The Case for Drinking Outside of Your Comfort Zone
From Mezcal to Malört, Why We Should Drink Smoky, Bitter, Pungent, Spicy Spirits
by Derek Brown
“It tastes like a watermelon Jolly Rancher wrapped in rotting weasel flesh,” tweets one cocktail and spirits enthusiast. “I find even the most pungent [one] delicious,” follows another.
They’re both referring to baijiu, a grain-based Chinese spirit often made from sorghum and fermented in mud pits or clay pots. Of course, there’s nothing discouraging about the first tweet to most adventurous drinkers and no hint of sarcasm in the second one.
I can relate. In the past decade, I’ve seen the avant garde of drinkers — bartenders, importers, and spirits writers — imbibing smoky, bitter, pungent, and spicy spirits and, what’s more, liking them. I’ve joined in the fun. Beginning with mezcal, a spirit that was widely panned at first among United States drinkers, and with the growing recognition of baijiu, we’re entering a new era in drinking where it seems that taste is the least of our concerns.
Below are four spirits, including mezcal and baijiu, which I argue consumers should try even though they once had, or currently have, reputations for being on the fringes of taste. But, if taste doesn’t matter in these spirits, what does?
Spirits With a Soul
If you can walk up to a bar and order a mezcal cocktail, you owe your gratitude to the people who pushed a seemingly unsalable spirit to become the darling of the cocktail movement (and friend to the wellness movement). Barbara Hansen, writing for the Los Angeles Times, summed it up best in her 2003 article on mezcal:
“Mezcal has a terrible image. It’s fiery stuff, real rotgut, with a worm floating in the bottom of the bottle — at least, that’s what most people think. Because mezcal sounds like mescaline, the psychedelic drug, it’s surely hallucinogenic. Furthermore, it comes from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, where counterculture folk go to munch on magic mushrooms.”
That image wasn’t easy to buck. But buck it we did. The first step was finding the real thing instead of the cheap, kitschy versions. The early versions that made their way north of the border, offered more fire than finesse along with a variety of jetsam placed in the bottle as a marketing ploy: dead bugs, scorpions, and worms.
I remember standing in a room with a handful of beverage managers and Ron Cooper, the pied piper of mezcal in the U.S. through his brand Del Maguey, circa 2008. We were stumped at the smoky, earthy, vegetal expressions of the agave spirit. The flavors were unlike anything we’d tried. When I later got to try Cooper’s pechuga, a mezcal packed with rice, almonds, and fruits, and filtered through a chicken breast, my brain exploded — this spirit was akin to when I first heard death metal, though strange and aggressive it was also complex and hauntingly beautiful.
That moment marked a rupture in my understanding of spirits. What made the spirit so interesting was exactly its intense flavors and complexity. For Emma Janzen, author of Mezcal: The History, Craft & Cocktails of the World’s Ultimate Artisanal Spirit, those flavors and complexity are an expression of mezcal’s soul.
“Today, the good sort of mezcal — mezcal that’s produced in a way that’s true to tradition — has found a home with bartenders and drinkers looking for spirits with a distinct soul,” wrote Janzen in recent correspondence, “artisanal mezcal is exactly that — a spirit that clearly communicates the heart and soul of Mexico.”
Mezcal is a heritage product of Mexico and does more than taste good, it provides a means of connecting to another culture. In the smoky flavors we can smell the wood burning under the still and taste the terroir from the agave plants that have been cultivated on the land for thousands of years. Mezcal is not just a product — it’s an expression of a people.
Spirits That Hit On All the Notes
Some spirits have soul and others have spunk: malört is of the latter. There’s no doubt that the umlaut that adorns the “o,” similar to Mötorhead, also looks like the face you make after drinking it. There’s an entire meme around Malört Face, a contorted expression that rises from its “forward facing bitterness,” as bartender and owner of Amor y Amargo, Sother Teague describes it. Other tasters aren’t as kind.
Describing malört, which means wormwood in Swedish, is a sport in itself. In a Reddit thread from earlier this year, descriptions verged on the, well, poetic. Commenters described it as “grapefruit mixed with earwax,” “gasoline and stomach acid,” “pencil shavings and heartbreak,” and “alcohol, rubber bands, and skin.” None of these descriptions are necessarily inspirational or affirming.
Yet malört has made its way outside of Chicago, where it was a cult classic among Chicagoans, and has infiltrated cocktail circles. There are even additional brands in the U.S. besides the once solitary Jeppsons Malört, such as Bäska Snaps from Bittermans.
As bartenders and consumers become more educated about these complex spirits, Teague argues that it’s no longer a “macho shot, basically a dare.” According to Teague, it’s all based on a misunderstanding of what amaro, a category of bittersweet liqueurs, should be:
“Amari [the plural of amaro] are not one note, they are complex and people are exploring them for all they have to offer.”
Malört may make some pucker up, but looking beyond the initial bitterness is key to recognizing the depth of this spirit and others like it. Realizing that complex spirits like malört are, put simply, playing with all the notes.
Spirits Where Context is Everything
Sometimes it’s “all they have to offer” that’s exactly what makes these spirits too flavorful for the average person’s palate. Though it might also be an issue of how we drink them. With mezcal and malört, are we sure that we’re drinking them how the distillers intended, or how they’re drunk within their particular cultures? With Aquavit, the answer is likely no.
Aquavit, a Scandinavian spirit flavored with caraway, cumin, and anise, among other spices, may as well have been the solitary tray of Indian spices in place of mints at Indian restaurants that most non-Indians have know idea what to do with. There wasn’t a market for it. Only one brand was readily available in the United States: Aalborg.
According to founder of Aquavit Week and ambassador for Linie and Aalborg aquavit, Jacob Grier, “Aquavit is a challenge in the U.S. because we’re more of a cocktail drinking culture, whereas the traditional way to drink aquavit is in small neat pours, often alongside food.”
“Aquavit is also often served cold in Scandinavia,” wrote Grier, “… if Americans get an un-aged aquavit served neat at room temperature, it’s understandable that they won’t get the full appeal of the spirit.”
Cocktails give another great context in which to drink aquavit wrote Grier, “In the U.S. people are more likely to be introduced to it in cocktails if they don’t have any Scandinavian friends or family, and that’s a great way to drink it.”
Chill it, try it with food, or put it in a cocktail and aquavit is suddenly brand new to the drinker, no longer confined to the shelf as the weird, rye and licorice-tasting spirit with an odd sounding name.
When I was in Denmark during the holiday season, I had my share of aquavit at a julefrokost, which is a holiday party Danes throw with friends, family, and coworkers. First, we had it in glögg, a traditional spiced wine that often uses aquavit. Aquavit’s spicy undercurrent was a perfect addition to the rich, wine heavy hot beverage. Then we had it throughout the meal, which included dishes with herring, lots of herring. Chilled aquavit shots hit the spot with each oily, decadent bite. Aquavit was a perfect accompaniment to our Christmas lunch.
Spirits That Have Range
If context matters, then breadth should matter too. When we talk about mezcal and aquavit, historically North Americans have had a narrow framework in which to judge the spirits: there were so few examples of these spirits on the shelves in the United States. The same goes for baijiu.
According the Derek Sandhaus, author of Baijiu: The Essential Guide to Chinese Spirits,
“The important thing to remember when discussing baijiu is that it refers not to a single specific drink, but to a range that encompasses at least a dozen distinct grain spirits.”
For Sandhaus, “Different baijius can be as different as any two bottles you pull off the backbar.”
I can attest that there is a much broader range available than what we typically see in the United States. In the last San Francisco World Spirits Competition (SFWSC), which I was a judge, there was an unprecedented number of baijius as entrants. Some of them even made it to the finals and won double gold medals, the highest medal honor. They didn’t all taste like children’s candy wrapped in animal flesh. Some displayed a subtly that went beyond the stereotype of this pungent spirit. Sandhaus concurs, “Many baijius have a funky, umami character… for those drinkers who abhor funk, there are a number of light and mild varieties to try.”
Does that mean that baijiu will storm the proverbial castle of spirits canon? Not necessarily, but it does mean that the door is cracked open and we can expect many more baijius to enter through the breach. I, myself, am finding a deeper appreciation and taking the spirit more seriously than I once did.
Whether an expression of soul, complexity, context, or range, each one of these spirits deserves the serious drinkers attention. Beyond that, I’d love to see them make their way, like mezcal has, onto backbars and into liquor cabinets of anyone who enjoys a good drink, regardless of the initial barriers to taste.
We may enjoy the descriptions and banter around each spirit, but we should grapple with our own preconceived notions and try each spirit with a fresh perspective. The reward, of overcoming our bias and enjoying something new, is so much greater than a giggle over its descriptors or a gulp for the sake of a dare.
