Drinking Trees, Part 3: The Tasting

This is the third installment of our multi-part series on trees. This week we make history; seriously, we do.

We contemplated writing this entry entirely in capital letters, but we did not want to make it unnecessarily difficult for historians of the next millennium to decipher. Professor Otsuka ended his very informative lecture and invited us to taste some of the wood-derived spirits, as well as a few liqueur-like blends made therefrom. This constituted the first public tasting and/or evaluation of these revolutionary beverages. Hence, calling it a historic event is not hyperbolic in the least. The blends were all highly palatable, but we will confine our comments to the spirits.

Simplified Adjectival Evaluation of All Beverages Tasted

• Grand
• Recherche
• Enticing
• Astounding
• Titillating

We tasted four spirits: Cedar, White Birch, Oak, and Kuromochi. All but the last-mentioned should be familiar to our readers. More on Kuromochi later.

Cedar

Taster A

Nose: floral notes

Palate: sweet and pleasant on the tongue

Comment: “…clearly a good beverage for those who like the overt flavor of wood….”

Taster B

Nose: incense notes, paint, and sweet, unique

Palate: green, peaty, aftertaste

White Birch

Taster A

Nose: fruity aroma, grass-like, green smell

Palate: sweetness, pleasant on the tongue

Taster B

Nose: grass-like, green smell, fresh, alcohol smell

Palate: pleasant on the tongue, grass-like, floral and lemon notes

Oak

Taster A

Nose: sweet, barrel-aged, gorgeous, vanilla notes

Palate: sweetness, aftertaste (long finish), classy

Taster B

Nose: sweet, barrel-aged, massive, gorgeous, vanilla notes

Palate: classy, bitterness

Kuromoji¹ (a.k.a., Lindera umbellata)

Taster A

Nose: sweet, floral notes

Palate: acidity, aftertaste

Comment: “This is very much like sudachi [Japanese citrus fruit] shochu.”

Taster B

Nose: incense and floral notes, fruity aroma, fresh, and unique

Palate: acidity, bitterness, sharp, citronella notes, aftertaste

¹ “A wild growing tree found all over Japan…used traditionally as the raw material of high-grade toothpicks.” Uchiya Essential Oils website.