The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World's Great Drinks (28 page)

N
orwegian distillers don't recount myths of lost princes and ancient recipes to explain the mysterious origins of their classic spirit. Instead, they tell the story of a trading expedition gone wrong. According to the makers of Linie Aquavit, a trading ship bound for Indonesia in 1805 carried used sherry casks filled with the caraway-flavored spirit aquavit in its cargo hold. The traders were unable to sell their national drink in Indonesia and returned home with it.

When they arrived in Norway, they found that the long, rollicking sea voyage had greatly improved the aquavit. To reproduce the flavor, they tried simply storing the aquavit in sherry casks, but it wasn't the same. The brutal sea voyage, with its time in warm equatorial seas and in cold Nordic waters, combined with the tossing and turning of the ship, caused the casks to expand and contract in a way that released more flavor from the oak. For that reason, casks of Linie still voyage around the world for four and a half months on the decks of cargo ships, crossing the equator twice and visiting thirty-five countries. The distiller once kept this strange method of aging the spirit a secret, but now a log of the voyage is printed on every label.

Aquavit is flavored with caraway, an annual herb that is a close relative of parsley and cilantro. What people refer to as the seed is actually a fruit that contains two seeds, along with essential oils that give it its spicy, toasted flavor. Most people associate the flavor with rye bread, but it is also used in sauerkraut, coleslaw, and some Dutch cheeses.

Caraway is native to Europe. Archeological evidence in Switzerland points to the use of the seeds as a spice as many as five thousand
years ago. There are two types: a biennial winter type that is sown in spring or fall for a harvest the following winter and an annual type that is sown in spring for a fall harvest. The winter type is the traditional choice in eastern Europe and is most widely available from seed companies.

Aquavit is made with a potato vodka base. Caraway is the predominant flavor, but fennel, dill, anise, cardamom, cloves, and citrus might also be added. Another caraway-based spirit is allasch, a Latvian liqueur also made with anise, and the better-known kümmel, a sweet, grain-based liqueur that dates to sixteenth-century Holland, which is usually served on the rocks after dinner.

CARDAMOM

Elettaria cardamomum
var.
Minor
or var.
Major

zingiberaceae (ginger family)

I
f you've never seen a cardamom plant, picture a clump of tall, weedy orchids. As a member of the ginger family, cardamom produces the third most expensive spice in the world, after saffron and vanilla. Its high price comes in part from the tropical locations it prefers and in part because the fruit is painstakingly difficult to harvest.

Cardamom has been collected in the wild for hundreds of years but was brought into cultivation in the nineteenth century. The plant reaches nearly twenty feet in height and blooms over a long season, requiring pickers to return again and again to the same plant to harvest individual fruits. They must be picked while they are still slightly green, then dried and split carefully apart to remove the seeds within. The pods are also sold intact, with the seeds still inside, which preserves more of the flavor.

Cardamom from India is considered the best quality, although Guatemala has become a major producer as well. There are two types: the Malabar type has a slight eucalyptus flavor, while the Mysore type is warmer and spicier, with citrus and floral notes. A related species,
Amomum subulatum,
also called large cardamom or black cardamom, is typically dried on an open fire and has a much smokier flavor as a result.

The spice contains high levels of linalool and linalyl acetate, which are fragrant compounds also found in lavender, citrus, and a wide range of other flowers and spices. Japanese scientists recently showed that these compounds reduce stress, as measured by direct testing of subjects' immune system response. That's as good a reason as any to add it to a drink.

Cardamom flavors a wide range of spirits, including gins, coffee and nut liqueurs, vermouth, and Italian
amaro
s. The best way to use it in a cocktail is to heat green cardamom seeds with simple syrup and experiment with it in a wide range of spicy, tropical, and fruit-based drinks.

CLOVE

Syzygium aromaticum

myrtaceae (myrtle family)

A
clove is not a seed or a fruit or even the bark of a tree. It is, in fact, a tightly closed flower bud that has been plucked from an Indonesian tree and spread out in the sun to dry before it ferments (in the way that, seemingly, anything will ferment if left unattended.)

Cloves come from the Indonesian spice islands of Ternate, Tidore, Bacan, Makin, and the Maluku Islands, which have been the source of spices for Asia and Europe since at least the third century BC. The Romans eagerly traded with Arab merchants for exotic botanicals from these islands, and by the seventeenth century, the Dutch and Portuguese were fighting over the territory. In an attempt to control the market, the Dutch cut down clove trees on all but the islands they controlled. French and British traders eventually got hold of some clove seedlings and exported them to their own
tropical colonies, including Sri Lanka, India, and Malaysia. Sadly, this had the effect of wiping out the rich genetic diversity that may have once existed among wild clove trees. The only wild trees that remain contain no trace of eugenol, the distinctive flavor extracted from modern cloves. This suggests that a second wild ancestor, which did produce eugenol, was wiped out entirely by the spice traders.

The clove tree itself is quite beautiful; the leaves transition from pale gold to pink to green throughout the season. The buds also change color as they bloom and must be harvested at the precise moment they turn light pink. Because of the tree's long blooming cycle, the flowers are picked as many as eight times in a season, yielding only about ten pounds of cloves per year. Clove stems are sometimes used as a cheap substitute for the buds, and clove oil may also be extracted from the leaves and branches.

The varieties of cloves sold in the trade today are Zanzibar, Siputih, and Sikotok, with the Siputih being the largest and most pungent of the three. Clove extract has been used throughout history—and continues to be used today—as a dental anesthetic because of its numbing and analgesic effects. In fact, that distinctive dentist office smell comes in part from cloves.

However, there are much more pleasant ways to enjoy cloves than a trip to the dentist's office. The flavor is wonderful in combination with other spices. It intensifies vanilla flavors and adds a level of complexity to citrus. Many nutty and spicy liqueurs rely on cloves to support and amplify other flavors, including amaretto, alkermes, and some vermouths and
amaro
s.

COCA