I wrote a story for the SFStandard about elderflower liqueur making a huge comeback. It was so popular when the brand St. Germain first launched in 2007 that it was given the nickname “bartender’s ketchup.”
It’s so back, but now bartenders are using a wide range of products. Read the story here.
My latest piece for Food & Wine is "How a Bottled Water Goes Social Media Viral and the Real Differences Between Them"
My latest story for Food & Wine is "Why the Shape and Size of Ice in Your Drink Matters."
My latest story for the San Francisco Chronicle is about all the ways bartenders are liquifying olives in their Martinis – in the vermouth, gin, vodka, brine, leaf tinctures, oil-washing everything, and even an “olive turducken.”
Here’s a gift link so you can read it.
I wrote about oleo citrate and super juice for the San Francisco Chronicle.
These are techniques for increasing the yield from citrus fruits by eight times or so, using a touch of citric and malic acid powder in a specific way to bump up the flavor and texture of citrus to extend it over a large volume.
Bartenders in the Bay Area have begun experimenting with the technique, not because our locals love high-tech processing of natural ingredients (our locals very much do not) but because threatened tariffs on imports from Mexico would make limes more expensive- as well as tequila and agave nectar.
The story may be paywalled, but check it out here:
Tariffs could make Bay Area cocktails more expensive. This ‘super juice’ may be a solution
By Camper English
Unless bartenders figure out something soon, margaritas could soon cause sticker shock on cocktail menus across the Bay Area. The tequila, limes and agave syrup used in them may all come from Mexico, and imports on them will face tariffs if President Trump follows through with his threats.
Eric Ochoa, partner at the bar Dalva in San Francisco’s Mission District, has been weighing his options and not finding any great ones. He could increase the price of the drink, or take the “shrinkflation” route, reducing the quantity of tequila or mezcal from 2 ounces per drink to 1½. Or he could swap out fresh-squeezed lime juice for “super juice” to cut costs on one ingredient at least. A citrus juice preparation resulting in six to eight times the liquid of regular juice from the same amount of fruit, it’s a technique that bartenders around the region and the country are testing out to squeeze their fruit for all it’s worth.
My first story for Food & Wine just went live.
I took advice from 95 years of cocktail etiquette books, beginning in 1930 and ending with the publication of How to Be a Better Drinker last week [amazon] [bookshop].
I had fun going through my cocktail book collection to find other etiquette books, including The Official Preppy Handbook, to cite.
Anyway, check out the story here!
I visited Norway late last year to see an “ice farm.” I wrote it up for Vinepair.
The story I turned in was about twice as long (my bad) so I’ll also share some of the stuff that was cut out here over the next couple of days. For now, here is the story.
Frosty, cooling drinks like juleps and cobblers were trending in early 1800s America, their popularity driven by the recent year-round availability of ice. Blocks of it were cut from ponds and lakes in Massachusetts and Maine in the winters, then sold locally or exported abroad on ships specially insulated to keep as much of it solid as possible.
When the cold cocktail trend caught on in the United Kingdom, thanks in part to books like Charlie Paul’s “Recipes of American and other Iced Drinks,” London ice delivery men wore uniforms with eagle buttons to reinforce the product’s U.S. provenance. Initially, ice was a luxury product over there, and the Wenham Lake Ice Company (located just north of Salem, Mass.) was the leading provider in London, at least until counterfeit cubes flooded the market.
In 1873, The Food Journal reported that “the use of ice has gradually increased among our population in the last twenty years, at an ever-accelerating rate, although it is as yet by no means as necessary an article in our domestic economy as among our American cousins,” and also that most of the U.K.’s ice now came from Norway. The country had a long-established relationship selling ice (usually along with fish) to the U.K. and wanted in on the cool new action. In fact, one Norwegian company renamed one of its local lakes from Lake Oppegård to Wenham Lake so that it could sell its ice under the same name as the famous American company.
This review that I wrote first appeared on AlcoholProfessor.com.
Boozy Book Review: Malört: The Redemption of a Revered and Reviled Spirit by Josh Noel
Jeppson's Malört is a famously disgusting liqueur from Chicago. It’s the drink that your party friends force you to try when you visit them, or sometimes the drink that a dive bar bartender might give new visitors as an ironic “Welcome to Chicago” shot. You try it, you make a horrified face and usually say something like, “Why does this toxic sludge even exist?” and everyone laughs. The memory and the bitter flavor stick with you for a long time.
In Malört: The Redemption of a Revered and Reviled Spirit Chicago Review Press (September 3, 2024), Josh Noel traces the path of the liqueur from its 1930s origins to its unlikely rise nearly a century later to its eventual sale to CH Distillery.
I expected the book to be full of jokes and quotes from people about how bad the liqueur tastes – and it has tons of them, and they are hilarious. What I didn’t expect was for the book to be so engaging and for me to become so invested in the story as Noel tells it.
How Malört Came to Be
Jeppson's Malört was a commercialized version of a Swedish bäsk brännvin, a wormwood-flavored liqueur with a medicinal reputation for soothing the stomach (and traditionally for eliminating intestinal parasites). The product was first sold to Chicago’s Swedish expat community as a reminder of similar liqueurs from home.
The brand was purchased by George Brode, who marketed it to the large working-class Swedish immigrant community of Chicago after Prohibition. He also advertised it as a macho drink, with slogans in the 1950s like, “No woman wets her whistle on Jeppson, that’s a he-man’s prerogative.”
Most of the book follows the story of Patricia (“Pat”) Gabelick, however. She was hired as Brode’s secretary in 1966, became his longtime mistress, and inherited the brand when Brode died in 1999. At that point, Malört sold very little – the height of its sales was in 1973 when it sold under 4000 cases. By 2000 it was selling sixty percent less than that.
Ironic to Iconic
It wouldn’t reach those 1973 levels again for forty years. Malört’s reputation elevation from zero to hero was due in almost no part to Pat Gabelick, despite her being the star player in its story. (She didn’t like it and never drank it but did provide hours of interviews with the book’s author.) With its dated bottle label and bottom-shelf status in Chicago’s neighborhood taverns and liquor stores, young drinkers were intrigued by the mysterious liquid and eventually adopted it as their own.
Meanwhile, the brand didn’t even have a website, and few people knew anything about it or why it tasted the way it did. (As far as I can tell its only ingredients were wormwood, sugar, and alcohol, so there’s your answer.) However, a few fan pages on Facebook and Twitter sprung up celebrating the “Malört’s face” people make when first trying it. It was young fans of Malört like these that essentially rescued the brand from extinction.
A Little Help from Friends
The book details how three key fans volunteered their time and expertise to Pat Gabelick spreading the word of Malört. They built the website, made t-shirts, held promotional events, pitched distributors, and ran social media. They seemed to do everything but control the finances – or receive payment for their efforts.
Their work ensured that media attention grew, then copycat Malörts were released, and a hostile takeover by a major liquor company disguised as a trademark lawsuit ensued. They fought it off. The brand became more successful than ever, on its way to selling 10,000 cases by 2017.
It was this story of the wholesome scrappy crew of fans working with an elderly lady to promote a unique local spirit that really hooked me. Author Josh Noel turned what could have been a silly brand history book into an underdog story. I found myself fully invested, rooting for the team to win and for everyone to come out rich and happy.
That’s not exactly what happened, though. While Pat Gabelick made out well for herself, I wouldn’t be surprised if the people who helped save Malört and build it into a big enough brand to sell for millions are left with a bitter taste in their mouths.
In Conclusion
I really enjoyed this book and was impressed by what must have been a tremendous amount of interviewing and research by author Josh Noel. I don’t know if other readers will become as invested in the story as I did or come away with as strong feelings as I now have about it. But much like a typical introduction to Malört, I plan to foist this book upon many of my friends and watch their reactions when they finish.
I wrote my take on this subject for The AlcoholProfessor, where the story first appeared.
Why is Distilled Alcohol Called Spirits?
The word “spirit” has many definitions but most center around either the idea of the conscious self as opposed to the physical body; or an attitude, as in “the spirit of the movement” or “in good spirits.”
But given that this is Alcohol Professor we are concerned with the origin of the boozier definition today; that of “a strong distilled alcoholic liquor.”
That definition comes in at number 21 out of 25 definitions of the noun “spirit” via Dictionary.com. Most of the other definitions have to do with thoughts and feelings or with ghosts and demons (as in Spirit Halloween) and other intangibles. But unlike the rest of the terms, the “spirits” in the form of distilled alcohol are real physical liquids that you can hold in a bottle or pour into a glass.
Looking instead at the etymology (the study of the origin of words and how their meanings have changed throughout history) of the word, we can see that ‘spirit’ is probably derived from the Latin spiritus meaning "breathing” or “breath” and also the “breath of life" as in the force that animates people; the force that gives them life.
How do we get from the word for breath and the concept of consciousness to the word for whiskey and vodka? The answer is not so straightforward, and we have to go through alchemy to see it.
Doctors and Distillers by Camper English
To be clear, I am not a linguist or etymologist, but I have wrestled with this question as I wrote the book Doctors and Distillers. Or rather, I was wrestling with the concept that distillation of spirits came from the theory and practice of alchemy, and along the way I figured out why the word “spirit” would be used to describe the result.
Alchemy was not (only) a practice of magic or a profession of tricksters and scam artists. It was proto-science before science was formalized, and involved elements of minerology, chemistry, religion, astrology, astronomy, metallurgy, and more. It was an attempt to understand how the world works, and how to improve it.
And just how would they improve it? With distillation. Distillation was one of the most advanced tools of early chemistry, more sophisticated than things like filtration, boiling, corrosion, and dehydration. And it was a tool used to make both the philosopher’s stone and medicine.
The Western-style pot still dates to at least 300 ACE in Egypt, but we don’t have good evidence of distilled concentrated spirits in the West until after 1100. In that millennium in between, the alchemists used the still to separate materials; for example, metals that had been corroded by liquid acids.
Many different, complicated distillations were thought to be required to make the philosopher’s stone; a powder or other substance that would help speed up the supposedly natural evolution from lesser metals into perfect gold. The still was seen as a tool for extracting the intangible part of something to apply it to something else in order to change (or heal) it.
At the same time, alchemists were using the same equipment to make distilled, preserved medicines and perfumes called “waters.” As we know from distilling red wine or yellow grains, everything that comes out of a still is clear, or the color of water. So things like rosewater and orange flower water were distillates from those plants.
Distillation leaves the solid parts behind in the still and imbues the resulting colorless liquid with the flavor and scent – and healing properties – of the original matter. Thus, the alchemists thought of this as creating a “water” with the “active energy” of the original material. And that energy could be applied to other things.
Much like creating the philosopher’s stone meant to ‘heal’ a lesser metal into gold, medicinal waters could heal humans into healthier form. This concept of active, reanimating energy from plants contained within distilled liquid medicine (the breath of life!) seems the most likely origin of the term “spirit.”
We see real written proof of concentrated alcohol produced from the still before the year 1200 in Southern Italy. The distilled wine, used as medicine, was called the “water of wine” at first, then “burning water” as it could be set on fire, and eventually aqua vitae or “the water of life” when distillation technology improved, and the distillate’s superior healing and invigorating powers were explored further. (It can’t be understated how big of an improvement distilled spirits were to medicine; the alchemists thought they could prolong human life significantly with it.) The terminology became more formalized in writings of the 1200s and 1300s.
These terms were written in Latin, the language of science in the Middle Ages, before being translated into languages like French (where knowledge of distillation travelled from Italy), German, and other languages. “Aqua vitae” becomes “eau de vie” in French, “aquavit” in Scandinavia, and even “whiskey” in English via the Gaelic “uisge beatha.”
At the same time, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “spirit” comes from mid-thirteenth century French, based on the Latin word spiritus. This seems to fit our timeline perfectly – the water of life gives the breath of life to people who ingest it. By the late 1300s the word “spirit” comes to mean “distillate” directly.
Now, the Latin word spiritus also corresponds to directly “breath,” referring to wind and respiration, so could the origin of the word simply refer to the moist alcoholic vapor produced in the process of distilling?
That’s possible, but given the important symbolic medicinal properties of distilled alcohol, my vote is still for the definition of “spirit” as the breath of life, the active energy, or the animating principle of the universe distilled into liquid form.
