN-CIN

Serves 1

1 ounce gin

1 ounce sweet vermouth

1 ounce Cynar

1 dash orange bitters

2 orange wedges, sliced ½ inch thick

Fill a shaker halfway with ice. Add the gin, vermouth, Cynar, and bitters, along with a squeeze of juice from one of the orange wedges. Shake well, then strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with the remaining orange wedge.

But I was still restless, so I decided to switch gins. I’d been using Tanqueray, and I shifted to Hendrick’s, which is softer, with rose and cucumber notes. And because I did that, I figured I’d make a drink created by my friend, bartender Charlotte Voisey. I switched out the vermouth for Lillet Blanc. I also traded Cynar for Aperol, which is Campari’s sweeter, sunnier, bright orange cousin. After mixing those three, I now had an Unusual Negroni, which was also wonderful.

UNUSUAL NEGRONI

Serves 1

1 ounce Hendrick’s gin

1 ounce Lillet Blanc

1 ounce Aperol

Orange peel twist, for garnish

In a mixing glass filled halfway with ice, combine the gin, Lillet Blanc, and Aperol. Stir vigorously for 30 seconds, then strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with the orange peel twist.

Recipe by Charlotte Voisey, brand ambassador for Hendrick’s Gin

While I enjoyed the Unusual Negroni very much, I realized what I really wanted to do was get rid of the gin. So I brought back the sweet vermouth and the Campari, put away the gins, and pulled out a bottle of prosecco. Then, I made what is called a Negroni Sbagliato—basically a Negroni that calls for sparkling wine instead of gin.
Sbagliato
means “wrong” or “mistaken,” as in, “I messed up and mistakenly put prosecco in this Negroni instead of gin.”

NEGRONI SBAGLIATO

Serves 1

1 ounce Campari

1 ounce sweet vermouth

2 ounces prosecco or Asti Spumante

Thin whole slice of orange, for garnish

Fill an old-fashioned glass with ice cubes. Add the vermouth and Campari, then top with the prosecco. Stir to combine. Garnish with the slice of orange.

But I still wasn’t finished, so I pulled out two of my favorite base spirits, tequila and bourbon. For the tequila, the always-excellent cocktail blogger Paul Clarke, at Serious Eats, showed me the way by blogging a recipe created by Bastian Heuser, one of Germany’s top bartenders. It’s called the Agavoni, and it replaces the Negroni’s gin with blanco or silver tequila. (Get it? Agave plus Negroni?)

AGAVONI

Serves 1

¾ ounce blanco or silver tequila

¾ ounce sweet vermouth

¾ ounce Campari

2 dashes orange bitters

Grapefruit peel twist, for garnish

Fill an old fashioned-glass with ice cubes. Add the tequila, vermouth, Campari, and bitters. Stir briefly until mixed and chilled. Garnish with the grapefruit peel twist.