Boozehound - Jason Wilson [57]
Norwegian aquavit must traditionally be made with potato-based spirits and infused with herbs and spices that must include a predominant profile of caraway. Why caraway? “It was the local remedy for indigestion” Nicolaysen said. “It’s a northern European flavor and it was always plentiful.” But caraway is only the beginning, and the spice room was full of pungent containers. Dill is also a major ingredient in aquavit, as are mustard blossom, fennel, coriander, guinea pepper, clove, and cardamom. And of course, our old friends anise and star anise. “Star anise, you know, becomes Tamiflu,” Nicolaysen said. “To fight the pig flu”
Nicolaysen clearly enjoyed the olfactory experience in the spice room. “What would life be without spices?” he asked. “Many of the spices have their basis in medicine. It was much easier to drink these herbs than to chew them.”
After the spice room, we toured the cask cellar. Unlike Danish and Swedish aquavit, Norwegian aquavit must mature in sherry oak casks, and Arcus has thousands of casks stored, including several earmarked for Norway’s royal family. Arcus’s most famous brand is Linie, which means “line” in Norwegian—in this case the equator. Linie is carried in sherry casks aboard ships that cross the equator twice before it is sold; the voyage date and ship are listed on every label. The flavor is supposedly “mellowed by its voyage.” I have asked every Scandinavian I know whether this makes any difference whatsoever to the taste. This question has been met with a shrug every time.
We tasted about fifteen of the fifty bottlings, from a young, clear taffel, or “table,” aquavit (aged in older casks that don’t impart color) to a twelve-year-old bottling that tasted like a cognac. Some versions have a blast of caraway and dill on the nose, while others have fruitier notes, and the more aged versions have hints of vanilla or caramel. Aquavit in all its versions is a strange, complex, and wonderful spirit, and a good match with the traditional winter Scandinavian fare of pungent fish, sharp cheeses, and heavy meat dishes. “The food is always deciding the character of the aquavit. We don’t make wine here. So this has been adapted to the Nordic kitchen,” Nicolaysen said. For example, there are special holiday bottlings to pair with bacalao (dried salt cod) or rakefisk (salted, fermented trout). In fact, the rakefisk bottling, which is aged three years, has an illustration of a fish on the label with a wavy line emanating from it—the international symbol for “stinky.” “This aquavit has to match a very stinky fish.”
When I mentioned to Nicolaysen that I had a bottle of Linie in my freezer at home, he nearly fainted. I told him that I’d been introduced to aquavit in Denmark, and that’s how my friends always drank it, ice-cold from the freezer. “Ah,” he said, “that’s because the Danes and Swedes don’t have this tradition of aging in casks like we do. For them, aquavit is a white spirit.”
He told me never to put Norwegian aquavit in the freezer. “It goes all the way to Australia and back to age … and then you put it in the freezer! Good god, that’s a sacrilege for those of us who make it!”
I began our tasting in the Hotel Munch with Henrik’s brand, Nansen Aquavit. Nansen had already launched a Norwegian-owned cognac that had gained popularity when France was testing nuclear missiles in the South Pacific in the late 1990s, which Norwegians firmly opposed. “People were saying, ‘I want a cognac, but not a French cognac,’ ” Henrik said. In 2007, they launched an aquavit.
Nansen