The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World's Great Drinks (44 page)

Damask roses, with romantic names like Comte de Chambord and Panachée de Lyon, tend to be lush, round, open and highly fragrant flowers with tightly packed petals in shades of pink, rose, and white. Cabbage roses,
R. centifolia,
were developed by Dutch botanists in the seventeenth century for their strong fragrance. The light pink Fantin-Latour is one of the best-known varieties of perfumed cabbage roses.

Most early recipes for rose petal liqueurs, like Culpeper's, called for a maceration of aromatic rose petals, sugar, and fruit in brandy.
Rose water, the watery part of the steam distillation of rose petals that is left behind after the essential oil is removed, is a traditional ingredient in Middle Eastern cuisine.

Lately rose water has become popular as a cocktail ingredient, usually sprayed on the surface of a drink. And a few high-quality rose petal liqueurs are produced in Europe and the United States, including the French Distillerie Miclo's fine liqueur of macerated rose petals, and Crispin's Rose Liqueur, made with an apple spirit base in northern California. The Bols liqueur Parfait Amour claims rose petals as one of its ingredients, along with violets, orange peel, almond, and vanilla. Hendrick's Gin includes a damask rose essence added after the distillation process, along with cucumber, to give it a garden bouquet.

A much less showy species, the eglantine or sweet briar rose
R. rubiginosa,
is grown not for its flowers but for the fruit, called rose hips, that remain after the petals have dropped off the plant. Rose hips are a good source of vitamin C and have been used to make teas, syrups, jams, and wine. An eglantine eau-de-vie is made by a few distilleries in Alsace, and a Hungarian brandy called Pálinka is made from them. Rose hip schnapps and liqueurs also turn up; for instance, the Chicago distillery Koval makes a rose hip liqueur.

SAFFRON

Crocus sativus

iridaceae (iris family)

F
or such an ancient and important spice, saffron is surprisingly difficult to keep alive, much less harvest. The crocus that we know today as saffron is a triploid—meaning that it has three sets of chromosomes instead of two—and it is sterile. It can only reproduce by creating more corms (a bulblike structure), never by setting seed. It is probably a mutant that has been continuously cultivated since about 1500 BC.

Each corm produces just one purple flower during a two-week period in the fall. That flower opens to reveal the precious three-part red stigma we know as threads of saffron. It takes four thousand flowers to gather just an ounce of saffron. Every few years, the corms must be dug up, divided, and replanted to ensure a good harvest. (Although saffron crocus blooms in the autumn, it must never be confused with the autumn crocus,
Colchicum autumnale,
which is highly toxic.)

Saffron is rich in flavor and aroma compounds. Its bitterness comes primarily from picrocrocin, which breaks down after it is harvested and dries to an oil called safranal. This substance is of great interest to scientists, who find that saffron's long use as a medical herb is not without merit. Limited studies show that it may suppress tumors, aid in digestion, and help scavenge free radicals.

In addition to seasoning Indian, Asian, and European dishes, saffron has been a flavoring for beer and spirits for centuries. Archeologist Patrick McGovern believes that saffron was used as a bittering agent in ancient times; he worked with Dogfish Head to create Midas Touch, a drink made of white Muscat, barley, honey, and saffron, based on residue analysis of drinking vessels found in King Midas's tomb.

Today saffron is cultivated in Iran, Greece, Italy, Spain, and France. Worldwide production is estimated at about three hundred tons, and an ounce of saffron sells for about three hundred dollars at retail, although prices vary widely depending on the quality. (Top-quality saffron is the result of better growing conditions and cultivars; it is worth paying extra to get the good stuff.) Its orange pigment comes from a carotenoid component called α-crocin; this imparts a yellowish hue to paella and to yellow liqueurs like Strega. It also colors the yellow version of many traditional yellow and green Chartreuse-like liqueurs made in Spain, France, and Italy. The makers of Benedictine disclose very few of their ingredients but admit to an infusion of saffron.

It is a popular rumor that the extraordinarily bitter Fernet Branca derives much of its flavor from saffron and in fact commands three-quarters of the world's saffron supply. This may be nothing more than a tall tale. If annual production of the spirit is 3.85 million cases, as reported in liquor industry trade journals, that would work out to one-sixth of an ounce of saffron per bottle—roughly twenty-five dollars' worth at retail. With a bottle of Fernet retailing for twenty to thirty dollars, it seems unlikely that it would contain such a large and expensive pinch of the spice—even with massive volume discounts.

VIOLET

Viola odorata

violaceae (violet family)

T
he Aviation cocktail is the Chelsea Flower Show in a glass, combining gin, maraschino liqueur, lemon juice, and crème de violette. And until a few years ago, it was impossible to make properly, because crème de violette had disappeared from the shelves.

That changed thanks to the efforts of Eric Seed, owner of Haus Alpenz, an importer of unusual and hard-to-find spirits. His search for an authentic crème de violette took him to Austria, where Destillerie Purkhart was producing limited quantities for special customers—mostly bakers who used it in chocolates and cakes. They select two varieties of
Viola odorata
for their liqueur: Queen Charlotte (or Königin Charlotte) and March.

The sweet violet is a flower of a bygone era; a hundred years ago, they were widely grown and sold in nosegays in flower stalls. The blossoms lasted just a day or two in water, and were meant to be worn or carried for just one evening, so their distinctive fragrance could serve as a woman's perfume.

Sweet violets are sometimes called Parma violets, although a Parma violet is more likely a particular variety of a very similar species,
V. alba.
Violets are unrelated to African violets but are a close relative of two garden center staples, Johnny-jump-ups and pansies.

The fragrance—and flavor—of violets is a tricky one. A compound called ionone interferes with scent receptors in the nose and actually makes it impossible to detect the fragrance after a few whiffs. There's also a genetic component to how we taste ionone: some people can't smell or taste it at all, and others get an annoying soapy flavor rather than a floral essence.