Franco Luxardo in Italy, he had a laugh as he recalled first encountering the ersatz “maraschino” cherries while in the United States as an exchange student in the 1950s. “I remember being surprised by this strange, bright red cherry they served me,” he said.
CHAPTER 3
LIQUOR STORE ARCHAEOLOGY
THE PROBLEM WITH THE WORLD IS THAT EVERYONE IS A FEW DRINKS BEHIND .
— Humphrey Bogart
M Y BROTHER TYLER AND I —long past our forays at the Jelly Belly store—used to play a game we called Liquor Store Archaeology. The aim was to make a pith-helmeted-like visit to older, neglected liquor stores—the sort of family-owned shops that perhaps were once prosperous and now do business mainly in pint-size flasks or liters of cheap wine or beer by the can. Inside, we’d scour the dark bottom shelves and dank back corners of the place, looking for forgotten bottles that had been languishing, perhaps for decades. That’s one of the special things about booze. Unlike just about every product in the world, distilled spirits almost never have to be rotated. More often than not, we turned up something rare or just plain strange. Our finds spanned the world: caraway-flavored kümmel from Germany, a wasabi-flavored schnapps, a brandy from Armenia called Ararat, a honey liqueur bottled with a real honeycomb.
It became rather competitive for a while, and it was funny to find the sorts of strange spirits that had been earlier generations’ versions of flavored vodka. I thought I had taken a slight lead in the game when I discovered a sweet, peachy aperitif called Panache—with a hippie-ish, 1970s faux–Art Nouveau label—that was made by Domaine Chandon but now is impossible to find. Then Tyler countered with a liqueur from Sicily called Mandarino del Castello. The label says it’s made from mandarin peels, and the oversaturated photo of the hilltop castle and too-blue Mediterranean sky suggests the mid-1960s, but about Mandarino del Castello we can find no information.
I figured I’d won when I unearthed a bottle of Cordial Campari. Though made by the same company, Cordial Campari is not to be confused with the more famous red Italian aperitivo. Cordial Campari is a clear, after-dinner liqueur with a taste of raspberries. I’d heard tales of Cordial Campari and seen it in a couple of old-man bars in Italy. It had been popular with the glamorous crowd that hung out on Rome’s Via Veneto in the 1950s and 1960s, but it’s never been widely available in the United States. Campari ceased production entirely in 2003. The bottle I found is probably decades old. It may have even been valuable—though probably not anymore, since my friends and I broke into the bottle during a party, and it’s now sitting half empty in my cabinet.
It was Tyler, though, who appeared to be the clear victor when he turned up something called, rather disturbingly, Peanut Lolita: a thick, peanut-flavored liqueur that once was produced by Continental Distilling in Linfield, Pennsylvania. The logo and fonts on the label suggest the early 1960s, but according to what little information we could unearth, Peanut Lolita was still around in the mid-1970s, when infamous presidential brother Billy Carter “often made drunken appearances” with the liqueur’s spokesmodel (this according to an essay by Christopher S. Kelley in Life in the White House: A Social History of the First Family and the President’s House ). Due to the liqueur’s overwhelming whiskey-and-peanut taste and grainy texture—not to mention its unfortunate name—it is unlikely to make a comeback anytime soon. We may now own the only two bottles of Peanut Lolita left in existence. Tyler tried his best to create a semirespectable drink with the stuff: he layered ice-cold Peanut Lolita and raspberry-flavored Chambord in a shot glass and called it a PB&J. Tyler’s bottle is three-quarters full, and probably will remain so for some time. After tasting his, I’ve never opened my own.
The
CHAPTER 3
LIQUOR STORE ARCHAEOLOGY
THE PROBLEM WITH THE WORLD IS THAT EVERYONE IS A FEW DRINKS BEHIND .
— Humphrey Bogart
M Y BROTHER TYLER AND I —long past our forays at the Jelly Belly store—used to play a game we called Liquor Store Archaeology. The aim was to make a pith-helmeted-like visit to older, neglected liquor stores—the sort of family-owned shops that perhaps were once prosperous and now do business mainly in pint-size flasks or liters of cheap wine or beer by the can. Inside, we’d scour the dark bottom shelves and dank back corners of the place, looking for forgotten bottles that had been languishing, perhaps for decades. That’s one of the special things about booze. Unlike just about every product in the world, distilled spirits almost never have to be rotated. More often than not, we turned up something rare or just plain strange. Our finds spanned the world: caraway-flavored kümmel from Germany, a wasabi-flavored schnapps, a brandy from Armenia called Ararat, a honey liqueur bottled with a real honeycomb.
It became rather competitive for a while, and it was funny to find the sorts of strange spirits that had been earlier generations’ versions of flavored vodka. I thought I had taken a slight lead in the game when I discovered a sweet, peachy aperitif called Panache—with a hippie-ish, 1970s faux–Art Nouveau label—that was made by Domaine Chandon but now is impossible to find. Then Tyler countered with a liqueur from Sicily called Mandarino del Castello. The label says it’s made from mandarin peels, and the oversaturated photo of the hilltop castle and too-blue Mediterranean sky suggests the mid-1960s, but about Mandarino del Castello we can find no information.
I figured I’d won when I unearthed a bottle of Cordial Campari. Though made by the same company, Cordial Campari is not to be confused with the more famous red Italian aperitivo. Cordial Campari is a clear, after-dinner liqueur with a taste of raspberries. I’d heard tales of Cordial Campari and seen it in a couple of old-man bars in Italy. It had been popular with the glamorous crowd that hung out on Rome’s Via Veneto in the 1950s and 1960s, but it’s never been widely available in the United States. Campari ceased production entirely in 2003. The bottle I found is probably decades old. It may have even been valuable—though probably not anymore, since my friends and I broke into the bottle during a party, and it’s now sitting half empty in my cabinet.
It was Tyler, though, who appeared to be the clear victor when he turned up something called, rather disturbingly, Peanut Lolita: a thick, peanut-flavored liqueur that once was produced by Continental Distilling in Linfield, Pennsylvania. The logo and fonts on the label suggest the early 1960s, but according to what little information we could unearth, Peanut Lolita was still around in the mid-1970s, when infamous presidential brother Billy Carter “often made drunken appearances” with the liqueur’s spokesmodel (this according to an essay by Christopher S. Kelley in Life in the White House: A Social History of the First Family and the President’s House ). Due to the liqueur’s overwhelming whiskey-and-peanut taste and grainy texture—not to mention its unfortunate name—it is unlikely to make a comeback anytime soon. We may now own the only two bottles of Peanut Lolita left in existence. Tyler tried his best to create a semirespectable drink with the stuff: he layered ice-cold Peanut Lolita and raspberry-flavored Chambord in a shot glass and called it a PB&J. Tyler’s bottle is three-quarters full, and probably will remain so for some time. After tasting his, I’ve never opened my own.
The
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