Category: liqueur

Thirty Four New Drink Books for Fall 2024

Update 2: Now this list is up to 34 books

Update 1: Detailed reviews of many of these books in my story for AlcoholProfessor are here.

Citrus: A World History

A Forager's Guide to Wild Drinks: Ferments, infusions and thirst-quenchers for every season

Sicilian Cocktails: Contemporary Island Mixology

Flavor Lab Creations: A Physicist’s Guide to Unique Drink Recipes

Gin Drinker's Toolkit

The Art of Calvados

Cocktails from the Crypt: Terrifying Yet Delicious Concoctions Inspired by Your Favorite Horror Films

The Mindful Mocktail: Delicious, Nutritious Non-Alcoholic Drinks to Make at Home

MockTales: 50+ Literary Mocktails Inspired by Classic Works, Banned Books, and More

The Official Yellowstone Bar Book: 75 Cocktails to Enjoy after the Work's Done

Preserved: Drinks: 25 Recipes

The Cocktail Atlas: Around the World in 200 Drinks

Free Spirited: 60 no/low cocktail recipes for the sober curious

The I Love Trader Joe's Cocktail Book

A Forager's Guide to Wild Drinks

The Whiskey Sour: A Modern Guide to the Classic Cocktail by Jeanette Hurt

Rum A Tasting Course: A Flavor-Focused Approach to the World of Rum by Ian Burrell

Malort: The Redemption of a Revered and Reviled Spirit by Josh Noel

The Absinthe Forger: A True Story of Deception, Betrayal, and the World’s Most Dangerous Spirit by Evan Rail

A Most Noble Water: Revisiting the Origins of English Gin by Anistatia R Miller and Jared M Brown

Spirits Distilled: A Guide to the Ingredients Behind a Better Bottle by Nat Harry

Cocktail Theory: A Sensory Approach to Transcendent Drinks by Dr. Kevin Peterson

Behind Bars: True Crime Stories of Whiskey Heists, Beer Bandits, and Fake Million-Dollar Wines by Mike Gerrard

Scotch: The Balmoral guide to Scottish Whisky by Cameron Ewen and Moa Reynolds

Martini: The Ultimate Guide to a Cocktail Icon by Alice Lascelles

The Hour of Absinthe: A Cultural History of France's Most Notorious Drink

The Vedge Bar Book: Plant-Based Cocktails and Light Bites for Inspired Entertaining by Rich Landau and Kate Jacoby

The Sopranos: The Official Cocktail Book by Sarah Gualtieri and Emma Carlson Berne

Drink Pink!: Cocktails Inspired by Barbie, Mean Girls, Legally Blonde, and More by Rhiannon Lee and Georgie Glass

Puncheons and Flagons: The Official Dungeons & Dragons Cocktail Book

Cocktails and Consoles: 75 Video Game-Inspired Drinks to Level Up Your Game Night by Elias Eells

New Editions and Reprints

Jigger, Beaker, & Glass: Drinking Around the World by Charles H. Baker Jr.

Bartending Basics: More Than 400 Classic and Contemporary Cocktails for Any Occasion by Cheryl Charming

In Fine Spirits: A Complete Guide to Distilled Drinks by Joel Harrison and Neil Ridley

The World Atlas of Whisky 3rd Edition by Dave Broom

September 6, 2024
Monks can’t make enough of this famous spirit. Can an alternative from S.F. replace it?

For the San Francisco Chronicle, I wrote about the Chartreuse shortage and how some bartenders are looking locally to Brucato Chaparral as a stand-in.

September 12, 2023
A Theriac in Digestif Form

If you read my book Doctors and Distillers you know that cure-all theriacs often contained viper flesh. Now one person has recreated a recipe for a branded theriac called L’Orvietan, with everything but the snake.

Bernardini had to travel across Europe on the trail of L’Orvietan. He scoured historic archives and antique bookstores. He acquired rare medical books and documents, and met with scholars, herbalists and pharmacists. Finally, in a Venice library, he found the missing link in his search: a 1623 recipe, written by Ferrante’s son Gregorio, which lists the ingredients, and, importantly, their measures, for the original L’Orvietan. Bernardini says he left just one ingredient out of his modern mix: burnt viper’s flesh.

Yet the mixture of herbs that Ferrante developed and others copied wasn’t necessarily all that original. L’Orvietan and its imitators had their roots in a more antique antidote called theriac. Theriac was a preferred preventive and cure of Roman emperors who were justly afraid of being poisoned, either from something slipped into their food or drink or by a venomous snake slipped into their bed at night. In fact, Theriaca Andromochas, developed by Nero’s physician, also contained viper flesh — similar in concept to antivenoms made of snake venom — and became the gold standard of antidotes.

Check out the story in Discover.

February 22, 2023
A New Book on Chartreuse Corrects the History of the Brand

Chartreuse, a liqueur made by Carthusian monks with a recipe dating to 1605, has been made in 6 different distilleries in France and Spain over the centuries. The monks dedicated to its production do so in silence and isolation, while the brand Chartreuse is run by an outside company. They handle the sales and marketing and all that jazz.

While the marketing company has done their best to put the brand history on their website and keep their importers and brand ambassadors trained on it, this was done largely without much input of the fathers of the order. So finally the marketing company and the fathers got together and produced a brand book that includes brand history, special bottlings, and other information. The monks looked into their vaults and records.

I have a copy of the book but haven't had time to read it yet. At a book launch event in San Francisco, we learned that in writing this new book they learned a lot of new information – and past misinformation about the brand history. One fact they brought up is that they had a special anniversary release bottling a few years back but then just learned that it was on the wrong anniversary and they were something like 50 years off.

Also the dates on the various monasteries/distilleries where Chartreuse was made have all been adjusted. I was working with Tim Master who works for the US importer on brand history a bit over a year ago for a project and getting really detailed info versus what was publicly available, but even that information was slightly off since he'd not yet had access to the info in this book. I wrote up a blog post about the location and dates of all the Chartreuse monasteries, but it turns out all the dates were slightly off so I need to update that post.

At the book launch they gave us bookmarks with all the distillery dates and locations on it so a quick check revealed where I was off. I'll need to do a super thorough review of what I wrote about the brand's history (I think I wrote about 4000 words on it) after reviewing this new book.

So where do I get this book, you ask? There's only one place: It's available for sale at CocktailKingdom.com.

The book is about 350 pages with a history, photos, timelines, etc. For a booze history nerd, it seems pretty essential.

February 29, 2020
A Visit to the Luxardo Distillery in Torreglia, Italy

This fall I visited the Luxardo distillery in Torreglia, Italy. Luxardo is of course famous for their maraschino liqueur and maraschino cherries, but they make a range of other products.

The company was founded in Zara in what is now Croatia but was then Austria. The flagship product was their maraschino liqueur then as it is now. It was exported to New Orleans by 1839, and as we know turned up in many of the "improved cocktail" recipes later that century.

In the early 1900s, they were the biggest distiller in Europe. Zara became a part of Italy after WWI, but the distillery was destroyed in WWII. In 1947 the company bought a distillery in Torreglia from the former owner of Cynar. That's where we visited.

Making Luxardo Maraschino

Cherries are harvested in late June. The variety of cherry is "Marasca Luxardo." They don't own the land where most of the cherry trees are grown (not at the location we visited). The do own a few trees on that property though. The lifespan of the trees is only 18-20 years, and they take 3-5 years to start producing useable cherries. Below are some newly planted cherry trees at the distillery.

The leaves, branches, and cherry solids (everything but the cherry juice) are macerated together with water and neutral beet alcohol (about 12% ABV) for up to three years.

The solids go into canvas bags. The liquids are distilled. The heads and tails from distillation go toward macerating the next batch. It's distilled up to 70% ABV in a single distillation.

Cherry solids after maceration.

The maceration tanks are emptied with a rake and then placed into canvas bags (below).

Several types of stills are used at the Luxardo distillery. I think this first one is used for the maraschino.

The distillate is then rested in wooden vats for up to 12 months. Then sugar and water are added and it's stored until bottling.

The juice of the cherries takes a different route: It is fermented with no added yeast. When it gets to 5% alcohol naturally, they fortify it to 40%. This becomes the base of the syrup for cherries, the Sangue Morlacco, and other products.

To make the maraschino cherries, they remove the stone/pit, add sugar and water, and soak them in the cherry syrup. They sell about 1.2 million 400g jars of cherries annually.

Thanks to Luxardo for our visit!

February 19, 2019
A Visit to the Rutte Gin Distillery in Dordrecht, the Netherlands
In the fall of 2017 I had the opportunity to visit the Rutte distillery in Dordrecht, The Netherlands, on my way to Bar Convent Berlin. In the US, Rutte sells their celery gin, dry gin, and Old Simon genever. It is sold in the Royal Dutch Distillers portfolio along with Cherry Heering, Mandarin Napoleon, and Italicus.

Dordrecht is connected by waterways to Rotterdam and the former center for genever production, Schiedam.

The Rutte Distillery is actually a distillery and shop, with former family housing upstairs. It is unlike any other distillery I've visited as it's more of a town shop rather than a industrial warehouse. The best analogy I've come up with is that it's like the town butcher or baker, where they do the work to prepare the food in-house and sell it from the counter in the front shop. At different times of the year, they have a different selection of offerings to sell.

The company dates back to 1749 in Rotterdam. In 1872, the fourth generation Rutte family member bought a cafe and distilled in the back. It was converted into a wine shop something like it is today after being renovated in the 1920s. The last Rutte family member sold the distillery in the 1990s while continuing to work there. He died in 2003.

The distiller since 2003 is Myriam Hendrickx, who comes from a food science background. She had only about a month of overlap between meeting the last Rutte distiller and his death. She kept some formulas like the Old Simon Genever true to the original (except they took out the tonka bean as it is prohibited in the US), while tweaking other recipes.

The malt wine, the malty, flavorful part of genever is purchased from Belgium (almost all malt wine is made there), and I believe all other the Rutte products are based on purchased neutral spirits. Hendrickx says that traditionally the Dutch are "botanical distillers," meaning they make flavored spirits like gin, ginever, and liqueurs, moreso than base spirits like whiskey and rum.

Random Rutte Facts
- They produce about 60 products in the small distillery.
- The celery in th celery gin comes from celery leaves and celery seeds, not the stalks.
- In general, they dilute the neutral spirit with the flavoring elements down to 50% ABV and distil it up to 80%; before bottling to proof.
- The current still is a pot-column hybrid still, but Hendrickx says they don't use the rectifying column much, only more like a filter than a distillation.
- The smaller products are bottled in-house, but the larger ones (we'll assume the gins) are bottled at DeKuyper.
- They make a "monastery liqueur" of similar complexity to Chartreuse, as well as an "Abbey gin" with the same distillate.
- They distil botanics that are used in multiple products together in groups, then combine them as needed.
- The gins are made as a concentrate that is diluted with more neutral spirit and water at the bottling facility. I asked her about the difference between "single-shot" gins where all the spirit goes through the still with the botanicals. She said, "I don't understand why anyone would do it that way" but sounded interested in hearing the other side of the story. That could make for a fun experiment or debate.
A Look at the Shop in the Front of the Distillery

Upstairs: Former Family Housing, Now a Tasting and Education Center

Down Into the Distillery in the Back

As you can tell, the place is tiny! There is only room for 40 small barrels of aging genever on site. The rest rests elsewhere.

So yes, a charming little place where they make some tasty gins.
February 14, 2019
Genepy Liqueur Versus Artemisia Genepi
When I was studying the various types of wormwood used in spirits earlier this year, I got a bit confused about Genepy/Genepi. All wormwood is a member of the artemisia genus.
- Artemisia Absinthium = Grand Wormwood; used in absinthe
- Artemisia Pontica = Roman Wormwood; small absinthe; often used in vermouths
- Artemisia Vulgaris = Common Wormwood; mugwort; used in Herbsaint, vermouth, and other products
- Artemisia Genepi = Genepi, used in Genepy liqueurs
After laying that out, I came to learn that there is a difference between artemisia genepi and genepy liqueurs, thanks in large part to Stephen Gould of Golden Moon Distillery. He makes a genepi called Ex Gratia.

According to Gould and supporting evidence from elsewhere on the internet, Genepy liqueurs can be made from not just artemisia genepi, but basically any artemisia that's not grand wormwood; often several of them mixed together. Gould clarified a working definition of genepy liqueur for me in email:

Any liquor/liqueur made with any member of the artemisia family, except artemisia ab. (Grand wormwood) would be considered a Genepi … the exception being Amaros where the various types of wormwoods are a supporting flavor.

Gould also wrote a profile of artemisia species for a 2014 edition of Distiller magazine. It no longer appears to be online (I think they're working on getting the archives up in a readable format so maybe it will return in the future), but he wrote:

Genepi
Genepi (or Genepy) are liqueurs typically made using “lesser”
wormwoods (such as petite/roman wormwood, sea
wormwood, black wormwood or rock wormwood), either
alone or in combination with other spices and botanicals.
These liqueurs are produced throughout the alpine areas of
Europe and are referred to by a variety of names. They are
commonly referred to as genepi in the Alps and Pyrenees
mountains. The word genepi is often also used to refer to
various wormwood plants as well, especially in France and
the French-speaking cantons of Switzerland.

Some of the "lesser" wormwoods include Sea Wormwood – Artemesia Meritima; Rock Wormwood – Artemesia Rupestris; Yellow Genepi –
Artemisia Umbelliformis; plus the Artemesia Genepi itself.

Gould also included a recipe for a Genepi from a handwritten distiller's note circa 1800 [excerpt]:

Genepi des Alps
Take of the common and sea wormwood, dried, of each ten
pounds; of sage, mint, and balm, dried, of each twenty handfuls;
of the roots of galangal, ginger, calamus aromaticusm and
elecampane, of the seeds of sweet fennel and coriander, of each
three ounces; of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmegs, the lesser cardamoms
and cubebs, of each two ounces.

The reason that this came up is there is a second American-made genepy coming out. As I posted in New Booze yesterday, the Bittercube folks are releasing a genepy liqueur to the Midwest US this year with a larger launch in 2019. They describe the new product as:

Heirloom Genepy was developed in the Bittercube apothecary and gathers inspiration from a variety of Artemitis plants, while bridging the gap between robust varieties and more subtle variations. With respect for the category, this modern Genepy was formulated with bright alpine botanicals, and mellowed with honey.

Long story short: artemesia genepi may or may not be in genepy liqueurs, which are flavored with non-absinthium artemisia species. It would be fun to compare various genepy liqueurs to see how they're interpreted by these different distillers.
October 23, 2018
What is Alchermes Liqueur?

As I covered on this New Booze blog post, the folks at Bittercube bitters have launched a new line of liqueurs, and one of them is an alchermes. So you may be asking yourself, what the heck is alchermes?

Alchermes is an ancient red-colored liqueur with its color derived from kermes insects. The insects are scale insects that eat oak trees. Modern alchermes liqueurs no longer use the kermes insects but the red liqueur is still used to make zuppa inglese and other desserts.

I wrote about alchermes for a story I wrote on cochineal (which replaced kermes as the preferred red coloring) for SevenFifty Daily:

Cochineal is a product of the Americas, but a different set of insects was used to dye fabric as well as one notable drink long before Columbus. Kermes is a coloring that was made from the crushed scale insect Kermes vermilio (and a couple of related bugs), which feeds on the sap of Mediterranean oak trees. The dye was used to color silk, and that silk was infused into a liqueur called alkermes (or alchermes), along with apple juice, rose water, ambergris, gold flakes, crushed pearls, aloe, and other ingredients. This liqueur recipe dates back to at least 800 A.D. when liqueurs and medicine were one and the same.

Today, versions of alkermes liqueur are still produced, specifically to make the traditional Italian red dessert zuppa inglese. These liqueurs are no longer colored with kermes bugs: Some makers use cochineal; others use artificial coloring. It’s doubtful that any still include crushed pearls and gold flakes. And few, if any, are imported into the U.S.

So there you have it. I'm not sure if there are any other US-made alchermes liqueurs on the market. As mentioned in the New Booze post, the new Heirloom liqueurs line launches outside of the midwest in 2019.

October 22, 2018
Map of All Distilleries Where Chartreuse Was/Is Made
I'm doing some research into the history of Chartreuse and learning so much. I'll share some of the info as I continue to gather it. Let's start with this.

There have been 7 Chartreuse distilleries. The most recent one just opened, and representatives from the US importer, Frederick Wildman, just visited it.

The first distillery didn't actually make the finished Chartreuse product but it was where the monks were given the recipe and probably experimented with it. The second distillery, Le Grand Chartreuse, is the location of the big monastery.
- Vauvert in Paris
- Le Grand Chartreuse
- Distillery Fourvoirie
- Distillery Tarrogone in Spain
- Distillery Marseille
- Distillery Voiron
- Distillery Aiguenoire
On the Google map below, you can click on the legend and see the dates that each distillery operated, and some more information on a few of them. You might have to open it in a separate window to see the legend.

For more information about Chartreuse's grand history, the website is here.

If you can't see the map below, you can access the map directly here.
September 5, 2018
The History of Orange Curacao and Triple Sec, Updated

This post is merely to refer you to another post – sorry about that. Years ago I wrote a post about the differences between orange Curacao and triple sec. I have just significantly updated that post with new information and conclusions.

For SEO purposes I am pointing you to the updated post rather than posting the new stuff on this post. It's Google's world, we just live in it.

Please give it a read:

What's the Difference Between Orange Curacao and Triple Sec?

August 20, 2018