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Dilution and Additives in Cognac (Hine Series Part 6)

In a series of posts I've been nerding out about cognac production, after sending a list of 100 questions to Hine cognac's cellar master Eric Forget, and combining that information with what I can pick up in books and elsewhere.

In this post, I'll talk about diluting and additives used in cognac. There is a lot that happens in between taking cognac out of a barrel and it being sealed up in a bottle.

The posts in this series are:

1. Cognac from grapes to wine.

2. Cognac distillation and the impact of distillation on the lees.

3. Wood and barrels used for cognac.

4. Aging conditions for cognac.

5. The strange exception of early landed cognac.

6. Dilution and Additives in Cognac.

Dilution in Cognac

As mentioned in an earlier post, dilution in cognac does not necessarily come all at the end just before bottling. Diluting alcohol with water is actually an exothermic reaction – it creates heat. And heat blows off more volatile aromas. Much of what is done in cognac's gentle handling is specifically designed not to blow off volatile aromatics.

So cognac is often diluted slowly over the years – a little bit more water is added at certain intervals during aging, and a final amount at the end before bottling (well, most likely while marrying the blend that will rest before bottling). According to Cognac by Nichos Faith, they don't bring it down below 55% ABV while aging though, as it needs to be stronger to interact with the wood in the barrel. (Cognac is distilled to 70% initially and at least at Hine they dilute to 62-65% before putting it in barrels.)

The water used for dilution at Hine is reverse osmosis filtered totally neutral water so that there is no flavor impact on the spirit.

Some producers, however, dilute with petits eaux. Petits eaux ("small waters") is made by putting water into an old cask. This will pull some of the alcohol out of the wood and end up at around 20% ABV after six months, according to Cognac. This water is used to further slow the rate of dilution. [Note that in most places it is spelled "petites eaux," just not in the Cognac book.]

Faith's book says petits eaux are used by "reputable" producers, but Hine's Forget says they do not use petits eaux because "There is a negative impact in term of finesse."

Another reason to dilute cognac slowly is saponification – if not done correctly, the brandy can take on soapy flavors, as Faith writes, "When brandy is blended with water, molecules of fatty acids clash and the result is the sort of cheap, soapy cognacs found in all too many French supermarkets."

I would love some time to compare quick-diluted soapy-cognac with properly-reduced version to see how soapy soapy cognac is.

Boisé

Some call boisé cognac's dirty secret. It is woody water made from boiling wood chips down into a thick liquid. This liquid is added to cognacs to make them woodier without the cost of new wood barrels. As Faith writes, "It thus provides a shortcut for those wanting to add a touch of new wood to their cognacs – and an alternative to buying new casks which now cost up to £500 each, which equates to over a pound per bottle of cognac. "

Forget says that boisé is often used in wine production (I had no idea, but it makes sense), but Hine does not use it in their cognac. Faith writes that there is no limit on boisé used in cognac, unlike other additives.

I wonder about making some boisé at home to make "barrel-aged" cocktails without the barrel…. I'll have to think about that next time I get some wood chips.

Sugar

According to Faith, it is permissible to add up to 8 grams of sugar per liter to cognac, and certainly it is very common to add sugar especially to young cognacs. In the case of Hine, Eric Forget says their VSOP and XO expressions do have added sugar, but not the rest of the line. He says, "It is a common habit for all houses to deliver a little sweetness."

Caramel

Coloring caramel, which should be flavorless, is a common additive not just in cognac but scotch whisky, rum, tequila, and pretty much all aged beverages except straight bourbon where it is not allowed.

Most producers will say that adding caramel is for "consistency only" and not to make the products appear older by being darker, but in cognac some producers are actually honest about it. For Chinese/Japanese markets in particular cognacs are often made darker than the same cognacs sold elsewhere. (Nicholas Faith writes that they are often made "richer" as so they can be diluted with ice as they are frequently consumed.)

Forget says that Hine does not make their products for other markets extra dark.

Filtration

Forget says Hine is filtered, "Like all the houses of cognac, at room temperature and then again at cool temperature. Cognac is very rich in oils and if some are [removed] during the filtration, and if the filtration is well conducted, there is no negative impact on the quality. It is also necessary to export in cold regions."

Typically spirits below 46% ABV are chill-filtered for just this reason – when the spirits get cold, oils can come out of solution and look cloudy. Consumers, generally speaking, associate this with the spirit being bad or moldy or something; and cognac is nearly always bottled at 40% ABV, so all cognac (that I know about anyway) is chill filtered. Forget says this is only done for visual reasons.

If you ever want to see the effect, take a 46% or higher spirit (probably whiskey) and add some cold water to dilute it a bit. Place a glass of this and a glass of full-strength spirit in the freezer and compare after they chill – you can see the cloudy bits in the diluted one.

Marriage

I did not ask Forget specific questions about how long after creating blends does the cognac sit in large vats to "marry," to come into harmony with itself so that it doesn't taste disjointed. (To be fair, I'd already asked him 100 questions at this point.)

But when I inquired if I'd missed anything or if anything else could impact the blending process, he said two factors I hadn't mentioned were having bad wood (which is a problem I think we're seeing in all the small batch American whiskies – people are so concerned with distilling they forget to pay attention to the barrels); and the other potential problem is not allowing enough time for marrying the blend before bottling.

So, this is the last official post in the series sponsored by Hine cognac. I've learned so much, and yet I still have so many questions! But that's the nature of learning - you're never done, it's always a journey. I hope you were also able to enjoy the ride.

Note: This series of posts has been sponsored by Hotaling & Co, importers of Hine cognac.

February 6, 2020
Cognac Distillation On the Lees (Hine Series Part 2)

I sent a list of 100 questions to the cellarmaster of Hine cognac, and am sorting through the answers in a series of posts. In the first post, we looked at cognac from grapes to wine. In this post, we'll take the wine through distillation.

The posts in this series are:

1. Cognac from grapes to wine.

2. Cognac distillation and the impact of distillation on the lees.

3. Wood and barrels used for cognac.

4. Aging conditions for cognac.

5. The strange exception of early landed cognac.

6. Dilution and Additives in Cognac.

Hine cognac is located on the banks of the Charente River in Jarnac, one of the three principle cities of cognac production along with Cognac and Segonzac. Even before cognac was produced in the region (Hine dates to 1763), the river was used to ship salt. Now the river isn't used commercially as far as I know, but the moist air the pervades the cognac aging cellars near the river bank and plays a part in developing the character of cognac. Hine is also unique in that they sell "early landed" cognacs that aren't aged in the Cognac region, but in England. We'll talk about aging in a later post.

As we covered in the last post, it is common for cognac makers to own some of their own vineyards and purchase wine from other growers. Similarly with distillation, some brands distill more or less of their wine or leave it to the winegrowers to distill.

In the case of Hine, as I learned when I visited in 2014, nearly all of their wine is distilled at a distillery called St. Denis. This distillery works with a lot of brands – they estimated that Hine is only 10 percent of their output.

Cognac Distillation

Legally cognac must be twice distilled in direct-fired Charentais pot stills, and distillation of the wine (which is stored without sulfur preservative) must be completed by March 31.

A diagram of the Charentais still is below. You'll recognize the pot still with it's bulb cap on the right, and the coil for the condenser that cools vapor to liquid on the left. But what's that thing in the middle?

That's the wine warmer, an efficiency enhancement fairly particular to cognac production. Before distillation, wine is stored in there, and during the previous distillation run (wine in the still), a tube runs through the wine warmer on the way to the condenser. This heats up the wine so that when it is put into the still for the next distillation run they'll have to expend less heat/energy to do so. Smart!

The wine that comes into the distillery (at about 9% ABV) is distilled up to 30% ABV after the first distillation. They make a heads and tails cut after the first as well as the second distillation. The second distillation brings the spirit up to 70-72% ABV.

Each distillation takes about 12 hours, so it's a full day for each still's worth of wine to be processed into eau de vie. You can see why they need from the end of harvest in the fall until March 31 to complete distilling all the wine for cognac.

Now, as cognac brands working with winegrowers pre-specify the strain of yeast to be used, they also specify distillation parameters such as the number of liters collected (the size of the heart cut), the speed of distillation, and whether or not to distill on the lees. I asked Hine Cellarmaster Eric Forget if they specify this all in advance or if it changes along the way. He wrote, "Everything is fixed by tasting, and could be changed every week."

Everything except for distilling on the lees that is.

Distilling with the Lees

Lees are the dead yeast cells left over from fermentation. Some brands distill "on the lees" and others filter them out first. As lees are solids, there is always the danger of them sticking to the bottom/sides of the still and burning, creating off-flavors. Forget says this is a "crucial point" about distilling on the lees and the care that must be taken.

I wanted more information about distilling on the lees, so I went to the definitive source, Nicholas Faith's Cognac (2004 edition). Some quotes from that section (p24):

Moreover the lees need protecting from the air before the wines are distilled and cannot safely be used late in the distillation season, once the external temperature has risen much about 10C.

And, as one distiller pointed out, "lees means that you need time for the brandies to mature and provide their additional complexity."

The yeast lees contain a number of esters, including three fatty acids, which turn out to be absolutely critical in giving the cognac its much prized rancio (a particular rich, cheesy flavour) quality when it is in cask.

… virtually all the producers in the Grande Champagne I have come across distill on at least some of the lees, if only because they are producing brandies destined to mature long enough to absorb the resulting richness in the brandy.

I decided to look up which brands distill on the lees and which do not. I had heard of the "Big Four" brands (Hennessy, Remy-Martin, Martell, Courvoisier) that only Remy distills on the lees, but when I went to confirm that I ran into inconsistent information.

Distill always on the lees: Hine, Remy [source], Camus, Frapin [source], Louis XIII [source]

Does not distill on the lees: Martell

Some with and some without: Courvoisier and Otard/D’ussé [source], though Courvoisier's website says it does distill on the lees but doesn't specify if it always does [source]. Hennessy distills on "fine lees" [source]. But overall I wouldn't count on the accuracy of this information – my guess is that some of their eau de vie may be distilled on the lees but generally not. As we learned from the Nicholas Faith book quotes, VS cognac (only lightly aged) wouldn't be a good fit for brandy distilled on the lees and we know in the case of Hennessy for example that VS is something like 80 percent of their sales.

In any case, back to Hine: I was wondering if there is such thing as "reduced lees" or "partial lees" or something like that to impact flavor to a lesser extent. Forget said (speaking about Hine specifically), "We distill all lees but filtered to avoid big impurities. There is never too much lees."

So what the impact of lees? Usually we hear that they add a nutty taste and more creamy body/texture to the resultant eau de vie; that distillation with lees allows for a "more complex" spirit versus a "cleaner" spirit without.

Flavor Impact of Distillation on the Lees

I asked cellarmaster Eric Forget what are the production parameters that he felt make the most impact on determining Hine's house style – what makes Hine Hine? He noted that distillation on the lees was the second most important factor in Hine's flavor profile:

He said: "Terroir has the most impact. Only (grapes from Grande and some Petite) Champagne region." Second, "Distillation with lees." Third, "Aging in fine, medium-grain oak barrels that are lightly charred." and fourth, "The differentiation is made with these three key points together, and a balance between the elements of the raw material (wine) and the wood."

We'll cover those third and fourth factors, among others, in the next several posts after the new year.

And if you haven't read it yet, check out the first post, "Cognac from Grapes to Wine."

Note: This series of posts has been sponsored by Hotaling & Co, importers of Hine cognac.

© Eric Medsker

December 19, 2019
Cognac from Grapes to Wine (Hine Series Part 1)

This is the first in a series of posts I'm doing with Hine cognac. I sent Hine cellarmaster Eric Forget a list of one hundred questions (really) about Hine's production a few weeks back, and am sorting through the answers over several posts.

The posts in this series are:

1. Cognac from grapes to wine.

2. Cognac distillation and the impact of distillation on the lees.

3. Wood and barrels used for cognac.

4. Aging conditions for cognac.

5. The strange exception of early landed cognac.

6. Dilution and Additives in Cognac.

For those unfamiliar with Hine, it's a brand founded over a quarter century ago in 1763. Beyond offering VSOP and XO blends, they have a whole series of vintage-dated cognacs and "early landed" cognacs that I'll write about in a future post.

We'll first talk about making the wine for cognac, and later cover things like distillation, aging, bottling and filtering.

The Vineyards

Grapes for cognac must come from the Cognac region, which is split into six crus. Grande Champagne is the central and most important cru, followed by Petite Champagne, Borderies, Fins Bois, Bons Bois, and the Bois Ordinaires/Bois a Terroirs. The latter includes an island!

Grapes grown in Grande Champagne are considered best for long-aged cognacs with floral notes dominant, according to the website of the BNIC, the "coordination and decision-making body for the Cognac industry." Petite Champagne has similar soil type but according to the BNIC's website, there is more influence from the ocean climate in the region; and it produces grapes with more predominant vine flower and fruity notes.

I asked Eric Forget if there were really large differences in grapes from the two regions and he replied, "It could be very subtle in accordance with the location and terroir," which I think means "not really." I followed up by asking if you could tell by eating a grape which cru it came from? The answer was a solid "no."

The other crus are known for bringing out notes of violet (Borderies), pressed grapes (Fins Bois and Bons Bois), or general fruit (Bois Ordinaires) when distilled.

Hine uses only grapes from Grande Champagne for most of their older bottlings – the XO Homage and Antique, and other bottlings including Triomphe, plus the vintages we'll get into on a later post. For the XO Cigar Reserve, they use Grande Champagne, Petite Champagne and Fins Bois distillates.

For Hine's VSOP products (H by Hine and Rare) they use Fine Champagne – which is the technical term for cognac with grapes from both Grande and Petite Champagne.

Photo: CK-Mariot-Photography courtesy of Hine

Growing Grapes

As seems typical, Hine owns some of their own vineyards but purchases most of their wine from winegrowers. Hine owns 70 hectares (173 acres) of vines in the Grande Champagne region, and this supplies about 30% of the total wine they need. This seems like a lot relative to the larger brands.

I asked Forget why not skip the hassle and just buy all the wine rather than make your own? He said, "The first reason is to secure the supply, and of course to make super wines." And do they consider their wine superior to that of the winegrowers from who they purchase wine? "We try to do our best but we select also the suppliers for their professionalism."

I asked what specific instructions Hine gives to winegrowers – how the grapes are treated, when to be harvested, etc? Forget said, "We give them a quality chart for production and keep in touch all along the year. For the cultivation, the appellation itself is very strongly involved in these topics."

That's pretty interesting and makes sense – it's not only the growers or the cognac makers/brands that get input as to the treatment and quality of the raw material for cognac, it's the region's administration that will have a say to ensure quality standards. I bet those meetings get… tense as conditions change every year.

By the way, 98% of the grapes are ugni blanc in Cognac.

Making Wine

Forget says they use dry commercial yeast, and start fermentation at 17 C (63F). Fermentation continues until it completes naturally, so it will generally undergo some malolactic fermentation.

I don't know a lot about malolactic fermentation and its impact on distilled spirits – perhaps that's the subject for a future post! But for now here is some malolactic fermentation information stolen and condensed from Wikipedia:

Malolactic fermentation is a process in winemaking in which tart-tasting malic acid, naturally present in grape must, is converted to softer-tasting lactic acid. Malolactic fermentation is most often performed as a secondary fermentation shortly after the end of the primary fermentation. The process is standard for most red wine production and common for some white grape varieties such as Chardonnay, where it can impart a "buttery" flavor.

The fermentation reaction is undertaken by the family of lactic acid bacteria. Malolactic fermentation tends to create a rounder, fuller mouthfeel. Malic acid is typically associated with the taste of green apples, while lactic acid is richer and more buttery tasting. Grapes produced in cool regions tend to be high in acidity, much of which comes from the contribution of malic acid. Malolactic fermentation generally enhances the body and flavor persistence of wine, producing wines of greater palate softness.

Photo: CK-Mariot-Photography courtesy of Hine

On my previous visit to Hine (I wrote about it in this blog post), Forget predicted that he expected to harvest grapes that would make 9.5% alcohol wine at about 3.4 pH that year.

I asked him what is the usual range for ABV and pH in wines for cognac, and he said 9 to 11% ABV and 3.2 to 3.5 pH. [Note that this is pretty acidic – while limes and vinegar both hover in the 2-3 pH range]. In addition to the pH and potential ABV (based on the sugar content of the grapes), then temperature must also be taken into account for fermentation.

Harvest usually runs September and October, and grapes are pressed right after harvest and made into wine. No sugar is allowed to be added in this process, and the wine is not preserved with sulfites as it would really mess up distillation later.

Distillation, which we'll get to in another post, is done in pot stills which are slow and inefficient, so this means that all the wine made after harvest has to be stored and kept fresh until it can be distilled. With no sulfites to preserve it, the BNIC has set a legal cut-off date: all the wine for cognac must be distilled before March 31.

Stay tuned for another cognac post next week.

Note: This series of posts has been sponsored by Hotaling & Co, importers of Hine cognac.

December 13, 2019
How Many Potatoes are in One Bottle of Vodka?

Answer: This many.

This the how many are in one bottle of Karlsson's Vodka, that is. That is one 15-pound bag of Russet potatoes and two 1-pound bags of mini-potatoes, all stacked in my extra-large salad bowl. Perhaps I need to get a real hobby.

Karlsson's uses about 17 pounds of potatoes- nearly twice as much other potato vodka brands, because Karlsson's uses small heirloom potato varietals from southern Sweden. These potatoes are rich in flavor and protein but lower in carbohydrates than traditional Russet potatoes shown above. They are less efficient for distillation than fuel potatoes- but delicious to eat and drink.

To put it in perspective, I took the picture next to an empty Karlsson's bottle:

That's a lot of potatoes! They (well not these) will be fermented, distilled up to 96% ABV, then diluted back down to 40% for bottling strength.

This post is part of a little project on potatoes and Sweden I'm doing for Karlsson's Vodka. Karlsson's Gold is a blend of seven heirloom potato vodkas.

Read about my adventures to Sweden with Karlsson's and learn how it's made here.

Related articles

The Weird History of Vodka in Sweden

October 17, 2014
Enzymes in Spirits: What Are They and What Do They Do?
In the process of making many types of alcohol enzymes are used, but I didn't know very much about them. So I decided to do some reading and share what I've learned. Or what I think I've learned anyway.

Enzymes are used in spirits production before fermentation. They are used to expose fermentable sugars in base ingredients so that they can be fermented by yeast. For example, a raw potato with yeast added to it won't produce potato beer (or not much of it). But when heated and with enzymes added then it will.

Let's review spirits production:
1. The base ingredient is prepared for fermentation. This can be as simple as crushing a grape or stalk of sugar cane, but many other raw ingredients must be prepared by methods such as malting (barley), baking (agave), heating in water (many things, called 'mashing' in whisky), and/or adding enzymes.
2. The ingredient now has its fermentable sugars exposed, so yeast can do its job and convert these sugars into alcohol.
3. The result is a beer/wine with a low percentage of alcohol.
4. The beer/wine is concentrated through distillation.
What Are Enzymes?
- Catalysts that perform and speed up chemical reactions. They are present in biological cells. They do a lot of work in nature.
- They convert molecules into other molecules. An example of this is the enzyme lactase, which breaks a lactose down into two glucose molecules. People who are lactose-intolerant do not produce the enzyme lactase so they can't process lactose.
- Enzymes aren't fuel for reactions – they're not consumed by the reaction they catalyze.
- Enzyme activity can be affected by environmental things like temperature, pH, and pressure. (For most fermentable materials, the mash of hot water and raw material is heated to very specific temperatures so that the enzymes will work.)
The enzymes are B,C,and D in this illustration. The material A is broken up. Source.

Common Uses for Enzymes

Some easy-to-understand cases where enzymes are used:
- In meat tenderizers that break down proteins into smaller proteins, making it easier to chew.
- In stain removers to break down fats or proteins on clothing.
- In digestion. From Wikipedia, "An important function of enzymes is in the digestive systems of animals. Enzymes break down large molecules (starch or proteins) into smaller ones, so they can be absorbed by the intestines. Starch molecules, for example, are too large to be absorbed from the intestine, but enzymes hydrolyze the starch chains into smaller molecules, which can then be absorbed."
Enzymes in Beer Production

The website HomeBrewTalk.com has a great, detailed chapter on enzymes in fermentation. They lay out how grains for beer are often mashed (heated with water) to two different temperatures.

Mashing is the process in which the milled grain is mixed with water. This activates enzymes that were already present in the barley seed or have been formed during the malting process. These enzymes work best in particular temperature and pH ranges. By varying the temperature of the mash, the brewer has control over the enzyme activity.

In barley starch makes up 63% – 65% of the dry weight. Starch is a polysaccharide (very large chains of glucose) which is insoluble in water. Brewer's yeast, however, can only ferment monosaccharides (glucose, fructose), disaccharides (maltose, sucrose) and trisaccharides (matotriose).

In order for that starch to be converted into water soluble sugars (fermentable and unfermentable), two processes need to happen. First the starch is gelatenized to become water soluble. For starch found in barley and malt this happens above 140ºF (60ºC). Secondly the activity of the amylase enzymes break the long chained starch molecules into shorter chains.

Enzymes in Scotch Whiskey

The malting process in scotch whiskey is a process to expose enzymes. To make malted barley, the dried grains are soaked in water so that the seeds just start to sprout, then the grain is dried to halt the process. Then when the grain is later mashed (has hot water added to it), the enzymes will convert the starches in the grains into fermentable sugars.

According to Ian Wisniewski in Michael Jackson's Whiskey,

"Growth hormones released by the grain also trigger the creation and release of enzymes that begin breaking down the cell walls and protein layers, in order to access the starch… The enzymes collectively termed 'diastase,' include alpha-amylase and beta-amylase (the latter is already present in barley). These enzymes are essential for the subsequent conversion of starch into fermentable sugars during the subsequent process of mashing."

Enzymes Used in Many Spirits

In other spirits, enzymes are added, which saves the malting step or speeds the natural reaction with enzymes naturally present. This is true in bourbon (from corn), in other spirits from grain (like vodka), and for potato vodka.

Most bourbon mashbills (recipes) contain a certain portion of malted barley. This is because the malted barley provides the rest of the batch with enzymes needed to break down the material into simpler sugars. However, in modern times many (if not all) major bourbon producers also add enzymes to the corn, wheat/rye, and malted barley mashbill to speed things up.

A good overview of the chemistry of this and list of enzymes available for purchase can be found on this IM biotech company site.

A Word on Karlsson's Vodka

I'm doing a research project on potatoes for Karlsson's Vodka, which I visited a few years ago.

From the few potato vodka distilleries that I have visited, it seems that adding enzymes is standard in the process of preparing potatoes for fermentation. So I used this project as an excuse to learn more about enzymes.

If you think about a raw vs. cooked potatoes, they get a bit sweeter after you cook them so we can guess that heat helps break down the starch into sugars- at least partially. Enzymes help with the rest.

Karlsson's uses "virgin new potatoes" to produce their vodka. These are very small, skinless potatoes that are full of flavor that translates into the final spirit.
October 7, 2014
Potato Information and Resources

Below are some websites, books, and various resources I've perused to learn about potatoes. I'll probably add more to this list in the future.

Books

Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent by John Reader. This book is a narrative history of the potato, rather than a linear history. Some chapters start with a 'fact' then go through the effort of showing how that fact was disproved/corrected. Thus it's not the best reference book in the world (hard to look stuff up and know you've found the real answer), but it does have tons of great information.

Potato: A Global History by Andrew F. Smith. This book has a concise history of the potato that ends on page 52. Subsequent chapters talk about the potato as a food source (how it's eaten around the world), the potato as a crop in the past and today. There is a final chapter of recipes.

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann. This best-selling book about "how European settlements in the post-Colombian Americas shaped the world." There is a chapter called "The Agro-Industrial Complex" about the history of the potato and its spread around the world, and how the prevention of potato blight neccesitated the agro-chemical industry we know today.

Info and History Websites

A long story about the history of the potato in Smithsonian magazine.

LimaEasy - Guide to some Peruvian potatoes.

The seven main types of potatoes in the US.

Idaho Potato Museum (since 1912!)

Try Swedish! A website about Swedish products and good information about Swedish potatoes.

Potato Research and Promotional Organizations

The International Potato Center based in Peru. "The International Potato Center was founded in 1971 as a root and tuber research-for-development institution delivering sustainable solutions to the pressing world problems of hunger, poverty, and the degradation of natural resources. CIP seeks to achieve food security, increased well-being, and gender equity for poor people in the developing world."

The Potato Council (UK) "The Potato Council is part of the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board www.ahdb.org.uk working on behalf of British potato growers and purchasers to promote potatoes."

Potato Goodness "The United States Potato Board (USPB) is the nation’s potato marketing and research organization."

The National Potato Council "The National Potato Council is the advocate for the economic well-being of U.S. potato growers on federal legislative, regulatory, environmental, and trade issues."

Karlsson's Vodka

Karlsson's is a Swedish potato vodka and the sponsor of this research project into the potato. To learn more about it, visit the brand's website, or read about my visit to the distillery: How potatoes are harvested and how Karlsson's vodka is blended from seven individually-distilled potato varietals.

September 24, 2014
When Vodka Was Made From Potatoes
I'm researching potatoes in a project with Karlsson's Vodka.

There is a very common misconception that most or all vodka is made from potatoes. In reality it's a tiny fraction (I heard 1% at one point), while the rest is made mostly from grains (though some is from sugar byproducts, grapes, or even milk whey). I would love to know how this became the popular idea, but I don't think I'll be able to find out.

Interestingly, from my research the potato history books skim over the history of potatoes in vodka, and the vodka books do too. But I wanted to research when potatoes were used in vodka.

Potatoes didn't come to Europe from their native Peru until around the mid-1500s, yet the first printing of the word vodka is from 1405. Distillation preceded that by at least a couple centuries.

So the original vodka (which doesn't resemble today's crisp, clean version to be sure) was definitely not made from potatoes- grains and grapes had a big head start.

Some info from Wikipedia:
- In Poland, "The late 18th century inaugurated the production of vodka from various unusual substances including even the carrot.^[21]"
- In Sweden, "Although initially a grain product, potatoes started to be used in the production in the late 18th century, and became dominant from the early 19th century.^[28]"
According to the book Vodka: A Global History by Patricia Herlihy, "In the early nineteenth century, Poland introduced the plentiful potato as an alternative base ingredient…. Between 1843 and 1851 the European potato blight severely curtailed production."

According to Nicholas Faith and Ian Wisniewski in their 1997 book Classic Vodka, potatoes first came to Poland in 1683, it wasn't until after 1764 that they began transferred from the gardens of the rich to the food of the peasants.

According to the book The Vodka Companion: A Connoisseur's Guide by Desmond Begg, "Potatoes, a cheaper raw material than wheat at the time, were first used in distillation in the 1790s."

As we'll look at in closer detail in another post, Sweden and other Scandinavian countries underwent a long puritanical/temperance movement. As part of this, the government took control of all alcohol production. And it seems that because they thought of alcohol as evil (though sometimes a necessary one), they made it all with the then-lowest-quality ingredient they could find: potatoes.

According to Classic Vodka, "Potato vodka is still subject to a certain snobbery, as though it is a consolation spirit made in the bath-tub. This misconception can be traced back to a time when potatoes were the cheapest raw material for vodka, whereas today they are generally more expensive and labor-intensive than grain.

Karlsson's Note

The ideal potatoes for producing high quantities of raw alcohol would be large and have a high starch content, but Karlssson's vodka uses tiny heirloom varieties (seven of them) in their blend of Karlssson's Gold. These are less efficient, more expensive, and they certainly produce a flavorful spirit.

Read about my trip with Karlsson's vodka here.

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The Potato, Explained
September 18, 2014

Which Countries Grow the Most Potatoes?

I'm doing a research project looking at potatoes, sponsored by Karlsson's Vodka.

Potatoes originally come from Peru, but they're only the 18th largest producers of the crop. China and India, which are relatively new producers of potatoes, are the top growers.

Then the US and Russia are nearly tied for third and fourth. I for one, am doing my share of potato-eating and drinking to keep America strong.

Not many potatoes are exported (less than 5% by one calculation); they're not much of a commodity crop.

According to FAOSTAT, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations- Statistics Division, the top potato-producing countries in 2012 were:

Rank	Area	Production (Int $1000)	Flag	Production (MT)	Flag
1	China, mainland	11470356	*	87260000	*
2	India	7082050	*	41483000
3	United States of America	2987382	*	20990738
4	Russian Federation	2793937	*	29532530
5	Germany	1665632	*	10665600
6	Ukraine	1598029	*	23250200
7	Bangladesh	1312276	*	8205470
8	Netherlands	1038951	*	6765618
9	Poland	989377	*	9091900
10	France	972314	*	6340807
11	Iran (Islamic Republic of)	881036	*	5400000	F
12	Turkey	765590	*	4795122
13	Canada	740998	*	4590296
14	Algeria	687124	*	4219476
15	Egypt	678837	*	4758040
16	United Kingdom	663815	*	4553000
17	Pakistan	661503	*	3393000
18	Peru	628456	*	4474713
19	Brazil	590224	*	3731798
20	Malawi

Though I know some Korean soju is distilled from potatoes, and after sweet potatoes regular potatoes are the most common Japanese shochu base ingredient, but I don't know if any Chinese or Indian beverages are made from potatoes.

Karlsson's Potato Vodka Facts

Sweden doesn't crack the top 20 potato-producing countries, but they sure grow potatoes there. In fact, if you search for "Swedish potatoes" you will find a ton of recipes, including something called Hasselback potatoes which looks amazing.

But the traditional summertime potatoes are called new potatoes aka fresh potatoes aka "färskpotatis" which sounds to me like "freshpotatoes" when spoken. The ripen in the summer and their skins are not mature so they slide right off. They are tiny and you eat them lightly boiled with dill and butter, though they're pretty buttery to start with.

It is from these heirloom potato varieties – seven of them- that Karlsson's vodka is distilled. They are distilled separately then blended together. They have also released two limited-edition, single-varietal vintage potato vodkas each with a widely different and robust character.

I visited Sweden a few years ago and wrote about how Karlsson's is made here.

September 16, 2014

The History of the Potato, Part II

I'm researching potatoes in a little project for Karlsson's Vodka. We have looked at what a potato is and the introduction of the potato to Europe. Now we'll look at the slow spread of potatoes around the continent, then talk about french fries, yum.

The Spread of Potatoes Around Europe

Though the potato arrived in Europe in the late 1500s, it didn't catch on so quick. Partly this was because of the difference in terroir between northern Europe where the temperature and sunlight varies a lot over the year, and their native equatorial Peru. So they were grown around Europe but they weren't as prodigious as the potatoes we know today.

It was on the Canary Islands- closer to Peru than to Ireland in climate- that farmers were able to breed varieties that would later be successful throughout Europe.

There were also publicity issues – though as mentioned in the previous post they were often called aphrodisiacs, they were also believed to be the cause of leprosy. You win some, you lose some.

Potatoes were a different sort of crop than Europe's grains- they were more labor-intensive to plant (one doesn't just scatter seeds) and harvest. It really wasn't until the 1700s that potatoes became a food crop.

By 1700 the potato was grown around the UK, though this seems to be largely in individual gardens rather than as a field crop initially. They may have first been grown commercially in Alsace, France.

One interesting reason for their success as a food/field crop was wars in Europe: armies trampling over the lands wouldn't see the obvious grains sticking out of the ground, and they could camp on the lands and potatoes would still be growing underneath.

"Parmentier Antoine 1737-1813". Licensed under Public domain via Wikipedia Commons

Throughout the 1700s potatoes were eaten not by choice but out of desperation- but it turns out that their a pretty darn good source of nutrients. Frederick The Great of Prussia was a believer, and required their planting across the Germany-Austria region. A French pharmacist named Parmentier (there is a Parisian metro station named after him) was captured during the Seven Years War with Prussia was fed exclusively on potatoes for three years, and brought back this knowledge to France.

He introduced them to the royal court and there there were all-potato themed dinners. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson may have attended these dinners and at one of them Jefferson is said to have delighted in French fries and brought the idea back to America.

Potatoes were more rapidly accepted in the UK, where wheat didn't grow all that well but the tubers did. And as grain was a big commodity market, potatoes benefited from not being subject to market and weather whims. John Reader writes:

As a crop that thrived where wheat would not grow, and survived in weather that ruined grain harvests, the potato was to be welcomed by governments and commodity markets alike. Not only because it was a cheap source of food for the poor; not just as a commodity to be bought and sold; nor simply as a cushion that would dampen the severity of fluctuations in grain supply. It was all of these things, but also promised to free up more grain for the markets. If people could be persuaded to grown and eat more potatoes there would be more grain to sell. Thus the potato nudged grain away from its primary signicance as a stable food of the people who grew it, towards a formative role in national and world trade.

In Norway, potatoes were grown by priests who were often farmers. They even had the nickname 'potato priests'. Potatoes came relatively late to Scandanavia. They were grown in aristocrats' gardens in Sweden and Denmark in the 1730s and became a field crop around 1800. Around the same year, they were cultivated in Russia and the Ukraine.

The Potato Blight

Later in the 1900s, anthropologists were able to show that wherever the potato was adopted, populations increased. It was a proven source of nutrition and allowed more people to share space on land. Of course this came with a downside.

In 1845, 90 percent Ireland's 8.5 million person population was dependent on the potato for food, as it grew so well there. And in 1845 and 1846 the potato blight hit and 88 percent of the potato crops failed. From those years and for the next few after, one million people died and another million emigrated.

Alexis Soyer [source]

The world's first celebrity chef, Alexis Soyer, designed and implemented a soup kitchen that fed 26,000 people a day in Dublin. He was also the creator of the first-known blue drink called Soyer's Nectar, but that came later.

We call it the Irish Potato Famine, but that's not at all accurate: the same crop failure happened all over the world. In 1843 it ravaged crops in North America and soon came to Europe, destroying crops everywhere. The cause was a parasitic fungus that grew on potatoes.

The solution to the problem came from a botanist named Millardet, who was also instrumental in helping circumnavigate phylloxera by grafting European grapevines onto American rootstock. He also promoted the solution to "downy mildew" which was a problem for grapes as well as potato leaves. The solution, copper sulphate mixed with lime that is sprayed on the leaves of plants, became known as the Bordeaux Mixture and it is still used on crops today. (It's discovery is credited with starting the agro-chemical industry.)

But as that solution was discovered 40 years after the great blight, how did they stop the disease? They didn't. It was the luck of the weather and of the varieties planted. There were regional outbreaks for years until the Bordeaux Mixture became common. Luckily, none approaching the severity of 1846-47.

The Potato in the US

Potatoes were grown in the USA since the 1600s, but not so much as food. The transition happened when Scotch-Irish people came to the US, as well as subsequent waves of potato-growing peoples from eastern Europe and Scandanavia.

According to the United States Potato Board:

Potatoes arrived in the Colonies in 1621 when the Governor of Bermuda, Nathaniel Butler, sent two large cedar chests containing potatoes and other vegetables to Governor Francis Wyatt of Virginia at Jamestown. The first permanent potato patches in North America were established in 1719, most likely near Londonderry (Derry), NH, by Scotch-Irish immigrants. From there, the crop spread across the country.

Idaho, the present-day largest producer of potatoes, actually did not begin growing potatoes until 1836, when missionaries moved west in an effort to teach the native tribes to grow crops instead of relying upon hunting and gathering methods. However, it wasn’t until 1872 when the Russet Burbank variety was developed, that the Idaho potato industry began to flourish.

The Russet Potato

I love single-origin stories. The potato generally comes from a single place in the world, the Andes of Peru, but all of the Russet potatoes in existence come from a single plant.

One way to avoid potato blight was to cross-breed potatoes to see what happened. In this process, a New York preacher was sent some seedlings from South America and these grew very well and were named the Garnet Chile Potato.

Then a Vermont farmer bred these into the Early Rose, which became very popular. These potatoes were generally seedless, but in in 1872 in Massachusetts an amateur botanist spotted a seed on an Early Rose. He collected and germinated the seeds and a single one of these new plants produced great big potatoes.

He sold the rights to this new potato (apparently that's doable) to a seed company. Then this potato mutated into the Russet-Burbank potato aka the Idaho potato.

And that's where your French fries come from.

Karlsson's Vodka Potato Facts

Those great big Russet potatoes would be a lot easier to use to make vodka, but Karlsson's insead uses tiny heirloom potato varieties. They have less starch than the big potatoes and thus they need to use more of them – about 17 pounds of potatoes for every bottle of Karlsson's.

Read about a visit to see how Karlsson's is made here.

Related articles

The History of the Potato, Part I

The Potato, Explained

September 9, 2014
The History of the Potato, Part I

I'm researching potatoes in a little project for Karlsson's Vodka. Today we'll look at how the potato came to Europe.

As mentioned in the previous post, potatoes are native to the Andes mountains and over 3000 varieties are found there.

The Quechua people of the Andes invented a way to preserve potatoes: They would put them out at night when the temperatures were freezing, and covered them during the day. Then they were soaked in water and put out to freeze again. The next day they walked on the potatoes to squeeze out the water content, then spread them out to dehydrate in the sun. They had basically made dehydrated potato flakes like in your box of instant potatoes.

The first description of a potato by a European was published in 1601 from observing potato harvest in 1537. The author described them as a type of truffle. The first print reference to potatoes by name came from observations from another explorer around this same time.

Sir Francis Drake is often incorrectly credited with introducing the potato to Europe.

The first potatoes to reach Europe were brought by the Spanish by the 1570s, probably in the previous decade. They seem to have first been grown in Spain but were found in Germany, Italy, and Belgium by the late 1500s.

They were probably not first grown on the mainland, but on the Canary Islands off the coast of Spain – which is a pretty amazing point of entry for the potato to come to Europe, because that was the point of exit for the sugarcane that was taken to the New World by Columbus.

The potato slowly became a "plant of interest" around Europe according to the book Potato by John Reader. In 1596 they were described in one botany book, and in 1597 it was first illustrated by another botanist John Gerard.

Source

Sweet potatoes were grown in Europe by the early 1600s and many accounts of potatoes confused regular and sweet potatoes – it makes for confusing research still.

Shakespeare refers to potatoes as aphrodisiacs around 1600; a common thought at the time.

In the next post we'll continue looking at potato history in Europe.

Karlsson's Vodka Potato Facts

The potatoes used in Karlsson's Vodka are called "new" or "virgin" potatoes. These are the first potatoes grown in the southwestern tip of Sweden that are harvested before their skin fully develops- when the plants are still flowering. They're considered a delicacy when the first ones are pulled from the ground; sort of the Beaujolais Nouveau of potatoes. I visited Sweden a few years ago and wrote about how Karlsson's is made here.

Related articles

The Potato, Explained

September 8, 2014