Stimulating the Appetite

By Patricia Winton

This topic turned out to be a difficult one for me because there are too many choices in Italy! Coffee? Espresso or cappuccino, caffè macchiato or latte macchiato. Wine? Red, white, and pink, house or vintage. Water? Mineral or tap, fizzy or still. My mind swirled with the possibilities. I needed to clear my head, so I went for a walk.

The afternoon passeggiata is a time-honored tradition in Italy. People stroll down the avenues and window shop; they linger in piazzas and gossip; they admire babies in pushcarts; they greet friends and neighbors. And they usually stop by a bar for an aperitivo before going home to dinner.

At my neighborhood bar, family and friends cluster around tables for this ritual. Many Italians rarely drink alcohol, just a celebratory sip of wine at birthdays and Holy Communion. For these people, bitter (pronounced BEE tare) is the drink of choice. This herbal-based brew is a refreshing carbonated confection that comes in red or white, like wine. Oranges give the red its color and strengthen its flavor.  Most bitter is bottled in 100 ml glass containers‒about three and a half ounces. Kept in the cooler, bitter is served with a slice of lemon or orange. These should not be confused with amaro (the Italian word for bitter) which is a digestivo and served after dinner.

For the people who want a bit of kick with their aperitivo, Campari reigns as the drink of choice. Also based on various herbs, straight Campari has about 20 percent alcoholic content, but it usually comes as Campari soda at 10 percent. Sometimes served over ice, Campari soda is often accompanied by a slice of lemon or orange. Campari is also the key ingredient in a variety of cocktails rarely, if ever, served in my neighborhood bar. The best-known of these, Negroni, contains Campari, gin, and red vermouth.

Vermouth steps up as the next favored aperitivo. The vermouth that stars in the standard martini just doesn’t do it, either. Italian vermouth comes in sweet and dry, red and white. The choices never end. Yet another herbal-based confection, Italian vermouth varies by brand, the most popular being Cinzano. But, even the lesser-known can satisfy.

During aperitivo hour, children probably drink Cokes, and at least one person is sure to have a glass of mineral water. That’s a perfectly acceptable drink at the bar.

When the drinks arrive, the staff also brings snacks. These can be as simple as a bowl of potato chips and a plate of olives. Other times, there are small sandwiches and tiny pizzas. You might get fried potatoes or strips of prosciutto, rounds of salami or pieces of cheese. The same establishment may be generous with the snacks one day and stingy the next.

After drinking and snacking, I’m not sure that I really need dinner.

History of a Beer Snob

By Beth Green

I have a confession to make. I’ll eat anything. I’ll go anywhere. I’ll try most things if they won’t put me in the hospital or in prison.

But I won’t drink bad beer.

In a pinch I’ll sleep in an airport or a train station—even (at least that one time) on a park bench. I’m not choosy about what I wear or the company I keep.

But I am a beer snob.

Beer is my particular snobbery.

I blame most of the reason for this on my parents, who in my formative years took an interest in home brewing when we visited New Zealand on our sailboat. I was 12, and years away from drinking beer myself (obviously), but I was intrigued by the whole madcap science of it—the strange giant tins of strong-smelling hops, the crazy jerry-can and tube set-up my dad tinkered with.

My parents got progressively involved and sophisticated with their brewing once we returned to the USA (Mom even took home a prize a few years ago for her Blonde Beaver Pale Ale at the Great Alaskan CraftBeer and Homebrew Festival in Haines, AK.). But I was still a few years away from being a beer snob. In college, perhaps making up for my nontraditional upbringing, I made sure I embraced the all-American university culture of drinking copious amounts of the cheapest beer available, occasionally utilizing household objects, such as funnels, for the consumption thereof.

But everything changed when, during my junior year of university, I went on academic exchange to Spain. I spent months beforehand reading up on wine, assuming in my naivete that that was pretty much all sophisticated Europeans drank.

So it was a complete surprise when I realized all that information I’d been absorbing about wines had actually made me appreciate beer more. I started noticing the metallic taste of canned brews, the nuances in flavor between the stouts, the hefeweizens, the lagers. One weekend trip to Madrid my friends and I ran into two Irish people in town for a rugby match—they introduced me to Guinness while my other friends chose cider or wine spritzers.

The author and her mother in the Czech Republic in 2004.

But even with this newly defined interest, I wouldn’t have called myself a snob of anything. Until, a few years later I moved to the Czech Republic, which, (at least in the

biased opinion of 10.5 million Czechs) is the world’s best place to live if you like beer.

And, boy, the Czechs like it. In 2010, they drank 132 liters per capita, according to the Kirin Institute Food and Lifestyle Report. Think that’s a lot? Well, that amount is down 21 bottles per person from the year before, in part to improved public awareness about the dangers of alcoholism and the creeping realization that too much of a good thing gives you liver problems.

If you ask a Czech, they invented the stuff—pilsner (a type of pale lager) is named, after all, after the city of Pilsen. Now, while their neighbors to the west, the Germans, have their own firm opinions about who truly invented the drink, the Germans haven’t put their money where their mouth is, only consuming a piddling 107 liters per capita per year. Does that give the Czechs the right to call themselves the inventors of modern beer? After a few glasses, I’d say so.

Fresh beer.

In the Czech Republic, beer has a cultural significance I’ve found no other beverage to hold in any other part of the world. In China, tea still reigns—but Chinese people don’t love their 茶 the way Czechs cherish a pivo. The French, Spanish, and Italians bicker over who has the best wine—but their pride in viticulture is shadowed by the Czech mania for beer.

Within the Czech Republic, I soon learned, there are factions of beer lovers. You choose a beer brand to support like in other countries you’d choose a football team. In fact, for Czechs, choosing a beer brand may influence your later choice of brew-sponsored soccer club.

Budvar, the brew from České Budjějovicky which has been involved in convoluted tradmark disputes with American Budweiser beer and is sold in the US as Czechvar, has a certain crowd. Pilsner Urquell, the most famous of Czech beers internationally, is drunk by tourists and certain Pilsen-loyal Czechs. Staropramen is a favorite among native Praguers. The list is long, and the tasting and choosing a laborious, though delightful, process. At long last, I chose Gambrinus.

Image from www.gambrinus.cz.

Gambrinus, made by the Pilsner Urquell brewery and owned by SAB Miller, is a clean, light-colored beer that a non-beer snob could probably quaff as easily as they would drink any other Czech beer. It’s sold in brown bottles to keep the flavor from turning skunky, but tastes best from the tap of a busy pub. After three years of trying the various brews around the country, I realized I could do a blind taste-test and always name Gambrinus as the superior drink. The SAB Miller web page describes it as having a “distinct and refreshing ‘bite’ which does not compromise its soft beer flavour.”

Watching Czech films or reading Czech literature will provide a small insight into the importance of the beverage in daily Czech life. One of the country’s most celebrated and respected authors, Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997), was a famous beer lover. The brewery Hrabal’s stepfather managed, Pivovaru Nymburk, has Hrabal’s portrait on their Postřižinské beer label. The beer is named after his novel Postřižiny, translated into English as Cutting it Short.

Image from www.postriziny.cz.

Beer is a happy pleasure, a luxury in China (where I now live). Of course China has its own beers, not all of them bad, but none of them as good as a wet, frothy glass of Gambrinus.

So, what’s your secret snobbery?

Pisco—A Bitter Rivalry

By Alli Sinclair

Working in an Irish pub in Peru had its advantages—happy hour ran for two, alcohol was cheap, and it was the perfect place to meet tourists from around the world. Before I was let loose to serve in the bar, I had to learn to make a mean Pisco Sour and luckily, this entailed taste-testing my efforts (although some were decidedly atrocious).

I got the hang of making the perfect Pisco Sour so quickly my boss thought I was Peruvian in a past life. But the Chileans that graced the Irish pub didn’t think so. They’d tut-tut my boss for allowing the gringa to make a drink with Peruvian pisco (even though the Chileans were in Peru).

Many Chileans lectured me as to why Chilean pisco was better and how the Peruvians stole their drink and claimed it as their own. It didn’t take long for me to figure out Peruvians and Chileans happily engaged in long-standing arguments about borders, football, food (check the Cerviche Wars here) and, of course, pisco.

I tend to be a fence sitter in these situations because it doesn’t pay to get either party offside. After all, I’d been a guest in both their countries and planned to spend more time in each. So depending on which country I was in, I’d nod and say, “Yes, yes, your pisco is much better than theirs.” We’d clink glasses, down the potent alcohol, and shake our heads at the disgraceful behavior of the neighboring country trying to steal the precious Pisco name.

Depending on where your pisco is from the grape brandy ranges from clear to amber in color. Developed by the Spanish settlers in the 16^th century, pisco replaced orujo, a pomace brandy imported from Spain.

Chilean pisco is produced in the Elqui Valley, in the Andes. The Muscat grape is mostly used, although some vineyards prefer Pedro Jiménez or Torontel. The pisco is double-distilled in copper pot stills and the end result ranges from 60 to 86 proof. Yowza! There is Regular, Control, Special, Reserve, and Great Pisco with the Regular a poor cousin to the others.

Peruvian pisco is produced in copper pot stills also and is made with grapes grown in the regions of Ica Valley, Pisco and Ica. Yes, Pisco is the name of a river as well as a town in Peru, another handy point in the Peruvian’s argument about where pisco originated. In Peru there is Puro (Pure), Aromáticas (Aromatic), Mosto Verde (Green Must), and Acholado (Half-breed) varieties of pisco.

Peruvians love their pisco so much they have set aside the first Saturday of February for El Dia Nacional Del Pisco Sour (National Pisco Sour Day) and participants wear red and white, the colors of the Peruvian flag. When the national anthem is played, whoever is drinking pisco must finish the drink as sign of respect.

If you’re willing to delight your taste buds, I suggest you click here for an array of pisco recipes.

Hmmm…. I’m a tad thirsty. It’s five o’clock somewhere in the world, right? Cheers!