Boozehound (22 page)

Beyond the kitchen, bartenders have been experimenting with aquavit in cocktails, most often as a replacement for vodka. Aquavit’s herbal profile seems to make sense in savory cocktails, such as the Bloody Mary, which is probably the only cocktail served in every bar all over the world.

The Bloody Mary was invented by a bartender named Fernand Petiot at Harry’s Bar in Paris during the 1920s. After Prohibition ended, Petiot moved to New York and served drinks at the bar in the St. Regis Hotel. Concerned that more conservative American patrons might be offended by the name, the St. Regis rechristened the drink the Red Snapper. With equal parts vodka and tomato juice and a squeeze of lemon juice, I believe the Red Snapper is the superior expression of the cocktail—nothing like the goopy tomato-gravy disasters you usually get. The “Nordic” rendition here calls for aquavit instead of vodka.

NORDIC SNAPPER

Serves 1

2 ounces aquavit

2 ounces tomato juice

¼ ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice

½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

2 dashes celery bitters

Pinch of fine sea salt

Pinch of freshly ground black pepper

Pinch of cayenne pepper

Lemon peel twist, for garnish

Fill a cocktail shaker halfway with ice. Add the aquavit, tomato juice, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, celery bitters, salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper. Shake well for at least 30 seconds, then strain into an ice-filled highball glass. Garnish with the lemon peel twist.

N
OTE:
Two more thoughts: Forget the celery stalk; do not forget the lemon juice.

Beyond Bloody Mary variations, however, aquavit cocktails can be hard to find. “Aside from being a kind gesture to visiting Danes, and so on, it is practically uncalled-for in mixing.” That’s what Charles H. Baker wrote about aquavit in his famous 1939 book,
The Gentleman’s Companion: Being an Exotic Drinking Book; or Around the World with Jigger, Beaker, and Flask
.

However, I have found one aquavit cocktail I often enjoy. This surprisingly complex cocktail gets its name from the way the savory, herbal tastes of the aquavit, the botanicals of the gin, and the touch of sweet in the maraschino liqueur complement one another. It is adapted from a recipe of Hardeep Rehal, bartender at Bar Rouge in Copenhagen, who won a local contest with it. He calls for the Danish Aalborg brand, but feel free to use any high-quality aquavit, preferably a
taffel
, or clear, aquavit. I recommend Plymouth gin, which is more subtle than a juniper-forward gin like Beefeater’s or Tanqueray. As always, do not confuse or replace maraschino liqueur with the juice from maraschino cherries.

COMPLEMENT COCKTAIL

Serves 1

1½ ounces Plymouth gin

¾ ounce aquavit

2 dashes maraschino liqueur

1 sprig dill, for garnish

Fill a cocktail shaker two-thirds full with ice. Add the gin, aquavit, and maraschino liqueur. Shake vigorously, then strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with the dill sprig.

Adapted from a recipe by Hardeep Rehal of Bar Rouge, Copenhagen, Denmark

CHAPTER 7

TERROIR-ISTS

 … THIS THIRST FOR A KIND OF LIQUID WHICH NATURE HAS ENVELOPED IN VEILS, THIS STRANGE DESIRE THAT ASSAILS ALL RACES OF MANKIND, IN EVERY CLIMATE AND TEMPERATURE …

—
Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

T
ERROIR
, THE TERM THAT FOR YEARS
has been mispronounced and misunderstood and has caused endless arguments in the wine world, has now gained serious currency in the world of spirits. To wit, Scotch whisky now exhibits terroir. Ditto cognac. So do the various eaux-de-vie made from orchard fruit throughout the Alps. But it’s not just European Union DOCs boasting of terroir. Kentucky bourbon claims it. So does tequila. Peruvian pisco? Yep: terroir.

In the simplest terms, terroir refers to the special characteristics that a geographic place imparts on an agricultural product. I knew “terroir of spirits” had absolutely gained traction when I saw spirits represented at the huge Slow Food Nation blowout in San Francisco over Labor Day weekend in 2008. “A spirit is an agricultural product,” I was told by Greg Lindgren, the curator of the Slow Food Spirits Pavilion, and co-owner of several bars in the city. “Producing spirits has always been a way for farmers to remain farmers. It’s one of the best ways to diversify a farmer’s economic situation.” This made me happy. I grew up in a family that made its living in produce. From an early age, I worked at a farm market selling fruits and vegetables with my brothers and cousins—we got all of our locally grown peaches and corn and tomatoes and melons from Garden State farmers within about a ten-mile radius, and this was in late 1970s, before we had Michael Pollan to tell us this was a good and virtuous thing.

Of course, understanding terroir better meant actually experiencing these spirits—and their raw ingredients—at the source. Which meant more travel. Which meant more looking at things and trying new drinks.

Famous Potatoes

It’s a question I’ve posed before, and I will pose it again now: does the world need another vodka? Maybe that doesn’t rank up there with life’s great philosophical puzzles, such as “What is the nature of the universe?” or “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” or even “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?” But it’s the sort of question that people in the cocktails and spirits business—not to mention lifestyle journalism—think about. In April 2009, the
Wall Street Journal
officially declared, “Vodka is passé.” A few weeks later, the
New York Times
countered, “Vodka Dead? Not So Fast.” This level of debate probably explains why no one asked lifestyle journalists to help solve the financial crisis, stop the swine flu pandemic, or save the ailing newspaper industry.

Given that vodka producers keep coming up with new marketing angles, I was not particularly surprised to learn that the makers of a new Swedish vodka called Karlsson’s Gold claimed to be “the first luxury vodka that can sincerely boast its own terroir.” Nor did it surprise me that this vodka is made exclusively from new potatoes grown on Sweden’s Cape Bjäre (“the region is to potatoes what France’s Bordeaux region is to grapes,” according to the company). Nor that these potatoes are so delicate that they must be washed and refrigerated within four hours of harvest. Nor that they are sought after by chefs in Scandinavia’s finest restaurants. Nor that the creation of the vodka was motivated by its maker’s altruistic desire to keep Cape Bjäre’s potato farmers on their land. Ah yes, a terroir vodka! I was not surprised by any of it.

Potatoes, in particular, were the main part of my family business. So I was excited that summer to visit Cape Bjäre, on Sweden’s southeastern coast, to meet the farmers who made terroir vodka. Håkan Paulsson, one of the farmers, greeted me and poured me a shot of vodka in coffee, a traditional eye-opener called
kaffegok
. Paulsson was a no-bullshit guy, and I liked him immediately. How did you get involved in the vodka business, I wanted to know. “Well do you want a story, or a true story?” Paulsson said, with a wink. Money seemed to be the main story. There appeared to be an awful lot of golf courses in Bjäre, which is sort of like a Swedish Hamptons. I’m guessing a lot of those golf courses were once potato farms.

He showed off the various local potatoes that grow only in Bjäre, varieties neither I nor my father nor my uncle had ever heard of: Solist, Minerva, Gammel Svensk Rod (Old Swedish Red). “How would you describe the taste of these potatoes?” I asked.

“Well, how about for you? It’s very difficult to describe taste,” Paulsson said. “Many Swedish people have grown up eating Old Swedish Red and herring. And then they moved to the United States!”

Later, over a boozy dinner at a fishing cottage by the sea, I met one of the founders of Karlsson’s Gold, multimillionaire Peter Ekelund. As the midnight sun didn’t set and the vodka flowed, I was a little surprised by Ekelund’s rhetorical question. “Does the world need another vodka?” he asked. “The product has gotten so boring. It’s gotten too big for its own good.” His response to his own question was, of course, to create another vodka that retails for forty dollars in the United States. “We wanted to do something contrarian,” he said. The contrarian idea: Can a vodka actually have taste? Odd, really, how few of the dozens of vodka companies ponder that question. Most nonflavored vodkas chase some standard of purity and neutrality and boast of being thrice distilled, five times distilled, ten times distilled. Essentially, those vodkas are marketed based on their utter lack of flavor.

Karlsson’s Gold, however, is an unfiltered blend of several potato varieties that’s then distilled as little as possible—going through a continuous still only once and thus retaining some funky elements, some character. When I tasted with Ekelund, he brought out some experimental bottlings of single-variety, single-vintage, single-farmer potato vodka. Say, a June 2004 Minerva, or an August 2006 Solist. To say I was skeptical is an understatement. But when I tasted, the differences were significant and noteworthy. A 2004 Solist was sweet and starchy compared with a 2004 Minerva, which was redolent of apple peels, or a 2006 Gammel Svensk Rod, which was hot on the finish but full of herbal intensity.

The Karlsson’s Gold approach, then, is to make a vodka that derives its taste from carefully chosen ingredients—in this case, gourmet potatoes—meaning that its gimmick is really no gimmick at all. It’s almost like a potato eau-de-vie. The final blend is rich, creamy, and smooth, with notes of herbs and crisp fruit. It is a lovely spirit: vodka with flavor. “These are the ideas that change industries,” Ekelund said. “The big ideas to solve problems.”

That sounds like pretty grand talk from a small-potatoes vodka company that’s now selling about 25,000 cases a year worldwide. Until you realize that, in the ultimate ironic twist, Ekelund and his colleagues at Karlsson’s are actually the same people responsible for setting the premium vodka snowball rolling nearly three decades ago when they worked for another little Swedish company … called Absolut.

You remember Absolut, don’t you? The brand that single-handedly reinvented vodka as a fashion accessory back in the 1980s? The one whose Andy Warhol–designed ads seem to have graced the back page of every magazine in America for decades? The one that sells eleven million cases annually worldwide and was sold to Pernod Ricard in 2008 for more than eight billion dollars? The one with the universally recognized bottle, the one whose flagship vodka tastes like … well, nothing? The one that opened Pandora’s box by creating flavored vodkas such as Absolut Peppar, Absolut Pears, and, more recently, Absolut Mango?

In Stockholm, the day after our visit to Cape Bjäre, I met some of the other principals in Karlsson’s. One was master blender Bärje Karlsson, who is credited with being the father of Absolut. At a dinner where several American and Swedish bartenders were trying to mix cocktails using his vodka, Karlsson wasn’t very happy. “I’ve spent my life making spirits to be enjoyed on their own,” he said. “I make the spirit a certain way. I like to drink it that way.”