eau-de-vie (“water of life”) is a general term that is the French equivalent of the English spirit, the German Geist, Wasser, or Schnaps, and the Latin aqua vitae, of which it is a translation. See aqua vitae. While it can be applied to spirits that have been barrel aged, it usually denotes one that is unaged. By far the most common use of the term is for the unaged fruit spirits made in Alsace and elsewhere along France’s eastern border from cherries (kirsch), plums (quetsch, prune, and mirabelle), apples, pears (poire Williams), quinces (coing), raspberries (framboise), strawberries (fraise), a number of other berries and fruits, and even wine lees (lie) or beer draff (fleur de bière). See
Collectively, the roots of the traditional eaux-de-vie of the French-German borderlands can be traced to the 1400s and 1500s, when distilling in Europe got out of the hands of the alchemists and doctors and into those of the farmer. In works such as Melchior Sebisch’s 1579 Sieben Bücher von dem Feldbau, we can see the earlier, multi-botanical spirits sharing space with things such as Erdbeerwasser, or strawberry spirit, for which the formula is simply “Take ripe strawberries and put them in a glass container; let them putrefy, throw in a little salt or sugar, and distill them.” Sebisch, it should be noted, was from Strasbourg, in the heart of eau-de-vie country. By the 1700s, making eaux-de-vie from the abundant fruits of the region was a local specialty.
Then as now, most of the distillers were farmers who distilled as a way of preserving a short-lived crop and making a little extra money. Pot stills remain the norm, most of them relying on indirect heat, although one occasionally still finds the old type of direct-fired still, with the still head peculiar to the region, where the vapor pipe is doubled, like a side-by-side double-barreled shotgun. There are also some larger producers using hybrid stills. See still, hybrid; and still, pot.
Most eaux-de-vie are made essentially as they were in Sebisch’s day, but there are some that use a two-step process: fruits and berries that lack the necessary sugars for fermentation are macerated for several weeks in neutral spirit (for the larger, more commercial producers) or new cherry or quince spirit (for farm producers, although this is fairly rare) before distillation. The fruits used are chiefly raspberries, but also bilberries, the berries of the whitebeam tree (Sorbus aria), which make “one of the finest and most elegant of eaux-de-vie,” as Paul Eschbach wrote in 1992, and a few others. The larger commercial producers produce their spirit using maceration, while some artisanal farmhouse producers still ferment. See maceration.
After distillation the spirits are diluted and matured, often for years. Traditionally, this is done in glass demijohns, which are left uncorked for the first few months of aging, allowing some of the more volatile compounds to escape. Large casks of ash wood (which is fairly nonreactive and does not color the spirit) were also used. Today large producers generally use stainless steel tanks. The finished spirits are bottled at between 40 percent and 46 percent ABV.
Eaux-de-vie are generally drunk after meals in small glasses. Their flavors can be quite subtle, but pot distillation means that there is a lot of it: they tend to be paradoxically delicate yet pungent. They also tend to be quite expensive, due to the artisanal nature of their production. Both of these factors limit their use in cocktails, although kirsch does turn up in some punches and in the classic Café Brûlot—and in the Rose cocktail, practically the signature drink of Paris in the 1920s and 1930s.
See also barack palinka; Germany, Switzerland, and Austria; Jelínek; kosher spirits; obstler; rakija; slivovitz; and tuica.
Andreae, Illa. Alle schnäpse dieser welt. Zurich: Transitbooks, 1973.
Eschbach, Paul. Les eaux de vie d’Alsace et ailleurs. Strasbourg: Editions Coprur, 1992.
Sebisch, Melchior. Siben Bücher von dem Feldbau. Strasbourg: 1579.
By: David Wondrich