by Adrienne

On May 18th, as part of the Manhattan Cocktail Classic, Dipsology is teaming up with St. George Spirits & Middle Branch for a (sold out) interactive seminar on the role of water in your perception of spirits.  In preparation, I visited the distillery in Alameda, California to get a sneak peek from Andie Ferman, who directs their tasting room, among other things.

The spirit we experimented with was St. George’s Aqua Perfecta: Pear Eau de Vie, which you can read more about here.  And I have to say, I was astonished at the results.  The experience went something like this:

First, Andie handed me a dry, totally empty glass.  I smelled it.  It didn’t smell like anything (duh).  Then she poured a little bit of spirit into it, and instructed me to hold my nose almost over the top rim of the glass as I tipped it towards me.  The overwhelming impression of the Pear Eau de Vie is a bright scent of fresh picked pears.  What’s incredible how the scent changes as you change your nose placement over the glass: towards the lower rim, when your nose is actually more in the glass, it’s weaker; but put your nose at the top of the glass and the bouquet hits you full force.

Next, I got a glass that had been rinsed with water first, before the eau de vie was poured.  Same pear smell, but much stronger.  The water had “opened up” the spirit, enhancing & bringing out its aromas, much in the same way wine opens up when you swirl it around in your glass to let the air in.  Finally, we added some water to the poured spirit, which further intensified the nose and also caused some of the oils to come out of suspension so we could see them clearly in the glass, where before there had been totally pristine “looked just like water” liquid.

Clearly this phenomenon has implications for tasting spirits on their own, but the effects are perhaps even more dramatic when we consider cocktails and the amount of optimal dilution in a drink that comes from shaking or stirring, or the choice of ice (large cube, pebble ice, etc) for those served on the rocks.  (Which is something the lovely Lucinda Sterling talked to us about when we chatted about the importance of balance in cocktails.)

No matter what, we’ll never taste spirits quite the same way again.

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Adrienne is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Dipsology.  When she’s not drinking, sleeping &  breathing cocktails, she can probably be found in Napa, drinking wine instead.  You can read about her non-cocktail adventures on her blog “à la gourmande” and follow her @alstillman.