The Drunken Cherry : How Ukraine’s National drink is leading a social revolution
On the 23rd February 2022, on an unusually tepid, but overcast day, in a wooden-beamed loft apartment, overlooking the Ploscha Rynok marketplace square in Lviv, I prostrated, committed a plan to action and backtracked several times over.
Finally, I made the decision to leave Ukraine on an overnight bus through the Carpathian mountains, across the Hungarian border, and onto Bratislava where I planned to take a flight to France.
I hastily packed up my belongings and checked out of one of the most cost-effective Airbnbs I’ve ever stayed in. I closed the heavy, padded door of the attic, left the key in a hole on the wall and trundled my large suitcase down the five flights of rickety wooden stairs, in a draughty building that I can only imagine was once a bell-tower of some sort.
Before I hopped on the tram to the bus depot, penned in amongst commuters anxiously reading the latest news updates from Kyiv, however, there was one final stop I needed to make…
п’яна вишня is a Ukrainian institution, beloved by locals and tourists alike and stylishly situated just off the main square, like an Art Nouveau Parisian cafe lighting up the cobbled streets in the chill of mid-winter.
Here you can order only one thing.
Halfway between a cherry liqueur and a fortified wine, the drunken cherry is served either cold, in a wine glass, or hot, like gluhwein in a paper cup.
Everyone has their preferred style but regardless of how you take it you will invariably find a trio of sunken alcohol infused cherries at the bottom of the cup.
Based on a traditional Halychyna recipe from the 17th Century, “Pyana Vishnya” has been a home-made staple in the homes of Western Ukraine through the generations.
The princely Halych was a largely rural region of the old Ruthenia, not far from the Carpathian mountains to the south. Over the centuries invading forces had trampled the land from left to right, rarely staying long enoiugh to integrate this little pocket of territory into their own. The Ottomans, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Crimean Tartars, Austro-Hungarian Empire and Soviet Union have all at some point in time been guilty of trespassing in the area and yet seemingly unable to repress the folkloric customs and traditions of its people.
In times of plenty, cherries were harvested and fermented in every household, like so much other produce so that in times of scarcity, there was enough to get through the harsh, near alpine conditions of winter.
Then, in 2007 three entrepreneurial upstarts launched the first bar in the old marketplace in Lviv bringing a nostalgic favourite into the limelight.
During my five weeks in the country I encountered people from all walks of life but never was the scope of modern Ukrainian society so crystalised in my mind as it was from behind the barrel, and under the glare of an electric heater with a warm cup of Pyana Vishnya.
Regardless of your plans for the rest of the night, you don’t often stay long at п’яна вишня — half an hour at most — but long enough to strike up conversation with the neighbours resting their drinks on the surface of the barrel beside you.
On one night alone, I got to know two Belarussian hackers in exile, an all- American wife-hunter clinically lacking in self-awareness, a Lithuanian cocktail bartender on a road-trip quest for the best bar in Europe and finally some Lviv university students who offered to spike my already heady, mulled drink with an anonymous bottle of something even stronger…
Naturally, I obliged.
From the corner of the square you can watch the world pass by on a Saturday night. The intoxicating effect of warm, sweet alcohol led women to tears, a channel for the pent-up anxiety and the never-ending “will they, won’t they” felt over those strange two months.
Groups of men walking from one bar to the next would contagiously break out in chorus singing the ‘Red Kalyna’ and even the the official anthem of “Ukraine has not yet perished” to a rousing crowd sipping their sweet cherry wine.
For all the regional romanticism and nostalgia attached to this drink, it’s worth noting that cherry based alcohols are hardly unique to Ukraine:
- In Portugal ‘Ginjinha’ is made by infusing sour and morello cherries with prunes and cinnamon and and has been dished out generoulsy by the octogenarian grandmothers of Alfama, Lisbon, whilst surveying the streets for troublemakers, like a vigilante neighbourhood watch.
- The Danish began fortifying cherry wine in the bathtubs of their private homes under the Nazi occupation when grape wine was scarce and quickly rebounded to imported vine juice when the war was over. Now Cherry wine is the preserve of only Christmas gatherings and bachelor parties, sporadically consumed at best.
- And, in the depths of the mountainous Black Forest in Germany, morrello cherries are crushed, stones and all before distilled into Kirsch Wasser (cherry water) giving the spirit a sharp, bitter, almond-like edge that can be drunk from a brandy glass or added to the mixture of a decadent Black Forest Gateau.
Yet, nowhere else in Europe does Cherry wine bring with it a culture of serendipitous bonhomie and fleetingly chance encounters with people you were never supposed to meet. The product is ubiquitous, the concept is unique.
It’s a clear recipe for societal success and Ukraine’s Pyana Vishnya has naturally spilled out beyond its borders with shops in Poland, Latvia, Hungary, Moldova and Romania, enticing other Eastern Europeans with boozy spin on 21st Century cafe culture.
I can already taste my next glass.
