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Posted on 05/15/2012 4:23:46 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Maybe it’s me, but I have always thought that grappa tasted like lighter fluid (although I will admit that I have never drunk lighter fluid). I grew up in NYC, where only Italian old men drank grappa until it became popular a few years back and also started being used in a number of recipes, particularly for baking.
I ruined an entire, otherwise harmless bread by using grappa in it.
De gustibus...
“grappa tasted like lighter fluid”
Yes! It’s ridiculous! And I have seen Sicilians swig it like water.
I worked in an Italian restaurant in NY when I was a kid (well, a teenager, because in those days, the drinking age was 18 so you could work in a restaurant that served liquor if you were 18) and I was completely stunned by how much those guys could put away.
I had one taste of it then. Granted, I didn’t drink very much when I was 18, so I wouldn’t have liked much of anything (although I did like the incredibly rare, for those days, single malt scotch that I was introduced to!). My next taste of grappa was decades later, in a baking class, and it still tasted awful and I thought the fumes were probably destroying my few remaining brain cells.
Great story! Thanks!
It’s a toss-up whether grappa or tequila does more damage.
But drink enough of either, and the retaliation from your body is something you will never, ever forget.
Once you come back into it, that is.
Not a bourbon thread ping but, I do like me a good Grappa at about 25-degrees F.
Any warmer and it really does resemble kerosine.
I’ve never had it, and judging by some of the comments, I may not be missing anything. While stationed in Germany, I sampled a product called Ratzipus or some such. It was like 140 proof or so. I’d not do it again...
Sticking with my occasional bourbon, even on my WW diet. And a glass of red wine at night as well. A great way to diet...
My best gin drinking pal when I introduced him to grappa said it tasted like moonshine, which is what it started out to be, matter of fact, with the Italian wine making peasants using the leftover seeds and stems (and not only the skins, as the article states) to make their own libation after making wine for the estate master.
My father-in-law, being one of those old Italian men, introduced me to grappa five years ago. Soak hot peppers in a bottle of grappa for a month and you get a cure for the common cold. I’ve also had it with juniper. Viva grappa!
I was introduced to grappa on a business trip to Italy several years ago. One particular restaurant had a big metal bucket full of grappa and blueberries on every table. You just dipped your glass in the bucket and every so often they came by and topped off the bucket.
I really don’t remember much else after that.
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