If you have never tried Rochelt, you don’t know schnapps. Like any great eau-de-vie, these Tyrolean treasures rely on fruit meticulously selected and harvested, carefully fermented and distilled to create a perfect snapshot of a fruit at ideal ripeness. But these spirits are aged an average of a decade in small glass demijohns to coalesce, mellow and concentrate. Most eau-de-vies are like perfume—you can only consume them in dabs. Rochelt’s schnapps, which come in a signature green-glass crystal bottle, are perfumes you can quaff. Balanced, flavorful and smooth even at a whopping 100 proof, the risk is drinking them too fast, which would be a mistake: Only eight bottles of each flavor— apple, morello cherry, muscat, black elderberry and apricot—entered the US this year.
Jordan Mackay’s writing on wine, spirits and food has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Decanter, the Art of Eating and many other publications. While Secrets of the Sommeliers, the book he wrote with Rajat Parr, won a James Beard Award in 2011, it’s certain winemakers that he credits with some of his most important tasting lessons.
This story appears in the print issue of Winter 2017.
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