Spirit Sunday - This Week Schwarzer Kater

This week – Schwarzer Kater ($29 500mL)

Let's get straight to the heart of this: it tastes like medicine. Please read on, though. It tastes like medicine, yes, but like the medicine you used to love as a child, that stange combination of fruit flavours, bitterness, sweetness and tang that you, as a child, could only find in certain brands of cough syrup. Before we were old enough to have 'grown-up' drinks, we could only explore theese sorts of tastes by hacking up a lung and being medicated. Schwarzer Kater, a black current liquer, lets you revisit all these memories and tastes, but with far greater legitimacy.

Given that the entire bottle is written is German I admit to a fair degree of fumbling before I found the intended combination of spirit/mixer. The taste is strong enough that to mix it with a fruit juice or soft drink just leads to conflict (flavourly speaking, of course), so a good splash in a small glass of cold water brings it to a more drinkable place. For those who don't mind to sip stronger stuff it still tastes great over ice and even at room tempurature. 

 

It's is a little more syrupy than a heavy port, and at %22 makes a hearty go of its half-spirit status without any real taste of alcohol. In my research I found that black current liquers of this variety were once used by monks in Europe as a 'cure for everything', prompting me to make the connection above.

It would make a great addition to any cocktail cabinet, especially as an alcoholic alternative to grenadine, just to add a punch while keeping the sweetness.

Schwarzer Kater rates 3.25 stars.