Pernod is the worst

All told, what we have to say about Pernod

Really, guys.

We were on such a roll - consistently writing five entries a month.

But then Pernod came along and suddenly, Dave and I felt like this:

"How many different ways can you say... 'I hate this'?"

Also we've been pretty busy.

You see, gentle readers, in a little more than a month, Dave and I will finally be living in the same city. So you can look forward to continuing antics. They'll just be happening under a single, consistent roof.

But mostly Pernod is the worst.

The worst.

May Liquor: Pernod

Pernod was not the first choice for May.

Joe went to the liquor store with the intention of buying Luxardo, a maraschino liqueur. But fate had other plans.

Many cocktail recipes seem to call for Pernod, and maybe it was a good idea to have the spirit on hand for future endeavors. Having no idea what the primary flavor of the spirit would be, the bottle was acquired and hidden from Dave. 

And here we are. 

To learn more about this fine spirit, we, alas, had to turn to the official wesbite of Pernod. 

Fun Fact: Pernod is owned by Pernod Recard, a huge multinational corporation that owns countless brands, including Kahlua, Absolut, (my beloved) Glenlivet, Malibu, Chivas, Seagram's, etc. You name it, they probably own it. I find this obnoxious. Can't we just have nice, small companies instead of enormous conglomerates that own half the market share?

Anyway. 

Pernod was apparently the original absinthe liqueur. I had traditionally-prepared absinthe in the Czech Republic a few years back, and it was not an experience I'd be excited to replicate. I disliked the flavor immensely, and I am now greatly concerned about Pernod. 

Dave and I pretend we are in a turn-of-the-century French Cafe

The bottle we bought is the traditional Pernod, not the absinthe, though star anise is the key ingredient in Pernod. The original recipe was developed by a French doctor and was marketed as a medicinal remedy. Eventually this doctor joined forces with a distiller, the titular Pernod, and a full-on distillery was opened. 

The drink was a hit in France, and soon the product was imported to the United States. When absinthe was banned in 1912, the Pernod company went silent for a few years before reintroducing their spirit without the absinthe. That is the spirit we will try today. 

The Tasting

We opened the bottle, and immediately the entire balcony smelled like licorice.

"This is not something you drink by itself," Dave proclaimed before drinking it by itself. 

The color is a beautiful yellowish-green that looks a bit like olive oil. 

We weren't pleased to learn that, according to the back label, it is artificially colored.

Once poured into the glass, Pernod takes on a new scent profile. You can smell the liquor, but the licorice is subdued and accompanied by floral and herbal notes. 

Here we go!

WHOA.

Dave: It's great to drink if you're having sinus problems. 

Joe: Whoa-hoah. This could burn a hole through your tongue. This is definitely something you mix with another liquor. I am not a fan. At all. 

At this point, Dave has elected to remain silent, claiming that I surely have enough thoughts for both of us. And he's right. I do. 

I can't even begin to tell you how alarming the taste of this is. It is extremely licorice forward. It might as well have a warning label on it. Something like: DO NOT DRINK IF YOU HAVE NO TASTE FOR LICORICE. And then when you purchase the bottle, the clerk at the liquor store should be required to ask, "Are you sure?" And if you say, "Yes", you should have to sign a waiver that you will not complain when it hits your tongue.

Dave is now reading to me several cocktails that have Pernod in it, and I'm starting to worry about the month of May. 

Although... he just "oohed" contentedly. 

But he might be looking at kitty cat videos. 

April Liquor: Créme Yvette

Hello, beautiful.

The story of Créme Yvette is, in a nutshell, the story of the last 100 years of American cocktail culture. The purple-hued liqueur was listed as an ingredient in published cocktails dating back to the late 1880s and until the 1930s and 40s, according to the company's website.

After prohibition, though, the way Americans drank changed. Many kids and teenagers who grew up during prohibition had little to no experience with drinking and went straight for drinks that could get them buzzed, and could get them buzzed quickly. This is part of the reason that vodka became an important and ubiquitous ingredient in drinks like the Bloody Mary, Screwdriver, and Moscow Mule, which helped its popularity soar.

Sad little digestifs like Créme Yvette were no match for this sea change in American drinking culture. It didn't help matters that one of Yvette's major ingredients was violet petals, as well as a masceration of berries, which I'm sure made it feel even more like something your grandma would drink, not a keen liquor you and your nifty friends would drink. Dig it, daddy-o?

Créme Yvette ceased production in 1969, but was resurrected in 2009 just as the classic cocktail craze was warming up in major American cities. There's a lovely interview with Robert Cooper, the head of the liquor company that owned the rights to the liquor's formula and decided to reintroduce it in Elements Magazine.

Bottoms up!

Cooper says that Yvette doesn't have the same broad appeal as the company's other famous liqueur, St. Germain, citing Yvette's lack of versatility and user-friendliness.

All the same, we're testing its boundaries this month with classic cocktails, new (and often frightening) creations, and, as always, a bit of murder thrown in at the end of the month.

Tasting notes: 

Dave:

When I took the cap off the bottle and sniffed, I was a bit shocked at how alcohol-forward it smelled. And when I poured it into the glass, I was really glad we hadn't decided to do Creme Violette this month instead, which is entirely violets, while Yvette is violets mixed with blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, and cassis, with honey, vanilla, orange peel and spices added.  It still smells ridiculously like flowers, which is not a smell I'm used to in things I drink.

I think Joe may have a difficult time with this one. It tastes much like it smells. Like flowers. We're drinking fucking flowers. I can't imagine drinking this after dinner as a digestif - it might make me want to retch up everything I'd just eaten. Not that it tastes bad exactly... just very, very strong. It's the strength of the floral taste that's off-putting. It's also a thick, heavy liquid - much like Bénédictine from last month - and that just enhances the almost syrupy sweetness in a way that's, well, gross to a modern cocktail drinker. We like our alcohol to taste like alcohol and this tastes like perfume.

It's going to be an interesting month. If anyone wants to try Créme Yvette, come by our place. I'm sure we'll have some of this left, even if you can't make it by our place until the year 2062.

Joe:

I was really quite excited about this liqueur when Dave told me it was his choice for April. I had never even heard of Créme Yvette, and I am always up for an adventure. Plus the information Dave had found about the drink was just so darn fascinating! A resurrected liqueur of yore!

But.

This smells like my grandmother. Her house, more accurately. I should probably clarify that I don't really like the smell of my grandmother's house. Most people probably associate grandmothers with baked apple pies or rose perfume or something. But this is not the case with mine. This is going to come across as incredibly cruel, but I'm being honest: her house smells a bit like mildew. Mildewed flowers. It's a scent that embeds itself in everything: furniture, food, you name it. Dave is getting a hit of all these wonderful fruity notes, and I'm just getting a big hit of mold.

And then we tasted it.

Picture a ninety year old woman. Maybe she has that bluish-tinted hair because of a rinse she uses. Maybe she smells like baby powder with a hint of mothballs. Maybe she spends her days in the garden, tending to gardenias and gladiola, jacaranda and hyacinth, hyssop and violets. She's been out in the sun for a long time. She returns inside and draws a bath, adding Epsom salts and lavender bubble bath. And she bathes. For a couple hours. Once her wrinkly skin is even wrinklier, she emerges from the tub.

And that's when the makers of Créme Yvette swoop in and bottle the bath water.

Dave took two candid photos when I tasted Créme Yvette for the first time. I had no idea he was snapping shots, but I think they tell the full story.

Oh, Sweet Jesus

Sweet baby Jesus.

This is going to be a rough month, folks.

Nerdy Librarian Citations:
Dewing, Neal. "How Vodka Conquered America" The Federalist. The Federalist, 15 July 2014. Web. 27 March 2016. <http://thefederalist.com/2014/07/25/how-vodka-conquered-america>.

Simonson, Robert. "Creme Yvette" Elements Magazine. Imbibe Media, 14 August 2009. Web. 27 March 2016. <http://imbibemagazine.com/elements-creme-yvette>.

Crème de Cassis Death Match

So, we have both learned important lessons about the seeming unimportance of crème de cassis in cocktails. Neither of us thought it added much to the cocktails we tried, so tonight, after a trip to Food City, we set about making our own original cocktails featuring crème de cassis.  

Dave's is on the left, Joe's is on the right.

I call mine Ina's Vineyard:

1 oz vodka
1 oz crème de cassis
1/2 oz lemon juice
Blueberries
Sugar
Club soda

Muddle a small amount of sugar and a small handful of blueberries in the bottom of a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Add vodka, lemon juice, and crème de cassis. Shake vigorously.

Strain mixture into a highball glass over ice. Top with club soda. 

This drink was amazingly okay. It is the first cocktail in which I've been able to taste crème de cassis. That said, it tastes a bit sweet and syrupy - like a starter cocktail for people who really don't like alcohol that much. I might drink it in summer, but it doesn't taste terribly different from the classic crème de cassis and soda with a spritz of lime that Amy Stewart raves about. Final grade: C+

Joe's Take on Dave's Drink:

Before Dave's drink hits your palette, you can smell it. I can't put my finger on it, but I just told Dave it smells like rotting fruit (and I wish you could see his face right now). He's incredulous, but laughing.

But really. It kind of smells like rotting fruit. 

It's confusing, because there's something else that's under there - a smell that is triggering vague memories that I can't fully recall. Grapes? Celery? Bad apples? I honestly don't know. If I were a trained sommelier or food critic, I'm sure I'd be able to pinpoint it immediately. Alas. 

Here's the hitch, though. The drink is actually quite refreshing: it's light and effervescent, mild but tasty. I don't get much of the lemon, but the black currant flavor is a subtle surprise (perhaps because the base liquor is so unassuming). I can imagine drinking it on the beach, one of those adorable cocktail umbrellas jutting from the ice. 

Maybe vodka is the best vehicle for crème de cassis. Maybe it's what we've been missing all this time. If we were to continue experimenting with the liqueur, I think we'd continue in this direction.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

And then there's mine. 

Having already made a crème de cassis cocktail with a clear alcohol, I decided to explore what a darker alcohol would bring to the black currant flavor. 

I call mine Grotesque Démodé. My friend Tricia would roll her eyes at my poorly appropriated French.

2 oz. bourbon
1/2 oz. crème de cassis
orange peel
club soda
sugar

Muddle orange peel and sugar (like you're making an old fashioned). Add bourbon and crème de cassis. Stir. Pour over ice. Wish you were never born. 

Pretend for a moment that you are walking through the woods on a crisp autumn day. The temperature is chilly, but the sun is bright and high in the sky, and its light filters through trees, a kaleidoscope of warm colors. Every time you breathe in deeply, you are filled with the beauty of the season. 

In the distance, you spy a log. A tree has fallen, perhaps decades ago, and it lays in mounds of leaves: some recent, some from years past. There's a fecundity that emanates from the log - it isn't necessarily unpleasant, but it is pungent with age and decay. You kneel before the log, plunge your hands into the rot, and stuff it in your mouth. The oaky fermentation fills your mouth. Your eyes water immediately. You wonder why you didn't resist the impulse to eat that which was clearly inedible. 

You have just tasted the equivalent of my crème de cassis drink.

I have come to the horrible, sinking conclusion that I am a long, long, long way from being a mixologist. In short: this drink is awful. 

Dave's Take on Joe's Drink: Yuck. 

I mean, it smells nice. There are hints of vanilla and berries and orange - it's a very Christmas-y, holiday, let's-get-blitzed-and-make-snow-angels smell. That would all be good and well if we were making potpourri. 

Alas, we have to drink it. 

It's quite alcohol forward and hits your tongue and is immediately dark and pungent, but oddly crisp and sharp as well (the orange, maybe?). 

So, I think I win this death match, but only by being the lesser of two evils. I am like the winner of the Republican National Convention, winning because I am the least disgusting here, the most digestible, and the least likely to make you want to vomit too much.