Mixology Mondays: Brandy

[xiphias]

So, Lis discovered that The Cocktail Chronicles holds a blog roundup called "Mixology Mondays", in which various bartending bloggers write about some topic, and then someone links to them all so that people can get a wide range of opinions on the topic.

This month's topic is "Brandy".

Now, when I think of brandy, all I can do is flash back to a Purim several years back. That, for anyone who is NOT Jewish, is a Jewish holiday which involves drinking. For me, that year, it involved slivovitz. And to me, brandy means slivovitz.

After that particular Purim, I was unable to drink the stuff for, oh, perhaps another three or four years. I rather overdid it.

So, what IS slivovitz? It's a plum brandy made in the former Yugoslavia -- Serbia, Croatia, and related areas. It's occasionally made other places, too, by people who came from there. Because slivovitz is basically moonshine made from plums instead of corn. It IS, generally, aged, which makes it much, much smoother. Unaged, it's about as smooth as maybe a wood rasp. But I only drink the good stuff, which is as smooth as 100 grit sandpaper.

I drink the Navip slivovitz from Serbia. It's the one I grew up on -- it's actually, most of the time, the only one that any of the local liquor stores have. The bottle looks like this:
, although that bottle is usually inside a cardboard box. The picture of the cardboard box that I found is too large for me to really want to put it in here, but it's yellow.

It's the one that, although I'm not entirely certain, I think I drank half a bottle of on that fateful Purim.

Funny story, really. Driving home -- BEING DRIVEN home, I mean -- Lis was driving, I ended up getting violently sick out the car window. I wasn't entirely certain, but I thought I might have lost my glasses because I couldn't see anything clearly. Then I remembered that I hadn't been seeing anything clearly before, so I got less worried. Then it occurred to me to touch my face and see if I was still wearing my glasses. I couldn't feel them, but then, I couldn't feel my fingers either, so that wasn't really conclusive. I then asked Lis if I was wearing my glasses, or if they'd fallen off as we were driving and I was puking out the window, but she didn't really seem to understand what I was saying.

In the morning, we DID find my glasses somewhere in the car, so I hadn't lost them, actually.

I suppose I should mention here that slivovitz is 100 proof: 50% alcohol. It burns rather nicely (which means that Lis has suggested that, once I figure this stuff out, I could develop a slivovitz version of the Blue Blazer).

So: let's do some tasting notes!

The Navip slivovitz looks clear and clean, with a lemon/straw color, looking a lot like a young Chardonnay. Upon being swirled, it develops thin legs and tears.

On the nose, it, like all overproof brandies, smells strongly enough of alcohol to overpower other nuances, so I added a little water to open it up. This is purely for tasting purposes -- I normally drink it neat.

Even so, even opened up, it smells simply like slivovitz. Nothing else smells like it, it smells like nothing else. I can only describe the nose as "dark fruit/earthy". But when I describe a wine as "dark fruit" and "earthy", I mean that I detect two notes, one of dark fruit, and one of earth. In this case, though, it is a single note which smells like dark fruit/earth. I mean, given that it's MADE from plums -- and its pot-distilled, which leaves most of the essence of the things from which it was distilled -- you'd expect dark stonefruit notes, because that's what it is. But the smell itself has changed.

There's something that is reminiscent of old books. But, again, with the fruit overtones.

On the palette, it presents some definite sweetness, perhaps a demi-sec level. And perhaps, just a bit of tart, as well. If I was drinking this full-strength, I'd never notice the tartness, because the alcohol burn would just overpower it, but I think it's there.

As far as the taste goes, the palette is where the plum characteristics come through. While the earthier notes influence the nose, they are not present to the taste.

But besides the plum, I think I detect a bit of vanilla, probably coming from the eight years the brandy was aged in wood.

There's a pretty good depth of taste to this brandy, something I never really noticed before, since I tend to simply slam shots of the stuff, in order to impress babes. (For what it's worth, this "impressing babes with slamming slivovitz" thing has worked exactly zero times in my life.)

In my research for this writing (specifically, Googling to see how to spell "slivovitz"), I discovered the Radosevish's U.S. Slivovitz Festival, a yearly slivovitz competition apparently started by three brothers who wanted to see if they could scam slivovitz distillers into giving them free bottles.

Comments

[ruth-lawrence.livejournal.com]

I once impressed a Bloke by slamming a shot of slivovitz.

About 30 years ago, though.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Blokes are easier to impress than babes in this manner.

[ruth-lawrence.livejournal.com]

I suspect you're correct, somehow.