flower-based spirits

flower-based spirits —that is, spirits distilled from fermented flowers—are exceedingly rare, but because floral flavors are very popular in cocktails, there are a number of spirits, both historical and modern, that are flavored with flowers. Flowers such as rose, lavender, and chamomile are common ingredients in amari, vermouths, and other types of aromatized wines. See amaro; vermouth; and wines, fortified. (In fact, vermouth maker Noilly Prat allegedly uses more than half of France’s total annual chamomile crop in its products.) See Noilly Prat. Wormwood, used often in both vermouth and absinthe, can be considered a floral ingredient as well—some producers use the plant’s flowers as well as its leaves. See Wormwood and absinthe.

There are also many different types of flower-based liqueurs. Perhaps the best known of these is crème de violette, a purple liqueur made with violet petals that was popular in the early 1900s in cocktails such as the Aviation and the Blue Moon, and which saw a revival during the twenty-first-century cocktail boom. See Aviation Cocktail; Blue Moon; and crème de violette. Rose is another common liqueur ingredient as well: parfait amour, often flavored with rose, berries, and citrus, was popular in the 1800s and early 1900s, as was crème de roses, both little seen these days, and rose petals are sometimes used in the category of rosolio, an Italian cordial originally flavored with sundew flowers that dates to the Renaissance. See parfait amour and rosolio.

A modern creation flavored with elderflowers, St-Germain is another flower-based liqueur that has become very popular in the early twenty-first century and has inspired a number of imitators. See Cooper Spirits. In addition to these, distilleries around the world make liqueurs and other spirits flavored with honeysuckle, rose geranium, hibiscus, marigold, poppy, iris, and other flowers. (Even artichoke-based amari like Cynar fall into this category, as the edible portion of the artichoke is botanically an immature flower.)

But these are all spirits flavored with flowers. The main spirit distilled from them is an Indian specialty, mahua, made from the flowers of the mahua tree (Bassia latifolia). When dried, these blossoms are as much as 40 percent fermentable sugars, but they are also rich in a glucoside that causes diarrhea. This compound persists in wine made from the flowers but does not pass through the still. Mahua has been made in parts of India since at least the 1400s, and it may go back to antiquity.

Brown, Jared. “Noilly Prat Ambre Vermouth.” The Historians (blog), March 20, 2009. http://thehistorians-jaredbrown.blogspot.com/2009/03/noilly-prat-ambre-vermouth.html (accessed March 19, 2021).

Mahdihassan, S. “The Earliest Distillation Units: Pottery in Indo-Pakistan.” Pakistan Archaeology 8 (1972): 159–168.

Regan, Gaz. “The Cocktailian: Creme de Violette Lifts Aviation to the Moon.” San Francisco Chronicle, September 27, 2007. https://www.sfgate.com/wine/article/The-Cocktailian-Creme-de-violette-lifts-Aviation-2520581.php (accessed March 19, 2021).

By: Jason Horn