Favourite Liqueurs

If you want Calvados, Pere Jules seems to me to be excellent: the vintages are pure and powerful, but the 50 year old has a super balance and is not cheap but very reasonably priced compared to old whisky, say.

It’s very rare I reach for after-dinner spirits here, but when I do it’s nearly always Somerset Cider Brandy, bottles of the 10, 15 & 20 year-olds all lurking in the cupboard. I love it!

I haven’t tried the Calvados you mention Paul, and I must try to find some, but from the ones I have tried off restaurant lists the Somerset version compares very favourably.

I first visited the farm/distillery at Kingsbury Episcopy maybe 15 years ago and then again last week - it remains one of the great authentically artisan drinks visits in the U.K. - no visitor centre or soft play area but a shop in a barn. Last week, at some personal expense after a morning’s rigorous barrel sampling, a very well refreshed Mr Temperley showed us around - a quite special occasion!
 
Thread revival - is anyone familiar with the Rochelt range of eaux de vie / schnapps? I'm looking for a present for someone and they sound stunning (and the packaging also looks stunning) but they are also stunningly expensive even compared to the likes of Capovilla (which i also tried following a read of this thread).
 
A recent convert to Green Chartreuse here.

I normally prefer Green Chartreuse to Yellow, but I followed the recommendation of the excellent sommelier at Guy Savoy the other week and a pour from this bottle was brilliant. The year on the label is the year of release, but the contents are supposedly the product of a single undeclared year (for this bottle 1980’s???). It was gently sweet, but not cloying, and the alcohol was beautifully integrated. Absolutely complete and seamless. Quite haunting.

I hadn’t come across this bottling before, so given my liking, checked availability. Unfortunately, zero availability near the release price and inflated on the secondary market.

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P.S. the other bottle in the background was Raveneau Blanchot 2010 at less than quarter of the “going rate”, drinking brilliantly.
 
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I've recently acquired a bottle of green Chartreuse VEP. Is there any merit (other than financial) in keeping it? Would it benefit from further ageing from a drinking perspective?
 
I am a fan of Drambuie, friends in the whisky industry rate the whisky that goes into it very highly. The 15 Y.O Drambuie is a step up and very good indeed over a large ice cube as the evening winds down.

All the mentions of Green Chartreuse means I cannot get the Billy Connolly joke about creme de menthe out of my head (I know it not the same, but its worth a google for the 2 scots in rome joke).
 
If liqueur means sweet, I never drink them nowadays but sometimes we use them in cooking. Nothing is better for rounding off a meal and for removing an excessively lingering sweet taste from the dessert than a dry spirit such as Cognac, Armagnac, Calvados, malt Whisky, grappa (or marc de Bourgogne, etc.) and dry fruit brandies like Framboise, Poire, Prune Sauvage, etc.

I have been living in Normandy for nearly 10 years and the trou normand is a thing of the past when Normans sat down to multi course meals with dishes cooked with lashings of butter, cream and cheese. As the name suggests, it was intended to make room for the next rich course and I don't think it was ever proposed as an apéritif. I can't recall ever having been offered a Calvados in this guise even in the many decades of visiting Normandy before I settled here.
 
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