Boozehound - Jason Wilson [36]
The hike up to the monastery on that afternoon was beautiful, and we passed families, troops of boy scouts, teenage lovers, and even a few old men wearing berets. It made me so happy to be in the mountains again, and then in the same moment, it made me kind of sad and nostalgic. When I was in Vermont, I always imagined I’d live in a place like this, someplace where there was excellent skiing, and mountain herbs from which secret elixirs were made, and perhaps alpine girls who wore chartreuse to work. Claire cheerily pointed out wild herbs like gentian and génépi, surely part of the secret recipe. We saw some elderflowers, and I asked Claire, “Do little men with mustaches and berets ride bikes into the mountains to harvest these?”
She looked at me like I was crazy, so I launched into the story of St-Germain. “Do Americans really believe this?” asked Claire, her laughter echoing through the Alps. She continued to laugh for several more minutes, until we drew close to the monastery and the sign that noted we were entering a “Zone De Silence.”
Nearly twenty years after the summer of my backpacking trip with S., I had the opportunity to tour the inner sanctum of the Jägermeister plant in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, a cozy town of half-timbered homes about an hour from Hanover (meaning it’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere). In fact, when I asked whether it was worth sticking around Wolfenbüttel for a day of sightseeing, the reply from the Jägermeister people was “Unfortunately there’s nothing more to see in this area.” Jägermeister corporate headquarters sits outside the center of Wolfen-büttel, and when you arrive, you are met by a rug that says, in bright orange, “Achtung WILD!”
The continued popularity of Jägermeister is undeniable. More than 2.8 million cases are sold in the States annually, part of more than 6 million cases total sold worldwide. Jägermeister is the best-selling liqueur in the States, according to the industry analyst Beverage Information Group. Yet because of its viral popularity, and also because Jägermeister is most commonly consumed in shots by young people, the liqueur has a mixed reputation among the spirits cognoscenti. There’s its association with heavy metal bands such as Metallica and Slayer; its mingling with Red Bull in the infamous Jäger Bomb; the big, branded tap machines that bring chilled shots to the masses. Whatever the reason, Jägermeister is rarely discussed in serious spirits and cocktail circles.
In the first edition of his ratings compendium, Kindred Spirits (1997), critic Paul Pacult, the Robert Parker of spirits, gave Jägermeister three out of five stars and said its herbal quality “is so profound that it’s like walking into a Chinese herbalist’s shop.” He offered this summation: “a charming and quaffable shooter; but that’s about it.” Curiously, in Pacult’s 2008 second edition, Jägermeister is not even reviewed.
I’ve remained a fan of Jägermeister, though surely this has more to do with warm memories of college nights than with the flavor itself. These days, I rarely find myself in a situation that calls for shots of it. Which makes sense, since the prime demographic, according to Dietmar Franke, Jägermeister’s business development director for the United States, is drinkers aged twenty-one to thirty-one: “the age bracket when you are out every evening.”
Franke, as if out of central casting, looks like a benevolent version of the Burgermeister Meisterburger from the Claymation Christmas classic “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” You could totally picture this guy in lederhosen. He’d certainly slurped down a few Jägermeisters in his day. Franke thought it was hilarious that I wanted to know the secret ingredients. At one point, when I