Sip

As “local” drinks go, they don’t come much more unique that Feni. It’s a specialty made just in, and for, the little state of Goa in the southeastern shores of India. When I asked around about what the local drink was I heard “Feni” without hesitation, and almost always with a slightly uncertain shifting of the eyes, as if there was some disdain or perhaps shame that came along with just saying the name of the stuff.

“Okay,” I’d say, “what is it? What is it like?”

What would follow, on several occasions, would be an odd description of very specific practices that sounded a bit like some sort of Santeria ritual. Unlike most spirits, which come from grains or even fruits, this stuff comes from nuts. Specifically from cashews (not native to India, but introduced by the Portuguese long ago) or coconuts. Pulped up nuts are buried under a mango tree in special jars where they ferment for specific periods of time and are then strained and filtered to extract the spirits. In the end, the drink itself is a mostly clear liquid that tastes a bit like a cross between rum and vodka, with perhaps a very, very slight essence of nut.

People here really like to mix it with lemonade. So much so that if you say you’d like it straight or neat or just say “no thanks” to any one of the many mixers they suggest you’ll get a baffled look. Not shocking, since it tastes so similar to vodka that saying you just want a room temperature glass of it is…not right. But that’s what I did at first, so that I’d get to just taste the stuff, not the mixers. I’m not too proud to admit that I’ve had warm, straight vodka before. This was tastier than that.

The odd ubiquity across all India of what they call “the head wobble” is entertaining and seems to be a kind of national pastime. So when you ask for Feni and you see heads bobbling in Bollywood dance circles while eyes roll through a glorious parade of possible emotions, it’s hard to know what they’re thinking. Amusement is my guess. You’ll be brought some, and then left alone in an act that feels remarkably like they’re lighting a fuse on dynamite and getting clear of it.

I was impressed by the smoothness and delicacy of flavor. I expected heat in my throat and then spreading heat from my stomach, but found that it went from lightly nut infused vodka/clear rum taste on my tongue straight to my head. A passing street musician, who was maybe 4 foot 7 in boots, asked me what country I was from and when I said “U.S.” began playing the strangest rendition of Simon and Garfunkle’s “America” I’ve ever heard. Thickly accented vocals, strange chords, and variations on the melody that made it totally his own. While that moment itself was a bit dreamlike already, I credit the Feni for putting it over the edge. I kept looking around and wondering if this was all really happening, and really as surreal as it seemed.

If you find yourself in Goa and have the chance, I say go for the Feni and take the ride. Combine the experience with a dip in the Arabian Sea, or just watch it roll its way in along the sandy Goan shoreline. Sparsely populated, much of southern Goa is an amazing blend of village, jungle, and empty beach that blend into each other without rhyme or reason, so you’ll only be sharing your Feni with those you really want to.

Make no mistake, if you are in Portugal you will be told this is some sort of traditional thing, going way back to the very first rums ever made, and being on the menu at every Portuguese bar as well as in every home.  But, like fraternity hazings or somber funerals or online “likes,” it is a tradition that should have been aborted before it was ever born.

It is often a pleasure to experience local beverages, and sometimes truly surprising, even confusing.  Rarely is it quite this disgusting.  This drink is a filthy pirate, and not of the charming, Jack Sparrow variety.  More along the lines of an actual, modern day pirate, who attacks people out on their boats, steals everything, murders or kidnaps, smells like diesel and dried piss, sings rape songs off key, and breaks bottles on the street.  And it tastes like it too.  Imagine, if you will, a blend of your grandfather’s  aftershave and “spice” cough syrup (if that was a thing), then add a dash of nail polish remover (say, bubblegum scented) and top it off with the taste equivalent of how your head feels after a night of Jagermeister.  If that is your kind of thing, you’ll love BeiRao.

The most surprising thing about this drink is that it sits alongside the wines of Portugal, which are among the most delicious in the world, and cheap as hell here.  Somehow people choose this sugar laden assault on the stomach over a glass of local wine.  I don’t get it.   But, hey, it’s tradition.

Oxford is a town that reeks of old timey institutions, ancient libraries, cobblestone streets, and the confusing, empowering,yet conflicted relationship between church and academia.  The air buzzes with the science, literature, and history, of a city founded on higher learning.  Tonight, as I sit in The Old Bookbinder’s Ale House soaking in the atmosphere of this pub that was founded here in 1869, I ask a fellow musician what’s the local brew.  It’s a lager, no shock there, aptly named the Oxford Noble Lager.

This beer rolls out of the tap with the ease and precision of an English gentleman.  It is in no rush, but it knows how to get things done in an orderly fashion.  After a brief introduction from the bartender, we get to know each other.

“I say, awfully sporting of you to ask for me by name,” it says as I look into its caramel-gold depths, “but would you mind terribly putting me on a coaster or a doily or whatever you American chaps call them?  Spares the wood of the bar those terrible water rings, you know.”

After a lightly chilled, malty drink of it that reminds me deliciously of the English ales I have tried back home, I set it lightly down on a coaster.  I tell it that it has a different character than the ales I tried in Scotland and Ireland which prompts it to simply arch one eyebrow in mild amusement and quip, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”  I didn’t mean it that way, but I keep that to myself.

The music starts at precisely the time the sound man said it would, and every performer, myself included, adheres strictly to their set time allotted.   The next Oxford Noble Lager picks up exactly where the conversation with my previous glass left off, as if no time had passed and they shared the same mind.  I enjoyed his dry humor, his cutting takes on world events, and even his polite requests to keep the noise down and behave like a gentleman.

All in all my evening with the lager was pleasant, civilized, and left me ready to recommend a trip to Oxford to anyone who is curious and has a thirst for a slightly higher-brow version of their English Pub experience.

This beer is a damned tramp.  It calls itself an Irish Pale Ale (IPA, get it?) and uses Cascade hops to get a floral smell and flavor that pretty much just yanks your pants down.  It has a reddish tint because, well, it’s a redhead and it won’t let you forget that.  The perfume of it is all softness and comfort and promises of the best night of your life.  If you happen to have the strength to pull yourself out of the pub and walk down the street, you still smell that perfume.  Then you pop into another pub because maybe you hear some lively music coming from inside and, hey, the night is still young, right?  When you walk in, there she is hanging out with the band.  They’re singing “Galway Girl” to her and you can’t resist the seduction and that perfume, like a Siren’s song, pulls you back to her.

There are those who will insist that the Galway Hooker is the fishing ship that the brewery is named for, but we know better.  Anyone who has spent a music-fueled, sensual, flower perfumed, beautiful night of bliss with her knows that this beer is just a tramp.

Sorry, but as a blog post there’s not really anything left to say about Guinness that hasn’t been said a thousand times before by better writers than myself.  They started making this here in 1759 and it has been sheer perfection ever since.  Gorgeous to watch being poured, beautiful to look at in the glass, not fizzy with carbon dioxide, but creamy smooth with nitrogen bubbles, and enough stout flavor to be satisfyingly substantial, but not so much that you wonder if you can handle a second pint.  While loads of other (fantastic) beers enjoy tremendous popularity across Ireland, there isn’t a pub that doesn’t have a row of Guinness lined up for those ordering the famous two-part-pour beer.

Like U2 or Elvis or Levi’s, there will always be detractors who loathe something so universally loved.  They’ll say the brewery has been bought out by a global corporation (it has), or that it’s only for tourists (it’s not), or that it’s fattening (it is), or any number of reasons to take away your joy.  Pay them no mind.  Stare into the molten chocolate depths of this cave-dark brew, taste the history of this recipe, listen to the rain on the window and the singing of the Irish band in the corner booth, and let yourself get lost in the beauty of a 250 year tradition in beer.  Your IPA can wait.

Walsh distillery was, I think, working feverishly in their castle laboratory on this one for an eternity of stormy nights.  Their wiry white hair being flung by the wind whipping in through the stone window openings, flashes of lightning like strobe lights across the oak casks and the orange glow of the copper still.  In their maniacal quest for something so easy to drink that it would drive countless authors to madness (or brilliance, or simply death) they must never have rested.  Then, one fateful night, they finally brought this recipe to their lips, slowly smiled, and threw their arms wide, screaming their victorious howl at the night sky.

I have a special place in my heart for whiskeys because they are the quintessential sipping experience.  Beer is for drinking, but whiskey is for the small sips and the joy of the afterglow.  The flavors roll in sequence across your tongue and then (if the whiskey is a good one) there is a slow spreading warmth from your belly outward.  A whiskey this easy to drink, this mellow, sweet, and seemingly harmless, is the femme fatale of the breed.  Smoky voiced with the smell of caramel and vanilla, it puts a warm hand on your thigh and reassures you that it is here for you.  Whatever you want, it promises.  If you’re not able to enjoy it for a moment and then set it aside, it will gut you and laugh.  

If you’re able to visit the Irish Whiskey Museum in Dublin, please treat yourself.  If you’re not able to, let me get the most interesting trivia out of the way for you, quick and dirty style.

First, the name comes from the old Gaelic “Uisce Beatha” which is pronounced something like “Ish-ke Ba-ha” or near that.  If you’re not Irish and a Gaelic speaker, best to just leave it to them.  The translation is basically “Water of life” and the simplification over time of “Uisce” became the “Wiskey” (if Scottish) or “Whiskey” (if Irish and spelled correctly) that we know today.  It has been around for a long, long, long time. Apparently arising from monks who learned how to distill from Mediterranean travels around 1,000 A.D.

Second, the earliest record of it being distilled in Ireland dates to 1405, and the earliest record in Scotland is from 1494, so apologies to the Scots, but the Irish appear to have invented it.  Or at least written it down first by almost 100 years.

Third, the amount of accidental discovery in the history of how Whiskey was born is astonishing.  For example, the methanol which makes moonshine so dangerous that it can blind or kill those who drink it, was originally removed by the Irish because they thought that the Faeries required a sacrifice of 1/4 of their barrel.  They noticed people dropping dead or comatose when they drank it, so they drained out 1/4 of the barrel as a gift to the Faeries in hopes their curse would be lifted.  As it happens, that removed the sunken methanol and made the remaining alcohol safer to drink.  They also tended to hide their freshly brewed barrels in the woods so that the tax man wouldn’t tax them for their product, and then forget where they were hidden.  This resulted in barrels of the stuff sitting in the woods for months before being found again.  They noticed that as it aged it tasted better, and so aging whiskey was discovered by accident.

Some of you are reading this and thinking, “I already knew all this” and good for you.  I didn’t.  These things are just some notable examples of the things you can learn while touring the museum.  And best of all, the museum tour finishes with expertly guided tastings of Ireland’s best whiskeys.  By the time you walk (or perhaps swerve) your way out of the museum an onto the cobblestone streets of Dublin you will be a more informed sipper of the stuff, guaranteed.

Upon arriving at the bar where I was playing on the night I landed in Paris I asked what was the preferred local drink.  The very popular Demory Brewing of Paris makes an appropriately named “Paris Ale” that is a bit of a hit with the otherwise hard to please Parisians. After the mandatory eye rolls at my unacceptable French, the bartender set me up.  That’s when the beer tried its first flirtatious come on lines with me.

It was saucy and beautiful, and I think it knew that I had been on a plane or bus or train for the last 27 hours and used that to its advantage.  I’m pretty sure it had just put on some kind of lotion or perfume because there was definitely some clean citrus notes wafting from it.  I thoroughly enjoyed our evening together, and it made an excellent companion through all the music we shared.  

At one point the sound engineer walked onto the stage to fix a microphone stand and accidentally kicked my Paris Ale, spilling it across the stage and onto the dance floor.  A gasp went through the room, and in movements so fast they seemed supernatural he raced to the tap, filled the pint again, and replaced it on the stage, good as new.  That was when I knew that the good times we were sharing, that Paris Ale and I, were not meant to last.  It was fun for a night, and I loved that Paris Ale, but I had other places to be and I knew that even if we were never together again, we would always have Paris.

There is a prevailing assumption all across Italy that at the end of your meal you will want a small glass of Amaro.  It’s almost always offered, and many times I have had a bottle of it simply plopped onto the table along with one tiny (shot) glass for each person.  When dining with a family it’s often treated just like dessert.  You don’t “drink” it, as you might wine, you sip a small glass (about a shot) that is room temperature, and it is supposed to calm your stomach.  It is an acquired taste.

There are a variety of types, but what they all have in common is that they are a bitter liqueur meant to aid digestion.  Amaro means “bitter” in Italian, and they’re not joking.  The Amaro I had most was by Tosolini, who described it as, “Fine herbal liqueur produced from 15 different types of alpine, maritime herbs and spices macerated in ash barrels for over 4 months. A complex, full-bodied liquor with a sweet , yet bitter orange taste.”

I have to be honest, I did not ever acquire the taste for it.  I did, however, really enjoy the way it was always offered.  There is a quality to Italian hospitality and friendliness that is infectious and makes me fall madly in love with the country.  So I found myself regularly sipping it down with a smile and enjoying the experience for what it was.  A bitter drink, served with heartwarming sweetness.

September, 2018.

The streets, shops, whorehouses, water fountains, and town square of the ancient city of Pompeii stand weirdly preserved in the middle of the modern Italian city of Pompei.  Colorful frescoes on the walls, the stones of the streets grooved deeply by thousands of years of chariots and countless human steps.  All frozen in time by the blast of mighty Vesuvius on a hot August day in 79 A.D.

My friend and host, Lino, tells me to try the Sannio Barbera if I like a bold wine.  He has the soft gravel voice of a chain smoker and knows the entire Napoli/Pompeii region like the back of his hand.  He was born and raised here, and at 12 years old sneaked past the police guarding the amphitheater to watch the English rock band Pink Floyd record their performance in the ruins.  He can be seen peering out from behind and arch in the film.  He is that type of guy.

Even in mid-September it’s hot here and the afternoons often bring a light, warm rain.  During the afternoons the town quiets dramatically as everyone naps, charging their batteries for the long and late Italian nights.  The dinner crowd starts to slowly fill up restaurants after 8, and by 9 most places are serving food and wine that will go late into the night.  With this as our new schedule, we sit at a sidewalk table and sip the Sannio Barbera as recommended. 

Made entirely from grapes grown at the foot of Vesuvius, this wine has the deep, lush flavors of every century that has passed since the vineyards were planted here in the Dark Ages.  It’s a stentorian, unapologetic wine that fills your head with burning wooden ships, Catherine wheels soaked in blood, horse hooves clattering down cobblestone streets, and a world drenched in Pompeii red and Tuscan yellow.  It is served with freshly baked, dry bread with a hard crust and that is exactly as it should be.  The two combine in your mouth to form the meal that made Italy and make it impossible to know or care what century it is.  Witchcraft and devilry are alive and well and can be found right here on this table.