The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World's Great Drinks (54 page)

PLUM

Prunus domestica

rosaceae (rose family)

W
hen Americans think about a plum, we think about variations on the Japanese plum,
Prunus salicina.
These large, sweet, red or golden-fleshed plums were the invention of Luther Burbank, the most famous plant breeder of the twentieth century. From his farm in Santa Rosa, California, Burbank bred an astonishing eight hundred new varieties of plants, including the Shasta daisy, the Russet Burbank potato, and the Santa Rosa plum. In fact, almost all the plums grown in the United States today are Burbank's creations, hybrids of young trees he imported from Japan in 1887.

As wonderful as these plums are, we don't eat many of them. The average American eats just less than a pound of plums per year, and we use far fewer of them in booze. That is a tragedy that a few intrepid distillers are working to rectify.

European plums,
P. domestica,
have a long history in alcoholic beverages. There are over 950 varieties and many subspecies, all of which are subject to regular renaming and reclassification. The plums of most interest to the average drinker include four members of
P. domestica:
the bluish purple, oval-shaped damson (from
Damascus,
pointing to its ancient origins in Syria), the small golden mirabelle, the round bullace, which comes in a range of colors, and the pale lime-colored greengage. (The first three are usually assigned to the subspecies
insista,
while the gages are placed in a separate subspecies,
italica,
but even this is up for debate.) There are so many varieties of damsons, mirabelles, bullaces, and gages that even fruit growers can't keep them all straight; ask a farmer what variety of damson grows in the orchard and you might get nothing but a shrug in response.

But all of these plums make delightful liqueurs, eaux-de-vie, and brandies. The new Averell Damson Gin Liqueur from the American Gin Company, made with damsons grown in Geneva, New York, is the latest in a long line of fine damson liqueurs. Recipes for damson wine or damson-infused brandy date to 1717, and by the late nineteenth century, damson gin was a common drink in the English countryside. While it is a sweet liqueur, it is not cloying: modern, well-made damson gins are simply bright, clean expressions of a wild, natural plum flavor. Damsons, greengages, and bullace plums all grow wild in English hedgerows; both homemade and commercially produced liqueurs are made with each of them.

There is a bit of a botanical mystery surrounding the greengage. Many nineteenth-century botanical journals claim it was named after a member of the Gage family, who brought the tree back to England from the Chartreuse monastery sometime between 1725 and 1820, depending on which account you read. This anecdote is enough to send any inventive bartender scurrying around to create a cocktail that combines plum eau-de-vie and Chartreuse liqueur—but unfortunately, it is impossible to prove. An 1820 history of English fruits claims that some member of the aristocratic Gage family picked the trees up at the monastery and shipped them back to Hengrave Hall in Suffolk. Apparently a label was lost in transit and the French plum Reine Claude was simply labeled “Green Gage” to reflect the fruit's color and the estate where it was grown. Other accounts claim that a similar event took place within another branch of the Gage family on their estate called Firle.

All we know for certain is that “gage” plums were established in England before 1726, when they first appeared in horticultural literature, which means that if the Gage-Chartreuse label mixup happened, it surely took place well before 1725 or there wouldn't have been time for the trees to be planted, bear fruit, and attract the notice of horticulturists. An early mention of green plums, in a 1693 catalog of English plants, implies that an even earlier generation of Gages would have had to be involved. Arthur Simmonds, deputy secretary to the Royal Horticultural Society in the early 1900s, made a heroic effort to clear up the confusion, concluding only that the various Gage candidates put forth in the botanical literature were either not alive, old men, or young children when this mysterious trip
to Chartreuse and subsequent label mixup occurred. Any connection between the Gage family and the green plums is, at this point, only speculative.

In France, the deep golden mirabelle plums are a specialty of the Lorraine region. In nearby Alsace the local plum is the quetsche, a violet-skinned fruit with yellowish green flesh. Each are made into jams, tarts, candies, liqueurs and remarkable eaux-de-vie. Eastern European countries are known for slivovitz, a kosher blue plum brandy that is often distilled with whole fruit and their pits, giving it a slight marzipan flavor, and sometimes aged in oak to add notes of vanilla and spice. While cheap imitation slivovitz, made from crude sugar-based liquor and prune juice, has a deservedly bad reputation, a well-made plum brandy or eau-de-vie is an extraordinary experience.

Other
Prunus
species are also put to use in liqueurs: for instance, Japanese plum wine,
umeshu,
is usually made with
P. mume,
a Chinese species more closely related to apricots. The ume fruit are soaked in a mixture of sugar and
shochu
(a spirit made of rice, buckwheat, or sweet potatoes bottled at 25 percent ABV) for up to a year before drinking. While commercial
umeshu
is available—sometimes with ume floating in the bottle—it is also something people make at home when the fruit is ripe.

QUANDONG