The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World's Great Drinks (57 page)
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Authors: Amy Stewart
Tags: #Non-Fiction
Citrus aurantium
var.
myrtifolia
With diminutive fruit no larger than a golf ball and tiny, diamond-shaped leaves, the chinotto (pronounced key-NO-toe) is the kind of tree that any citrus collector would want in an orangerie. Although the fruit is often described as bitter and sour, it's actually less tart than a lime or lemon and perfectly fine to eat. The trees flourish in the Mediterranean, where the fruits ripen in January.
The chinotto's distinctive flavor is widely reported to be a key ingredient in Campari, which is best enjoyed in a Negroni or splashed into club soda. A nonalcoholic soda called Chinotto can also be found throughout Italy and in Italian markets everywhere. Resist the temptation to combine the two: mixing Campari and Chinotto would almost certainly be too much of a good thing.
NEGRONI
1 ounce gin
1 ounce sweet vermouth
1 ounce Campari
Orange peel
Shake all of the ingredients except the orange peel over ice and serve in a cocktail glass. Garnish with the orange peel.
CITRON
Citrus medica
One of the earliest species of citrus and the parent to many others, the citron is known for its monstrously thick peel and sour, nearly inedible fruit. In about 30 BC, Virgil wrote that citron “has a persistently wretched taste, but is an excellent remedy against poisons.” The peel was added to wine as a medicinal remedy; it induced vomiting, which might not recommend it as a cocktail ingredient.
Citron is the dinosaur of the citrus world. It is downright reptilian in appearance, with thick, wrinkled skin and bizarre deformities. The Buddha's hand citron (
Citrus medica
var.
sarcodactylis
) is shaped like a many-fingered hand, making it almost all peel and no flesh. Like other citron, it can be brined and candied to make into a kind of crystallized peel called succade. But because the Buddha's hand has such a large surface area of flavorful peel, it can also be infused whole in vodka.
Recipes for “citron water” from Barbados, where the tree was abundant, date to before 1750 and might have flavored vermouth in those days. The fruit was also chopped or zested, soaked in a variety of spirits, and mixed with sugar to make a cordial not unlike
limoncello.
The best tool for peeling citrus is a handheld zester, which looks like a fat, stubby fork. The tines on the end are used to extract zest, but below the tines is a hole with a sharp edge that makes long, thin, perfect peels.
CITRUS
Anyone who lives in a mild-winter climate and doesn't have a citrus tree in the backyard is squandering an opportunity. There is nothing better than grabbing a fresh lemon or lime for a cocktail, and even neglected trees producing nearly inedible fruit still offer excellent peel for garnishes.
If possible, visit a fruit tree nursery that specializes in citrus to choose a tree with fruit you like that grows well in your area. At a general garden center, ask around and find an employee with expertise in citrus who can advise you about potential pests or disease in your area and tell you whether young trees will need protection against frost.
Calamondin, Improved Meyer lemon, and most lime trees do well in containers and can survive indoors if they have bright light (not just a sunny window, but a well-lit conservatory, greenhouse, or supplemental grow lights) and if you can keep their living quarters humid in winter, when furnaces make the air too dry for their taste. Potted citrus should be kept on the dry side in winter, as cold, wet roots may rot.
Â
full sun
regular water
hardy to 30f/-1c
Use specialized citrus fertilizer monthly during the growing season, but withhold it in the winter, when it can burn roots already stressed by cold temperatures. Nearly all citrus are self-fruitful, meaning that they don't need another tree nearby for pollination.
GRAPEFRUITCitrus à paradisi
A cross between the sweet orange and pomelo, grapefruit is most likely a mutant, or an accidental hybrid, that sprang up around 1790 on Barbados. The compelling mixture of tangy citrus and bitterness make grapefruit an astonishingly good mixerâit works well in variations of the Negroni, and it blends beautifully with either rum or tequila.
Grapefruit liqueurs are harder to come by. Giffard Pamplemousse is one example; it is made from a maceration of pink grapefruit. An Argentinian distillery called Tapaus makes Licor de Pomelo,
pomelo
being the Spanish word for “grapefruit.” Both could be sipped on their own or used experimentally in any cocktail that called for citrus liqueur.
CIAO BELLA (A NEGRONI VARIATION)
1 ounce gin
1 ounce sweet vermouth
1 ounce Campari
1 ounce grapefruit juice
Grapefruit zest
Shake all of the ingredients except the grapefruit zest over ice and serve in a cocktail glass. Garnish with a wide slice of grapefruit zest.
Ichang papeda (c. ichangensis)
: The world's hardiest evergreen citrus, surviving temperatures down to 0 degrees Fahrenheit in the Himalayan foothills. The fruit often contains no juice at all, just seeds and pith, making it fragrant but nearly inedible.
FRANK N. MEYER, PLANT HUNTER
Japanese immigrants began importing sweet lemon-mandarin crosses to the United States in the 1880s,
but the Meyer lemon bears the name of the man responsible for formally introducing it to America. Frank N. Meyer was born in Amsterdam in 1875 and arrived in New York City in 1901. He undertook four expeditions to Russia, China, and Europe on behalf of the USDA, gathering seeds and plants that might be of use to American farmers. In all, he introduced twenty-five hundred new plants, including the Chinese persimmon, the gingko tree, and an astonishing array of grains, fruits, and vegetables. He also endured unimaginable hardship, including injuries, illnesses, robberies, and the loss of countless plant specimens owing to shipping problems or delays clearing customs.
He found what is now the Meyer lemon in Peking in 1908 and managed to get it back to the States. Over the next few decades, farmers realized that clones of this tree were symptomless carriers of a disease called tristeza; as a result, many of the original Meyer lemons had to be destroyed. A virus-free selection was discovered by Four Winds Growers, a California nursery, in the 1950s. Today the Improved Meyer lemon is once again widely grown.
Mr. Meyer's plant explorations came to a tragic end in 1918, when at the age of forty-three he died while traveling down the Yangtze River to Shanghai. His body was recovered from the river a week later, though the exact cause of death remained a mystery.
LEMON