Hawkings - Aperitif: a spirited guide to the drinks, history and culture of the aperitif

Publishing Director and Editor: Sarah Lavelle
Designer: Will Webb
Photographer: Sarah Hogan
Prop Stylist: Alexander Breeze
Copy Editor: Euan Ferguson
Production: Vincent Smith and Nikolaus Ginelli

First published in 2018 by Quadrille,
an imprint of Hardie Grant Publishing

Quadrille
5254 Southwark Street
London SE1 1UN
quadrille.com

Text Kate Hawkings 2018
Photography Sarah Hogan 2018
Design and layout Quadrille Publishing Limited 2018

The rights of the author have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN: 9781787132900

CONTENTS

I WAS 12 WHEN I FIRST HEARD THE WORD aperitif, at a chintzy country house hotel that reeked of uptight gentility and suppressed emotions. I was there to celebrate my great aunt Margarets eightieth birthday. My parents, my older sister and I were ushered into the drawing room before dinner, Margaret gamely leading the way on her walking sticks, with her ill-fitting wig set at a jaunty angle. We perched on the over-stuffed sofas overloaded with cushions as leather-bound menus were flourished by the white-jacketed maitre d, sleek of hair and oleaginous of demeanour. Our host then uttered the immortal words, Would you care to commence with an aperitif?

My sister issued a snort and my shoulders started shaking, but we managed to summon the good manners to wait until the poor man left the room before collapsing in hysterical giggles at this preposterous pomposity. When my father, who dined here occasionally with his clients, leaned towards us and whispered conspiratorially, His name is Mr Snodgrass, we totally lost the plot, spluttering dry-roasted peanuts across the velvet pile carpet and crossing our legs tightly so we wouldnt wet our pants.

Our mother frowned and handed us the tissues she always carried in her handbag; we wiped the snot from our noses and regained a semblance of composure just as Mr Snodgrass returned with our drinks held aloft on a silver salver. Aunt Margaret said simply, Well, isnt this nice?

It was bitter lemon for my sister and me the go-to treat drink whenever it was on offer while the ladies had champagne and my father, a Campari Soda. The drinks arrived in immaculate crystal glassware, a ramrod-stiff linen coaster deftly placed beneath each one by the fawning Mr S. He produced his pen and notebook with a flourish. And may I take your order for dinner? At that moment a passion in my heart was born for the aperitif the very word, the sense of occasion, and my-oh-my, the drinks.

Campari Soda is my absolute favourite aperitif; from time to time I replace the soda with bitter lemon and drink in homage to dear Mr Snodgrass.

The word aperitif comes from the Latin aperire, meaning to open. It is something to open the appetite, to stimulate the taste buds, to mark the start of a meal thats to come. It could be a perfect gin and tonic before a long and louche lunch that ends the wrong side of midnight, a Martini to flex the digestive muscles at the start of a dinner out with friends, or perhaps a glass of something lovely at a bar on your way home for supper.

More usually for most of us, an aperitif is what properly announces the opening of the evening at home at the end of a long day when we turn our attention to the important things in life perhaps cooking, eating, drinking and talking with the one or ones we love, or just slugging something into a glass, making cheese on toast and snuggling up solo with friends on social media. Some cocktails can be considered aperitifs, and champagne certainly counts; a glass of wine cant put a foot wrong if it has a crispy pizazz to get your juices flowing and a snifter of sherry will always suit, but apros, as the French fondly call them, can be so much more.

Many of the classic aperitifs date back centuries and have their roots in medicinal compounds that all manner of chemists, alchemists, quacks and clergy concocted using whatever nearby nature offered. Such drinks were usually devised to aid digestion; water was often contaminated and food hygiene standards were slack, so the digestive health of populations needed all the help it could get. Where theres medicine, theres money, particularly if the tincture tasted good, so making snifters to be taken before eating became big business.

The histories of many of these drinks are lost in the mists and alcoholic daze of yore; others are newer to the aperitif party, the result of the vogue in the drinking business to resurrect and revive forgotten recipes as well as to use them as inspiration for new drinks for the modern age.

Aperitifs occupy a particular niche in drinking land. Cocktails are all well and good in the drinkers repertoire, but the aperitif suggests something rather lighter, something to tickle ones fancy without wrestling ones taste buds and sobriety into submission. There is a trend towards drinking lighter alcohol and less of it, and the aperitif vibe fits this bill perfectly. Also, they dont need the hand of a skilled bartender so are easy to knock up at home.

Sharpeners, snifters, aperitivos or noggins (my grannys word, and perhaps my favourite): we all know what we mean. Let us raise a glass to the aperitif, that most civilised and cheering of drinking habits.

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 ones 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.