“They’ll put arak in your glass, add the ice and when you’re done will pour you a clean glass.” If you’re in Lebanon and a waiter offers you baladi, that’s the local homemade version, but labeled bottlings are abundant too, such as Arak Brun. “It louches and forms a slight film,” says Matta-Aliah. A polite peculiarity of the drink: You never use the same glass more than once. Waiters will “break” the arak to your taste-that is, add water-which is often one-third arak to two-thirds water or at most half and half, because the spirit is so strong (over 50% ABV). According to Matta-Aliah, arak is typically served from large carafes, often at long family Sunday gatherings for mezze at favorite local restaurants. “Arak runs through the veins of every Lebanese,” says May Matta-Aliah, a wine and spirits educator and Lebanese expat living in New York City. In Lebanon, anise-flavored arak (emphasis on the first “a”) is both literally and figuratively a communal spirit. France is absinthe’s ancestral homeland, but brands have popped up all over the world, from the dozens of elegant version made in France to American craft upstart offerings, such as Philadelphia Distilling’s Vieux Carre Absinthe Superieure, with its minty-fennel aromatics and pretty decanter-style bottle. It’s utterly complex, and the best way to untangle the giddy mix of other botanicals is to drink it in the traditional method, pouring a little absinthe into a glass and slowly dripping water over a sugar cube atop a petite slotted absinthe spoon. The dominant flavor of the green fairy is anise, certainly, but that’s not really doing the spirit justice. ![]() ![]() in 1912 and was only gingerly ushered back in during 2007), but in all likelihood, it was the spirit’s high ABV (anywhere from 45% to 74%-sure, that might make you hallucinate). Wormwood often gets the blame for the bad behavior of imbibers (so much so that the spirit was banned in the U.S. And indeed, the green fairy knows how to take over a party, exit early and leave everyone gossiping about her. What follows is an overview.Įntire books have been written on the subject, poems composed, paintings and dances inspired, rumors spread. ![]() But the resulting flavor is nearly interchangeable with aniseed because both contain the essential oil anethol, which gives that unmistakable (if sometimes polarizing) spicy, pungent licorice-like herbaceous flavor and the ability to take a liquid from clear to opaque with a drop of water or the addition of an ice cube.Īround the world, a multitude of countries and regions have each found its own spirituous anise expression. Pliny the Elder was a fan of its digestive charms.Īnd what about star anise? That’s actually the fruit of a type of tree from the magnolia family, native to southeastern China. It’s one of the oldest known culinary herbs and, according to “The Oxford Companion to Food,” hails from the Levant (a historical term referring to what’s now Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria) and was a Roman-era darling in desserts and other dishes. Once you start poking around, you realize there’s so much more than simply sambuca.īut first: What is anise? Also called aniseed, it comes from the Pimpinella anisum plant, whose long, stalky stems produce white flowers where the seeds form. You know how the dumpling is pretty much the great equalizer in the food world because nearly every culture seems to have its own version? The spirits world’s version of that is anise spirits.
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