Botticelli's Second Toe

I strained and filtered a jar of bing cherry liqueur the other day. After several months of macerating and occasional shaken jar syndrome, I retrieved the hermetic jar from its hiding spot in the dark, recessed top of my tallest bookcase.

Cherry liqueur, left, and blueberry liqueur, right.

I shook the jar experimentally. The broody blood red colour was intriguing, but the liqueur no longer had the virginal clarity it had several months ago when the bathtub booze madness began.

At the height of this year's genteel Victorian summer (never hot, never quite cold), I was seized with the inclination to try my hand at making liqueur. I daydreamed of speakeasys; running my very own blind tiger where hot jazz plays until the wee hours. Being a woman of action, I tired of daydreaming and got down to the business of research.

I pored over śliwowica and schnapps recipes, read about the resurgence of vintage cocktails, and stumbled on Gunther Anderson's site. I collected my cherries, blueberries, sugar, little Italian hermetic jars and the cheapest vodka and gin I could find.

I felt confident with my fifteen years of canning experience. Give me fruit, give me sugar and I will give you something delectable. Then I realized I had started out the hard way. Working with liquor would have been the best way to ease into the world of all things canned as high proof alcohol creates a preservation-friendly environment the jelly maker has to work hard to create.



Rhubarb schnapps

But fruit, sugar and liquor? Ye gods. There is something about that trifecta that is undeniably akin to the perfection of Botticelli's second toe. 



Botticelli's second toe. The great Italian Renaissance master painted beautiful women with second toes that were longer than the first. Have a good look at The Birth of Venus. She's riding that half shell with second toes that are longer than her first toes. Historically equated with beauty, wisdom, and royalty, the longer second toe is also known as piede greco or Greek's foot.



My first liquor experiment with my parents' rhubarb started it all. My decision to elevate rhubarb from its humble status as playmate to apples in a crumble allowed it to assume new heights of noblesse in vodka. There was something mesmerizing about watching the fine legs of vodka run down the inside of the schnapps jar while the scarlet hue of the rhubarb slowly eased into a faint pink, its colour blushing into the sweet liquor sea around it.

C. Aiken for Luscious Domestic. Plum schnapps.

Not content with rhubarb alone, I boozed up unsuspecting blueberries, cherries, orange peel, and, at Aiken's suggestion, golden plums that were too ripe to eat in polite society.

Then the jars sat. I'd like to glibly say I forgot about them as most people seem to write in their own musings about making liqueur, but I was too curious. I'd check to see how the colour changed. I'd shake the jars.

Now after filtering the cherry liqueur, the jar has gone back to the top shelf to age for another few months. Using coffee filters proved to be very time consuming. However, as the end product boasted a colour and clarity even more sublime than its first incarnation, I felt its beauty was reason enough to tolerate the wait.

Bing Cherry Liqueur

3 lbs fresh or frozen cherries (must be good quality)
Cherry pits of half the cherries (1.5 lb)
10 whole black peppercorns
3 cups sugar
1.5 litres vodka (I like Wyborowa or Bols for this sort of thing)

Method

• Pit the cherries and save the cherry pits. You may use frozen cherries, but thaw them out first. 
• Divide the cherries and sugar equally between two 2 quart jars. I like the hermetic ones, or ones made by Weck.
• Use a stone mortar or something equally durable to crack the cherry pits. Divide the pits and the peppercorns between the two jars. Shake the jars.
• Macerate in a dark place at room temperature for eight to ten weeks. Shake once in a while for first two weeks.
• After eight to ten weeks, strain liqueur using a cheesecloth to remove the larger solids. Do not squeeze fruit as this will ruin the clarity of your liqueur. You can squeeze your fruit to get every bit of liqueur out, but you'll be fussing with filters quite a bit more.
• Use a coffee filter or paper towel to filter your liqueur. Test for sweetness (if it isn't sweet enough, use this recipe for simple syrup). 
• Age the liqueur for another three to four months.