LCBO Food and Drink Autumn 2016

APRÈS

BY JAMES CHATTO  •  PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAMES TSE

Once everyone’s pushed back their chairs, sated after the Thanksgiving feast, revive the civilized tradition of offering your guests digestifs, the perfect way to complete a special dinner.

when an ounce or two is offered at the end of a meal.    Such diversity is cause for celebration— especially since almost all of these rare li- bations come with their own little bundle of anecdotes, perfect for keeping the conver- sation going deep into the night. There are no rules about how you serve them, though I find clear or very sweet spirits benefit from chilling while brown spirits give up their aromatics most enticingly at room tempera- ture, swirled in a brandy snifter and lingered over for as long as patience will allow.

TO CALL AN AFTER-DINNER DRINK a digestif , as the French do, is to return to the very roots of alcohol distillation, some- where in the Arab world, at a time now lost to memory. Doctors used their alembic stills to produce spirits that could extract, concentrate and deliver herbal medicines, curing ills and soothing the digestive pro- cess. Today, the meaning of digestif has expanded to include ports and bitters, liqueurs and eaux de vie—some of them co- lourless and dry, others virtual syrups—as well as just about any other kind of spirit

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