Regional Spirits: Digestifs, Aperitifs and All the Rest
Taught by Zach
Zach is a writer and musician in New York City. He plays drums in Flaming Tusk, a metal band from Astoria, Queens, and spends much of his free time trying to convince his friends to play card games with names that nobody can pronounce.
Less work than a cocktail and more exotic than bourbon (and even rye), the Old World is full of digestifs, aperitifs and catch-all spirits that have been produced with local ingredients, according to local recipes, for hundreds of years. Some are cloyingly sweet and some are bitter enough to shock the palette, and there's at least one for pretty much any flavor found in nature.
We'll take a roughly geographical trip around Europe, stopping off at points throughout Italy, up through France and Germany, and bouncing around Scandinavia. We'll learn a little and get a couple of tastes under our belts. And by the time we're done, you'll be able to not only pronounce 'Fernet Branca' correctly, but even possibly appreciate how it tastes.