Embury presents the first in a series of stories from Jolly Benson on his travels to far off places and what he drank with the locals.
Prosec, 2005 vintage. Hvar, Croatia
The old man laughed and touched his nose. He pretended to fall off his bench. ‘That’s the stuff that will get you’ he’d said. ‘After one you don’t feel anything. But just try to get up after two. You can’t it’s impossible.’
The old man spoke German pretty well, and my Dutch friend Nicolaas could get by. The old man learned it from Nazi soldiers stationed on the island of Hvar, Croatia, when he was a young boy. He lived on that island his entire life, except for a few wild years in Paris in his twenties. But he came back, because the city life was too fast and chaotic. He preferred the rhythms of the country, the early dawns and late sunsets. Plus, he missed the good hooch his island had in abundance.
Nicolaas learned German God Knows Where, but the two were getting along famously. After we agreed on a price for the spare room in the house, the old man told lurid tales of young women in the vineyards at harvest time, and other things that pass for scandalous in that country. Nicolaas translated all this to me, while the old man’s wife sat in silence with a polite smile spread across her broad face. She understood none of it, but knew her husband was happy to tell the stories he always exaggerated to strangers.
He was on a tear about the local wines, how so-and-so’s red isn’t as good as his father’s, or how a neighbor cheats by mixing his wine with commercial wines from the mainland. I asked him (through Nicolaas, of course) about the local spirits. He knew of many kinds. A local herbal tonic, made from 40 kinds of herbs and roots grown only on the south side of the island, used for rheumatism, gout, and coughing fits. A plum brandy used for celebrations and special events, but drunk daily by most. They have a lot to celebrate, he said. The most intriguing for me was a sweet –as- dessert-wine deal which drank as smooth as a Riesling but socked it in there at 80 proof, minimum. This is the stuff he was talking about when he did his nose and bench dance.
'Where can I get some?'
'The market at the bottom of the hill tomorrow. But be there before 8. The old lady usually sells out by then.'
After a few more drinks, he admitted the shine lady was a former lover of his, and he volunteered to purchase her finest spirits for me. But we mustn’t tell his wife he knew the liquor lady, as she doesn’t know about the affair. We agreed, of course. I couldn’t have explained it to her if I wanted to. His wife sat there blankly; glad to see these two foreigners talking with her husband.
We drank about three Prosec each. Then Nicolaas and I stumbled down the cobblestone lanes and into the town square. The late September sun was low already and the locals all sat around with somber looks on their faces. They all smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and sucked air over their yellow stained moustaches. It was hard to read these local types. Nicolaas and I were in a grand mood. He was singing a song in Dutch, and I was singing as song in English, and to us it sounded glorious. It was a David Hasselhoff tune we were both singing, and the choruses matched up. At least we thought they did. We bought food at a restaurant where a heavy lidded waiter mostly ignored us. It was good food, but went down unnoticed, mostly because we were talking loudly about Artificial Intelligence, Hasslehoff, and the lack of women in town. I remember saying “If there were only more pretty ladies around, we could all pile in my zeppelin and go to Majorca. It is powered by champagne bubbles and my own hubris!”
Before I knew what was happening, we were headed back to the lovely old couple’s house. Once there, we had an argument about the cognitive abilities of schwein, compared to other domesticated animals. I was losing the argument, and felt like I needed some air. I went out onto the patio, and the cool air washed over me. I then threw up in the lovely old lady’s tomato plants. I could imagine her, as I was still in the plants, sitting up in her bed with her fingers tightly woven together, hoping I wouldn’t die in her tomato plants. I did not die in her tomato plants. I passed out in them, and Nicolaas came out to get me just before dawn.
At 9:30, the old man had five plastic bottles waiting at the breakfast table. He beamed with self-satisfaction. Or he had already started in on the drink. For about $20, we got: 2 bottles of Travarica (herbal cure-all), a bottle of Orahovica (plum hooch for daily celebrations) and a bottle of Prosec, a 2005 vintage. This was the jewel of the lot.
It took a full day of recovery before I could objectively taste the Prosec. One really should use terms reserved for wines when talking about this spirit. Preposterous terms like “smoky butterscotch notes” and “honey in the nose” don’t seem out of place at all. Terms used for describing liquor are obsolete. Burn? What is that? There is no fire, no deep burning resolution at the end of the sip, nothing. You could feed this stuff to an eight year old, and he would think it no stronger than a juice box.
But the flavor! The flavor is gloriously rich, and the texture is as smooth as a model’s hand in a silk glove. It is made from mostly Muscat grapes, and so it has all the sweetness and body you would expect from a mellow Muscat, but at 80 proof, it can make you into an ass very quickly. My favorite thing to drink this with is a wonderful French fois gras, served just so, with little toast points. Then we sing David Hasselhoff tunes, and are that much happier for it.
-Jolly Benson
Photo: JSB Archives
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