Who knew that Grand Marnier oranges came from Haiti? I sometimes worry about my level of obscure booze related knowledge, but until I visited Cap-Haitien I had no idea Haiti was the leading source of fine orange flavors in French liqueurs. Grand Marnier, Cointreau and Marie Brizard all rely on Haiti for their bitter orange needs.

I learned this startling fact while lounging around on Labadie Beach outside Cap-Haitien. I had tagged along to the beach with a group of guests from my hotel. There was an Alabaman sexologist who had set up a remote village school, her daughter, and a Christian film crew shooting a documentary about the school. Collectively the Christian film crew looked something like the Village People, so that is what I will call them. A diverse cluster of mustached young men, they lacked an Indian chief, but had military man and leather man well covered. I never saw them shooting, but I can imagine that when they did so a construction worker appeared to do various manly things. The piece de resistance though was somewhere the original Village People never dared to go, a Jesus look-alike, his flowing beard and hair offset in true ’70s style by a thin sweat-band and oversized reflective shades.

The Village People looked far too dangerous to share a body of water with, so I left them to frolic in the waves and settled myself under a palm tree. Before long a Haitian guy joined me, helped himself to my rum, and launched into a discussion of how the CIA had assassinated Bob Marley. His favorite rum was Meyers from Jamaica. You cannot buy Meyers in Haiti, but he said the cruise ships that visited Labadie sometimes brought it in with them. He did not care for my Barbancourt White, but luckily had no problems slumming it. Later the sexologist joined me and the Haitian guy disappeared. I am not quite sure how it happened, but somehow the topic of conversation drifted from her telling me all about sanky-pankies (on which she had written a learned thesis), to her telling me that Grand Marnier was “made in Haiti” by the man who owned the beach we were lounging around on. The sanky-pankies were far from normal, but this last revelation was just bizarre!

I could not believe that Grand Marnier was really made in Haiti, but was sure there would be some truth in what she was saying. She was adamant that Grand Marnier had some kind of factory in Cap-Haitien that processed oranges. When I thought about it, Grand Marnier was strangely popular in Cap-Haitien. I had seen it everywhere.

Online research back at the hotel confirmed that Grand Marnier and Cointreau really did source bitter oranges from Haiti. Both companies owned large orange plantations a couple of hours drive from Cap-Haitien. A few years earlier the two liqueur houses had become embroiled in a bitter labor dispute, and most of the online material I dug up dealt with the plight of their workers. It seems that picking, peeling and grating oranges from dawn till dusk pays extremely badly, irritates the skin and lungs, and occasionally results in lost fingers. Ouch!

Given the distance to the plantations and the likelihood that their labor issues made them sensitive to visitors, I decided to ask Madame Joelle (the hotel manageress) if she knew anything about a Grand Marnier orange processing facility in Cap-Haitien. Madame Joelle was busy having coffee with someone so I went and sat by the pool with a book. Once Madame Joelle was free I asked my question. Unbelievably, she told me she had just been having coffee with the man I should be speaking to (I think she said he was Daniel Zephir). Unfortunately he had left to the airport on his way to France.

Missing out on meeting Haiti’s Grand Marnier Orange King by just a few minutes was disappointing, but I managed a consolation prize. Madame Joelle arranged an appointment for me to see Nonce Zephir at Establishment Novella, a Cap-Haitien agricultural products export company that has been supplying oranges to Grand Marnier for many years. Establishment Novella was what the Alabaman sexologist had grandly labeled a “Grand Marnier factory”. Of course Establishment Novella did not produce Grand Marnier at all, simply being an orange peel trader that supplied Grand Marnier.

Establishment Novella lay behind a nondescript iron gate on a quiet street in the foothills at the south end of Cap-Haitien. There was no obvious sign indicating its presence. My moto-taxi driver made a couple of unsuccessful sweeps up and down the street and had to stop and ask before he found the address.

Beyond the gate was a courtyard thickly matted in coffee beans spread out to dry in the sun. I picked my way over the slippery beans and headed towards the main building. Nonce Zephir, an elderly French Haitian, saw me coming and was at the door to meet me. In between ushering me into the small office he dabbed a tissue at something stuck in his eye. He was not having a good day, but livened up once we got talking.

We sat down and chatted about Grand Marnier, oranges, and Haiti. Mr. Zephir said that Establishment Novella was purely a processor and exporter of dried orange peels (along with coffee and cacao), and knew none of the secrets of Grand Marnier’s production. Grand Marnier was a key customer though, and they had been supplying oranges to Grand Marnier for at least three generations. He could not tell me exactly how far back the relationship stretched, or how it had begun, just that his grandfather had already been supplying Grand Marnier with orange peels. Though I never thought about it before, the close links between French liqueur houses and Cap-Haitien orange suppliers should come as no surprise. Before the Haitian slaves rebelled and won independence Cap-Haitien was the center of French wealth in the Caribbean, and after the fighting died down French economic interests remained almost as entrenched as ever.

Establishment Novella says it is merely a buyer of orange peels, and is not involved in the orange plantation business. That may not be completely accurate. Articles on the labor disputes of a few years ago indicate that Daniel Zephir and Establishment Novella assist Grand Marnier in managing its orange plantations. Without technically owning orange plantations Establishment Novella may still be involved in that side of the business. Of course it could also be a case of disgruntled orange workers venting their anger at the wrong target. Anyhow, Nonce Zephir maintained that the main focus of Establishment Novella was purchasing, drying, cleaning, grading and exporting bitter orange peels.

The oranges are a small, green skinned, pale fleshed orange known as Citrus Bigardia. You often hear that this orange variety is bitter to the point of being inedible and used only for its fragrant skin. In fact, these little green oranges can be purchased in every fruit market in Haiti, and are widely consumed for their flesh and juice. The taste is light and sour, with a bitter grapefruit-like edge, and a hint of the fragrant quality you get from a lime. They may be best known for their skins, but they also make a good juice that is refreshing without being either sugar-laden or excessively sour.

The peels of the fruit are removed in quarters, pith and all, then dried, cleaned and graded. Mr. Zephir took me to see a warehouse where bag upon bag of dried orange peels sat waiting for cleaning and grading. Grabbing a peel, he absent mindedly scratched his neck with it while showing me around. He was a little cagey about photography, not wanting the sacks of dirty peels to be photographed. In fact they were just a little dusty and did not look too bad.

While Grand Marnier is one of Establishment Novella’s biggest customers, the firm also supplies Marie Brizard and other liqueur manufacturers. Haitian orange peels are popular owing to being organic (so the locals say anyway), hand processed, and economically priced. Of course not all the peels go into liqueurs. Many of the peels, and I’m hoping it is the lower grade ones, go into products like marmalade and perfume.

Mr. Zephir told me that Grand Marnier actually sources two products from Haiti. The primary product is dried bitter orange peels, but a secondary product is orange essential oil. This essential oil is produced on the Grand Marnier orange plantation by further refining dried peels through grating, mixing with water, and centrifuging. Precisely how the dried peels and oil are incorporated into the final product is of course a secret.  I don’t think Grand Marnier mention the use of orange essential oil though.

Despite being the largest supplier of bitter orange peels to the French liqueur industry, Haiti has little cachet as a brand. Instead of proudly advertising that their use of Haitian oranges, Grand Marnier, Cointreau and others make vague references to bitter oranges from “the West Indies”. Haiti needs to get organized, fix its horrible international image, and do a little brand building. I wonder which European liqueur house will be first to put the words ‘Haitian bitter oranges’ on a label?

In any case, when reaching for the Grand Marnier, Cointreau or Marie Brizard Triple Sec, spare a thought for Haiti, its famous oranges, and especially its hard-working, low-paid orange workers.

In some ways this would be good drink for introducing people to Campari. OK, the dose of Campari is kind of heavy for that purpose. Still, the classic Campari drinks (i.e. the Negroni and the Americano) are complicated by the inclusion of vermouth – another problem ingredient for many people. This drink is free of vermouth, Grand Marnier increases the sweetness, and fruit juice lightens things a little. In fact the drink is purely about rich and bitter sweet citrus. The taste is intense but free of surprises. While quite bitter, this drink reflects the current fashion for drinks that are light on spirits and heavy on juices and liqueurs.

Romanza

1 3/4 oz Campari

1 1/4 oz Grand Marnier

1 oz grapefruit juice

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange twist.

Anyway it is very pleasant – rich sweet orange with an intense bitterness that keeps things interesting. Also, unlike a lot of what I have been posting recently, this recipe requires no hard to find ingredients. Yes, my friends in Shanghai will not need to cry upon reading this. Instead they can march to the booze cabinet and throw one together.

Consider this cocktail a goodwill gesture in the lead up to the Beijing Olympics. Besides tasting good, it proves this blog is not part of a decedent western plot to contain China’s peaceful rise through a series of alluring but impossible to replicate cocktail recipes, each one scoring a deep gash in the morale of the Chinese people. Nope, no such nefarious scheme is being attempted. I guess that is just as well too, since such a scheme would certainly be doomed to ignominious failure, with its perpetrators being ground to a kind of messy paste and smeared across the less interesting pages of history.

It looked better full. . .

Pineau des Charentes is an interesting aperitif from France that I have only recently tried. It seems to be relatively unknown outside of France. Pineau des Charentes is generally drunk straight rather than being used used in cocktails. However, since I am interested in aperitif wines as cocktail ingredients I picked a bottle up to try it out.

Pineau des Charentes (also known simply as pineau) is said to have originated in the 16^th Century when wine must (i.e. unfermented grape juice) was accidentally poured into a cask containing cognac eau de vie. The cognac prevented the must from fermenting and the barrel was set aside as an unfortunate mistake. However, it was found that extended maturation saw the flavors of the wine must and cognac blend to produce a fine drink. Pineau has been a specialty of the Charentes region ever since. The Charentes region seems to be sub-region within Cognac by the way.

The regulations governing production of Pineau des Charentes are quite strict. For a start the product must come from the Charentes region. The grapes used for the must should be Ugni Blanc, Folle Blanche, Colombard, Sémillon, Sauvignon or Montils. Pressing must be light to ensure the pressed juice is of high quality. The cognac used for blending must be a minimum of one year old, 60% or higher alcohol by volume, and from the same vineyard as the must. According to the Comité National du Pineau des Charentes the finished product must be matured in oak barrels for a minimum of 18 months. Other sources mention minimum maturation of 8 months for red pineau and 12 months for white, so there seems to be some ambiguity on this point. Old pineau can be aged for 10 years or longer. The alcoholic strength by volume must be in the range 16-22%. Most pineau is a blend of roughly one quarter cognac to three quarters wine must, with an alcoholic strength of around 17%.

The vast majority of pineau is either consumed within France or exported to Francophone markets. Less than 25% of pineau production is exported, and over 90% of exports go to Belgium and Canada. In practice France and Belgium together consume almost all pineau production. Canada follows a very distant third, but still consumes several times more than the next largest pineau drinking nation. I am guessing Quebec is the center of Canadian pineau consumption. The French are keeping this one very much to themselves. So enough of facts and figures! It is time to open that bottle and see what the French are hiding. . .

The taste is mild but interesting, and unusual compared to other aperitif wines. No herbal flavors, bitterness or spice leap out at you. There is also little of the matured complexity of aperitif wines like port or sherry. This stuff is simply sweet, full bodied, and extremely ‘fresh’. It tastes like a very fruity wine, but also reminds me strongly of mead (honey wine). It is hard to believe it contains no honey since the honey taste is so strong. There is also some apple aroma, though again no apples were harmed in its manufacture. It has an unusual ‘primeval’ character, reminding me of the opening titles in Werner Herzog’s ‘Fitzcarraldo’, which describe the Amazon is described as a place where God never finished his creation. Yep, it tastes ‘unfinished’, in a good way. Pineau seems slightly rough-and-ready, with a plethora of interesting aromas that threaten to erupt all over the place and are disinclined to sit still. This stuff should have potential as a cocktail ingredient. I wonder why it isn’t used more?

In terms of mixing I would tend to think (roughly in order of potential) along the lines of cognac (the obvious choice), calvados, rhum agricole, pisco, Cuban rum, and whiskey. Pineapple juice also springs to mind, and perhaps Cynar could be another idea. This is not experience talking. I am just making some guesses as to what might work. I should also note that I did not dream up the rhum agricole angle. I bought a bottle of pineau partly so I could make a rhum agricole drink, the Pompadour, from the Esquire Drinks Database. Lets start with the Pompadour then. . .

The Pompadour
1 ½ oz rhum agricole vieux (I used St. James Ambre)

1 ½ oz pineau

½ oz lemon juice

This shows off the characteristics of both the rhum and the pineau. It is weird and unlike anything you are likely to have drunk. It is also fantastic. There is a full on aroma symphony, with the fresh and aromatic characters of both ingredients getting a chance to shine. You should seek out Pineau des Charentes for this drink alone.

Next up are a couple more pineau cocktail recipes I found online. I will include some experimental recipes of my own in a subsequent post. This next recipe is from the website site of a producer of Pineau des Charentes.

Charentais

2 1/2 oz pineau

½ oz cognac

¼ oz crème de framboise

1 tsp lemon juice

This smooth and tasty refresher is just lightly spiked pineau. The source of this recipe was unclear on whether a liqueur or eau de vie framboise was called for (mentioning both in different places). I did not have an appropriate eau de vie so I went for a liqueur. The lemon juice was added by me as an afterthought to give it some zing since it tasted a bit flat.

The next was something not unlike the above, but with the addition of a dash of pineapple juice and the whole then being brought to life with champagne. Again the recipe was from the website of a pineau producer.

Reaulais

2 oz pineau

½ oz cognac

½ oz pineapple juice

1 dash grenadine

2 oz champagne or sparkling wine

Shake everything except the champagne over ice. Strain into a glass and top with champagne.

A very rich yet slightly lively drink. There are no real surprises but it is most pleasant.

The next recipe was from a French language website – hence a little ambiguity over what liqueur is meant.

Ambassade

1 ½ oz pineau

½ oz gin

½ oz ‘orange liqueur’ (I used Grand Marnier)

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Another “take Pineau des Charentes and spike it with a little hooch” type of drink. It tastes good though. French style cocktails, by which I mean drinks that are heavy on aperitif wines and light on spirits, are tasty. Made with Grand Marnier the drink is rich and smooth. With Cointreau or some other triple sec it would probably be more fresh and fragrant.

I love the way the French can’t help adding London Dry Gin to things. It has to hurt them, right? Something like an “every time you spike your drink with gin, somewhere in the world a DGSE operative in scuba gear dies” kind of thing.

Sorry, I’m unrelenting about the Rainbow Warrior Affair aren’t I? The French are a fine race, and have punched well above their weight in terms of inventing delicious aperitifs. I’ve had better cocktails than this one, but I’ve also had much worse.

In my next post on Pineau des Charentes I will experiment with some recipes of my own.

Passion Fruit Pisco Sour

2 oz pisco

¾ oz passion fruit pulp (I used a whole passion fruit, which yielded roughly ¾ oz of pulp – not juice!)

½ oz lime juice

¼ oz simple syrup

1 egg white

Shake long and hard over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

I deliberately didn’t double stain, hoping the passion fruit seeds would end up as an attractive garnish on the bottom of the glass. This didn’t happen. About three seeds made it to where they were supposed to go. This was not quite the effect I was after. Maybe double strain and forget about trying to achieve this effect, or simply garnish with a teaspoon of passion fruit pulp in the bottom of the glass?

It seems best to leave out the Angostura garnish on the foam. I experimented with a drop of Angostura on one corner of the drink, but it seemed to distract too much from the delicate passion fruit aroma. Of course some may like it.

This drink made a beautiful pisco sour variation. The passion fruit and pisco make nice partners, and there is no doubting the passion fruit adds some extra complexity.

Since passion fruit comes from the Amazon, and since Pisco also comes from South America I am labeling my further experiments (involving pisco and agricole rum) ‘Amazonian cocktails’.

Amazonian Cocktail #1

2 oz pisco

¾-1 oz passion fruit pulp (my passion fruit was especially big so it gave me practically an ounce of pulp)

½ oz lime juice

¾ oz St. Germain

1 egg white

Shake hard over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

I had envisaged a drink that improved on the above by adding some subtle complexity in the form of St. Germain. I think the St. Germain ended up distracting too much from the passion fruit though. Maybe ½ oz of St. Germain would be better? This is a pleasant drink, but the passion fruit doesn’t jump out like I want it to. Perhaps it just needs tweaking?

Maybe my best drink came last. . .

Amazonian Cocktail #2 (or The Fitzcarraldo) 

1 ½ oz pisco

¾ oz passion fruit pulp

¾ oz dry apricot brandy (i.e. a eau de vie, not a liqueur)

2 tsp Grand Marnier

1 tsp Grenadine

This is just a reworking of the Dulchin, substituting passion fruit for the lime juice. Though I say it myself, this is pretty damn good. The passion fruit makes a much softer and more approachable drink than the Dulchin, yet one that is no less interesting. The combination of pisco, passion fruit and apricot eau de vie provides tons of aromatic complexity. The pisco is easy to pick, but the apricot and passion fruit mesh into a single exotic flavor. While sweeter made with passion fruit than the original Dulchin, it is not too sweet. It could certainly be reworked (playing around with the Grand Marnier and Grenadine?), but this is close to being a pretty good drink. The color is beautiful too.

So why did I call this the Fitzcarraldo? I have always been fascinated by the city of Manaus, the remote Brazilian Amazon town that was the site of a big rubber boom in the late 19^th and early 20^th century. One of the famous stories of the Manaus boom years concerns the grand opera house that was built there. Legend has it that Enrico Caruso himself was scheduled to perform there but for various reasons never made it. No sooner was the opera house completed than the rubber economy collapsed, and Manaus reverted to a remote jungle backwater marking the furthest boundaries of civilization. Werner Herzog directed a movie, Fitzcarraldo (1982), about the dreamer behind the construction of the Manaus opera house. This last drink seems as good a drink as any to christen the Fitzcarraldo. The drink combines Brazilian passion fruit with Peruvian pisco (this makes sense because Manaus is closer to Peru than to most places in Brazil). Meanwhile, European apricot brandy and Grand Marnier bring some Old World refinement to the remote frontier.

So today marks a leap year meaning we get that rarest of experiences – February the 29^th. This may not seem hugely exciting. However, back in the 1920s, when Harry Craddock was mixing cocktails at the Savoy, leap year celebrations were quite the thing. Harry Craddock even created the Leap Year Cocktail to mark the 1928 celebrations at the Savoy. The Leap Year Cocktail isn’t a bad drink either, being sort of a lightweight cousin to the Burnt Fuselage.

The Burnt Fuselage (which I found here at the Cocktail Chronicles) became a minor hit in Shanghai after I introduced the recipe to the now disappeared Senses Wine Lounge. Senses was stocking a good mixing cognac, had some customers who appreciated cognac in mixed drinks, and the drink took off. The drink spread from Senses to a few other bars, and I started getting late night texts from strangers asking me to confirm the recipe for them. Even more amazingly the drink continued to be made consistently to the original recipe for weeks on end. This consistency was something of a first.

Chinese barmen are not the world’s greatest. There are a few different things at work here. First, there is the Chinese trait called ‘cha-bu-duo-ism’ (or 差不多-ism). ‘Cha-bu-duo’ means something like ‘just about’ or ‘nearly right’ in Chinese, and describes the way most things are done there. If a barman finds himself without rum he’ll make a Pina Colada with gin. In fact even if he does have rum he may still absent mindedly make it with gin. Second, there is the Chinese habit of protecting ones interests by keeping knowledge to oneself. This works well if you are a character in a martial arts epic, lending itself to grand finales hinging on secret and powerful fighting techniques. Unfortunately the same habit becomes frustrating when barmen adopt it. A barman who learns anything tends to jealously keep that knowledge to themselves. If asked to pass the knowledge on to co-workers they may even deliberately mislead their hapless student. Chaos ensues. Third, there is just a simple lack of basic knowledge of how to make drinks in China. This means barmen have real trouble retaining complicated recipes, making simple mixtures comprising equal proportions of three ingredients a godsend. Lets also admit that these equal parts recipes are easy for inebriated drinkers to remember too.

So the Burnt Fuselage is made as follows:

1 oz cognac

1 oz Grand Marnier

1 oz Dry Vermouth

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist, being sure to express the oils into the drink.

Simple, rich, complex and delicious.

The Leap Year is a lighter cousin to the Burnt Fuselage, and is made as follows:

2 oz gin

½ oz Grand Marnier

½ oz Sweet Vermouth

dash of lemon juice (my dash was a teaspoon or so)

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

This lacks the powerful and complex body of the Burnt Fuselage. It is much lighter, less sweet, and leans more towards refreshing than contemplative. The Burnt Fuselage seems more like an after dinner or late evening drink. The Leap Year is probably more at home in the early evening. Not a classic, but also not bad. Why not mark the 80th birthday of this drink by mixing one up? Oh, and according to Harry Craddock this drink was responsible for more proposals than any other cocktail ever invented. The tradition of women being allowed to propose to men on a leap year must have been very real back in the 1920s. Some men may wish to closely guard the formula.

This one may be my favorite pisco cocktail. Dave Wondrich wrote it up on the Esquire website drinks data base (which seemed to disappear for a while but has now moved here). The Dulchin doesn’t have its own entry there; look for it under the Hop Toad, a lime and apricot brandy drink that is also pretty good.

The thing I really like about the Dulchin is its use of eau de vie, or dry fruit brandy. Eau de vie is fantastic stuff for mixing cocktails with. There aren’t nearly enough Eau de vie cocktails out there and the good ones deserve some attention. The Dulchin gets even better by combining eau de vie with pisco. This combination just works so well, with the pisco being a sort of a eau de vie itself – certainly more like a eau de vie than a traditional grape brandy. To top things off, the Dulchin uses a particularly hard to find and under-appreciated eau de vie, a Hungarian dry apricot brandy called Barack Palinka. It is hard not to like this drink.

Barack Palinka can be hard to find. Obviously another apricot eau de vie would make a fine substitute. If you can’t find an apricot eau de vie then consider experimenting with some other eau de vie you can find. I have found that plum makes a reasonable substitute, different from yet still similar to the original apricot. Yugoslavian plum brandy, or slivovitch, is fairly easy to find. I can imagine raspberry also being good although I never tried it. I am not so sure about cherry or pear. It couldn’t hurt to give them a whirl though. Whatever you do don’t substitute a sweet apricot brandy (i.e. the reasonably ubiquitous apricot liqueur) for dry apricot brandy (i.e. apricot eau de vie). There is nothing wrong with sweet apricot brandy, but keep it out of this drink.

The recipe:

2 oz pisco

1 oz dry apricot brandy (I used Barack Palinka)

1 oz lime juice

1 tsp grenadine

2 tsp Grand Marnier

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Bracing, tons of complex fruity flavors, very dry, and not too sour. This drink is very different to most others so you really need to try it for yourself.

I think this drink is a good example of how pisco can do unique things. Here the pisco helps cut the intensity of the apricot to a more agreeable level, while simultaneously contributing its own fruity and aromatic qualities. The pisco forms the backbone of the drink while also providing the perfect stage for the apricot to shine on. If you substituted vodka for the pisco you would simply have diluted dry apricot brandy. If you substituted gin you might get an interesting result but the flavors would be likely to compete rather than cooperate. It might take a little more sweetness to make the drink work. If you substituted a dark spirit like brandy then you would mute the fresh flavors in the fruit brandy. Pisco doesn’t seem like an unusual choice in this drink; it seems like the ideal choice.

Oh, and this drink was apparently named after some U.S. industrialist who was allergic to other more common spirits and so had to find inventive ways to drink pisco.