While most of the reply is entirely false (Park Royal Asda is surprisingly unbleak for a soulless shopping shed on the edge of Europe’s biggest industrial estate, with friendly staff and an excellent range of produce. However, their meat pies are quite generically packaged) one part that isn’t is the core message – I do get many ideas for blog posts while walking around Asda, especially the beer and spirits aisle. The tales of gaudy booze pouches with easy sipping nozzles, excellent cans of mild and a range of port that I suspect indicates a hidden pocket of affluent residents nearby will wait for another time. Today I’m going to talk about Jeremiah Weed’s Sour Mash Brew.

The name of Jeremiah Weed is not unknown to me due to some of their other products that we managed to import from the USA at work. We used to have their infamous sweet tea flavoured bourbon, which is much beloved by the US Airforce and is fuel for their wild parties, according to a selection of the racier emails I received. Due to the vagaries of importing from the US in more recent times we haven’t been able to get it. Hence the emails. And further emails when we managed to get their sweet tea flavoured vodka, making sure we knew we obviously had bought the wrong stuff because why would anyone drink anything other than the USAF party juice?

So, when I came across this and its sibling, Roots Brew (ginger flavoured, rather than the root beer I feared), while wandering the halls of Asda I had to grab a bottle, for better or worse. I showed the folks at work and the general response was ‘Why would you do that?’ I put a picture up on Twitter questioning why I would drink it and received responses reiterating the question. I took it out of the fridge, opened it, poured it, took pictures of it and then tried it.

It’s really quite nice.

At first I poured it into a tall glass (as seen in the first picture I took) but after realising I actually quite liked it I decided to do a some research. With a little bit of digging I came across the signature serve for both this and the Roots Brew – over ice in a jam jar. Luckily I have a few jam jars knocking around (I like jam), including a few Four Roses branded ones specially made (or at least screen printed) for drinking out of. One of these was quickly dusted off, ice was sourced and my drink was complete.

Using the right glass is important. It is. Really. Well, I think so…

I started writing notes, but there was a lingering hint of flavour recognition that I couldn’t put my finger on. A soft drink nose of fizzy cola bottles, crushed chalky refreshers, Ting, and lime cordial. All of that was in the taste as well as a bourbon-like sweet and spicy edge, and then the flash of remembrance hit – it’s a Lynchburg Lemonade, one of my favourite summer cocktails from my misspent youthful days of drinking in TGI Fridays: Jack Daniel’s, lemonade (7up/R Whites style) and lime cordial. The Sour Mash Brew is described as being ‘brewed with fruit alcohol, spirit and flavourings’ but I suspect that means it’s basically some young whiskey with alcoholic lemonade and some other citrusy goodness.

The ‘brewed’ side of things seems to be a hold over from its American roots as, as far as I know, the British style ‘add neutral spirit to fizze- up fruit flavoured liquid’ alco-pops aren’t legal on the other side of the pond, leading to all of their teenage fall-down juice being brewed to give them their boozey kick. I’ve tried a few hard lemonades and they’ve generally been a cut above the British Hooch and Mad Dogs, and I’m intrigued as to whether the Jeremiah Weed Brews for the UK are properly brewed malt beverages. I suspect they’re not.

However, production methods aside I was rather surprised as to how much I enjoyed the Sour Mash Brew. My only problem is the price – £2.20. It’s a fine drink but I thought I could make something almost exactly the same for a lot cheaper. Actually, I like numbers, so:

My recipe: 50ml Jack Daniel’s, 10 ml Rose’s, 140ml lemonade.

Asda Prices:
JD – £30.47 for 1 litre, ~£1.52 for 50ml
Roses – £1.89 for 1 litre, ~2p for 10ml
R Whites – £1 for 2 litres, ~7p for 140ml

A total of £1.61 for 200ml, which scales up to £4.03 for the same amount as you get in a bottle, although at 10% ABV rather than the Sour Mash Brew’s 4%. If you stick with 50ml of JD and scale the other two ingredients up to make it up to 500ml you’ll get a 4% cocktail costing £1.70, which is not all that much cheaper than the ready made and will have less whiskey flavour. I might have to rethink this…

Jeremiah Weed Sour Mash Brew
Whisey based mixed drink inna bottle, 4%. £2.20 for 500ml.

Firstly, I don’t (in general) buy booze to collect or as an investment. I did a bit of a reorganisation of my whisky cupboard(s) today which showed me that I have more bottles that I’m not drinking than I thought, but so far I’ve not bought any of them from an auction. I see auctions as a good way of getting reasonably priced drinking boozes that you can’t find down the shop. I’ve mainly stuck to whisky so far, although you can find pretty much any spirit online, and all of the bottles I’ve bought (with a pair of exceptions that were bought due to one half of the lot being distilled in the year I was born) have been old versions of whiskies that are still around today. Over the years recipes change and over decades there can be small changes in bottled spirit, so old bottlings are often quite different to what you can find today.

My first auction purchase – lot 666

My current ‘problem’ has been 10 year old Laphroaig. Ever since m’colleague gave me a dram of a 1990s bottling that he’d picked up in an auction I’ve been focused on finding another like it – almost entirely without smoke but with a massive slab of passion fruit juice, unlike anything else I’ve tried. Since then I’ve picked up a couple (and have vowed to stop looking for more, although that will probably last until the next auction) and very much enjoyed them – they weren’t the passion fruit awesomeness of Tim’s, but they were both different to the Laphroaig 10 you can find in almost every off license.

So far there are a few places that I’ve played around with auctions, the first being McTear’s. They are a well known brick-and-mortar auction house in Glasgow who do regular wine and spirits auctions, specialising in whisky. Over in the east there’s also Bonham’s, Edinburgh’s auctioneers, who do the same but who I have carefully avoided so far so as not to destroy my bank account. The main thing to realise when bidding in any auction, especially with old school auctioneers, is how much you will pay in the end. The price that you bid (with the winning bid known as the ‘hammer price’) is just the start, with McTear’s adding on a buyers premium of 18% + VAT for all sales and 3% + VAT for internet sales, coming to a total of about 25% on top of what you’ve bid. For example, if your winning bid is £100 then you’ll also pay £18+VAT (£21.60) premium and £3+VAT (£3.60) for a total of £125.20. On top of that you’ll need to get your lots home, with postage and packaging potentially adding on a large amount more – McTear’s are pretty good with postage, but it can run to £10 a bottle for small numbers, although they’re also good at keeping lots in storage if you think you’ll be bidding in later auctions and want to bundle up several purchases together.

Prices at any auction will depend on the mood of the room, for values of ‘room’ that now include people bidding online. The auctioneer plays an important role, as I’ve discovered by listening in to the auctions online (McTear’s provide an audio feed to give some more of a feel of what’s going on, although sometimes it gets out of sync which can lead to internet bidders jumping in late to find a lot has already been sold), with some of them dragging bids out of reticent buyers while others can dampen down the room to give some bargains (as the £30 I paid for a 1990s Highland Park 12, as well as a bottle of Tobermory that they’d bundled with it that I look on as a free gift, will attest – we have similar bottles up for £90 at work). It pays to research the catalogue beforehand to work out what you want to pay attention to, find bottles hidden in large lots (McTear’s seem to like bundling less interesting bottles in with something decent as well as writing long descriptions that don’t fit an entire list of bottles onto their catalogue index page – it’s worth clicking through on many of them) and work out how much things are worth – their predicted prices aren’t to be trusted, as they often seem to be no more accurate than picking random numbers. For price enquiries I generally use work’s website, as we have lots of old bottlings (the boss is a regular at auctions), but there are many other online resources still selling or listing prices of when they last sold items.

Buy one get one free!

McTear’s next auction is on February 22nd (luckily I’ll be on holiday and hopefully hidden inside a distillery while it’s on) and the catalogue is up now.

Update: Have a look at the paragraph at the bottom of this post and follow the links before playing with McTear’s – they’ve done a bit of enraging of the online whisky community by selling open bottles but not having that fact in the description…

Outside of the traditional auction houses there are a couple of other internet only avenues I’ve explored, first of which is eBay. It is against eBay’s rules to sell alcoholic drinks but it’s perfectly reasonable to sell collectible bottles, many of which are sold with the original contents intact although obviously not for consumption. This loophole in eBay’s rules has been exploited to the point that there is now a boilerplate disclaimer that almost every eBay listing selling boozecollectible containers uses:

1. The value of the item is in the collectable container, not its contents.
2. The container has not been opened, but any incidental contents are not for consumption.
3. This item is not available in any retail outlet and the container has a value that substantially exceeds the current retail price of the contents of the container.
4. As the seller I will take steps to ensure the buyer of this collectable container is of lawful age in the buyer and sellers jurisdiction (18 in the UK and 21 in the US) and that I am in compliance with any and all applicable laws and shipping regulations in carrying out the transaction.

That seems to be enough to keep eBay from killing your auction, although there were lots of unwanted bottles of Laphroaig for sale after Christmas that laughed at numbers 1 and 3 which shows that they’re only really paying lip service to their own regs. The thing to keep an eye on with eBay is the amount of postage, typically £10 a bottle, as a nice way to jump the price up for the seller. Other than that it’s just the same as a regular eBay auction, ie you will probably need to use a sniperbot if you want to win anything that’s going to be hotly contested. Luckily for me I haven’t had to fight for anything, as I don’t snipe as a (foolish) matter of principle, and have managed to pick up a reasonably priced bottle of pre-Batch 1 Laphroaig Cask Strength and a 1978 (my birth year) Hutcheson’s Colheita that will sit on the side and wait for my birthday to roll around.

Check the lot description – I didn’t realise I’d bought a litre of Laphroaig until it arrived…which was nice.

The final auction place that I’ve played with, but not yet bought anything from, are specialist online booze auctions, specifically ScotchWhiskyAuctions.com and WhiskyAuction.com. These two do things in a different way to eBay with each auction featuring a large number of lots and bidding open for several weeks before closing the auctions at a pre-ordained time. The two sites also differ slightly in their approach, with ScotchWhiskyAuctions extending bidding by 15 minutes if someone bids close to the end of the auction, to try and stop sniping, and WhiskyAuction not charging buyers any fees. They also differ due to the former being based in Scotland and the latter Germany, which will affect the price of postage somewhat.

I bid in the most recent ScotchWhiskyAuction (including on a rather lovely looking bottle of SMWS Caledonian grain whisky that was distilled in 1978) but ended up dropping out of all of the lots before the end as the prices got a bit too rich for me – something that is a lot easier to do with the slower moving auctions rather than eBay’s frantic last minute bidding and the live auction’s compression of the entire bidding process into minutes. There is danger of getting caught up in the moment, as a couple of purchases of mine have demonstrated to me, although only to the tune of a few quid, but at the same time that’s part of the fun of it – there is a remarkable amount of adrenaline rush to be found in winning a lot that you really want.

The first couple of piccies are from the McTear’s website – the quality of their photography varies a lot but it’s generally good enough to get an idea of what you’re bidding on, although there are various cases where they’ve been misleading. Just as I was about to hit publish I saw this article up on Ralfy’s website – caveat emptor, the photos are there to sell things, not necessarily give you all the information. If you want to be sure then you’ll need to go to the auction house and have a look at the bottles yourself…

The distillery was started in 2009 by Sam Galsworthy and Fairfax Hall, formerly Fuller’s and Diageo reps in the USA, with writer and drinks historian Jared Brown coming in as master distiller and recipe guy. They bought a garage in Hammersmith (formerly owned, it turned out, by legendary beer writer Michael Jackson before he died), obtained (through a scary amount of effort) the first new distilling license for a copper pot still in London for 189 years, filled the garage with a beautiful 300l still made by Christian Carl that they named Prudence (after one of Gordon Brown’s favourite traits, so the story goes) and started making gin and vodka. They don’t do it alone, though – they also have a nice chap called Chris who does the day to day distilling. So, between the three of them, Jared being an occasional visitor, they produce a large amount of booze, the increasing quantity of which Sam seems genuinely shocked about.

Their production process is quite simple – obtain barley based spirit and redistill it. If they’re making vodka that’s it, but if they’re gin-ing then they add the botanicals to the still and leave them to macerate overnight (if I remember correctly – there is a distinct hole in my notebook where my notes from my first visit to the distillery should be) before redistilling. Both vodka and gin are brought down to their bottling strengths of 40% and 41.6% respectively using water from Lydwell Spring, the current source of the Thames up in the Cotswolds, adding yet another London-y string to their bow.

However, my most recent encounter with Sam, Fairfax and Jared was for a slightly different reason – it was to do with fruit. Last year they produced a sloe gin for the first time, starting with 10kg of sloes in May 2010 for experimentation and then moving swiftly up to a first batch using half a tonne. Rather unromantically they matured it in the black drums that their barley spirit is delivered in, but on release it flew off the shelves. This year they decided to up the stakes a bit and went for 4 tonnes, a lot but not quite in the league of Plymouth and their 50 tonnes per year. Like the chaps from Plymouth they couldn’t be doing with pricking all the sloes so took the ‘cheating’ route of freezing them for 3 days to cause the skins to burst (a technique that seems to have varying levels of effectiveness in the home), before adding them to a high proof version of their gin, to aid flavour extraction, along with a small amount of sugar to help the process along. I tried last year’s and it was rather good – sticky, sweet and with enough of the original gin flavour coming through to let you know that it’s ‘proper’ sloe gin.

This year, however, they decided to add a couple of new things to their range. Sitting in the no-man’s land between released and not is their Fruit Cup, a Pimm’s like beverage that’s meant to beat the market leader hands down for taste, and a damson vodka – the reason for my recent visit to the distillery. I was invited along to their late launch party (we’re already selling it at work, so I hope they did a few more) and rocked up to their convenient-for-my-office-and-home distillery to be greeted by a hot garage with some smelly cheese from La Cave à Fromage, some grub from The Ginger Pig, a pile of London drinks folk and a bar manned by Jared and Graphic‘s Adam Smithson. The focus of the evening was to have a bit of a party, drink some drinks and judge a competition. The week before I had been sent a bag of sloes by PR queen Rose McCullough to use to make some kind of interesting recipe to bring along to the party – the best recipe using the supplied sloes or damsons would win a mixed case of boozes and the never ending respect of our peers. Unfortunately I ended up drunk in The Netherlands at Maltstock and singularly failed to make anything. I have since pricked all 2lbs of sloes and stuck them in bottles with varying amounts of gin and sugar, but that’s a story for another day. Anyways, the winner was Ailbhe of Simple Splendiferous who made a rather impressive Damson relish, just pipping Becca of How to Make a Mess‘s sloe syrup to the prize. Anyways, enough food – drink.

I managed to get a bit of the Damson Vodka on its own, but most of the evening was focused around cocktails. While it does work well as an ingredient I think a bit more time spent on the vodka as a drink in its own right wouldn’t have gone amiss, as it was rather nice. On the nose it was very reminiscent of a Sloe Gin but with a bit more of a jammy edge – red fruit, plasticine, sticky boiled sweets, a hint of sourness and a heavy underlying richness. To taste it was as thick and sticky as you’d expect from a fruity liqueur, but was definitely not sloe gin – cherry jam, hints of prune, old ruby port and a buttery finish. It doesn’t quite have the complexity of the sloe gin, but it does have a lot of excellent fruit and is one that I wouldn’t mind sipping.

Cocktail-wise we started off with a Damson Royale – Damson vodka topped up with champagne, as with a Kir Royale. I’m not the biggest fan of champagne, but this did exactly what Kir Royale’s do – champagne with the edge rounded of thanks to some sweet and sour fruitiness. As the evening moved on some cognac started getting added for a bit more buttery fruit. With the damson vodka falling behind on number of cocktail recipes Jared and Adam did a bit of on the fly creation and put together a combination of damson vodka, gin, champagne and amaretto, that worked rather well and was speculatively christened ‘Damson on the Fly‘.

The sloe gin was a bit more established with two solid cocktails – the Blackthorn and the Blackthorn No.4. The former is a simple mix of 2-1 sloe gin to sweet vermouth that I suspect I will trying when my maturing sloe gin is ready. The No.4 was much more interesting – a combination of equal measure of sloe gin, Jameson whiskey, gin and, according to the recipe, amontillado, although I’m fairly sure they were using La Gitana manzanilla instead. Either way it was a great cocktail, with the sloes providing sticky fruit, the gin a punch and some aromatics, the whiskey a warm buttery base and the amontillado a bit of dry astringency. One that I will definitely be trying around Christmas time and a perfect excuse to buy even more sherry.

Anyways, as you might be able to tell I rather like the Sipsmith folks. Luckily they do produce good stuff (although their vodka recently got a bit of a thumbs down on the Bitters & Twisted blog) which I rather like drinking (although my house gin is still Tanqueray – I need to do another vertical gin tasting to try and see beyond the brands and kickstart my rubbish gin flavour memory) so I feel slightly less of a shill when I write a fairly glowing piece such as the above. However, their enthusiasm for making tasty boozes rubs off on you after a few minutes at the distillery or even just having a chat in Waitrose (one of the more random places I’ve bumped into Sam: doing a ‘Try my gin’ stand at the Westfield branch – it’s not often you see a company’s co-founder handing out samples of their booze on a Saturday afternoon down the supermarket). Long may they continue.

Sipsmith Sloe Gin
Sloe gin, 29%. ~£22

Sipsmith Damson Vodka
Damson vodka, 28%. ~£24

Palinka has various descriptions ranging, depending on the opinions of the person doing the describing, from fruit brandy to schnapps to death in liquid form. It’s a clear spirit distilled from fruit and still retaining some of the fruity flavour of its ingredients. Palinka as a term has been pretty widely applied to a variety of fruit based booze over the years, but since 2002 it has been enshrined in EU law as coming from Hungary (and a few places in Austria in the case of apricot palinka) and restrictions have been placed on the definition. Only certain fruits can be used (Plum, apricot, pear, cherry, quince, grape and maybe chestnut) and there are also designations for various aging techniques (lengths of time, wood or steel containers, with fruit in or not). Unfortunately I didn’t get to taste much in the way of variety – one with some fruit in and the rest just clear, young (as far as I could tell) fiery palinka.

Pajor Mézes Ágyas Cigánymeggy (Cherry) Palinka – Mézes means honeyed and ágyas (literally ‘bedside’, according to Wikipedia) indicates that the palinka has been matured with fruit in for at least 3 months. This was the first that I tried and the least favourite on the table. Coloured red from the steeped fruit and tasting strongly of fresh cherry it was very sweet and cloying from the honey.

Kecskeméti Barackpalinka – Apricot palinka from the Kecskemét region, one of the combinations of fruit and area that has been made a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO). I couldn’t make out the producer on the label and my internet searches weren’t helped by the fact that almost all kecskeméti apricot palinkas use a similarly shaped tall thin bottle. This one had a fantastic fresh apricot nose, with both sweet and sourness coming through. However, it tasted like rocket fuel, with the neat alcohol aquavit-like dryness swamping any fruity flavours that survived the distillation process.

Valódi Szilva (Plum) Palinka – This was the type of palinka that I was told was most common and popular, and I can both see why and not at the same time. On the nose it had very little plum, retaining a general sour fruit note and little else rather than alchohol. To taste it had a strong sour schnapps flavour which I rather liked, but which noone else at the table did. This was unfortunate as our waiter gave us a complimentary round of them at the end of the meal and being the most polite person at the table I felt compelled to drink them so as not to offend our hosts. Or so I claim. The evening is hazy from then on.

Gündel Birsalma (Quince) Palinka – The only other time I got to try some palinka, after a meal at Bagolyvar (the more downmarket sister restaurant to Gündel, one of Budapest’s oldest and most expensive restaurants). This was the best of the lot, with loads of quince on the nose and a nice combination of booze and fruit to taste.

In general Palinka was not my thing – smells like fruit, tastes like death. I pinned my hopes on the second spirit on the list – Unicum. Unicum is a brand name for a type of herby, bitter digestif produced by the Zwack family since 1790 and seemingly everywhere in Budapest. Along with the regular Unicum they also produce Unicum Next, a lighter sweeter version that I grabbed a bottle of to bring home. Zwack don’t only stick with Unicum, being also a producer of Palinka and other spirits, running tours around both the Unicum factory and their distillery in Kecskemét.

Regular Unicum is a thickish black liquid that looks rather worrying. It has quite a punch on the nose, with strong bitter herbs, liquorice and wood. To taste it’s, to me, almost unpalatable – very bitter indeed with a heavily tannic aftertaste behind the initial pleasant herbs that removes any enjoyment I might have had from it. It reminds me a bit of the bitters that I used to buy little bottles of at the supermarket checkouts when I lived in Vienna – easy for me to smuggle back to the UK as illicit booze for my 16 year old self to try and get drunk on. Filthy stuff with a flavour that stopped me from ever drinking enough to get tipsy.

The Unicum next is quite different – browny red in colour and much more liquid. On the nose it has the distinctive bitter herbs as well as a sugary sweetness and hint of citrus – a bit like candied orange and lemon cake decorations. To taste it removes the bitter punch of regular Unicum, keeps the spice and herbs, and adds a syrupy sweetness to the finish. The citrus peel, that I assume is in the bitter mix, comes out and adds a hint of bitterness to the aftertaste. It’s got an almost ‘Christmassy’ taste to it and a slug of it in a glass of red and you’d have instant mulled wine. A block of ice waters things down a bit too much, but a frozen bottle would be perfect – thickening up the spirit and adding a refreshing cold kick to the rather pleasant flavour.

Unicum
Keserü likör/bitter spirit – Hungarian herb bitters, 40%

Unicum Next
Citrosos gyógynövény-likör/citrus & herb infused spirit – Hungarian herb bitters, 30%

The MacPhail Collection 1969 Glenrothes. I grabbed a tiny taste of this at Hawksmoor while I was visiting to try out the ice ball machine. 39 years old and a recent acquisition, it’s much loved by the bar staff and they wondered if I’d agree. I did. Vanilla and spicy wood on the nose with struck matches, salty caramel and pepper in the mouth. Water softened the wood into vanilla and brought a background of charcoal. Tasty.

Blanton’s Single Barrel – Barrel 153. A 65% cask strength bourbon. I was chatting with the Hawksmoor bar staff about whiskey, having had a shot of George T Stagg (one of my most favourite whiskies, which there will be a post about sometime soon), and they ‘forced’ a taster of this on me. A bourbon that I was not that much of a fan of when I got a bottle for my birthday a few years back, this reminded me of the good elements of that bottle – prickly and perfumed on the nose, it tasted spicy and woody with a weird astringency not unlike PVA glue. A drop of water added a stack of vanilla. A rather complex and interesting whiskey, more savoury than most bourbons I’ve tried.

Port Charlotte PC7. One on the ‘find and try’ list for a while, this is from Bruichladdich‘s ‘other’ distillery. On the nose it was salty with mulching seaweed, which developed in the mouth to a citrusy charcoal burst and a buttery mouth feel. A drop of water piled on more smoke and a strange salty sweatiness. Impressive.

Horseradish gin. Not one on the menu on its own, but this is the base for Hawksmoor’s new brunch menu‘s drinky centre piece – a bloody mary. They make theirs (the ‘original’ way) with gin, and infuse a large jar of Beefeater with thumb sized chunks of horseradish to make an interesting starting point for the drink. The horseradish smooths out the bumps in the normally fairly rough Beefeater and adds a beautiful spicy warmth to the flavour. I’m off to buy some bottles, gin and a chunk of horseradish later today so I can make my own – I assume it’ll be great in a bloody mary, but it also tastes nice on its own.

1800 Anejo Tequila. Cactus based booze is definitely on my list this year (especially after speaking to Johan Svensson about agarve tequila recently) and I grabbed a shot of the second cheapest anejo that The Texas Embassy sell while abusing their free chips and salsa policy the other week. It had the classic salt and pepper tequila smell but was a chunk more complex to taste. A woody centre with fruitiness turning bitter on the finish. It burnt on the way down and after it had gone left drying tannins that turned to vanilla. Interesting and a place for me to start from.

Marble Chocolate Marble. A present left for me by Alan after my whisky tasting the other week, this is the produce of the Marble Arch brewpub in Manchester. I was meant to be up there this weekend and had already planned a 20 minute dash into the pub to buy some more of their beer, but unfortunately had to cancel my trip. The Chocolate Marble is excellently chocolatey, despite not containing any chocolate as far as I can tell. Stout-ish, as it says on the bottle, bitter-sweet and mouth filling, it may well be my favourite bottled beer I’ve had in a while.

Hop Back Taiphoon. The first of my birthday present beers (thanks Dad!) to disappear down my throat. It’s a weird one this, with a lemongrassy tinge that makes it taste more like a shandy than a regular beer, but with a dry malty aftertaste rather than the sweetness you’d expect. I’m still not sure about it and suspect I need to try another…

I don’t travel much, being afraid of places were I don’t speak the language as I am, but my comfort zone was well and truly kicked in 2008 when I ended up in Bulgaria for a friend’s wedding. In standard fashion I used the opportunity to sample the local booze and other than some fairly average beer (I probably didn’t find any of the good stuff due to staying in a posh hotel and keeping away from random bars due to the aforementioned not speaking the language issue) and rather good Rakia my only exposure was the Mastika that I picked up in the airport – Mastika Peshtera.

I’d not encountered the stuff before and even had to look up on Wikipedia what it was before I grabbed a couple of bottles to bring back. After some wrangling with customs in Zurich (during which both bottles were confiscated, due to the Bulgarian airport staff not putting the right date on their tills and thus my receipt, and then carried through the terminal to where I was waiting once the customs guy had, unasked by me, pursued my case for keeping them with his superior. I like Zurich) I finally cracked a bottle when I got home and got my first taste.

It’s a strong, oily, aniseed spirit which is quite overpowering neat, fading quickly from an initial sweetness to a pleasantly bitter aftertaste. Over ice it opens up nicely and tastes like a bitter anise. However, the addition of water in any form leads to a strange reaction – it goes cloudy (expected) and a white solid precipitates out, sticking to the sides of the glass (not quite so expected). This grainy solid is quite worrying at first, but the effects of the drink are quick and your vision soon fades…

Other than the white gunk the most disturbing thing about this Mastika is the hangover it produces. It reminded me somewhat of an absinthe hangover, with everything seeming slightly more real, including the functioning of every organ in your body. Along with that, however, it adds all of the hallmarks of a regular hangover, making the day after significantly more painful than it might have been otherwise.

While doing some firkling on the internet to find out how a) to write Пещера in roman characters and b) anything more about the stuff, I found some of its advertising on YouTube. I’m not sure if this is standard Bulgarian advertising (I was too busy wandering around trying to find military museums to sit and watch TV), but it’s certainly a step on from our usual XXXX ads here in the UK. Warning: Contains sexual themes, a very tiny pair of bikini bottoms, music played on a Casio keyboard and men hiding erections.

I’ve now run out, having finished the second bottle last week (the bottle that I had given to a friend as a present and that he had left behind in his flat when he became my landlord) and I suspect I won’t be going out of my way to get any more. However, if a bottle crosses my path again I may still be tempted to pick it up. I suspect the memory of the hangovers will have faded by then…