THE DRINKING OF APERITIFS is an indisputably European thing. Across the continent there endures a culture of finishing the day with a stroll in the sun and a drink in a bar, seeing and being seen on leafy boulevards in towns and cities or promenades on the coast, or perhaps just a very slow amble around the village square. The Spanish call this daily ritual el paseo; the Italians, la passeggiata. In Britain we call it ‘going down the pub’.
We Brits lack the balmy weather enjoyed across the Channel – one is far more likely to make a dash in the rain to one’s local than enjoy a leisurely saunter underneath the beating sun – but whereas most of us used to be happy with warm ale or white wine when we got there, we now crave more fitting and interesting things. Traditional boozers are closing at an astonishing rate: the more canny owners and brands have transformed themselves into modern bars for the modern drinker, offering cocktails, craft beers and wines that go far beyond just ‘red or white’.
The precise history of drinking cultures and what they drank is shrouded in mystery, myth and muddled memories after one too many. Research sends one down endless rabbit-holes of information, much of it fascinating, much contradictory. In researching this book I have driven myself to drink on several occasions at the impossibility of establishing the facts. Of one thing we can be sure: mankind has been drinking alcohol for a very long time indeed.
Alcohol is produced by the action of yeasts on anything that contains sugars, the yeast feeding on the sugar to produce carbon dioxide and alcohol. Back in the days when our distant ancestors were still swinging from the trees, fruits would drop to the forest floor as they ripened to full sweetness – natural yeasts borne in the air would feed on the sugars within, starting the process of fermentation. The smell of alcohol made the fruit easier to find than when it was growing on the plant; in addition, animals would have experienced a gentle rush of pleasure as the alcohol released feel-good serotonin, dopamine and endorphins into their brains.
At this point I will posit the controversial and possibly gin-fuelled theory that this extra appeal to life on the ground tempted apes down from the trees, and thus alcohol is indirectly responsible for the evolution of all human life. Though, squiffy primates would have been easy for other animals to hunt – so perhaps it was the ones who could take their booze that survived, rather than the fittest. Around 10 million years ago, a gene mutation in the last common ancestor shared between us and the apes created an enzyme that digested alcohol 40 times faster. This allowed the fruits of the forest floor and the nutrition they gave to be enjoyed in greater quantity without being so susceptible to the ill effects.
The following chasm of time remains somewhat woolly. The first archaeological evidence of concerted production of grain-based hooch was found in Turkey, at what’s thought to be a temple site nearly 10,000 years old, where trough-shaped stone vessels with a capacity of around 40 gallons bear traces of a fermented broth. It was only a couple of millennia afterwards that grapes were being cultivated to ferment into wine in modern-day Iran, Georgia and Armenia.
We do know that the Romans drank wine infused with medicinal herbs said to aid digestion at the start of their elaborate and excessive feasts, and of course we have their language to thank for the word aperitif itself.
The Dark Ages are known as such for good reason – there is precious little in the way of written records for the centuries following the decline of the Roman Empire (although we can be certain that the production of alcohol predates the written word). Wine continued to be made and drunk in those places where the climate suited the growing of grapes, and we know mead, made by fermenting honey in water, was all the rage in the chillier Celtic and Germanic cultures. Beer from grains and cider from apples were also made at this time, though how they’d compare with today’s brews is, frankly, anyone’s guess.
Meanwhile, alchemists in the Arab world in the 10th (or was it the 8th?) century were working on the art of distillation, a process that may (or may not) have been practised by the Greeks or even the Babylonians before them. Or was it the Egyptians? Whatever. In their quest to find the true ‘spirit’ of a substance these Arabic distillers boiled it and condensed the vapours produced in a device called an alembic still. This process was used to make perfumes, medicines and cosmetics, including a fine dark powder used by ladies to enhance their eyes. Al-kohl; the probable root of our word alcohol.
When wines or other fermented brews were distilled they produced a high-strength alcohol known as ‘spirited water’ or ‘water of life’, from which we get the generic word ‘spirit’ for any distilled alcohol, and the specific drinks eau de vie in France and akvavit in Scandinavia, and (possibly) whisky (uisce beatha in Gaelic), which all mean ‘water of life’.
These distilling techniques found their way to Europe, possibly to Salerno in southern Italy in the 12th century, or Bologna in the 13th. Some time around 1320, Pierre-Arnaud de Villeneuve, a physician living in Montpellier in France, wrote his Liber de Vinum (Book of Wine) in which he describes the distillation of wine to make a spirit.
De Villeneuve discovered that when a little of this spirit was added to wine it not only halted fermentation, so leaving residual sugars and thus natural sweetness, it also prevented the wine from oxidising and turning into vinegar. This process is called fortification and it became central to the development of so many aperitifs that we know today.
While we have religion to blame for many of the world’s evils, we also have it to thank for its influence on the worlds of both medicine and merriment over the following centuries. Christians needed sacramental wine so most religious orders made their own, as well as other remedial drinks and medicines made from distillations of plants found in their surrounding lands. Those that were situated on trade routes would have discovered new spices and ingredients from the passing merchants who sought refuge with them – most monasteries offered accommodation for pilgrims and other travellers along what must have been long and solitary paths. We should give a special mention to the Benedictine order of monks and nuns in particular, whose research into herbal cures and other tinctures, as well as a probable love of a tipple to take the edge off those dark and lonely nights of the soul, features so much in the history of many of the alcoholic drinks that we still enjoy.
La Belle Epoque, that period of relative peace, prosperity and a flourishing of technology and the arts that swept across Europe between the end of the Franco-Prussian war in 1871 and the start of World War I in 1914, was good news for the aperitif. In towns and cities across Europe, wide streets and boulevards were built, perfect for promenading, and where there used to be lowly cafés and bars rose large and lavish establishments to cater for the newly rich and leisured. Walls of mirrors and finely carved woodwork stood by gleaming brass rails and hissing gas lights, all swathed in a fug of smoke: in these pleasure-domes the genteel appeal of the aperitif was democratised, at least up to a point.
This was the age of the flâneur, the preening peacock dressed to the nines, out on the town to see and be seen in all the right places, drinking all the right things. The power of branding had dawned on forward-thinking producers – Henri-Louis Pernod was one of the first off the mark, his modish advertising for absinthe being widely credited with spreading the drink’s popularity like wildfire, and other producers soon followed suit. Brands became associated with status and were targeted directly at the growing middle classes with great effect. This was the age of the train as well as of rampant commerce, so what had been only local drinks for local people became what we’d now call global brands.
The Americans had been drinking cocktails since the early 1800s, aided and abetted by the introduction of refrigeration and commercially produced ice, but this modern cocktail culture didn’t reach Europe until ‘American bars’ began to open in grand hotels in the late 19th century. New Yorker Jerry Thomas, gold prospector, showman and all-round bon viveur, carved himself a niche as the bartender’s bartender with his seminal 1862 book How to Mix Drinks (or The Bon Vivant’s Companion). Thomas combined craftsmanship with showmanship and his flamboyant style earned him celebrity status wherever he went. He travelled widely throughout the United States and Europe and spread the seeds of his new cocktail style, coining the term ‘mixologist’.
After post-war gloom had lifted and the television age dawned, stars of stage and screen were rolled out to endorse all the accoutrements of middle class aspiration. Pre-dinner drinks were very much a part of this. Those less junior than some will fondly remember Cinzano being peddled by a glamorous Joan Collins and hapless Leonard Rossiter, while Humphrey Bogart and, er, Lorraine Chase flirted with each other over Campari in a pastiche of Casablanca. And who could forget Orson Welles’ gravelly tones extolling the pleasure of Domecq’s La Ina sherry?
These were the days when ‘Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet’, when Martini & Rosso’s vermouths were being pushed against backdrops of beautiful people skiing, sailing and hot-air ballooning, a glass of Martini with ice rarely out of shot, with the strapline ‘Any time, any place, anywhere’. These ads had a knowing kind of wit along with a message that sophistication was only a slice of lemon away. And, of course, the right brand mattered. The marketing of drink brands really ramped up in the 1970s and ’80s, promising to confer on us glamour and status along with squiffiness.
Then came the Cocktail Years, given a boost by the execrable 1988 film Cocktail, in which Tom Cruise introduced us to ‘flair bartending’ – the ridiculous show-off circus trickery of juggling bottles, shakers and other bar tools RATHER THAN JUST GETTING ON AND MAKING THE BLOODY DRINK. To be fair, Jerry Thomas was known for such theatrics in the 19th century, but that doesn’t make it right. Some things never change: good bars are and always have been those where the guests are treated as guests and not as audiences to fawn at the feet of their performing hosts. It is no surprise that the quality of drinks in those days was pretty dire.
Sugary cocktails adorned with novelty straws and gaudy non-ironic umbrellas were the order of the day. This was the heyday of the Piña Colada, the Blue Lagoon and the Slippery Nipple; of bartenders in Hawaiian shirts surrounded by plastic palm trees. Wham’s 1983 song ‘Club Tropicana’ and its accompanying video just about sum it up.
As the uncool eighties gave way to the narcissistic nineties, sensible bartenders with better taste and style looked to Jerry Thomas’s How to Mix Drinks, as well as Harry Craddock’s 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book and others, for inspiration. This trend started in America and spread to cool bars in Germany; London was a little late to the party but when it arrived it made a lot of noise. Cosmopolitans and Whiskey Sours, Moscow Mules and Mai Tais, Caipirinhas and their Cuban cousins Mojitos, served by sexy barmen (and yes, they were, and still are, mostly men) with naughty twinkles in their eyes. There was a sense of elegant debauchery to these proceedings held in new-age, glamorous bars, as well as real geekery – top bartenders became minor celebrities who revived and refined the classics and brought us new drinks to be taken seriously, made with an eagle eye for detail and an obsessive tongue for quality.
Drinks that were strong and bitter became the fashion; Negronis took centre stage again after decades in the doldrums, and vermouths and other traditional aperitifs also came blinking into the light once more, with fashionable bars experimenting with their own concoctions, infusing spirits with botanicals to make their own house versions.
Cocktails have been on a roll since then, as aperitifs and digestifs as well as insalubrious nights of getting hammered with nothing but a bowl of nuts for sustenance. But cocktails are damaging on the pocket and on one’s liver; we now see a trend towards lighter drinking and this is where aperitifs really come into their own.
THE APERITIF ACROSS EUROPE
We should doff our caps to the ITALIANS, who can lay claim to have come up with the aperitif concept in the first place, dating as far back as the Romans. Aperitivo-time in the royal courts of the 18th century involved taking a glass of the new-fangled vermouth with a morsel of food before yet another lavish dinner began. The habit was embraced by all walks of life and is still alive and well across the country, engrained into the daily ritual of life, from alla moda bars in Milan’s grand piazzas to grubby shacks down backstreets in Naples.
In Venice Andémo béver un’ombra! is shorthand for ‘let’s go for a drink’, though the literal translation of ombra is ‘shadow’. This refers to the practice going back centuries when wine would be sold from mobile carts that were moved as the day went on so they were always in the shadow of the campanile – the bell tower – of the San Marco cathedral, the better to keep the wine cool. Nowadays the Aperol Spritz is Venice’s best-selling aperitif, with Bellinis – said to be invented in Harry’s Bar on the San Marco waterfront – surely not far behind. The Milanese prefer Campari, it being invented there, while vermouths are often the order of the day for the good citizens of Turin. White wine, sparkling or otherwise, with or without the addition of an additional flavouring, is popular across the country too and, of course, all Italians love a Negroni.
Wherever you are and whatever you’re drinking, an aperitivo in Italy is unthinkable without some food. This civilised practice allows for leisurely drinking without getting silly on alcohol fed to an empty stomach. Bread, cheese, cured meats, olives, perhaps some deep-fried suppli (rice balls) or some anchovies fresh from the sea; salty things to titillate the taste buds and keep a relatively clear head before dinner.
In SPAIN the G&T is king; the Spanish are the world’s third largest gin consumers (the Filipinos drink the most, then the Americans; the Brits are fourth in the gin lovers’ hit parade) but they tend to drink it as a post-prandial rather than to mark the end of the day. When it comes to aperitifs, different regions have different habits, although a caña of cold beer to kick off an evening is ubiquitous across the country. Sherry, of course, in Andalusia, while the hipsters of Barcelona and hip-in-their-own-way Galicians prefer vermouth (vermut, as they call it there). In the north, the Asturians and the Basques drink their local cider, poured from a height to give it some fizz, or their young white wine served in a similar fashion. Always, always preprandials in Spain are knocked back with something to eat – nuts or a nibble of ham or cheese, or perhaps a nugget of tortilla. These are true tapas – from tapa, meaning ‘a cover’, as these morsels of food were originally served on small saucers placed on the top of the glass to keep the flies off.
The FRENCH are still traditionalists when it comes to their apéros – they’ve never been big on vodka or gin but prefer pastis, sparkling wine (rarely still wine unless it’s made into a kir), and when it comes to vermouths they tend to stick to the big brands, the Martinis and the Cinzanos as well as their own Noilly Prat, Dubonnet and the splendid Dolin range of vermouths from Chambéry. They’re also some of the world’s keenest port consumers, generally preferring chilled red port of fair-to-middling quality as an aperitif to the more serious vintage and tawny wines we Brits, still stuck in our own traditional ways when it comes to port, have with cheese and often only at Christmas.