Honest Truth
Drink was a cordial way to spice up life and raise a glass to the future
It’s a key ingredient for famous cocktails. But few realise the history of the liqueur dates to the ninth Century. A compelling tale of alchemy and empires, royalty and the common man, here Lesley Jacobs Solmonson tells Sally McDonald the Honest Truth about the liqueur.
Why are you interested in the liqueur and its history?
Some people view history through the exploration of books or wars, art or science. For me, the story of alcohol touches on all of them and a lot more. Essentially, liqueur is the original spirit. First, we drank alcohol sweetened with sugar and flavoured with botanicals as medicine. Then, we drank the same stuff recreationally. It may have been pretty rough around the edges, but it made us feel good. It’s the “feel good” part that’s at the core of why I write. I still remember my parents, ending dinner with a glass of Chartreuse or Galliano. Even more interesting to me is the fact that so many of the great cocktails require liqueurs.
What was your most surprising find while researching its history?
Because I have ancestry (Clan MacDonald), I was curious to learn more about Scottish liqueurs. One of the most surprising discoveries had to do with “usquebaugh”, which comes from the Scottish Gaelic Uisge Beatha – meaning “water of life”. While we now identify it with the precursor to the word “whisky”, it was originally a liqueur flavoured with herbs and honey.
What is the first known record of liqueur and what was it?
Before we used the term liqueur, we had the word “cordial” thanks to the medieval alchemist Arnaldus Villanova (1240-1311). It’s likely he created what we consider the first true liqueur when he sweetened a brandy spirit with sugar. He named his tasty medicine a cordial after the Latin term “cordyalis”, which means pertaining to the heart. And even today, we use the term cordial to mean welcoming or friendly.
How did it come about?
Its earliest form was medicinal. The Arab alchemists of the 9th Century and beyond refined the process of distillation, then added herbs, flowers, and other botanicals to the spirit to create medicines. Unfortunately, many of the herbal additives were quite bitter, so the alchemists added sugar to make the treatments more palatable. Spirit plus botanical plus sugar makes a liqueur. It was only a matter of time before people realised the medicine that they took made them feel relaxed and happy.
Who imbibed it and why?
In its earliest recreational incarnations, liqueur was only a rich man’s beverage. Once sugar became readily available, it was still an expensive commodity, so liqueurs were equally expensive.
When Catherine De Medici brought her spiced liqueur Alkermes, to the French court, she wasn’t sharing it with the servants. Eventually, more people started enjoying these drinks – new classes emerged, and people had more free time, so they could actually indulge in something for fun, and liqueur paralleled these developments with a lowend, low-cost, generic liqueur becoming available as opposed to the much more expensive, higher quality, proprietary version.
What can you tell us about Scotland’s links to the liqueur?
Every country has its own indigenous liqueurs that reflect its terroir – the fruits, flowers, herbs, and other flora. Along with the ones with long histories, like Drambuie and Atholl Brose, Scotland lays claim to a number of whisky and gin-based liqueurs. There’s Glayva, a Scotch-based liqueur created in 1947, which features tangerine, cinnamon, and honey. Scotland’s answer to Baileys is Magnum, made with Speyside single malt Scotch and Dutch cream. Edinburgh Gin’s line of gin-based liqueurs include raspberry, and elderflower among others.
How has it had an influential role throughout history?
Wars were fought over ingredients like nutmeg that were in early liqueurs. In the Victorian era and beyond, people frowned on women drinking, but no one blinked if the lady of the house got the “vapours” and needed a nip of something sweet and boozy. And, if women did drink in public, they were expected to do it while a man or men were present. Later, in 1902, the Ladies’ Bar in New York City’s Café des Beaux-Artes opened – allowing women to sip their liqueur in public without a chaperone. The owners even invented a liqueur called Forbidden Fruit for female clientele.
What would you like readers
to take from your book on liqueurs?
I’d like to inspire a sense of curiosity and pleasure. If they love all things Italian, they can try the endless variety of regional amari. If they are movie lovers, they could make a White Russian and watch The Big Lebowski the go-to cocktail for Jeff Bridges’ character, The Dude. When they travel they can try local liqueurs like Xtabentún in Mexico or Iceland’s Björk liqueur. Each has a unique flavour, but all should be drunk responsibly.