CLASSIC SPIRITS: The Fig Leaf Old Fashioned

From September 17, 2021

Ciao! Just back from Italy. A touch of Autumn in the air. I thought a good moment to revisit Alice Lascelles’s classic Fig Leaf Old Fashioned, fig leaves being at their most flavourful at this time of year. It’s such an elegant twist on a classic and I daresay there will be a lot more on these lines in Alice’s forthcoming book on the Martini - which I can’t wait to get stuck into. I recreated the heaven-themed playlist too. Normal service resumes next week! Scroll down to the bottom for the shopping list.

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~ THE FIG LEAF OLD FASHIONED ~

A small fig leaf or two
50ml whisk(e)y
10ml golden sugar syrup (2:1)
Angostura bitters

Find a fig tree and pluck a few leaves from it. Ideally, you want a small-ish, new leaf (no bigger than your hand) from an old, well-established tree. Now run, run, run - before the neighbours see you! When home, pour some of your best whiskey into a jar - it will probably make sense to make double or treble the amount you need for the one cocktail. Scrumple up the leaves somewhat, place them in the whiskey and muddle. Cover and infuse for at least an hour, hopefully two. (Why not listen to this heavenly playlist while you wait?) Now strain your fig-infused whisk(e)y and use it to make an Old Fashioned. Stir whiskey, sugar syrup and bitters patiently over ice (ideally one large cube) in a tumbler and serve just like that. A fig garnish won’t go amiss.

Some Fig Leaf notes:

1) This recipe is the invention of the ever-impressive Alice Lascelles, the only drinks columnist for the Financial Times who once supported the White Stripes. I suppose that makes this the first Spirits collab? Here’s what Alice hath to say:

“The smell of fig leaves is one that gets bastardised a lot in scented candles and room sprays. But the real, true scent of sun-warmed fig leaves is just beautiful - voluptuously fruity, green and coconutty all at once. I have two little figs trees growing in the courtyard outside my study and often on a sunny day I will just go outside and stand there, smelling them - it sends me into a slight trance. When the leaves are young they're not so interesting I find - they're less scented and more grassy. By late August/early September, though, they've really built up that perfume. So now is a great time to use them in a drink. I often make fig leave syrup at home - just chuck some leaves in a sugar syrup and leave them to infuse. But on this particular occasion I couldn't be bothered so I just mainlined them straight into the drink - and the result was just as good (better, even).”

2) Don’t expect great wafts of fig here. The F.L.O.F. has a subtle nose of red fruit followed by a lingering leafy, buttery, almost tropical aftertaste. It works just fine with bourbon, Scotch, Japanese… whatever you have on hand. Alice used Scotch (Nc’Nean single malt) in her original. I used Irish whiskey - specifically the one made for the cult NYC bar Dead Rabbit - as I fancied that its smooth, spicy/grassy notes would work well here. They did. This is sort of thing I can imagine being served at an extremely expensive restaurant and the nicest cocktail I’ve had since… ooh last week’s.

3) Speaking of which: I made another pair of Enchanted Catnips when we had some friends round the other day, with a spiced rum base. Only, I was in a bit of a cooking/welcoming/children-to-bed fluster at the time and I somehow neglected to put the lime in them. And do you know - it was almost… an improvement?

4) Alice also recently posted a Fig Leaf Daiquiri as well as unearthing an Italian Fig Leaf Liqueur. Just so you know.

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I am Richard Godwin and this is my newsletter. You will find instructions for making sugar syrup, grenadine, orgeat ice, etc here and my 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS here. I have also assembled some bottle recommendations for a cabinet here - and here is the full archive of weekly specials. Do please share the Spirits with anyone who might like it - and feel free to tag me with your creations on Instagram or Twitter. Also scroll to the bottom for what to get in for next week! Please consider subscribing for the full experience! 

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Anemoia (noun) = Nostalgia for a time you have never known.

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DOES any fruit have as rich an interior life as the fig? It’s not even technically a fruit but an inverted flower, a secret bloom that hides its pollen deep within. The fig is the first (actual) tree mentioned in the Bible. The apple-as-forbidden fruit is an embellishment of later European artists, but the actual Adam and Eve really did reach for fig leaves once they realised they were naked. They are a handy shape, should you too find yourself dealing with an Edenic consciousness mishap. They almost tesselate too, if you need to sew them together. And what a fragrant skirt they make. Douse your underwear in Philosykos by Diptyque for a similar effect.

The inside-out flower-fruits that we call figs are really something too: the colour of bruises, the shape of heavy tears. Open a fig up and it looks so carnal, like you accidentally killed something. The way the seeds are suspended in the ribbony flesh always makes me think of faces peering out of flames. Heaven and hell in a wild flower.

But figs can be deeply disappointing, especially if it’s a British supermarket fig: dry, tasteless, a little sinister. Jesus was alert to their false promise. A fig-related disappointment prefigured the whole getting crucified episode: “The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, ‘May no one ever eat fruit from you again.’” I planted a fig tree last year and can relate.

In the right place, at the right time, figs taste like soft rubies, warm flowers… though you will need to be on holiday or else find an excellent supplier to experience this as the fig doesn’t travel well. When you do find good figs, the musky, winey, deep-red sort with a pearl of nectar at their tip, eat them immediately, ideally from the tree or if not, with good olive oil, buffalo mozzarella and some torn basil and mint. I had the rare good fortune of lunch at the River Café this week. You can guess what I had to start:

Still, even the perfect fig is a little elusive, ungraspable - apt to leave you feeling a little mournful, a bit like when you catch a glimpse of a beautiful person in the street, completely absorbed in their own life, and realise you will never cross paths again. A rotten fig is a terrible thing. If you have read the fig tree scene in Edward St Aubyn’s Never Mind you will know what I mean. Or indeed Sylvia Plath’s famous passage in The Bell Jar, in which the teenage Esther sees her potential in fig-tree terms:

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

(A page later, Esther reveals that actually she hasn’t eaten for ages and that maybe she was just thinking of figs because she was hungry.)

Strangely, the symbolic life of the fig is nothing compared to the actual life of the fig. Why would a flower do as the fig does, turn in on itself, shield all its treasures inside? For the exclusive benefit of its secret paramour, the fig wasp, without whom the fig would not exist - for this is the only creature capable of pollinating the fig.

The dependence is mutual. Female fig wasps lay their eggs inside male figs (there are male figs and female figs; we eat the females). Only, the way into a fig is narrow. On entering the fig, the female fig wasp’s wings and antenna break off, and she’s trapped inside. But that’s OK because once her eggs hatch, the baby fig wasp males impregnate the females and then gallantly burrow tunnels out of the fig so the females can escape (covered in pollen) to find another fig in which to lay her eggs. This process can only happen inside of male figs. Sometimes, the female fig wasp will enter a female fig by mistake. Here she cannot lay her eggs. But she does pollinate the fig and create the mysterious fruit-flower that you and I so love to eat. Inside every one: a female wasp who died of loneliness.

🐝

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PLAYLIST

Everybody’s trying
To get to the bar
The name of the bar…
The bar is called heaven

- Talking Heads, Heaven

Taking my cue from the fig leaf, here is a playlist of songs about or inspired by Eden, paradise, heaven, that general locale. An embarassment of riches, actually! I have stuck, as ever, to songs that will slip down well with cocktails. Note how much repetition there is in the Talking Heads song: almost every line begins by reiterating the end of the last line, adding to the feeling of being trapped in an eternal queue.

THIS PLAYLIST UPDATES AUTOMATICALLY EACH WEEK. The idea is, you download it and return to it each week in your Spotify. If there was an old song you’d like to hear again, you’ll find it RIGHT HERE in the ongoing archive of 2021 playlists.

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WHAT I’VE BEEN READING

The Bible, obviously.

Laura Snapes is a great music critic and like the best critics, sees beyond her subject. I thought this column on the impossible expectations around Emma Raducanu was excellent (Guardian)

Welcome to the seven-day working week (FT)

Sirin Kale on how ‘optimism bias’ plays into vaccine hesitancy (Guardian)

Will Dunn on the ‘fidget business’ and why every primary school age child wants a Pop-It (New Statesman)

Ted Gioia wrote a wonderful essay about Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, a 98-year-old Ethiopian nun who plays the piano like no one else. An East African Debussy! (The Honest Broker)

(NB: Ted Gioia is a great old-school American jazz writer (and player) who really opens the whole subject up. I heartily recommend his History of Jazz whole How to Listen to Jazz makes an excellent Audiobook. Like all the best writers, he is now doing great things on Substack)

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SHOPPING LIST:

Rye (or bourbon), lemon juice, sugar syrup, egg white, absinthe.

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