Old Old Fashioned – Lantenhammer Marille
When you are into eau de vies, there are a lot of interesting ones out there you want to try. However, there are others that are so exclusive that you only dream about sipping. One of those very limited eau de vies comes from the renown Lantenhammer distillery. In their “Raritaeten” series they bottle eau de vies in beautiful perfume-like flacons which have been barrel aged. In this case, I am delighted to present the apricot eau de vie aged in mulberry wood to you.
For their rare series Lantenhammer chose already high-quality eau de vies and decided to barrel aged them in different woods. The apricots for this eau de vie come from the Vinschgau region in South Tyrol and are squeezed before mashing. After the temperature controlled fermentation Lantenhammer distill the mash twice. The resulting heart of the distillation run then spends two years in earthenware vats and gets a finish in mulberry barrels. Each batch is a vintage with the bottling date added to the label. In my case the eau de vie was bottled in October 2019.
Lavish apricot jam notes
The interesting thing about the mulberry finish is that it replaces the fresher fruit flavours with darker notes. In this case, the bouquet changed to a lot of dried apricots and apricot jam notes. Nevertheless, with its floral rose petal notes the eau de vie really did remind me of an exclusive perfume. The taste is a bit simpler than the aroma with astringent notes and tannins keeping the spirit from becoming exceedingly sweet. Contrary to oak, the mulberry wood does not impart vanilla or a lot of caramel notes on the eau de vie. In the long aftertaste the tannins are more pronounced with other stone fruit notes.
Apricots and walnuts
Yes, it is a bit decadent to mix a cocktail with such a high-quality spirit, but I dried to keep the character of the eau de vie. On top of that, if you do use other high quality ingredients there is nothing wrong with creating a special cocktail for an extraordinary spirit. So, in this case I went for an Old-Fashioned, but instead of just simple syrup I added walnut liqueur also from Lantenhammer to the mix. Yet, to fully balance the drink without overwhelming the apricot taste, I added two dashes of simple syrup. For the bitters I kept the walnut theme and chose the Fee Brother’s Walnut Bitters.
0,75 cl Lantenhammer Walnut Liqueur
2 Dashes Simple Syrup
Stir – strain – chilled Nosing glass;
Garnish: Long Lemon Twist;
Song: Frightened Rabbit – Old Old Fashioned;
In the “Old Old Fashioned” you still taste the apricot jam notes from the Lantenhammer first. It takes a short while for the walnut notes from the liqueur and bitters to catch up. Afterwards, it is a great combination of dried apricot notes and candied walnuts. The bitters are very well integrated and the essential oils from the lemon twist lend a bit of freshness to the drink. I can only recommend enjoying this drink from a thin-walled glass and pondering about something profound like the meaning of life…
*The fact that I received a product reviewed in this article for free, did not – in any way – influence the rating of said product. The eau de vie was provided by Lantenhammer.
