My simple 10 minutes of web research turned into an eye-watering 5-hour journey down the web research rabbit hole. I’m officially adding brandy to the list of drinks to which I’m more or less addicted.

Ansley Coale, who has been kind enough to read and comment on my previous cognac blog post, founded Craft Distillers to help distribute artisanal spirits ranging from cognac to mezcal, whiskey to rose liqueurs. He’s also involved in a distillery in Ukiah that carries the name of his partner, Hubert Germain-Robin, the latest in a long line of brandy producers, albeit the first on this side of the Atlantic.

Having now sampled that California brandy, two cognacs, a mezcal, and a rose-infused liqueur, I feel confident saying the items with which Mr. Coale associates himself are superb examples of their various styles and among the better spirits I’ve had recently.

His products – save Hangar One vodka, which he sells to subsidize his other endeavors – are not available in Michigan (of course), but they are worth saving up for and hunting down.  I posted about my first bottle of Maison Surrenne Borderies, but there are some additional notes below.

Finally, I’ve also learned a thing or two about appropriate glassware. While I don’t subscribe to the theory that 20 different wines or beers require 20 unique glasses, I certainly hold it to be true that glassware has an effect on what we taste. In this case, the claims that a tulip glass are superior to a snifter are unquestionably true. Snifters create a more volatile, hot drink, whereas the tulip glass seems to emphasize the fruit and barrel flavors.

So armed with a tulip glass, I went about sampling some new drinks (Photos are courtesy of Chance Landrews, staff photographer at the Sugar House Bar):

Maison Surrenne, Petit Champagne Cognac, Lot 1991
There’s the same buoyant, delicate quality as the Borderies (as noted in my previous post on cognac, Bordieres and Petit Champagne are specific regions within Cognac) I’d had previously. But it isn’t so rich and silky, nor is it as clearly violet scented or flavored. More so, it has subtly sweet, fleshy fruit qualities. The finish is a bit hotter and spicier, though that’s not to say it’s inelegant. Quite the opposite. It’s a very well-balanced drink. Compared to this region, Borderies is supposed to have richer soil due to river deposits, and that’s unsurprising — this has a stonier, sharper edge.

Germain-Robin XO Select Barrel
This couldn’t be more opposite than the Surrenne above. The wood shows more of its role here in the form of a much richer, denser body. Aromas of caramel and grilled/baked fruits. Oaky vanilla flavors, though the caramel isn’t noticeable on the palate. And then there’s the fruit. I don’t know enough about brandy to understand if this relates to the distillation process or to the heavy amount of American pinot noir, but there’s a strawberry and apricot nose to this and very subtle red fruit flavors. I didn’t sense them in my first taste, but the more I got accustomed to this drink, the more I became fixated on some of these fruitier flavors rather than the barrel flavors. Regardless, this is a deep spirit, equally potent and nuanced.

Los Danzantes Los Nahuales Reposado
I’ve had much smokier mezcals, though I always get the feeling that they’re smoky to cover something else up. Not so here. Instead, this has true depth from the first whiff through the lingering finish.  There’s a certain orange-ish flavor reminiscent of some Irish whiskies, but it’s dominated by a sweet, pleasant smokiness. It’s not salty in the way scotch can be, but it has a mineral quality about it that lends a similar edge. I’m hardly a mezcal expert, but some friends who were tasting with me – Dave from Sugar House and James from Great Lakes Coffee – and I have had Del Maguey, Arette Gran Classe Anejo Tequila, and/or other, similar drinks, and this absolutely belongs in that class. A real treat.

The quality prompted me to do some reading, and it turns out that this is aged in French oak, rather than American, and that the brothers who produce the product use very sweet, mature agave in the distillation and aging. Also, take a peek at the label: This is essentially a varietal mezcal, using the one type of agave, espadin. There are numerous others. Further research is required.

Crispin’s Rose Liqueur
This is the purest expression of a macerated fruit, herb, or flower I’ve ever had. The distiller, Crispin Cain, distills a mead with apple (if I recall correctly, a mead-cider hybrid is called a cyser) to form the base for this spirit, into which goes heirloom rose petals. It’s drier than it smells, though it’s certainly still kissed by sweetness. To smell this, though, is to smell a rose. Great flowers have a depth to their aromas, and this liqueur expresses that sensation. It’s plump. And on the tongue, there’s more of the same, though again, accented by that honey-ish sweetness. It’s a bit too pricey for me to turn this indulgence into a regular habit, but I’m genuinely pleased to have tried it.

It’s a shame these aren’t available here. But like I said, they’re worth seeking out.

Maison Surrenne is a large distillery, boasting eight cellars of brandy covering multiple regions of Cognac. I’d be lying if I understood the organizational structure and how the family history ties into the business and the region, but it’s worth noting that this bottler is apparently still family owned.

My first purchase was their unblended Borderies cognac, with Borderies being the specific sub-region from which the spirit came.  Into my second glass, I can’t disagree with the notes offered on the bottle’s own label: Vines in the Borderies get more sun exposure, which deepens the flavor of the grapes. The single-vintage Galtaud has unusually rich fruit with the region’s typical attributes: profound volume with hints of violets and nut kernels.

Galtaud is the single-still distillery, founded in 1800, at which this cognac was produced. This particular bottling is listed as “Lot 1989: Casks 9, 4 & 16.”  One of 1600 bottles produced, this is 40.5% alcohol by volume and was bottled in 2008.  According to the Maison Surrenne website, the Borderies region is known for its rich soil deposited in years long past by the nearby Charente River.

This is all new to me, but you can certainly taste that richness and depth: Maison Surrenne is delicious stuff. It absolutely smells like violet, toffee (or perhaps nut kernels, a descriptor with which I’m unfamiliar), and even caramel. And on the palate, the floral, violent sensation absolutely hits me over the head. It’s incredibly noticeable, though refined and elegant. The finish is hot, spicy, and alcoholic, but it’s violet again and cocoa nibs that linger for me. There’s a moderate orange/apricot sensation somewhere in there that I can’t quite pinpoint. This isn’t a sweet spirit, but it certainly has a sweetness to it derived from the fruity and nutty qualities. Despite even that, it’s got a long, hot, dry finish full of flowers and alcoholic spice. How can anyone not love such a thing?

Regardless of what wine media-driven adjectives I could possibly ascribe, the bottom line is that this is one classy spirit. For the first time ever, I understand why the stereotypical wealthy baron of cinema asks people to retire to the study for some cognac or other brandy. This is good drinking. Great drinking.

Cognac at this level is, for me, a revelation. Further study is required, and I’ll be working a lot of extra hours to (happily) pay for that self-imposed research.

Serbian Spirits

My true love of Eastern European hospitality sprang up in Belgrade, Serbia in 2007.  My last aunt born in Serbia had died and left my dad a small sum of money.  Being a generous and sentimental fellow, Dad planned an expedition to Serbia and Romania for the family.  I’d been to Romania before but never Serbia due to the incessant conflicts during the 90s.  Mom, Dad, brother and I set out for the ancestral villages on both sides of the border.

We flew into Belgrade and our cousin Ovidiu, or Ovi, met us at the airport.  Dressed in all black with black hair and a stocky frame, Ovi looked much like an Eastern European gangster, or at the very least, our protection from Eastern European gangsters.  It’s fortunate that my dad had met him before.

Being Romanian American in Serbia would have been a challenge, as we don’t speak Serbian.  Serbian died out with my grandmother who was born there but ethnically Romanian.  Ovi was the language link to our own past.

We checked into a hotel for the night and headed to the Shadorska, the Bohemian district of Belgrade, for dinner.  You could tell Ovi didn’t make it into the city often.  He was as excited as we were.  As we walked down the curving cobblestone street, two women called out from the restaurant Dva Jelena.  They were framed in the restaurant entrance by a mass of cascading flowers.  This was the place we were meant to be.

The interior was all inlaid woods and mystery.  Drinks were needed.  I wanted to try some slivovitz.  It was only normal and the list of brandies was no smaller than an entire page.  I looked to Ovi to translate.  As his eyes scanned down the page through the selection of slivos, he paused.  He turned towards me and in a reverent tone said, “zuta osa.”

I had no frame of reference for what those two words meant, nor what they would later mean.  I did not expect them to signal a shift in how I viewed the world.  Ovi explained that zuta osa was special slivo.  It meant yellow wasp but had another meaning.  Yellow wasps were an indicator to the plum farmer that the plums were ripe for picking.  The secondary meaning was due to the color of the plum brandy once it had been distilled and aged in oak barrels.  The color was as yellow as the wasps.  We ordered a round.

Ovi had a simpler rakija.  He wanted us to have the best out of respect.  A tray of shot glasses was brought out with no fanfare.  Amber in color and fragrant as an orchard in autumn, the zuta osa beckoned.  As I lifted the glass to my mouth, I felt connected with another world, with my family, with my forebears, with this new, old land.

My mouth burned with alcohol as I took a sip.  Then the fruit exploded on the finish as the heat migrated into my stomach.  Noroc, the ancient Romanian toast hung in the air then disappeared.  Plates appeared laden with peppers of all shapes and colors.  I was home.

It was a feast.  Musicians entered the scene.  As they struck the first chords, the man at the adjacent table began to sing.  The songs were melancholic, nostalgic, the same feelings I was beginning to understand about a place I’d never known but now occupied.

Family Spirits

We arrived at the farm in Sutjeska the following day.  The land was flat and wide, full of sunflowers, corn and fisheries along the Danube.  The houses of the village were huddled together as if for protection.  We pulled in the drive and stopped at a rusty, metal gate behind which was a courtyard full of strutting chickens. Could they be dinner?

Silos of dried corn framed out the courtyard.  I could see around me all the simple signs of sustainable living we have become so enamored with in the West.  We entered the main house, put on slippers and entered the living room.  A family waited.

As I was introduced to these wonderful people, a tray of slivo was produced, this time homemade.  Noroc!  While the men toasted each other the women brought out plate after plate of food like bees returning with pollen to the hive:  pork schnitzel, roasted potatoes, red pepper salad, fresh bread, on it went.

Bottles of homemade wine accompanied the feast.  I realized I might never have a meal again as fresh as this.  I was home.  As the celebration continued, more and more relatives arrived.  Meal one was followed by meal two after an interlude of intense conversation: more schnitzel, roasted chicken (aha) and a plate of house cured pork beyond imagining.  We slept a country sleep.

The next morning more relatives came.  One guy, when offered coffee, then beer, said yes to both.  After that, we went to the big town of Ecka where my paternal grandmother was born.  We cautiously drove down a road of uneven, hand laid bricks.  A short man in all black and a fedora haled us from his bicycle.  He invited us into his house.

We sat at a simple kitchen table and were offered quince brandy and a plate of cured pork.  Noroc!  They had been waiting.  As we discussed the brandy, the man agreed to take us down the street to see the local brandy distiller.

The distiller was a Serb who greeted us at his gate.  He explained the process and showed us the copper alembic still assembled in his garage.  The Serb mainly made plum and apricot brandies and proceeded to produce two clear bottles.  He commanded us to drink in Serbian.  Though we couldn’t understand the precise words, we knew exactly what he meant.

We took deep swigs and passed the bottles around.  The fiery fruit greeted us like a slap and a hug.  We were flying.  Beware of Eastern European men bearing clear unlabelled bottles.

Simple Spirits

As the crow flies, my grandfather’s village Guilvaz is only 40km from my grandmother’s village in Serbia.  What God had joined together in geography man can somehow sever.  Banat, the region, straddles the border of Romania and Serbia.  Through communism, wars and Romania’s ascension to the European Union, now it takes about 3.5 hours to drive between villages, past closed borders, and through nonsensical zigzagging turns in the road.

Ovi drove us to the border after a random stop at an official’s house for what I assumed was a furtive payment to let us cross the border.  Our Romanian driver, also named Ovi, met us on the Serbian side.  Hello Ovi, goodbye Ovi.

Guilvaz is much poorer than Ecka and Sutjeska.  An E.U. sign met us on the outskirts of town.  A new lamb abattoir had been built.  Our cousin in the village later told us the owners wouldn’t hire local Romanians because they feared the locals would steal the meat.

As we drew close to the village a train rumbled by with its doors flapping open and closed.  Another man in a fedora on a bicycle caught up to us and showed us the way to our destination.  Where do these guys come from?

The road had never been paved.  It was rutted as if a meteor shower had rained down and grass had grown over the enduring indentations.  We passed a ruined church, abandoned buildings, a horse grazing in front of a house, and an old woman planting seeds.

After reaching my cousin’s house the road gave out to farmland.  Nearby, a healthy, white pit bull sat in the driver’s seat of an old Dacia car.  We ducked to enter the doorframe of the house.  Not just the big news in the village, we were the tallest people by a foot.

We walked through a small room with a tile furnace and a low wood ceiling before entering a dining room where a colorful table had been set.  After being poked and prodded by the newfound relatives, a clear bottle of tuica (Romanian for plum brandy) was produced and glasses raised.

This time the brandy was all fire and brimstone, hellfire and damnation to follow — rustic, you might say.  The food was simple and fresh: house-cured pork, sausages, tomatoes, cheese, peppers, roasted chicken and potatoes.  More relatives arrived from Timisoara, the big city.  More glasses were raised and drained.

We went to see my grandfather’s house and were met by a couple of squatters who were ill prepared for my dad’s arrival and story.  They were from an even poorer region called Oltenia and insisted that they had paid money for the house.  It was rather unlikely since my grandfather had bought the house when he went back in the 50s.  Moreover, they were the second couple I’d met in the same house with the same story.  My dad could have reclaimed it post communism but he wasn’t going to kick these people out.  For what good?

Sophisticated Spirits

From village relatives to the city relatives, we drove from Giulvaz to Deva, a mid-sized Romanian city in the mountains best known as the headquarters for Romania’s powerhouse gymnastics program.  Dan, Rodica and their daughter Tana have stayed with us in the U.S. and we know them in a less awkward way than the man-on-a-bike-style relatives from the villages.

Dan is an architect and had redone their Communist-era condominium apartment since last I had darkened the doorstep in 1993.  Walking up the uneven steps in the dark stairwell I smelled the signs of communist construction. I wasn’t prepared for the marvel of design that lay behind door #26.

Dan had gutted the small kitchen, living room and one bedroom to install a completely open floor plan.  One side featured a plaster wall with asymmetrical cubbies housing Romanian art.  The other side was a curving kitchen bar and a backsplash made of limestone from a local quarry.

Next stop was the liquor cabinet.  There was Tuica and a toast from Dan. It seems that the German toast “prost” actually means dumbass in Romanian and Dan made full use of this fact. But then, Dan is also a part-time comedian and a chain-smoking ringer for Vladimir Lenin.

We ate beet soup with sour cream, spit-grilled lamb and a macedoine of vegetables.  Then Rodica brought out a papricas of mushrooms served over a bed of mamaliga, the Romanian national dish or cornmeal mush or polenta if you prefer.  A bottle of Feteasca Neagra complimented the spicy paprika dish.

After the meal, Dan wanted to show off his new Audi and some of the buildings he’d designed around Deva.  We blew through the empty streets with the ominous Deva sign shining on top of the citadel, Hollywood-style.  He showed us a hotel, church and a bank, all very modern in contrast to the crumbling apartment blocks and remnants of traditional structures.  The only sounds heard above the hum of the A6 engine were the barking of stray dogs.

High Octane Spirits

The next day a long drive took us out of the mountains and back towards the Danube River and its delta.  The hills were terraced with vines.  Turkish and Tatar villages occupied the land amid the reeds and wetlands.  We ferried the Danube at Galati.  The land was losing sway to water and thatch appeared as a roofing material.

We drove a single-track road until it ended in the middle of a field.  We were lost.  Someone produced a phone number for the boat launch and we made our way back to a beach-like pond area filled with boats, rusty buildings and lazy dogs.  We clambered aboard an open-air skiff.  The luggage was casually tossed in the back of the boat causing the boat to sink within an inch of the river level.  Meanwhile, darkness prevailed.

The boatman pushed off from the shore, opened up the motor and we were hauling ass in the dark through a narrow channel as trees whizzed by.  The luggage shifted and I had to wrap my arms around it before it slid into the Danube.  We started letting out whoops of excitement as we banked from the narrow channel to the wide-open Danube.  You could feel the immensity of it even if you couldn’t see it.  The sound shifted, the wind shifted, the boatman was guiding us through pure experience.

Nothing was visible either in front of us or on the shore for that matter, wherever it might have been.  We were fully at warp speed.  At a certain point our eyes adjusted to the darkness and we could make out the faint outline of trees lining the riverside.  The only light we saw before the hotel was a fire someone had lit.

As we approached the hotel, the light grew but it still felt lonely.  The light was dim.  The darkness was great.  There was no doubt that nature was in charge out here.  The boatman guided us expertly alongside the dock and, like a gymnast dismounting from a pommel horse, jumped out of the boat and tossed our luggage on the quay in one fell swoop.

In the shadows was a man holding a platter.  He was dressed in a bowtie and vest with an immaculate and majestic walrus mustache.  Poftim, he said.  Please drink.  On the platter were shot glasses filled with palinca, the even more fiery sister to tuica.  We all did rapid-fire shots, including my mom, a lifelong teetotaler, and the boatman.

Artistic Spirits

Believe it or not, a trip lasting from the hinterlands of Serbia to the Black Sea coast would end up in Bucharest at the exact same time as a NATO meeting featuring then-President Bush.  The streets were clean (unusual for Bucharest), quarantined and quiet.  It took some logistics just to reach our hotel.  What was even more surprising was a blanket ban on alcohol sales along the diplomatic route.  The only time I’d encountered such a prohibition was in India during election voting and after a tour of the Labrot Graham distillery in Kentucky.  But we were in Bucharest, not Bourbon County.

We checked into our hotel near Piata Victoriei and walked around the corner to Ioan Nemtoi’s studio.  Ioan is a friend of my dads and an expert glassblower whose glass art we import into the U.S.  His studio has an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ aspect to it with crashing colors and myriad shapes arranged on pedestals fabricated from metal and wood.

Ioan was late so I waited out on the street.  A leggy woman approached with a head of blonde hair so thick I couldn’t see her face.  She greeted me with “buna” and slipped by into the gallery.  The woman was Ioan’s stepdaughter who I was being fixed up with later.

Ioan arrived shortly, squat and bearded like an Orthodox priest. Typically only priests wear beards in Romania, so with Ioan, my dad and I similarly bearded, it was like an Ecumenical Council of the Patriarchs.  It ended up being a species of communion.  Ioan’s eyes danced as we recounted our exploits and inability to get a drink in Bucharest.  Not to worry, he exclaimed, and disappeared into a room at the back of the gallery.  Out he came with a two liter plastic bottle filled with crystal clear liquid.  We toasted to life, art and matchmaking.  He and my dad laughed the loudest.

Home Spirits

My dad and I import art from Romania and hope to expand into wine in the near future.  The main thing I have imported thus far is the disposition of the hospitality of spirits.

With this outlook, I had a basement party last year filled with house-cured pork, plum brandy (zuta osa is available locally) and Romanian music.  This is the ethos of the Gourmet Underground Detroit: curing pork, making sausage, fermenting vegetables and beverages, canning, toasting, and celebrating.  All these iterations were in evidence at the Holiday Food Bazaar last December organized by Noelle Lothamer.  It was as much social as commercial.

At some point all of our ancestors brought their traditions to this area.  Sadly much of our handed-down knowledge has been severed by corporate food business and the desire to make money above all else.  But there is something inside us which longs to be in touch with nature and other people. This spirit cannot be bought or sold.  It can only be celebrated.  Noroc.

Beer and wine, of course, fit that mold. Low alcohol, lighter, drier beers or whites in fish-friendly regions. Big wines in regions with spice. Family-brewed beers that fit farming lifestyles or pubs for high-density cities. But I hadn’t really thought much about spirits in that context until this weekend when I brought some Fish House Punch to my co-blogger’s house for a Saturday evening party.

Ted Haigh, aka Dr. Cocktail, writes about the punch:

In 1732, fully 104 years before Texas declared itself a Republic, Schuylkill (pronounced “SKOO-kull”), home of Fish House Punch, was its own colony, and later its own sovereign state. It must’ve been quite a place, too. It had a Navy (well, two boats). It had an army (OK, a cannon). At its core it was a club: The Schuylkill Fishing Company… A recipe as old as Fish House Punch, fervently slurped by the Father of Our Country, has inevitably gone through many fanciful formulations. Jerry Thomas related a simple (and probably accurate) recipe using lemon juice, sugar, water, peach brandy, Cognac and rum in 1862. Another was contributed by Mrs. Goodfellow’s Cooking School in 1907 that added oranges, strawberries or pineapple but called the addition of green tea “an abomination.”

The variations are interesting, and I can’t help but think these variations were spurred on by available ingredients. And more to the point, why rum and brandy? The answer, I suspect, is because of the importance of rum to the early colonies and which would have easily made its way into the areas near Philadelphia, a wealthy city in those days. Not surprisingly, the colonies and territories that would go on to form middle America seemed to acquire a fondness for bourbon, and while they had their own punches and juleps, Fish House Punch was created in a time and place that almost required its invention. Rum was available, and over time, those with access to strawberries or different types of teas or brandies would have altered the recipe to suit their needs, of course. Family recipes would have emerged all around three common ingredients: rum, brandy, and a need to make them easily quaffable.

The recipe I used was based on Haigh’s, with a substitution of some pretty piss poor apricot brandy for his suggested top-shelf peach brandy — in and of itself a choice made because Detroit doesn’t see a big selection of peach brandies.

Fish House Punch

• 2 quarts Jamaica rum (I used Mount Gay silver)
• 1 quart brandy (I used Hennessey and some from another bottle)
• 1/2 pint peach brandy
• 1/2 pint Maraschino liqueur
• 1 quart fresh-brewed green tea
• 1 pint fresh lemon juice
• 1 pound sugar

I’d like to try to make this in the future with some variations: black tea for green tea, slightly more lemon juice, replacing some or all of the sugar with some sort of homemade spicy sugar syrup, et cetera. Regardless, this is a great party punch that represents the fine human tradition of creating something amazing out of whatever ingredients are available. Enjoy it as a powerful social lubricant at your next gathering.