Getting Better Acquainted with... RuaVieja Aguardiente de Orujo

What’s that, mater and pater? You’re going on holiday to Spain? Excellent. Could you pick up some aguardiente de orujo for me? I’ll write it down for you. Spend up to 20 euros. Don’t worry what brand, I’ve only had a couple before, so you’re almost certain to get something new. Don’t go to too much trouble either though, eh?

Those were the instructions I gave my parents on hearing of their upcoming jaunt. What transpired was that my mum went to considerable lengths that culminated in her getting the exact same brand I’d had before. I knew it as soon as she called on her return, told me it was in a brown bottle, and began giving me a blow by blow account of how she had completed the task. I just knew it and the disappointment was so strong that I couldn’t let her finish her story. It was difficult apparently, she tried everywhere, no one had even heard of it, and she finally found some in Duty Free on the way home.

Worse than getting the first brand of aguardiente I’d ever tried, she paid 4 times more for it as well. Oh well. I’ll be able to give it a bit of a reappraisal at least.

What is aguardiente de orujo? Well, it’s pomace brandy – like the grappa that I keep banging on about, although this originates from Spain rather than from Italy. This one is full-bodied, but not as refined as my favourite varieties of white grappa. There’s something weird about it though, that I didn’t notice last time; it has for example, an aroma that is very reminiscent of baiju. Mrs Cake says it smells like wee. I have to disagree with that, it smells much nicer than that, but it is something I’d expect the casual drinker would find objectionable.

It is nicely sweet at the tip of the tongue, but further back, that funky baiju quality comes through and dominates. The, just as you’re deciding it has crossed the line into the area marked “unpleasant”, that extra 2% alcohol kicks in to give you a sweet and reassuring burn.

I think you can really learn to love it though because, on return visits my appreciation deepened and I’ve been enjoying it very much – not chilled or over ice though, like I’ve read suggested at classicspirits.co.uk and again on RuaVieja’s website.. I like it as is and, having tried it chilled, room temperature is the way I’ll continue. That has the added bonus of freeing up fridge space, and not having to plan ahead every time I want a glass.

If you’re an alcothusiast like I am, aguardiente de orujo adds another dimension to trips to Spain. It makes a nice change, and it’s a spirit that isn’t currently (at the time of writing) available via your online retailers in the UK, so it’s something exotic but close to home.

Perhaps we can even say this is a benchmark – how much of an alcothusiast you are depends on what you think of aguardiente, and whether, having tried it, you’d buy another bottle. I would. Maybe you could start by buying your first bottle.

Ok. Thanks for stopping by again (assuming you did). I’m off to Northern Italy again tomorrow – for a holiday, but also to stock up on grappa for the year. Hopefully I’ll get to visit some distilleries, too. So there won’t be a post next week, but I will be back the week after. Enjoy your week and keep your booze strong.

Poker Night... Part 3

Happy Sunday, everybody! You join me today as I reminisce on another poker night that I really should have told you about earlier, but life got in the way. So without further prevarication, I give you... poker night part 3.

Another Saturday, another poker event, another haze of drunken tomfoolery, and very good it was too – and not just because I won two of the rounds and finished second in the other. To be fair, I should have won that one too, but I got a bit carried away on the penultimate hand and betted when I should have gotten out.

Poker sure is fun, and we had a great old laugh, but one of the things I look forward to at least as much as the poker and the laughter… is the booze. I almost said there that it is an unwritten rule that you need to bring some special hard liquor with you, but frankly not everyone does. David brought a bottle of champagne to celebrate his new job appointment and a bottle of RuaVieja – which oddly enough has featured on these pages before (twice in fact) while Chris and Dave just took care of cider for themselves. I decided on a few bottles of whisky for everyone to try – Jim McEwan’s Symphony No 1, a blend which continues to go down very nicely, a Glenmorangie Original that I hadn’t opened yet, and… the one I’d been waiting to open for about a month… the Suntory Hakushu 12.

I’d also requested that Dave collect a few bottles of Double Maxim from his local Morrison’s, which he was kind enough to do.

So it was straight in with a beer, and the beginning of the poker.

The first game always seems to be a bit cagey, as the various players try to feel out the parameters – how cautious should you be? What effect are the specific blinds going to have? What are the playing styles of each player?

I won the first two or three hands, and it was looking good. We all betted cautiously, but I started to grow bolder as I saw that I seemed to be the only one getting decent hands. Chris was folding almost straight away every time, and Dave was bluffing when he had absolutely nothing. He won one or two like that though, and in the end it came down to me and him.

I’d almost finished my second beer by this point, had started a glass of the Symphony (no 1! 46% ABV), and was alternating sips of that with gulps of David’s champagne. So as we reached the closing stages of the first game, I realised I was on the way to being drunk – this was before dinner, of course. Three to four pints of water were in order.

That worked a treat, but not quick enough to prevent me betting big on the penultimate hand when I had nothing. A minute or two after that it was all over, and I knew it had all been my fault.

After popping out to the local curry house for tea, I went on to win games two and three [bit of poetry there for you]. I can’t recall any details about these, but I know there was a great deal of raucous laughter and smutty humour. I haven’t laughed so much and so heartily in a long time. David tells me that as we were clearing up afterwards, Chris mistook pictures of playing cards on the box of the poker set for real cards, and tried to pick them up. He then put on his glasses and went to sleep on the sofa. Dave and I joked that he had put on his glasses so that he could see his dreams better.

Game two was preceded by the opening of the Glenmorangie Original, which is 40% ABV, and 10 years old . I’d only tried this once before, and hadn’t been impressed, but there was a possibility the contents of that bottle had been compromised over time, since I was told the cork had atrophied. My bottle was an impulse buy when I saw it at £6 off on a trip to Tesco. I was never going to pay full price, and that discount gave me just enough incentive to give it a go. At first taste it seemed thin and uninteresting, but since the poker night in question was some time ago now, I can inform you that it became an example of another single malt that I came to enjoy more thoroughly by the glass.

It is fruity and sweet, and one that I’d encourage you to pick up if you see it on a £25 offer again. I probably will. It scores a remarkable 94 in Jim Murray’s 2013 Whisky Bible, though I wouldn’t quite rate it that highly.

The nose revealed pleasing orange notes while the palate brought sherbet and sweet, sweet barley. Far from being something to write off as an everyday drink, it came to be a treat that I actually preferred most times to the Talisker 10 (read more about that in the coming weeks), that I picked up the next time Tesco had some offers on. It doesn’t place all that highly on the all time single malt rankings, but for a malt at the very lower end of the price spectrum it punches way above its weight.

Back to the poker night, and finally it was the moment I’d been waiting for: the opening of the Suntory Hakushu 12 (43% ABV). I had toyed with the idea of not bringing this along at all, since my bottle of Maker’s Mark had lasted only two poker nights, proving so popular that people just inhaled it. Nevertheless, what’s the point in buying something a bit special if you keep it to yourself? (and anyway, the faster you drink it, the sooner you can buy something else…)

Suntory is the oldest Japanese distiller, and actually owns three distilleries – Yamazaki, Hibiki and Hakushu – each producing their own highly regarded single malts. I’ve tried the Hibiki once before, but this was my first purchase of an actual bottle of Japanese malt, a decision I took based on reviews and scoring from a number of experts and review sites.

The bottle certainly looks the part, but I was a little disappointed to find that it is sealed by a screwcap – a better class of screwcap, I’ll grant you, than the standard one you get with a blended scotch, but still… this is a single malt -  and I was hoping to hear that sound I love so much – you know the one; the squeak and the pop.

Luckily, the contents make up for that one moment of denial. I know Japanese whisky is renowned for its quality, and here I can see why. It reminds me a little of my favourite malt, Caol Ila – though I don’t think it’s quite as good as that. Even so, it reaches a pretty high standard. There’s a lot going on, with a good deal of complexity and drinkability, so was looking forward to getting to know it a little better over the next few months before I come to decide what I’m going to get next.

If you’re looking for some amateurish tasting notes, I’d say it’s soft and fruity on the palate, with a little bit of peat and a slightly bitter finish – which is where it fails against the Caol Ila.

In the end, Suntory Hakushu 12 did not develop into the favourite dram that my over excitable anticipatory gland hoped it might be. Sure, it was fresh, clean and sweet but that bitter finish continued to let it down. It was however my second favourite out of 5 when it made an appearance at the Manchester Whisky Club’s Japanese Whisky Night. It remains to be seen what that says about Japanese whisky in general. I remain keen to try more and, as ever, look forward to the next poker night.

How do you select wine?

This week’s post comes to you a couple of days early because I won’t be around on Friday evening, when I normally add the finishing touches, and release it into the abyss. That’s right, my birthday treat has arrived, and the missus and I are headed on a road trip to the Isle of Islay, where they make several of my favourite whiskies. I never thought I’d go there, but there you go; Mrs Cake is known to pull out all the stops from time to time. I will tell you all about the trip and all the things I learn at some point in the future, but don’t be expecting it next week; it will probably take me a good couple of months to write it up. For now though, please enjoy this week’s post, which is concerned with how difficult it is for novices like me to go wine shopping.

Last Saturday the wife and I hosted a dinner party at our house for 8 of my friends from work. It was a lot of fun and a lot of work (pretty near a whole day cooking in the kitchen) that the missus organised and coordinated with military precision, and it required a lot of drinking. To facilitate the drinking though, I got to indulge in one of my favourite pastimes; booze shopping.

I’ve been budgeting in a ruthless manner since paying for numerous holidays in 2011 and the wedding in 2012 led to my credit card bill going through the roof, so I rather optimistically planned to get all the booze in for £30. Oddly enough, and thanks to Tesco’s clubcard scheme, I only exceeded that by £5.

It was a case of quantity not quality really, so not the most exciting trip ever, but it did give me chance to explore the possibilities of some budget brands, and I was able to leave feeling only a minimum quantity of guilt.

What was most challenging though, was the purchase of the wine. In case you missed it any of the previous times I said it, I’m just not into wine. I don’t find it interesting, I don’t find it particularly tasty, I don’t find it particularly demands that I drink it – unlike other kinds of booze, and I really don’t enjoy shopping for it. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I dislike wine, but let’s say I have a glass of wine: it will take me ages to drink that glass, and then I won’t want another one. So suffice to say; I don’t really see the point, and I don’t see how anyone can be that bothered about it.

But! Sometimes it is necessary to buy wine, like when you’re hosting a party and some of the guests are going to be girls. Sure, I knew everyone would be bringing their own booze, but you do need to provide some basic provisions. To complicate things, two of our guests were Will and Catriona, who actively like wine. A lot. So I felt I needed to get some decent wine, if at all possible, even though it seemed likely we’d end up with it at the end of the night, and there’s no point in us ending up with it, because we just don’t drink wine. I drink beer and spirits and Mrs Cake just doesn’t tend to drink casually at all.

The other purchases were more or less trouble free. I started with vodka from Aldi. Mrs Cake had planned vodka jellies, and I wasn’t sure there was enough Red Square left to do the job. It turned out that there wasn’t – we used half a pint of vodka, half a pint of boiling water and half a pint of cold water to make the jelly, so the purchase of Aldi’s more premium brand proved necessary. I was tempted to get the brand that is just called “Vodka”, but they did have a Tamova Blue Label premium variety (as opposed to the standard red label), and I figured I’d go for that this time. It’s 50cl, 40% ABV, and £9.50 or something like that.

vodka; out with the old...

...and in with the new

I’ve tried it on its own since, and it’s neither better nor worse than any other standard budget vodka, from what I can tell without doing a proper taste test. I think it’s a bit stronger than the red Tamova, and a little bit more expensive, so that’s probably why it’s called ‘premium’.

I overruled Mrs Cake’s insistence that we should get the wine from Aldi. Sure, for us it’s ok, but “bottled exclusively for Aldi” just doesn’t seem right when it’s for other people.

It was off to Tesco then, where I picked up some beers (Tuborg, that only I drank), cider (Magners, that no one drank, but I have been enjoying since), and Sierra Reposado tequila (gold, 38% ABV, 50cl) that I used to make a variety of margarita (Cadillac) that went down quite well. I hadn’t seen the gold variety of Sierra before, and it now holds the record for briefest lifespan (about 3 hours from breaking the seal to placing the empty bottle in the recycling). About 24 measures were required for the cocktail, and we finished the rest off in shots. That’s what I bought it for, and it won’t be missed. My el Jimador, 100% agave has frankly exposed cheaper tequila for what it really is. I kept that under wraps for myself.

Yeah whatever, Neil; what about the wine? I’m getting to that: how do you choose wine? There’s so fricking much of it! Why is there so much? The prices vary greatly, and experts tell you that the more you pay, the better variety of grape you’re getting, but wine ‘experts’ on TV tell you that cheaper ones can be just as good… It’s difficult, and I don’t even care that much, but I did want my wine-appreciating friends to enjoy it.

Nevertheless, I didn’t want to go overboard, and figured a bottle of white and a bottle of red would do. From what I’ve heard, pink (or rose) seems to have fallen somewhat out of general favour of late, and it seems we’ve already got two bottles of that in our cupboard.

So the first stop was the special offers section. If it said ‘half price’ and half price was £5 or less, it had a chance. I was struggling, because I have an unspoken rule that you shouldn’t buy Blossom Hill, Jacob’s Creek or Kumala (amongst others). I’m not sure why, but they just seem ordinary. Everyone’s had them before, they’re always on offer, and while I’m far from qualified enough to be a wine snob, I just don’t think they’re going to impress anyone when they see the bottle.

Mrs Cake offered, “look for ones that have got badges”. She meant of course, wines that have won awards – which is nearly all the ones in Aldi, but surprisingly few of the ones in Tesco. In one or two instances there were bottles that looked like they’d got badges, but we couldn’t be sure, and figured they were a cunning ploy to trick amateurs like us into buying them.

 Finally, after what seemed like forever, we chose two bottles. I have no idea what they were, where they were from, what grape variety they were made from or anything like that because, as I say, wine just isn’t interesting to me, so if you were hoping for some detail, I’m sorry to disappoint you.

At the party I made a point of asking people who cared about wine, how they went about selecting it. They said go to the special offer section, and look for badges. It seems we’d done the right thing. A lot of the awards are based on blind taste tests (IWSC or example), so you’d think they must be all right if they’ve got a badge. It doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily agree, though.

We managed to foist the bottle of red on our guests, but the white remained untouched, and has been added to the wine graveyard that takes up one half of my Special Spirits Cabinet. We also managed to acquire two further bottles from guests. Ass! And some cider – yay

I tried a glass of red a couple of days later, and I didn’t like it at all. Then, later in the week I stuck a half finished bottle of pink in the fridge and tried a glass – and that was really nice. Perhaps it’s too early to write pink wine off? I don’t know what brand it was, but it was pink so you probably don’t care anyway.

The vodka jellies went down very well, the cocktails went down very well, and the only thing that didn’t was my aguardiente de orujo (RuaVieja). I couldn’t believe it, but no one liked it AT ALL. I mean, that’s fine; more for me, but no one could believe I would enjoy drinking it; they looked at me like I was crazy or something. Well, I like it, I don’t care what anyone else thinks. Sadly it is now finished, but that just means I can start thinking about replacing it.

So, I’d like to know if you have any suggestions for making the chore of selecting wine easier. Don’t be shy. Be warned though, I don’t want recommendations, I want methods. Thanks in advance.

Booze Wars! Tesco's Grappa Julia Superiore vs RuaVieja

Good evening everyone, it sure is nice to welcome you to this week’s blogpost. Just a brief one this week, and while I don’t want to lower your expectations too much, it probably isn’t the best thing I’ve ever written. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy it. You can start now.

Since returning from my honeymoon in Ibiza [now more than] a few months ago, I’d been waiting for an opportunity to conduct another booze wars experiment; pitting the bargain orujo I’d picked up (RuaVieja, 42% ABV) against the cheapest grappa I’ve ever seen in the UK, Tesco’s GrappaJulia Superiore (38% ABV). 

I think this is the first time I’ve ever had two spirits of this type in the house at the same time, so the chance to compare was not one I was going to pass up. Grappa and orujo are both spirits made from distilling pomace, which is the stuff that is left over from wine making – stems, skins etc. It differs from brandy in that brandy is actually distilled wine. From my experiments so far, I have to say I have a preference for pomace spirit.

I took out two glasses as you can see, and poured similar amounts of spirit into each. Both looked identical to me, so I moved straight on to the smell test. I had a good sniff, and detected that the Julia is significantly more fragrant than the RuaVieja. I offered them to Mrs Cake to smell, but she has a cold and can’t smell anything. So, into the lounge I went for some tasting and to finish watching The Taking of Pelham 123 with John Travolta and Denzel Washington (which surprisingly isn’t bad – I know!).

Proper tastings should be conducted without distractions according to whisky expert Jim Murray, but real life is conducted with background noise and entertainment. I was drinking in real life, so getting comfy in front of the telly was the method.

In contrast to the smell test, the RuaVieja performs better than the Julia in terms of flavour. Julia is sweet on entry but bitter at the finish, while RuaVieja appears to me to have greater depth. It’s a pleasure to drink, and an absolute bargain whether you pay the 3 euros 90 that I was lucky enough to get it for (have I mentioned that before?), or the full price of 12 Euros – which is still cheaper than the Julia.

Julia isn’t bad when you think about how much you tend to have to pay for grappa in the UK. It isn’t the best quality, but if you really need a bottle of grappa, you can’t turn your nose up at £13. ‘Who really needs a bottle of grappa?’ you might ask. Well: I do. Perhaps not at the moment; I’ve got the RuaVieja, and I think I’ll be drinking that first.

Another trip to Spain is on the cards this summer, so on top of everything I’m looking forward to hitting the booze shops and the duty free again. I think you can be fairly sure I’ll be picking up some more orujo at some point along the way.

In other news, last night saw the first physical meeting of the Manchester Whisky Club, which went off very successfully. I’ll probably write a bit more about that in the coming weeks. Once again, it is the weekend, and as usual drink features very highly on my agenda – going out, staying in; it doesn’t matter, I’ve got some booze and it’s going in mah belly. Tonight I’m thinking pub, homemade pizza, cans, homemade caipirinhas, cracking open a new bottle of vodka and special spirits to finish. That was quite a poetic sentence. Tomorrow I’m thinking pub sesh and dinner out. Sunday I’m thinking a couple of quiet drinks at home.

Before I take my leave then, I’d like to wish you all a splendid weekend, and I hope you’ll pop back next week when I’ll have something else for you, something better. Hopefully. Till then, you can follow me on Twitter if you like inane comments about booze and stupid thoughts that seem funny when you type them, but actually aren’t. Laters!

Booze Tourism part 4: Ibiza, and... part 3 of the Wedding Trilogy; The Honeymoon

Hello! And thanks for coming back for another instalment of Booze Tourism, and part three of my wedding trilogy. This time I’ll be focusing on observations and experiences from my recent honeymoon in Ibiza. This episode will be something of a departure in that this is the first time I’ve actually been a booze tourist since this blog began – all previous instalments were based on trips that occurred before I began writing the blog, and were therefore entirely constructed from memory – like back in March when I wrote the first booze tourism article about Venice. 

When I embarked on that trip (and the others), I had no idea that I would later be writing a blog that would draw upon it. This time then, I was actively looking for things to write about, and trying to form ideas of what I might say as I went along. As a result, you might find that I have a lot more to say.

To prevent this from becoming a long, rambling, eye-stinging jumble of text that no one has the time or inclination to read, I’m actually going to split it into sections, so it’s easier for you to find the bits you might be interested in. I’ll try to fit anecdotes and detail around that basic structure, and we’ll see how it goes. So before we get to the really interesting things, let’s start with the essential...

Spanish Lager, or Cerveza

San Miguel

I think I can safely say I’ve never tried a Spanish lager that I didn’t like – from the first time I ever tried San Miguel, to the Estrella cans that random people sell you on the streets of Barcelona... There don’t really seem to be that many types, but they’re all good. At various points during the holiday I bought 6 to 8 cans of each (as well as the odd giant bottle of San Miguel (I love those things).

Cruzcampo on the beach

I have to say though, despite having been a devotee to beer for many years, I probably couldn’t really tell one from the other if put to the test. But that’s all fine. They’re strong, they taste good, stick em in your fridge and bring one out to chug down when it gets hot – which it invariably does.

I drank one or two beers in the various bars and restaurants we visited, but it seemed a shame to pay bar prices when we had a terrace back at our accommodation, and a fridge to keep our beers cold.

Estrella

Mahou

You can see from my various pictures that I most frequently bought multiple 330ml cans. That’s pretty normal in Spain. One of the supermarkets we visited (in Cala Vadella) actually had some 440ml cans (the type we’re more used to in the UK), but in that heat, 330ml is fine. You don’t need to be stuck drinking a large can when your beer is rapidly warming in the Spanish heat – even when you try to keep it in the shade. Sure, my friends and I used to laugh at the characters in Aussie soap Neighbours for drinking those tiny beers (what’s the matter with them? Lightweights!) but it makes sense, and if you want more, just open another one. It’s at least cold, because it’s been waiting for you in the fridge.

Cruzcampo, San Miguel, Mahou and Estrella were all represented at some point during the 7 days. The only other Spanish beer I can think of just now is Alhambra, but I didn’t see that anywhere. I think that’s more visible in the South of Spain, being that it’s named after the famous building in Granada.

One of the best things about Spain is the availability of booze. Pretty much any store that sells food also sells booze, so you can nip into a bakery, pick up a croissant, and also get a giant bottle of San Miguel… which you can then drink as you walk through the streets, or on the beach, or anywhere. No one cares and there is no stigma, unlike here in the UK.

There was one beach we visited, Cala Salada, where a couple of people had set up their own businesses selling mojitos. They carried all the various paraphernalia in rucksacks, then sat under a parasol mixing the drinks. We didn’t have one, but they looked nice, and it was a nice idea. It was just a shame that you had to drive to the beach, so drinking strong cocktails wasn’t an option for me (much as I would have liked to). As a business venture, it probably wouldn’t win funding on Dragon’s Den, but you’ve got to appreciate the effort.

I suppose the choice of beer in Spain is limited compared to the UK, and that might get tiresome if you actually lived there, but for a visit it’s sufficient.

Aguardiente de Orujo

Booze cavern

If you read my preview to this post, “Looking forward to theDuty Free”, you will recall that aguardiente de orujo was one of my main targets for this trip. Being a fan of Italian grappa, and hearing that this was the Spanish equivalent, I determined I needed to find some. It didn’t take long. On our second (or maybe third) day in Cala Vadella we walked across the beach and up to the local supermarket where, tucked away in the back was an awesome booze cavern.

Before I go any further, one thing you need to know about Spain (besides the fact you can buy booze nearly anywhere) is that they have fantastic booze shops that put our UK ‘specialist’ stores like Carringtons to shame. Even this tiny supermarket had a better variety and selection of booze than most booze shops back home. Somewhat surprisingly, wine was kept to a minimum and intriguing spirits and liqueurs were all over the place. A lot of them were dusty, adding even greater mystique to their appeal.

I knew what I was after, so I bypassed the scotch and the rest of the whiskies, the brandies and the rums – even the grappas, of which there were a few - and stepped into uncharted territory where I didn’t know what the bottles contained. And there I found what I was looking for – two distinct bottles marked aguardiente de orujo.

They were both in unusual bottles that looked like they might have been of more than a passing interest to Indiana Jones – as if they contain the soul of Jesus Christ and the breast milk of the Virgin Mary.

The Virgin Mary's breast milk?

The first, in a grey rectangular shaped bottle, had a price sticker on the top that said 12 euros, while the second was in a more bulbous brown bottle that was for me more intriguing. This one didn’t have any price on it, so I asked the young checkout girl. She didn’t know, so she asked the older lady who was behind the cheese counter.

“Three ninety”, she said (in Spanish).

“Three ninety”, said the girl (in English).

“Three ninety?” said I, also in English. It took me some time to absorb this.

“Si”.

“Three ninety?”

“Si”

“Three… ninety?”

“Si”

I didn’t know what to do with this information, and I already knew what the answer to my next question would be, but I felt like I needed more information.

“…do you know if it’s any good? ‘Cos this other one’s like, 12 euros...”

Shrug.

That was the answer I was expecting.

It appears it was 3.90. I was already prepared for having to make the tough choice between the two bottles, but this actually made things more complicated. I was initially more drawn to the brown bottle, and wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to be astronomically expensive. This was a different prospect altogether – it was microscopically inexpensive. What was I supposed to draw from that?!? How good could 70cl of strong alcohol be (42% ABV, another attractive detail) if it only costs 3 euros and 90 cents?

I remembered that at home we have a few phrases that might provide some guidance; you get what you pay for; you buy cheap, you buy twice and if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. But wouldn’t it be stupid to pay 12 euros for a bottle when I could get one for under 4?

What a quandary. I didn’t go expecting to buy more than one bottle of aguardiente, so I wanted to make sure I got one I’d enjoy. How are you supposed to make these decisions? Well, it went like this: 3.90 is so cheap that if I didn’t like it, I could just throw it away and buy a different bottle. I suppose I could have bought both, but I exercised a bit of restraint for one, and opted for the cheap one: RuaVieja. I can’t remember what the other one was called.

As you can imagine, I couldn’t wait to try it later that evening. When later came, I twisted the cap and poured it into one of the glasses we’d borrowed from our apartment’s bar. It was a clear liquid. It looked like grappa, it smelled like grappa… it tasted like grappa. Fantastic, I love it. And did I mention it was only 3.90? Mrs Cake and I regaled each other with stories of the purchase for the next few days, and now I’m telling you. 3.90!

When we arrived in our second destination, Santa Eulalia in the east of Ibiza’s southern coast, I found a few more excellent booze shops, and made sure to look up RuaVieja to see whether 3.90 was the correct price, or whether I’d gotten a bargain. I found it normally sold for 12 euros, so that was excellent. To be honest, this stuff is so good that it would be a bargain at twice that – especially when you consider how expensive grappa can be in the UK.

Also available were a couple of other varieties, one a cream version and the other a liqueur version with respective alcohol contents of around 24% and 17%.

Being that I was on holiday, I was able to dip into the RuaVieja nearly every evening, sitting on various terraces, sometimes accompanied by a cheap (but nice) cigar that took about 50 minutes to smoke. It was during one of these sessions that I happened to see the lady in the hotel room next to ours completely naked, so that was nice. Let this be a lesson to you: net curtains are not sufficient for preserving your modesty at night when you turn the light on.

Living the dream

There was one major drawback with the RuaVieja; it had one of those screw caps that never reaches an acceptable level of tightness. You could tighten slightly, and then it would just push through to become loose again. I wasn’t intending to drink the whole bottle on holiday, so it presented a problem as to how I was going to get my booty home without leaking its contents all over my bag.

We decided we would just buy some tape, and began the quest of trying to find some. In the UK you can buy tape nearly anywhere, and if you don’t know where to buy something, there’s always the pound shop.

It’s not like that in Spain. They have those tat (I mean ‘gift’) shops everywhere, and they look like our pound shops, but while they do occasionally branch out from stocking tat – such as plastic gorillas you squeeze to make boobies pop out - to carrying a few practical items, tape isn’t one of them. Similarly, supermarkets limit their wares exclusively to food and beverage items.

On the last day it was starting to get desperate, when I saw a shop called Bricolaje, and a conversation I once had with one of our Spanish student lodgers came to mind. I had been telling him about how I was going to be doing ‘DIY’ that weekend, and he didn’t understand what it was. After explaining, I asked what DIY would be called in Spain, and after thinking about it for a while, he decided it was probably ‘bricolaje’. So that bit of knowledge proved useful and I was able to procure some tape and make sure my RuaVieja made it back to Manchester. For good measure I also put it in a ziplock bag. There was a tiny bit of leakage within there, but nothing significant.

I haven’t had occasion to try it again since my return, but I’m looking forward to doing a comparison test with Tesco’s Grappa JuliaSuperiore. 

One final thing; here’s an interesting site with a little more info. It doesn’t look the most professional, but there are some interesting things on there.

Sangria

 “Sun, sea, sex and sangria” is a phrase you might have heard before – maybe you saw it on a t-shirt in the 80s. It’s a piece of alliteration that is commonly used to flippantly describe Spanish holidays. Well, we all know what the first three are, but what is sangria?

Sun, sea...

It’s a drink. Yes, we knew that, but can I be more specific? The answer to that question is: only a little. See, I’d never had sangria before. A bit of checking on Wikipedia reveals that it’s a wine-based punch, popular in Spain, Portugal and Argentina. I kind of knew that without really knowing it, but that’s as far as Wikipedia goes. It seems the recipe is variable.

It’s not something I’d normally think about drinking but… I do write a booze blog, and I was on holiday in Spain. Mrs Cake and I saw another guest at our apartment complex in Cala Vadella carrying a jug back from the bar to the pool area and we thought, we should do that.

...sex and sangria

So we did. Unfortunately, the barmaid had nearly finished making it by the time it occurred to me that it might be useful to take note of what she was putting in it. She definitely put some vermouth in there (Martini Rosso, I think), but other than that and the various chopped fruits, I didn’t see. There were at least 4 spirits, and I think she may have topped it up with cranberry juice, or something like that. If it was wine, it was wine out of a carton rather than a bottle. There were also chunks of orange, lemon, apple and kiwi which we enjoyed eating after the drink was gone.

Nevertheless, it was delicious. I was particularly hot that day, and I could have dispatched that whole jug in an instant. Mrs Cake suggested I nip back to the apartment and pick up a beer instead, to ensure I left some for her.

Hierbas Ibicencas and Absinthe

A few years ago Mrs Cake went to Ibiza with some of her friends. She brought a whole bunch of presents back for me, and one was a bottle of Hierbas Ibicencas. What’s that? This might provide the kind of information you’d like to know 

Twigs

If you can’t be bothered to read all that, it’s an interesting Ibizan alcoholic drink, made from herbs such as rosemary and thyme, and it tastes very aniseedy. The most interesting thing about it is that (as you can see from the various pictures) there are all twigs in the bottle. I’m still fairly new to this booze blogging lark, but I haven’t seen that anywhere else yet.

It took me quite a while to polish off that first bottle, but I used to down a small glass while I was cooking from time to time. I think it’s intended more as an after dinner type thing – a digestif, which just sounds like trying to make a legitimate excuse for having a drink to me. Look, do you want a drink? Yes. Then have one. You don’t need to say, I’ve finished me dinner, I’d better have a digestif… I don’t know: them Europeans.

Twigs

So, I did decide that should I go to Ibiza, and providing it wasn’t too expensive, I would get another bottle of Hierbas Ibicencas. It turns out it’s not too expensive, but to be fair, it’s difficult to find any booze in Ibiza that’s too expensive – unless you go in the clubs. It’s all I could do to make sure I didn’t buy everything.

The first place I saw Hierbas Ibicencas was in the small shop in our apartment complex. A 20cl bottle was 4.90. Now, I’m not a massive fan of aniseed, so I figured a 20cl bottle would suit me just fine, and I like those hip flask shaped bottles you can get.

Mrs Cake said I’d probably be able to get it a lot cheaper, so I figured it would be best to wait until we got to the town of Santa Eulalia before ultimately deciding on a purchase. Oddly, all the bottles in the town were more expensive. Only by another euro or so, but you know, once you’ve seen something for one price, you don’t want to pay more. So it wasn’t until we had a day in Ibiza Town that I got around to buying.

It was a shop by the marina where they actually had four types you could try. Mrs Cake asked the proprietor if we could, and he asked which one we wanted to try. I thought that was a bit tight – I wanted to try them all and then decide which one I wanted to buy. He indicated that two of the four on offer were the best – one had an alcohol content of around 25%, and the other 35%. Well, you know me – when given a choice, the strongest wins. I tried them both anyway. The first (lower alcohol) was sweet and tasted just like the bottle that Mrs Cake had bought me all that time ago. The second was much more to my taste; more savoury, less sticky, more like a spirit. This was something I could drink for relaxation in an evening, if I fancied a change from the usual whisky or grappa. I made my purchase. I think it was 4.30.

One thing I didn’t realise before I started booze shopping was that they also make absinthe in Ibiza. It has a similar aniseedy taste to Hierbas Ibicencas, so I suppose that makes sense. As soon as I saw I could get a small bottle of that for a similar price, I figured it would be rude not to, really.

The first time I ever bought a bottle of absinthe, it cost me over £40… which means it is still the second most expensive bottle I ever bought. It was back in 2000, when (it seemed) people in the UK were first starting to hear about it – a psychedelic alcoholic drink that would make you hallucinate and had caused Van Gogh to sever his ear. How could I resist that? I’ve got two ears…

Another explanation for the Van Gogh thing is that his flatmate, Paul Gauguin put glue on the phone, and then went out and called it. I have no idea if that one’s true. It seems unlikely, since the glue would have to remain sticky for however long it took to get to the phone, and then stick instantly and permanently once Van Gogh put it to his ear.

I had to order a bottle from an advert in Viz magazine, and have it delivered to a friend’s house (I was still living with my parents at the time).

I lived in Rotherham, and my friend in Newcastle, so it was a couple of hours of train journey before I could get my mitts on it. That meant I’d had at least four (possibly six) cans of beer before I got to his house, and it wasn’t many more minutes after that that we were having a joint.

I found out then that these aren’t ideal starting conditions for drinking absinthe. Absinthe is typically around 70% ABV, and we would have been drinking fairly quickly. I soon fell asleep - sitting, with my head on my knees.

That wasn’t the end of the evening though. If a university education taught me anything, it was how to prolong and survive a session. A brief powernap later, and I was compus mentus enough to rejoin the party. Later that night I got lost on the way to the toilet – and not for the last time, but there were definitely no ear-severing incidents. Being drunk in other people’s houses is confusing.

If you check this Wikipedia article, you can see that there’s quite a complicated procedure for drinking absinthe. The booklet that came with the bottle described some variation of the Bohemian Method, saying you should pour a little absinthe over a teaspoon of sugar then set it alight. You would then watch it burn until the sugar caramelises. We had a lot of trouble with that. For one thing, what’s the point in having extra strong alcohol if you’re going to burn some of the alcohol off? Secondly, how do you know when the sugar has caramelised? I still don’t know the answer to that one (or the first one for that matter).

Knowing that the longer we allowed the vapour to burn, the less alcohol would remain on the teaspoon, we soon decided that the sugar had probably caramelised. The next step then, is to tip the contents of the spoon into a glass of absinthe and stir it around. This obviously caused the absinthe in the glass to catch fire, and there were no instructions as to what we should do with this – blow it out? Leave it? Drink it?

I can see now, from the Wikipedia article that you’re supposed to pour a shot of water into the glass to extinguish the flames. That definitely didn’t form part of the instructions we were following. We ended up doing a combination of the first two ideas, before doing the third. None of the sugar had dissolved, which perhaps is the purpose of this whole rigmarole, so we ended up pouring burning sugar granules down our throats.

It’s not entirely pleasant, but I have repeated this ritual a few times since. You can’t really drink absinthe straight because it burns your gullet like crazy. It immediately gives you the alcoholic equivalent of bread chest. The Bohemian method also gets you smashed real quick, because if you do follow those instructions, you feel instantly changed, and ready to party.

I’ll be trying the “French Method” shortly, so keep a look out for my post on that.

Duty Free

If you remember from my preview, I was really looking forward to hitting the duty free. It was something of a disappointment though, when we finally got to it. The booze shops in Ibiza generally are so good and the booze so cheap that duty free really isn’t all that special. Nevertheless, despite being tempted on numerous occasions throughout the holiday (one of my targets, Cutty Sark was selling at 11 euros) I told myself that once I’d gotten the aguardiente de orujo for drinking during the holiday, and bottles of hierbas ibicencas and absinthe for taking home, I would save my booze budget for the duty free.

As I say, it was a little disappointing. I’d been hoping to pick up some special scotch, but there wasn’t all that much in that respect (there was a disproportionate amount of brandy, and I wasn’t in the market for that). They did have a Highland Park, but it wasn’t the 21 years old at 47.5% ABV that I had been hoping to find, instead it was a bottle marked “1998” that had been “bottled exclusively for international travel” and the alcohol content was only 40%. I was still tempted, and at 53 euros it was still within my budget, but the alcohol content put me off, and I didn’t even bother to find out what the 1998 meant – was that when it was bottled? Or was that when it began aging?

When we arrived back in Manchester, and passed through that last duty free shop that you get to before entering arrivals, there was a Highland Park marked “2001”. So further investigation will be necessary for future occasions.

The wrong Dewar's

There was no Cutty Sark, but they did have my other target, Dewar’s 12 Year Old. I hadn’t realised it was a blend, but apparently they age the whisky for a year after it has been blended also, and it was recommended in my whisky book, 101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die. I think that’s the first time I’ve seen an aged blend.

Having checked my book again last night, I’m not actually sure it’s the same one, though. The one in the book has a black label, and says “Special Reserve”. Mine has a blue label, and says, “Double Aged”. Yeah, it looks like I didn’t even get the right one. Goddammit!

It was 35 euros, which has converted to £28 (for a litre), so I’ve got a lot of booze budget left for the future, and I believe this will be the most expensive blended scotch I’ve bought so far, though that only equates to £19.60 for 70cl, which is actually only a little bit more expensive than the Black Grouse.

 The only issue now is that it will be quite a while before I can buy anything else because I’ve got a lot of unfinished bottles and now four unopened ones (my brother-in-law brought a bottle of Maker’s Mark over from Canada with him), so I need to make a bit of headway and at least finish one of my brandies and one of my blended scotches first. There are certainly many adventures to come.

You can find a review of the Dewar’s (the one that I actually bought) here. Perhaps I ought to have read that before I travelled, as it looks like I might have another uninspiring blend to get rid of… a litre of it this time. I probably should have gone for a single malt, but there wasn’t that much to choose from. Well, you never know; I might still like it – Scotchnoob has based his review on a miniature, and I could name many times that I haven’t started to appreciate a whisky until I’m halfway down the bottle, so we’ll see.

Conclusion

Shall we have a conclusion, then? We may as well. The main thing I’d like you to take away from all this is that Spain is an excellent place to go if you’re a booze tourist. The shops are filled with tons of fascinating bottles of various things, and most of them are very reasonably priced. You can drink virtually anywhere, and they produce a lot of their own varieties so there’s plenty you can bring back to impress your friends with. If your friends aren’t impressed, you can gaze at them lovingly, and enjoy a nice drink on your own.

I certainly made sure I sampled a few things this time round, and there’s plenty left over for future visits. I didn’t think about it at the time, but it might be worthwhile seeing if there’s a hierbas ibicencas producer that you can visit. How likely it is I’m ever going to return to Ibiza again is hard to say at this point, but we had such a lovely time that I certainly wouldn’t rule it out.

I hope this has been of some help to you, and if not, at least a little bit interesting. Look out for future Booze Tourism posts, and the follow up on that bottle of absinthe. I’ll see you soon.