Gluttons Club

Last night when I went to the ole liquor cabinet for a nightcap, I ended up with more than I expected. I wanted something out of the ordinary so I looked past the frequently used whiskys and way in the back, under a cover of dust, I found a bottle of Norman calvados. We got this bottle a few years ago when my female roomies briefly hitched on to the apple martini craze. As a purist and curmudgeon, I poo-poohed their trendy drink but welcomed the addition to the cabinet. Calvados is the sort of bottle that gives a touch of class to any liquor cabinet and keeps things interesting when you get sick of the usual ole drink.

Calvados is an apple brandy with origins in Normandy, France. Normandy is renown for its orchards so apples make their way into many dishes and drinks in the region. Just as conventional brandy is made by distilling grape wine to fortify regular wine with, the Normans make calvados with hard cider. The result is a pleasant enough brandy with just a touch of apple-y sourness to make it distinct.

I first drank it while studying abroad in Dublin and my friend Fred, who was from Normandy, came back from a trip home with an unlabelled bottle of brownish liquor. It was made by his grandfather and was supposedly known to be of good quality. He opened it up and passed it around the table for a handful of us to try. It had the sort of fiery essence that sends vapors through the top of your head and siezes your throat on the way down. It was good but not what anyone expected--somewhere in there you could tell that an apple was involved but it wasn't clear what happened to the poor thing along the way. We happily drank it as a nice alternative to the usual whisky and cheap lager we always had on hand and I fondly remember the coughs, gasps and grimaces as the bottle made its way around the room.

I've since lost touch with Fred and sadly, most of my friends from that year in Dublin. Some couples ended up together but most of us drifted apart, heading back to our homes throughout Europe and the US. After a couple of years of postcards and holiday greetings, addresses changed and letters went unanswered as we moved on with our lives. No matter how much time passes however, I'll always remember the good times we had through association with the particular types of food and drink we shared. We shared our cultures through care packages from home and the filter of poorly stocked Irish grocery stores. Nowadays, when I come across something familiar, the mere taste conjures up happy memories. Often, as it did last night, it comes from the most unlikely of sources, the back of the liquor cabinet.

To me this is further testament to the importance of eating and drinking for enjoyment over mere sustenance. Looking back at pictures from those days, there are more of us sitting around a kitchen with empty plates and beer cans on the table than any other setting. It was typical for us to cook for eachother and share our native habits so I got to eat a lot things that I would have normally had to travel throughout Europe for. At times the offering wasn't always the most pleasant, as in the case of lard and snuff night, but it was always an occasion that brought us together and the tastes and smells will be with me for a long time.

Fred, just in case you're reading this, tu es un poisson.