grappa

Fiery alcoholic drink (from Italy) made from the leftovers of the wine making process.

After pressing and extracting the juice, the resulting mass of grape pulp, skins, seeds and twig is cooked, allowed to ferment, and distilled. What comes out has about 40° and is usually clear in color.

grappa used to be really cheap, nasty, low-quality booze. It has recently undergone a process of marketing and refinement, turning into a drink you can mention (and quaff) in polite company. Especially neat is grappa bottled in hand blown glassware, usually looking like something that should live in a chemical lab or an alchemist's den. Good brands are Piave (middle end) and Nonino (high end, from Trieste). Good grappa always declares its origins, that's to say the place of production and what kind of grapes/wine were used in the making, for example Grappa di Pinot Grigio.

Grappa should not be used in cocktails, and it should be drunk at room temperature, slowly, and with joy.
Well, there is one cocktail-ish use of grappa, that's to say to spike espresso (producing caffè corretto), and it is canonical because we do it in Italy, so there.

grapa in Mexico City means a dose of cocaine, but you shouldn't admit you know that, at least not in polite company.

some grappa tales

"In Hungary we used to say there were three grades of grappa—mediocre, awful and downright poisonous." —me

i was introduced to grappa in Hungary, at the farmers' market in Vác, Hungary. We went down one morning, arrived around 0630 and got in line for breakfast, which turned out to be lángos dripping with sour cream, olive oil, cheeses and garlic. On the back end was a shot of espresso and one of grappa. It's the single most memorable and energy-giving breakfast i can remember; I didn't need to eat again until 1400.

Later in the day (around 1400, in fact!) we found ourselves sitting outside a lovely cafe/bakery opposite the American embassy in Budapest, eating tasty little pastries and drinking espresso and grappa. I've told the story before, but it bears repeating; every twenty minutes the waitress brought a tray with more pastries and cakes, a shot of espresso and grappa for my interpreter and me, and a carafe of water. After a couple of hours I was both drunk and jittery, but 10/10 would do again.

I have to say that caffe corretto is the best way to enjoy grappa (if "enjoy' is the right word). Whilst it has some fruity, floral notes, it tastes a little coarse compared with my preferred spirit (single malt scotch), burns going down and is just generally not worth drinking by itself. Its raison d'etre seems to be as a digestif, so medicine rather than a pleasure drink.

Finally, i have been fortunate enough to live in a wine-producing region, and where there's wine-making, there is pomace with which to ferment the stuff. now all i need is a distillery brave enough to distill grappa. And Lo! there is one such distillery not twenty minutes away. One quick visit to their tasting room later, and I now have all the makings for a moka pot corretto after dinner; the added benefit is that I get to sleep a little quicker these days.

---

$ xclip -o | wc -w
326