If Ever A Situation Calls For Digestifs, It's Thanksgiving

My annual pitch to give eau de vie and schnapps a try. With 11 bottle recommendations for the holiday.

This piece is taken from The New Wine Review’s Thanksgiving wine package, which includes pieces on pairings with the cheese board, desserts, and leftovers.

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For most people, Thanksgiving is that one time of the year to eat certain foods. How many of us are eating green bean casserole or turkey stuffing or pumpkin pie on the reg? I think the same thing can apply to after-dinner spirits. If there was ever a Digestif Moment, the 3,000-calorie holiday meal is definitely that moment.

Which is why, every November, I make an annual pitch for serving those clear fruit brandies—called eau de vie by French speakers or schnapps by German speakers—and giving them a try. The whole category of eau de vie and schnapps represents some of the best quality and value among all spirits.

I’m talking here about unoaked brandies made from apricots, cherries (kirsch or kirschwasser), pears (Poire Williams), plums (slivovitz), or any other fruits—quince, elderberries, damson plum. Or pretty much anything that grows: carrots, pine buds from Douglas fir trees, whatever. It’s a whole wild world of clear fruit (or not-fruit) brandies. But for some reason Americans always seem to fear clear 80-proof spirits served in tiny glasses. It’s sort of a fact of American life. I guess the fear is these spirits are going to burn on the way down. (As if vodka, tequila, or Fireball don’t?) If schnapps are well-made, they absolutely do not.

Rochelt fruit brandies from Austria.

Another reason for their lack of popularity is that the word schnapps has taken on a very bad association with things like Rumple Minze, Goldschläger, and Peachtree “schnapps”—which is especially bad among people of my generation, who drank them as shots or in Fuzzy Navels in the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, all these awful spirits are lower-proof liqueurs, and not schnapps at all. Real schnapps has no added sugar.

Good eau de vie is a complex, dry, delicate spirit. Perhaps that’s what makes it hard to understand for someone who loves, say, bourbon. An eau de vie should be the very essence of the ripe fruit used to distill it—nothing else. Think of it as a snapshot of the harvest, which makes for another reason to pair it with Thanksgiving.

It’s a spirit sold in smaller bottles that you nip at over time, which is a perfect way to end a meal or an evening.I think maybe too much emphasis is placed on the bottles at the top end, and so I’ve tried to suggest some starter brandies for skeptical newbies. But remember, you’re not going to be guzzling these. A good bottle of schnapps can last a long time, and it’s worth the investment.

At its best, schnapps is a snapshot in time of the ripest, most aromatic, most beautiful essence of fruit. Yet—and this is likely the confounding part—in schnapps that fruit is completely unadorned by sugar. It’s an experiment in fruit that’s dry and not sweet. Is this an esoteric experience? Yes, it can be. But there is nothing in the world like that moment, after a wonderful dinner, after the pumpkin pie, after the coffee, when someone cracks open a magical eau de vie.

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Digestifs to Enjoy on Thanksgiving

Etter Zuger Kirsch (Switzerland) ($40, 375 ml)

An excellent and affordable kirsch, from the Swiss Alps. It’s made exclusively from cherries grown in the region of Zug, a cherry appellation that dates back 600 years. Intense and redolent of the ripest black cherries.

Schladerer Kirschwasser (Germany) ($45, 750 ml)

One of my everyday favorites. Over 160 years ago, Sixtus Schladerer began making fruit brandies for guests at his restaurant. Little has changed. For me, this is one of the top-value spirits in the world.

Clear Creek Pear (Oregon) ($48, 700 ml)

One of the great brandy values in the world, at a price low enough so that you might even experiment with it in cocktails. 

Purkhart Pear Williams (Austria) ($28, 375 ml)

A lovely Alpine standard, made from pears grown in Alto Adige. Bright, ripe pear flavor.  This is a good starter schnapps that’s not too expensive to use in a pear-y cocktail.

Hans Reisetbauer Carrot Eau de Vie (Austria) ($75, 375 ml)

You never thought a vegetable schnapps could taste this good, but the sweetness and earthy complexity of the carrot is incredible. One of my favorite spirits in the world.

Laurent Cazottes Goutte de Reine-Claude Dorée (France) ($77, 375 ml)

It’s hard to overstate how good this plum brandy is, which is made from greengage plums grown in southwest France. Powerful, bright, intense, and inspiring.

Hans Reisetbauer Rowanberry (Austria) ($111, 375 ml)

Rowanberries are bitter, tart berries with citrus-like flavor that grow in northern Europe. In schnapps like this—made from wild rowanberries grown in Austria at over 2,000 feet elevation—the flavor transforms into something memorable and transcendent during distillation and aging.

Laurent Cazottes Goutte de Poire Williams (France) ($115, 375 ml)

The gold standard of pear spirits. It takes a team of 10 people one full month to clean the fruits after harvest and prepare for fermenting and distilling this. Lively, pretty, and full of the essence of ripe, juicy pear.

Capreolus Damson Plum (UK) ($200, 375 ml)

It’s a tradition in the U.K., to pick damson plums from country hedgerows and make homemade spirits with them. Here, distiller Barney Wilczak uses more than 50 pounds of damon plums for one liter of eau de vie, and achieves something incredibly profound.

Rochelt Black Elderberry (Austria) ($320, 375 ml)

This is not at all like the elderflower liqueur that was so popular a decade ago. So complex—it’s fruity, savory, and earthy all at once.

Rochelt Wachau Apricot (Austria) ($325, 375 ml)

It’s hard to explain just how ethereal, complex, and beautiful this spirit is. Made from a particular, unique apricot variety grown in Austria’s Wachau wine region. This is what “terroir apricot” tastes like.