Far Out – Scheibel Cherry-Brandy

It has been a long time since I wanted to try this exclusive cherry liqueur. Convinced by the quality of Scheibel’s Alte Zeit wild cherry eau de vie, I was looking very forward to this review. On top of that, you will also find a special cocktail I created with this special cherry brandy below.

Scheibel produces their “Alte Zeit” range of spirits on wooden fired pot-stills in a classic two-shot distillation. Furthermore, they recreated a recipe from the 1950s with this Cherry-Brandy. Apart from sour cherry eau de vie, the recipe includes cognac, Maraska cherry juice and sloe eau de vie. The fruits for this liqueur come from Germany, Italy, Spain and Croatia. After a resting period, the liqueur is bottled at an ABV of 35 %.

Bitter almond and cherry notes

Yes, the Scheibel Cherry-Brandy is excellent. With the first sip, you instantly get that the liqueur is different and high quality ingredients are used in the production. Apart from an obvious sour cherry note, you also taste quite a lot of marzipan and bitter almonds. I guess to some extent that is due to the sloe eau de vie in the recipe. However, the cherry brandy also has noticeable spice and brandy notes. All in all, the liqueur even reminds me of high-quality pipe tobacco. I guess it is pretty obvious that the Cherry-Brandy makes an excellent Blood & Sand cocktail.

Daring split-base cocktail

Well, today I chose a rather unusual cocktail to make a twist on. The Twenty Mile Limit cocktail is a Prohibition era drink which you do not see very often. Maybe this is due to the rather weird combination of light rum, rye and cognac. Yet, I wanted to make a riff on it using the Scheibel Alte Zeit Cherry-Brandy. However, I used Harris Gin and Rock Island Sherry Cask Scotch to give the drink a more Maritime feel. Since I increased the lemon juice used in the drink, I also added a bit of gomme syrup to balance out the recipe.

Yes, the recipe of the “Far Out” reads a bit awkward. Nevertheless, the flavours do work together. Of course, the Scotch and the cherry brandy are a perfect match. Yet, the gin nicely adds a bit of contrast and complexity to the recipe. In the end, the sweet and sour base balances out the other flavours and rounds off the drinking experience.

*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 liqueur was provided by Scheibel.