flavorings comprise all tangible, measurable ingredients added to spirits that alter their aromas and flavors. Broadly, the term encompasses those spices, herbs, fruits, seeds, essential oils, oleoresins, essences, extracts, blends, infusions, wines, sweeteners, and other natural and synthetic ingredients added after (and, in the case of some botanicals, during) distillation. The foundation of a spirit’s flavors is shaped by factors such as its substrate or base material (barley or molasses, for example), yeast strain, still design, a distiller’s cuts during distillation, and barrel selection and management. Building upon that base, flavorings allow distillers, bottlers, rectifiers, and blenders additional levels of control, of both artistry and artifice.
Where flavoring ends and adulteration begins is sometimes a subjective line. Small quantities of flavorings undeclared on the label may be used to adjust, finesse, or subtly finish a product to prepare it for sale. Alternately, they may strongly imbue a spirit with a new flavor, thus fundamentally altering its character. An admixture of synthetic vanillin, for example, may amplify a whisky’s existing vanilla notes. See vanillin. Other flavorings may transform neutral spirits into candy-flavored schnapps and ersatz brandy. Others still lie at the heart of elegant cordials, gins, and absinthes. The use of flavorings is apparent in well-stocked liquor stores: whiskies flavored with peanut butter, mint extracts, cinnamon and cassia oils, and honey; vodkas with the taste and aroma of chiles, bison grass, hemp, extracts of pear and lime, and pitch-perfect strawberry pavlova; spiced rums; liqueurs made with natural and artificial flavors for banana, orange, ginger, melon, coffee, watermelon, and more; brandies flavored with apricot, blackberry, and apple. The possibilities are almost limitless.
Flavorings have been used for millennia in drinks, but around the middle of the nineteenth century, organic chemists began to analyze spirits systematically to determine their precise chemical composition. Using that research, compounders and rectifiers subsequently created ersatz brandies, rye whiskies, and other beverages. The intent was not necessarily fraud. Among scientists, the thinking was that if all the components of genuine spirits could be determined, recreating those spirits at considerable profit was a simple matter of combining those same compounds with less expensive base spirits. In practice, the widespread adoption of essences, extracts, essential oils, and other flavor compounds invited chiselers and cheats to create such blatant, low-grade fakes that the United States passed the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897. See bottled in bond and essential oils.
While flavorings are technically forbidden for a number of spirits, such as straight American whiskies, they are not in and of themselves a cheat or fraud. Many elegant cognacs, for instance, use an oak extract called boisé to finish their brandies. See boisé. In fact, flavorings are required to make numerous spirits, including gin. Whole botanicals (in the form of juniper berries plus citrus, orris root, licorice, angelica, coriander, and other botanicals), extracts, and essences or a combination of them may contribute the classic flavors. See
Flavorings are not restricted to plant matter and its concentrates or derivatives. For centuries distillers deployed meats such as beef, mutton, horse, snails, cured ham, deer, iguana, and others in spirits, although they have become rare in the modern age. An eighteenth-century manuscript at the University of Pennsylvania presents a detailed recipe for Cock Water made from a barnyard fowl distilled with wine, herbs, and fruit. The practice continues: Del Maguey now sells Pechuga, a mezcal distilled in a traditional manner with a chicken breast suspended within the still. See Del Maguey mezcal.
Though more properly the domain of blending, small additions of spirits such as brandies or rum in some circumstances act as flavorings. Wines, including but not limited to port, Madeira, and sweet vermouth, are also used. Whiskies may be “finished” in barrels that previously held sherry or other wines to impart a degree of wine character to the bottled spirit. Some, however, are blended with wine. So-called Kansas City–style whisky, a pre-Prohibition style resurrected by J. Rieger & Co., blends various straight whiskies with a small addition of sherry to temper the spirits.
Modern regulations dictate that spirits flavorings may not be harmful in the quantities used, though what is permitted varies by country. In the United States, all added flavorings for commercial spirits must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, designated as GRAS (“generally recognized as safe”), or affirmed by the maker as GRAS with no FDA objection. The use of calamus, Virginia snakeroot, lead, and other ingredients of the past now understood to be problematic has been discontinued in many countries. It behooves the modern distiller, bartender, or home enthusiast recreating old recipes to research ingredients thoroughly and follow best practices for their use in drinks.
See also adulteration; aging; amaro; aroma; blending; compounding; cordials, distillation; gin; infusion; and rectification.
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Difford, Simon. Diffordsguide Gin, 2nd ed. London: Odd Firm of Sin, 2013.
Goldfarb, Aaron. Hacking Whiskey: Smoking, Blending, Fat Washing, and Other Whiskey Experiments. Brooklyn: Dovetail, 2018.
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Stewart, Amy. The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World’s Great Drinks. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin, 2013.
By: Matthew Rowley