Rustic schnapps and refined brandies
What is the most important thing about a Black Forest gateau? The chocolate? The little swirls of cream? No, it’s the Kirsch, with that clearly discernible alcoholic taste which makes the gateau genuine, which delights elderly ladies and scares off children.
This kind of “Chriesewässerle” (cherry water), made from wild cherries and with at least 45 percent alcohol is nowadays as hard to find as genuine brown trout, even in the Black Forest. A one-litre bottle of this rarity would cost well over 50 Euros.
This is because, to make just one litre of this coveted elixir requires a good ten kilos of the tiny aromatic fruits which are hardly bigger than blueberries and more than half of which are cherry stones. Nobody picks them anymore.
Even the wild cherries relations, the dark red rowan berries and “Hafer” cherries, have all but disappeared. But distillation rights have remained. Even now, there are around 14,000 approved distilleries in the Black Forest producing small and sometimes the tiniest amounts of schnapps, ranging from the simple fruit schnapps made from apples or pears to the distillates of local plums in the region of Zwetschgen, right up to Kirsch, the queen of all fruit brandies.
Fortunately, the area where Black Forest Kirsch originates from also includes the regions of Markgräflerland, the Kaiserstuhl and the Rhine River Plain – the Rheinebene. Wherever wines grow, fruit trees are generally never too far away. Every Baden wine-grower who still has some fruit trees distils schnapps too, naturally.