Foraging for Booze

A story about foraging on “CBS Sunday Morning” caught my eye. It’s called “In Denmark, a Quest for New Spirits.”

We’re told that Lars Williams of Empirical Spirits in Denmark is “trying to totally reimagine alcohol,” asking “if agave can become tequila and juniper berries can flavor gin, what other spirits are yet to be discovered?”

He said, “We’re also trying to show that alcohol can be more than a gin and tonic at the end of a hard work-day, because it’s such an amazing vehicle for capturing and preserving flavor, that it has a lot of potential that we’re just sort of scraping the surface on.”

Well, if that’s what floats your boat, go for it. Back when I was a drinker I was no connoisseur, though; the cheapest bourbons and vodkas worked just as well as the fancy stuff.

And as a GardenRanter I have to ask – did Amy Stewart start all this? 

There was also mention in the story of “a full-time forager for clients, including Noma.” (I had to Google to find out that’s a restaurant.)

The very notion of “full-time foragers” got my attention. Who, besides the occasional extremely expensive restaurant, pays for foraging? So I asked Ellen Zachos, author of Backyard Foraging, who responded that:

We’re generally a freelance bunch with multiple side hustles. I was very fortunate to work for The Botanist gin for several years, teaching foraged mixology across the country. It was a wonderful gig and I learned as much about cocktails as the mixologists learned about foraged ingredients. Jobs like that are few and far between…mostly we foragers either have to scramble or explore the aforementioned side hustles.

Which made me ask – there’s a gin called The Botanist? I am SO out of it.

Foraging for Booze originally appeared on GardenRant on January 3, 2020.

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