Spirited News 04/2021: Spiritus Rex
The eau de vies distilled by Matthias Sievert continue to extend their lead in flavour further and further. This time I was extremely lucky to try to of Matthias recent bottlings, the Hintperi Raspberry eau de vie and the Sudachi eau de vie. While the former is distilled from fermenting the berries, the latter uses an exotic Japanese citrus fruit for macerating. Usually, I don’t mind mixing with high quality and highly priced ingredients. However, with these two eau de vies even I reached a limit. Therefore, I only present them to you neat.
Let us start with the Hintperi Raspberry eau de vie. Matthias distils this luxurious spirit from Romanian wild raspberries. Instead of macerating them in neutral grain spirit, like he does for his Spiritus Rex Rubus Idaeus Raspberry eau de vie, he ferments the fruits. Obviously, since each raspberry has not a lot of fructose this results in an extremely low yield. According to Matthias it is around 1 %. Taking all this into account, it does not come as a surprise that the Hintperi is not exactly inexpensive.
A bombardment with raspberries
Do not ask me if this Raspberry eau de vie is worth its money. This is something everybody has to decide for themselves. What I can tell you is that the Hintperi is simply put the best raspberry eau de vie I have ever tried. You instantly know that you are sipping a raspberry spirit. Yet, the eau de vie manages to capture the whole aspect of the berry: From the fruit pulp, over the small kernels to the little green leaves on the plant itself. At the same time, the spirit is quite intense without any neutral grain alcohol characteristics. To make things short, it is right up there in the eau de vie Olympus.
Exotic citrus flavours
I would not call myself a citrus expert. Yet, during my research for citrus eau de vie articles, I came across quite a lot of different varieties. Nevertheless, I never had heard of Sudachi. These small, green lime like fruits are endemic to Tokushima. Matthias managed to get his hands on a small amount of them. On top of that, he also made an eau de vie from them by macerating the whole fruit in neutral grain alcohol. After distillation the eau de vie is bottle at the for Spiritus Rex usual 42 % ABV.
Bitter oranges and intense spices
I totally agree with Matthias on the flavour of the Sudachi eau de vie. It tastes very different from eau de vies distilled from common citrus fruits. However, you first taste familiar bitter orange and mandarin flavours. Next, a certain spiciness kicks in and delivers atypical flavours of peppercorns and curry leaves. They linger on through the whole drinking experience while the citrus notes switch back and forth between bitter oranges and mandarin. I almost feel like I do not have to tell you that the Sudachi spirit reflects the whole citrus fruit. In the end, my verdict here is clear: If you are a full-on citrus eau de vie fan, you just have to get a bottle of this unusual spirit!
*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 were provided by Spiritus Rex.
