Alcoholist Yet another cocktail blog.

TotC2009 notes: Low Country Libations

Philip Duff (door74 owner) and Timo Janse (door74 head bartender, author of Shake It!, about non-alcoholic drinks for children) discuss Low Country Libations, especially ones we can’t get in the US (with which Philip repeatedly taunted the audience…)

• “Low Country” means, roughly, the Benelux – “We live in the crotch of Europe.” [I've no doubt that was Philip.]
• Philip might have missed a word: “Timo’s book is about non-alcoholic children. Er…”
• modern inventions [this seemed a bit more in context at the time]:
  • penicillin
  • walk on the moon
  • the Internet
  • women in bars
• Only session with NO sponsors [but I have to presume that Philip didn't buy all the Easter Egg bottles of Old Schiedam himself... they just weren't in the room.]
• “Der Naturen Bloeme” (1269) – first reference to distilling in Europe
• juniper – “He who has cramps, cook juniper in wine; it’s good against the pain.”
• … and early distilling was precisely juniper and wine
• late 1400s, “Making Burned Wine”
  • botanicals: grains of Paradise, galangeel [what?], nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, ginger
  • served has a [health] tonic
• 1497 – Brandewijn (sp?) in Amsterdam
• 1552 – Genieve – aqua vitae
• 1582 – Kornbrandewijn – “in aroma and taste is almost the same as brandy-wine
• 1602 – Dutch East India Co., or Verenigde Oost-Indisch Co. (VOC), upon whose conquests Dune was based:
  • 50,000 employees
  • functioned as a nation (conquered states, printed their own money)
  • fueled a spending boom that got silly enough that people were paying ~10 million [whatevers] for a tulip bulb
  • Indonesia (whence Batavia Arrack)
  • rolled up in ships, offered to pay for spices/silks/goods, if the city refused to pay, they politely pointed at all the cannon on the ships
• Dutch Navy’s drink was Genever (a taste of Olde Schiedam came around here, and I’ll need to get to Europe to bring some back)
• Genever from satellite cities because distillers kept pigs, feeding them the mash, and “pigs are smelly”
• Olde Schiedam:
  • a wine-based Genever
  • single malt
  • 2/3 barley & 1/3 rye
  • Schiedam itself is a satellite city of Rotterdam
  • [I have:] “Shippem = Schiedam”
  • the only botanical is juniper
• 1621 – The Dutch West Indies Co., Geoctrajeerde W-Indische Co (GWIC), was chartered
  • founded US (New Amsterdam)
  • otherwise unsuccessful
  • granted everything west of Capitain
• The Best selling regions for Genever outside Holland are Argentina & Guadalupe
• In the movie Ray there’s a reference to Bols Genever – not product placement, he really drank it every day
• West Africa also drinks a lot of Genever; a good gift for a chief for his daughter’s hand in marriage
• “So good it’d make a Bishop kick a hole in stained glass” [Philip, of a particular Genever, the name of which I expected to pull out of a photograph of the bottle, but since the camera and laptop were both burgled...]
• 1623 – Philip Massinger’s Duke of Milan first [literary] use of Genever
• 1827 – continuous still invented – per Philip, by Robert Stein, not by Angus Coffey
• 1860 – first continuous still operating in the Netherlands
• 1862 – [something's missing here:] Wondrich’s important quote on genever 5/6 to 1 relative to gin [Is this the thing about how Jerry Thomas's recipes actually work with genever? Too little context, because they launched into what describes different classes of genever]
• Rules of genever:
  1. Terms
     • Oude (old) genever – aged or unaged whiskey with botanicals; taste shows that; softer, lower-proof (35%)
     • Jonge (young) genever is vodka with a hint of malt
     • The similarity of genever to gin is a myth; distilling with a Dutch King in England starts with lots of sugar (like genever), the process gets refined, ends up as grain neutral spirits
     • Timo: “Kettle One is about equivalent to jonge jenever”… but KO jenever is $11 (and better than the vodka) rather than $35; better as in better flavor profile
     • Jonge starts with Coluire [spelling? Hell, intelligible?] in the 1920s because of a shortage of grain post-war
     • Timo [I think]: “You can’t sell vodka in Holland.”
  2. Made in one of:
     • Holland
     • Belgium
     • Nord or Pas-de-Calais
     • Nordheim-Westfalen, DE
     • Niedersachsen, DE
  3. Must contain juniper, but it does not have to be a discernible flavor (gin, per ATF, must smell of juniper)
  4. content:
     • jonge genever is
       • 15% malt wine (whiskey)
       • 70° proof
       • max 10 grams sugar/L
     • oude genever
       • min. 15% malt wine
       • max. 70° proof
       • max 20 grams sugar/L
       • if aged, min. 1 year, in a max 700 L barrel
• Willem Kieft
  • founded American whiskey by 1644 – first distiller in US
  • he was the “utter bastard” (Philip, of course) running the US GWC
  • recalled because of how much he abused the settlers
  • … but he gave us Pennsylvania rye
  • succeeded by Peter Stouson (sp?)
• 1637 – Pieter Blower invented rum in Barbados, also under GWC
• Simon Schama’s Embarrassment of Riches covers all this very Dutch ___ India Co business.
• a history of brandy (remember, from brandewijn):
  • 1585 – fall of Antwerp
  • 1604 – 50% of distillers in Charente (now Cognac) were Dutch
  • 19 May 1972 on VOC
  • [... and I got distracted by a tasting...]
• 1724 – bitter, herb-infused genever (roughly “equivalent to MD20/20″)
• New developments:
  • yonge genever -> Ketel One vodka
  • old genever -> Bols 1830
• [My notes here on, just half a Moleskine page, are a mess of spirit types and brand names; I'll go through Philip's slide show and fill this in when I can figure out what I was trying to keep up with.]

Inline in my notes, but separated here, are some of the spirits we tasted (that Philip will be glad to remind you that you can’t get in the US) and were not lost to the loss of the camera:

• Els la Vera – 4-5 grams of sugar/L, from Maastricht Lindbergh; similar to absinthe, malt cane(?); botanicals grow only in volcanic soil (replicated by Bols)
• hand-grated mandarin orange-infused Old Schiedam Mandayner(sp?)
• Dutch wine, Apostelhoeve (first written proof of which is 871)
• Rutte (aged) Paradyswijn

As with all of Philip’s presentations, this one is available on slideshare.net.