Cheers, Silver Apricot!

With the days rapidly becoming shorter, it is high time for another hedonistic editorial miles away from cardiac surgery. How about some “schnaps”? One of the rarest, most treasured bottles in my cellar is a gingko seed spirit, distilled by legendary distiller Christoph Keller at the Stählemühle.

Gingko seeds? The gingko biloba tree, considered by many a living fossil on the border between coniferous and deciduous trees, is usually best known for its characteristic bipartite leaves. These were immortalized by Goethe in his homonymous poem as a two-in-one symbol of love. The gingko is an unhurried plant which can grow to impressive heights and live for a thousand years or more, taking his or her time. Yes, it is diecious, but it will take two to three dozen years to find out which sex the one in your garden has. We are still patiently waiting for ours to show. If it turns out to be female and if there is a male partner not too far away, it will eventually bear fruit. In China, where the gingko is indigenous, its name means “silver apricot”, nicely describing the attractive product. The problem with it is that it exudes a rather unpleasant smell not unlike rancid butter, similar to the dreaded durian (which you are not allowed to take on the Singapore subway). Each “apricot” bears a solid kernel – the seed our spirit is made from. Definitely not your everyday raw material.

Stählemühle? This idyllic mill situated in the Hegau County a few miles North of Lake Constance once was the distillery heaven of Germany, if not the world. In 2004 publisher and art historian Christoph Keller moved there to start something completely different: distilling spirits. Together with his partner Alexander Stein of Black Forest Distillers he came up with Monkey 47 Schwarzwald Dry Gin which became a sensation almost overnight and started what can be called a worldwide gin euphoria. In 2016, the French heavyweight Pernod Ricard placed a serious investment. Keller had meanwhile been experimenting in his mill with distilling practically everything palatable growing in the surrounding countryside: from the more traditional fruit and roots to black truffles, mushrooms, herbs, vegetables, cereals and Hegau-grown gingko seeds. He tried over 600 flavours and sold over 250 different spirits. Meticulous attention to detail and the use of only the highest quality products from the botanicals to the distillery apparatus catapulted the Stählemühle spirits to world leadership and into many famous star-studded restaurants. All of a sudden, in 2018, Christoph Keller decided to call it quits. He had distilled for 15 years, had achieved everything there was to achieve, could not become any better according to his own words, was afraid to be left saturated and bored and, once again, wanted to do something completely different. Prices for the remaining bottles continue to soar. Definitely not your average distillery.

It was Michel Fouqet, the sommelier at Nils Henkel's restaurant in nearby Burg Schwarzenstein, who first introduced us to the gingko spirit to round off a phantastic and romantic birthday dinner. He brought the bottle in its case and two slender glasses which contained two small metal “ice cube” coolers each to avoid diluting the spirit with meltwater. We were given small tongs to fish out the cubes after about two minutes for a perfectly cool but not too icy temperature. The first sip was a revelation: like a cross between a very clear Siberian vodka and a mildly flavoured gin, giving a tangy sensation on the palate and leaving an adstringent feeling similar to that of “ice drops” sweets. Definitely not just another digestive.

The next day I hunted down a bottle. Fortunately, and this is in contrast to, say, a 2009 Chateau d'Yquem, another absolutely hedonistic, irrational pleasure, it keeps with the bottle opened for a very long time if stored cool and in the dark. Here's to the glorious silver apricot then, every once in a while!

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Artikel online veröffentlicht:
15. Oktober 2021