Spirited News 02/2023: Spiritus Rex
In this post, I am wrapping up the last two spirits from the last care package from Matthias Sievert and Spiritus Rex. Matthias distils both spirits from rare wild fruits. Which turned out to be the highlight of this years spirits.
For the ‘Asperl’ eau de vie distilled from wild medlars, Matthias mapped the trees and bushes in his region for years. In 2019 he had enough locations to mash and distil the fruits. Each plant only carries a maximum of 20 kg. In addition, the fruits contain little fruit sugar, so you need a lot of them. In the end, Matthias bottled the spirit at his usual ABV of 42 %.
Uncommon flavour
The ‘Asperl’ starts with wild fruit eau de vie notes. Next, you will find flavours reminiscent of overripe apples and a touch of pear. The taste is a little hard to describe, because almost no one knows the flavour of medlars. Matthias’ edition of medlar eau de vie once again is the best version I have tried so far. However, you have to be deep into eau de vies to really appreciate this taste. A funny thing happend when tasting both eau de vies here back-to-back: The medlar eau de vie suddenly brought a pleasant almost citrus like freshness to the palate.
The height of eau de vies!
Next, I want to present the ‘Aris’ eau de vie to you. Matthias had to hire professional tree climbers for the harvest of the service berries. The yield for the eau de vie lies between 66 kg to 100 kg for each litre of spirit. It also took four years from 2014 to 2018 to result in enough spirit for bottling in very low numbers.
Another leauge
I never had service berry eau de vie before, only one distilled from aronia berries which supposedly comes close. Yet, the ‘Aris’ is in another league. Obviously, there is a certain wild fruit characteristic, but at the same time the taste is very refined. There is a touch of bitter almonds, but this might just be the best eau de vie to get people hooked on wild fruit eau de vies. Yes, this one is expensive and I usually do not comment on the price of the spirits I taste. Yet, I absolutely understand why the price tag is as high as it is.
Stay tuned for my 10th anniversary post! You will have the chance to win one of three crazy packages.
*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 vies were provided by Spiritus Rex.
