Everyday Drinking_ The Distilled Kingsley Amis - Kingsley Amis [54]
Today I’ll stick to herbal liqueurs. These probably came about because early techniques of distillation left you with a pretty rough product and the benefits of letting the stuff age in the cask hadn’t been discovered. It was natural enough to try the effect of soaking a few herbs in spirits in the hope of producing something beneficial to health as well as palatable. The monasteries, with their pharmaceutical tradition, were the obvious places for this to happen. They also had an unlimited supply of another essential item—spare time. No wonder the first liqueurs came from there, including two of the most famous at the present day, Chartreuse and Benedictine.
Chartreuse is made in two varieties, green and yellow, the green being the original, the more expensive, the drier and the stronger. In fact, at nearly 55 per cent alcohol, it’s likely to be the strongest drink in the house and so requires caution. Best kept out of the hands of visiting Americans, who may not have seen it before. Quite different from any other drink.
Green Chartreuse is made to a secret recipe that’s said to include 130 different herbs, which sounds most unlikely. It seems, however, that the very striking colour is altogether genuine, coming from the natural flavouring ingredients and nothing else. I know of no mixed drinks based on it, but I’m told that a small quantity poured over a vanilla ice cream produces a delicious dish. Quite possibly.
Benedictine is too sweet for my taste and has about it a peculiar tang which I have never really liked, the result perhaps of the rhubarb among its flavourings. The foundation is brandy and, as always in these cases, the sweetness can be palatably and legitimately cut by adding more foundation.
In fact the company markets something called B & B which is just that, brandy and Benedictine or the other way round and extremely popular. Horrible mixtures of Benedictine and tonic water, white wine and heaven knows what are also drunk in places I hate to imagine.
The most popular liqueur in the UK is the splendid Drambuie from Scotland, a blend of fine Highland malt whiskies and honey in the proportion of two and a half to one, plus herbs. Very sweet, and though to my way of thinking not sickly, improvable by adding more malt and reducing the honey content to one fifth or less.
You can have a lot of fun establishing by experiment the formula you prefer, but remember my recent warning about the dire after-effects of all sweet drinks.
Today I conclude my remarks on the subject of being off the booze. This third instalment is actually about no longer being off it—returning, that is, to full membership of the human race. I had intended to keep a sort of diary of new first impressions of the various drinks as I came to them, but I somehow didn’t, and I can’t really think what I would have said if I had. “Had some Scotch (or Burgundy, or port) this evening. Excellent stuff. Tasted strongly of Scotch (Burgundy, port).” Not very helpful.
But I do remember my first drink after the break was a glass of plain Gordon’s gin and water. One thing it did for me was confirm my judgement that when it comes to drinking gin, there’s no other decent way. To pour sweetened fizz like tonic water into such a masterpiece of the distiller’s art makes about as much sense as, well, putting tomato ketchup on caviar, I was going to say, except that that strikes me as rather a sound scheme providing you’re sure you’ve got enough ketchup to spare. Anyway, you get the idea—leave your gin alone. Even a slice of lemon is really too aromatic to put in with it. Ice is all right, but I prefer to have chilled the bottle.
My second drink was a Carlsberg Special Brew, very cold, which I think is better than just cold. The effect was electrifying. As I drank the whole of my head seemed to become flooded with the taste and smell of beer. This was the result not so much of not having boozed for