The Thrill of it All – Spiritus Rex Marille

If you are following my blog for a short while, you might notice that I am not only a big eau de vie geek, but that I especially love apricot eau de vies. I do not know why, I am not even that keen on fresh apricots. However, when they are distilled they turn into liquid gold! Additionally, I had a rather underappreciated sherry on hand I was longing to mix with.

Matthias Sievert uses apricots from the Wachau region in Austria for his Marille Marquess eau de vie. The apricots have to be really rip, basically just before they become windfall. After the harvest, they are transported to Malente and Matthias ferments them at the lowest temperature possible for four to eight weeks. Next, distillation also takes place very slowly. In my case, the bottle is a 2019 vintage.

Beautiful balanced apricots

First things first, the Marille Marquess is a very high quality eau de vie! You instantly get an apricot note in the bouquet. Additionally, with a bit of time the flavour turns towards apricot jam and some rose petals. Moreover, the taste provides you with similar notes, but also has additional tannins, a hint of marzipan and dryer fruit notes. Apart from that, you also will find a hint of vegetal notes, reminding me of black currant twigs. If you open a new bottle and try the eau de vie right away, it might come off as a bit reserved. However, after a while the Marille Marquess opens up and gives way to a whole assortment of beautiful flavours.

Three ingredients

For a drink I decided to keep things simple. Therefore, I wanted to just use three ingredients in the cocktail. Apart from that, I cannot quite tell you how I ended up with this exact combination, but I thought that quinces and apricots might go well together. Additionally, I wanted to use a sweet sherry in the drink, but PX sherry seemed too heavy for the subtle notes in the apricot eau de vie. I know that my final recipe is not what you could call inexpensive, but you are still able to appreciate all the individual ingredients.

The “Thrill of it All” starts with clear cut apricot notes, before sweet and fruity notes from the quince liqueur and the sherry appear. Moreover, the Moscatel sherry gives the drink a great backbone with typical “sherry notes”. The sweetness in the drink is almost honey like, but the slow dilution from the big ice cube nicely balances it.

*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 eua de vie was provided by Spiritus Rex.