griffer
Practically Family
- Messages
- 752
- Location
- Belgrade, Serbia
Five years ago my wife and I spent a week of our honeymoon in the Styria (Steiermark) region of Austria in a little town called Grundlsee.
While we were there we, enchanted by the locals and adopted by the one open restaurant, they plied us with their local moonshine, Zirbenschaps.
I called it moonshine because the only places I saw it for sale, it was Hausgemacht (homemade). No labels, just random bottles filled with a red schapps.
The local restaurant owner introduced us to it from his own stock. It is a a fruit brandy macerated with pine fruit from a particular tree that grows way up in the mountains. Called a stone pine, the fruit is harvested by hand before it dries to a pine cone.
The color is a beautiful dark red, clear. The taste is a wonderful refreshing pine.
It is Christmas in a bottle.
It is an Alpine spring.
And for us, it is our honeymoon.
When I got back to the states, I exhausted all me resources- German friends, liquor stores, wine importers, and the internet- searching for this elusive balm.
Thanks to the discussions here on German hats which led me off in search of Austria tracht, I stumbled on an Austrian site that sold it.
4 bottles on order, but my search was reinvigorated. I searched again and discovered, beginning last year, some buzz on gourmet forums. One mentioned a product called Zirbenz being imported by a Mr. Seed. A couple clicks later and I had Eric Seed on his cell phone describing to me in detail where I could pick up bottles or have his Zirbenschaps served to me in Manhattan.
A ten minute walk later and I had the first bottle of Zirbenschaps in my hands in 5 years.
My wife knows about the order I placed, but she has no idea I will actually come home with a bottle tonight!
Thanks interwebs, thanks Fedoralounge, thank Mr. Seed and thank you Manhattan!
http://www.zirbenz.com/
While we were there we, enchanted by the locals and adopted by the one open restaurant, they plied us with their local moonshine, Zirbenschaps.
I called it moonshine because the only places I saw it for sale, it was Hausgemacht (homemade). No labels, just random bottles filled with a red schapps.
The local restaurant owner introduced us to it from his own stock. It is a a fruit brandy macerated with pine fruit from a particular tree that grows way up in the mountains. Called a stone pine, the fruit is harvested by hand before it dries to a pine cone.
The color is a beautiful dark red, clear. The taste is a wonderful refreshing pine.
It is Christmas in a bottle.
It is an Alpine spring.
And for us, it is our honeymoon.
When I got back to the states, I exhausted all me resources- German friends, liquor stores, wine importers, and the internet- searching for this elusive balm.
Thanks to the discussions here on German hats which led me off in search of Austria tracht, I stumbled on an Austrian site that sold it.
4 bottles on order, but my search was reinvigorated. I searched again and discovered, beginning last year, some buzz on gourmet forums. One mentioned a product called Zirbenz being imported by a Mr. Seed. A couple clicks later and I had Eric Seed on his cell phone describing to me in detail where I could pick up bottles or have his Zirbenschaps served to me in Manhattan.
A ten minute walk later and I had the first bottle of Zirbenschaps in my hands in 5 years.
My wife knows about the order I placed, but she has no idea I will actually come home with a bottle tonight!
Thanks interwebs, thanks Fedoralounge, thank Mr. Seed and thank you Manhattan!
http://www.zirbenz.com/
