Everyday Drinking_ The Distilled Kingsley Amis - Kingsley Amis [61]
Calvados, a strong spirit pot-distilled from a fermented apple mash, belongs to the catalogue of fruit brandies. These are a separate family from the fruit-flavoured liqueurs I described a few weeks ago, where the alcohol derives from grape, maize, parsnips, etc. The difference is the difference between the fruit brandy Kirsch, a dry, colourless distillate of a mash of cherries, and a rich, sweet, dark, cherry-flavoured liqueur like Cherry Heering. Each is a splendid drink in its way. A bit confusingly, Calvados itself, being aged in wood, emerges pretty dark, but it’s dry all right, also smooth, fragrant, full-flavoured, you name it. The Normandy cuisine is rather fatty, dripping with cream and butter, and Calvados is the ideal corrective to that sort of meal. In fact, it’s an excellent out-of-the-way round-off to any serious lunch or dinner.
The same applies to the other fruit brandies. Most of them come from an area on the eastern side of France and the adjoining parts of Germany and Switzerland. Apart from Kirsch they include poire Williams (made from pears), quetsch and mirabelle (plums), prunelle (sloes), framboise and Himbeergeist (raspberries), and so on. There even used to be one made out of hollyberries, but I doubt if they can get the blokes to pick them these days, don’t you?
These are very fine unusual drinks, running you into money in the £12–£15 range, but worth it for a particular treat and a wonderful Christmas present for anybody known to take a serious interest in these matters. Some care in serving is needed. Calvados you just pour straight out, but the trick with the others, in Germany at least, is to pre-freeze the glass though not the bottle. There, by the way, they’re more often drunk before the meal than after.
The Balkan countries have slivovitz, made from plums. It features, heated in a saucepan and mixed with honey, as a winter warmer and cold cure known as Serbian Tea. A user says, “Great, but after two or three you can feel the lining of your stomach wearing thin.” So watch it.
It was the late, great Stephen Potter who invented one-upmanship, or rather brought the concept out into the open. You could define it roughly as the technique of getting or keeping the edge on the other fellow in any gathering or situation, probably by bluff, brass or straight lying. The field of booze, with all its snobbery and true and false expertise, is obviously a rich one from this point of view.
Potter wrote some good stuff on what he called wines-manship, in which he explains how to get away with giving your guests the vilest plonk imaginable and passing yourself off as an expert at the same time. It’s partly what you do— pretend to fetch the bottle from the cellar, take for ever uncorking it, keep staring at it before you pour—and partly what you say—“Over the top now, of course, but still with a hint of former glories. Keep it in your mouth a moment . . . see what I mean?” At this, the other fellow will start thinking that the flavour of carbolic he thought he’d noticed is actually rather interesting or even pleasant.
And so on. This last bit strikes me as brilliant but dangerous. There are too many people around these days who aren’t quite ignorant about the subject and, more important, aren’t afraid to state their likes and dislikes. Safer to stick to neutral ground—a restaurant—wait for someone to drop a grain of knowledge, and work the old jujitsu trick of turning his strength to his disadvantage. As soon as he mentions tannin or chalky soil or the ’79s coming on fast—or slowly—shush everyone else and say: “Listen, chaps, here’s a chance for us all to learn something. Carry on, Percy”—the equivalent of dropping him on his head.
When he’s finished, which should be pretty soon, ask a lot of questions, the more elementary the better, like: “Does that make it good or bad?” Then, having wrung him dry, say: “Fascinating! Some of these fellows are uncanny. I met one the other day who could tell which end of the vineyard the grapes that had gone into an individual bottle of something-or-other