INTRODUCING: Boozy Souvenirs
A new series in which Adam McDowell explores rare, unusual and collectible spirits
According to the fascinating and hard-to-find book Italian Liqueurs: History and Art of a Creation by Renato Vicario, alkermes (also spelled alchermes) derives its name from qirmiz, the Arabic name for cochineal. That’s an insect whose bodies we dry and crush to create the red dye known as carmine.
The little bugs lend alkermes its bright red colour. As for flavour, it’s syrupy-sweet, and it tastes mainly of cloves. As I sip some right now, I also detect rosewater. Twenty-first-century Italians mainly use alkermes to flavour and colour pastries and desserts, and apparently some makers of mortadella include a small amount of it in their recipes. But like many other Italian spirits, alkermes — which may date back to the 13th century — was originally conceived as a medicine. The odd time I have some, it’s a little nip, straight, just after dinner.
[Jamie McDowell — my brother — has graciously agreed to illustrate this series. Huzzah
!]
There are other brands available in Italy, but my alkermes was produced at Officina Farmaceutica Santa Maria Novella in Florence, which has to be one of the planet’s most unusual retail experiences. Do check it out: With its marble floors, vaulted ceilings and framed portraits, it resembles the interior of the Uffizi, the famous public art gallery a few minutes’ walk away. But S.M. Novella is actually a four-century-old business that started as an apothecary and now principally makes and sells scented products — candles, soaps, perfumes, dog shampoo (yes, really) — and liqueurs. It’s too fancy to make you carry your purchases from room to room. When you choose something to buy, they take it away and box it up while you continue shopping.
I first stumbled across S.M. Novella on a family vacation in 2013, when my mother sent me there to fetch a candle. When I discovered they also sold liqueurs — well, there’s a reason I always make sure there’s a little extra room in my suitcase. You go ahead and shop at the duty free,but I acquire curiosities.
Maybe a year later, I emailed S.M. Novella to ask how much alkermes they actually make. Five hundred and fifty litres’ worth a year, they replied. Anyone in the spirits business who's reading this just did a spit take. That’s nothing. Drops. This has to be one of the rarest drinks you can get your hands on.
Anyway, fast-forward a few years and now I’m staring at my bottle and wondering if I can bring myself to finish and toss it, or otherwise give it away.
My daughter turned five months old the day I started to write this, which is wonderful — a kid is a real blessing, like everyone says — but it also means the days are numbered for my hoard of rare and interesting booze.
A few months from now little H will begin to crawl, and soon thereafter to walk, and her budding mobility will place my 300- to 400-bottle stockpile of booze — the fruits of years of travellin’, collectin’ and drinks-writin’ — at the mercy of her clammy little kid-fists (especially the stuff that I store in open crates on the floor because the shelves ran out of room years ago).
So, in the name of responsible parenting and all that, the McDowell Liquor Museum is in for some deaccessioning: Bottles of parfait amour and erguotou and bruidstranen must go down the drain, or into the hands of friends and thusly out the front door.
(“Drink them!” people often suggest when I talk about this “problem” of too much rare and weird booze.
Thanks, but you aren’t appreciating the volume we’re talking about here. Let’s say I have, conservatively, 200 surplus bottles that are each half-full. That’s 2,600 ounces. I’d have to drink an extra three ounces of booze per day, every day, for nearly 2½ years to go through it all — and even that assumes that I would cease replenishing the inventory with freshly acquired bottles, which of course I won’t.)
And anyway, the main difficulty in getting rid of the booze hoard is that I feel a sentimental attachment to a lot of it. We liquor hoarders — yes, there are others (I even wrote a story for Toronto Life magazine about us a few years ago; it is, sadly, no longer online), we’re motivated by a few different things: bragging rights; the sheer fun of collecting; and the fact that many of us live in Canada. Rare liquor comes and goes here, so you have to grab it when it arrives instead of when you actually need it.
But more important than all that, my dusty bottles remind me of the countries and cities where I bought them, and, more often than not, the episodes of my life that were unfolding at the time. My alkermes, for instance, transports me back to Santa Maria Novella, which in turn reminds me of two very special visits to Florence — and, naturally, of my mother, who passed away in 2016.
I’d been pondering this conundrum ever since I found out my wife was pregnant, because that signalled the coming of a baby who would one day crawl and explore. At last, when Christine and I started Moose Milk, I got the idea: If I catalogue these bottles for you, readers, I think it will bring a sense of closure to each one.
One by one I’ll explain ’em all (including the aforementioned parfait amour and erguotou and bruidstranen), and my hope is that after I hit “publish,” it’ll feel as if each bottle has at last fulfilled its purpose. Then I think I'll be able to replace the stopper and chuck it in the recycling bin.
So begins a new recurring feature for Moose Milk: Boozy Souvenirs, a guide to the world’s rare and interesting spirits and fortified wines, which you should definitely collect when you get the chance. (And then, by God, drink them rather than letting them pile up.)
Do it for me, because — fingers crossed — I really do think I've passed the peak of my booze-hoarding days. Sorry, memories of Florence. Baby comes first. Cheers to the past, but onward to the future.
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Illustrations of cochineal collection in José Antonio de Alzate y Ramírez, Memoria sobre la naturaleza, cultivo, y beneficio de la grana…, (Essay on the Nature, Cultivation, and Benefits of the Cochineal Insect), 1777. Colored pigment on vellum. Newberry Library, Edward E. Ayer Manuscript Collection, VAULT Ayer MS 1031
As a bartender, father, and occasional booze collector, take heart, there are ways to maintain a reasonable volume. (That said, ask me again in a few years when I am dealing with a pre-teen who can reach my top shelves...) Any chance you might want to start a moose milk spirit tasting meetup to dispose of bottles? I'm sure I could finagle some time away from family and bring some interesting stuff.