Boozehound - Jason Wilson [67]
Still, it’s noteworthy that El Diablo, Patrón’s master distiller, is one of the few I’ve met who’s candid about this nebulous issue of luxury. After all, it’s become fashionable in cocktail geek circles to turn one’s nose up at Patrón. It’s too big, sort of like the Darth Vader of premium tequila, right? Too many ads, right? It can’t possibly be good. Well, let’s be clear about one thing: if it hadn’t been for Patrón entering the market in the late 1980s, there wouldn’t be a premium tequila market in the United States. You’d still be drinking Cuervo Gold. Bagging on Patrón reminds me a little of teenagers who hate a band as soon as it becomes famous.
It also, strangely enough, sounds like the sort of debate that routinely happens in the wine world. Yes, to enter the world of tequila is to slip down a rabbit hole. Which probably proves that it is much more complex than most people think.
Fruit Forward
For most Americans, “fruit” is not the word that immediately comes to mind when they hear “eau-de-vie.” If eau-de-vie evokes any words, those might be: intense, burning, foreign. Or if one thinks of fruit, it’s the whole pear sitting inside a curious bottle. Some home cooks may have purchased a bottle of kirschwasser long ago to attempt a real fondue. But as I have said, Americans mostly steer away from clear European spirits that are served neat in small glasses.
“These are hard-to-sell, expensive products that no one likes,” jokes Stephen McCarthy of Clear Creek Distillery in Portland, Oregon, which makes some of the nicest eaux-de-vie in the United States, including one with the pear inside the bottle. “People just aren’t getting the message.”
I wish that were not so. Near the midpoint of my winter doldrums, in particular, I miss the abundance of seasonal fresh fruit. Maybe that’s why one of my winter drinks is an eau-de-vie after dinner, just a bit of poire Williams or kirsch or a plum brandy called slivovitz. Eau-de-vie is a delight and, with its digestive properties, a fabulous way to finish a meal. Unlike liqueurs, which often have a cloying percentage of sugar and a lower alcohol content, eau-de-vie is clear, unaged brandy, generally clocking in at around 80 proof. Although many still think of eau-de-vie as Alsatian or alpine, there are a few wonderful producers in the United States.
The domestic market was basically created in the 1980s by two men: Stephen McCarthy, and Jorg Rupf of St. George Spirits in Alameda, California, which produces the amazing Aqua Perfecta brand of eau-de-vie (and also, it should be said, Hangar One vodka; gotta pay the bills, right?). Both McCarthy and Rupf came to the business in a roundabout fashion. Rupf grew up in Germany’s Black Forest in a family of distillers but went into law and became Germany’s youngest judge at the time. On a scholarly visit to the University of California at Berkeley, he fell in love with the local fruit and decided to stay and distill it. “Seeing the blossoming fruit in California,” he says, “it was like the Garden of Eden.” McCarthy ran a successful business producing parts for hunting guns, which took him on sales trips to Europe. There he realized that the Williams pear, used to make the French eau-de-vie poire Williams, was the same as the Bartlett pear grown back home on his family’s orchard in Oregon. In the mid-1980s, he sold his business and started