The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World's Great Drinks (39 page)

The best known of these liqueurs is Perique Liqueur de Tabac, distilled at the Combier facility in France through a process that, according to the distillers, leaves no detectable trace of nicotine in the bottle. (Nicotine has such a high boiling point—475 degrees Fahrenheit—that it might not rise through the still at all.) Made with a grape eau-de-vie spirit and aged in oak for
over a year, this liqueur is sweet, aromatic, and decidedly different. It comes from a particularly strong and flavorful tobacco strain that is only found in St. James Parish, Louisiana.

Perique tobacco was probably grown by native people for at least a thousand years in that region; settlers have been cultivating and processing it for just two hundred years. The leaves themselves are processed in a way that any distiller would appreciate: they are slightly dried, bundled, then packed into whiskey barrels, where the remaining juice slowly ferments. This adds earthy, woodsy, and fruity flavors to the finished tobacco. In fact, one study identified 330 flavor compounds, 48 of which were previously unknown in tobacco. The tobacco has experienced a resurgence as the interest in artisanal and heirloom ingredients extends to smoking; it is sold in high-end blended pipe tobaccos.

The Perique liqueur does not have the strong, toasted tobacco flavor that a good Scotch has. The best way to describe it is to say that it tastes the way sweet, damp pipe tobacco smells. It is the only widely available liqueur of its kind. Historias y Sabores, a distillery in Mendoza, Argentina, makes a tobacco liqueur; apart from that, the most common use of tobacco in cocktails comes from house-made cigar bitters, an infusion of tobacco and spices in a high-proof spirit that appears on upscale bar menus. Such experiments can be dangerous for bartenders to undertake, however. Without scientific monitoring of the sort not normally practiced in bars, an inadvertently high dose of nicotine in a drink could be delivered to customers.

TONKA BEAN

Dipteryx odorata

fabaceae (bean family)

T
his tropical tree, native to damp soils along the Orinoco River in Venezuela, produces a sweet and warmly spicy bean. European plant explorers saw the potential in the bean and brought it back to London's Kew Gardens to be cultivated in tropical hothouses. With notes of vanilla, cinnamon, and almond, it was useful as a perfume ingredient and a baking spice. It was also used to cover the nasty odor of iodoform, an early antiseptic, and until quite recently, it was added to tobacco. Chewing tobacco in particular would be sprayed with a solution made from soaking the beans in alcohol.

It was inevitable that such a tasty bean would turn up in bitters and liqueurs. One brand, Abbott's Bitters, may have derived some of its flavor from tonka beans, according to chemical analysis of old bottles. It is also rumored to be an ingredient in Rumona, a Jamaican rum-based liqueur. But in 1954, the FDA banned tonka as a food ingredient because it contains high levels of coumarin. Liquor containing tonka bean disappeared, but it took a few more decades for tonka to be eliminated from tobacco products, owing in part to the fact that tobacco companies were not required to disclose their ingredients. It is still found as an adulterant in imitation Mexican vanilla, which is why the FDA advises tourists not to bring the product home from vacation.

Tonka bean has made a comeback of sorts. Europeans can find it in the Dutch Van Wees Tonka Bean Spirit, the German liqueur Michelberger 35%, and the French pastis Henri Bardouin. It's used, sometimes on the sly, by chefs and bartenders who believe that the minute dose of coumarin delivered by a fine grating of the spice over a drink or dessert could not possibly be harmful—and in fact, they argue, cassia cinnamon also contains high levels of coumarin and faces no such restrictions. The flat, wrinkled black beans, resembling large raisins, have become a kind of culinary and cocktail contraband.

VANILLA

Vanilla planifolia

orchidaceae (orchid family)

When Spanish explorers first tasted vanilla, they might not have realized what a rare spice they'd encountered. The vanilla bean is the fruit of a species of orchid native to southeastern Mexico, and it is unusually difficult to cultivate. Like most orchids, it is an epiphyte, meaning that its roots need to be exposed to air, not soil. It climbs the trunks of trees, thriving in limbs a hundred feet aboveground, and unfurls just one flower per day over a two-month period, awaiting pollination by a single species of tiny stingless bee,
Melipona beecheii.
If the flower is pollinated, a pod develops over the next six to eight months. And although the pods contain thousands of tiny seeds, they are incapable of germinating unless they are in the presence of a particular mycorrhizal fungus.

If that isn't complicated enough, the pods themselves don't taste like much of anything when they are picked. They must first be fermented to activate enzymes that release the vanillin flavor. The traditional way to accomplish this was to dip the pods in water, then spread them in the sun and roll them up in cloth to “sweat” at night. The results were worth the effort: hot chocolate drinks flavored with vanilla were one of the Spaniards' most exciting discoveries.

It is no wonder that the first attempts to transport vanilla orchids back to Europe and grow them in hothouses failed. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, no one knew how to pollinate the plants. Finally a method was developed using a tiny bamboo pick, but even that wasn't easy: as each flower opens for only one day, someone has to be standing by, ready to do the work of the bee. Even today, with most vanilla coming from Madagascar, the flowers must be artificially pollinated because the native bee simply cannot be exported. No wonder it competes with saffron for the title of world's most expensive spice.

Over a hundred volatile compounds have been detected in vanilla, which explains why the flavor of pure extract can be so complex: notes of wood, balsamic, leather, dried fruit, herbs, and spices round out the sweetness of vanillin. This makes it an extraordinarily versatile flavor, useful in perfumes, cooking, and in beverages of all sorts. When Coca-Cola made its ill-fated switch to New Coke, the
Wall Street Journal
reported that the economy of Madagascar nearly collapsed because of the sudden drop in demand for vanilla. The company refused, as always, to comment on its secret formula, but the inference was that the original Coke recipe called for vanilla and the new version did not.

Today the highest-quality vanilla comes from Madagascar and Mexico, although some people prefer the fruitier flavor of Tahitian vanilla. The spice can be found in an impossibly wide range of liqueurs, from spiced citrus spirits to coffee and nut liqueurs to sweet cream and chocolate drinks. Kahlúa, Galliano, and Benedictine are just three examples of products strongly dominated by vanilla flavors.

WORMWOOD

Artemisia absinthium

asteraceae (aster family)

A
nyone who has never tried absinthe will be surprised to find out that it does not taste at all like
Artemisia absinthium.
Wormwood, a pungent, silvery Mediterranean herb, produces volatile oils and bitter compounds that add a kind of mentholated bitterness to aromatized wines and liqueurs, but it isn't usually the primary flavor. In fact, absinthe tastes more like licorice, thanks to another main ingredient, anise. But wormwood gives it its reputation.