You may have heard of our neigh­bors to the north, Art in the Age of Mechan­i­cal Repro­duc­tion. This bou­tique is a must stop dur­ing my many Philly trips. That and the Ital­ian Mar­ket of course. Art in the Age of Mechan­i­cal Repro­duc­tion’s care­ful­ly curat­ed shop fea­tures small label goods from the likes of Bil­lykirk, Wren, Shabd and Prop­er­ty Of, as well as posters from local artists’ like Alex Lukas. The shop has a lot to offer, but I’ll be focus­ing on their hand craft­ed liqueurs. Actu­al­ly, you can’t buy them in their store. You’ll have to go to the liquor store down the block to get your bot­tles of Root and Snap.

Root

Root was cre­at­ed by Steven Grasse, you know… the guy respon­si­ble for Hen­dricks Gin (psst… love this site). You may notice the sim­i­lar­i­ty in brand­ing style with both Hen­dricks and Root. Any­way, Root’s fan­tas­tic back sto­ry hooked me and I had to pick up a bot­tle when I was in PA. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, you can’t pur­chase it here in Maryland.

The video they pro­duced titled The Sto­ry of Root does a fan­tas­tic job explain­ing the his­to­ry behind this liqueur. I’ll keep my expla­na­tion short and sweet… it’s an old Native Amer­i­can recipe. Ok, you can push play now.

The Story of Root

Root is a dark brown organ­ic liqueur. Its aro­ma is dom­i­nat­ed by the win­ter­green and spearmint. But you can also pull out the anise. You may be sur­prised to hear that it does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly taste like root beer. Sure there’s a base root beer fla­vor to it, but it’s way more com­plex than that. And quite frankly, thank God, because most root beer fla­vored liqueurs I’ve come in con­tact with have been awful and way too sweet. Root has a nice bal­ance of sweet and bitter.

The bot­tle lists the organ­ic ingre­di­ents as fol­lows: birch bark, smoked black tea, cin­na­mon, win­ter­green, spearmint, clove, anise, orange, lemon, nut­meg, all­spice, car­damom and pure sug­ar cane.

Root is com­plex, rem­i­nis­cent of an amaro. The bal­ance between the anise and the mint fla­vors is real­ly what sets this liqueur off. You’ll notice licks of the cin­na­mon, nut­meg and clove, but it’s the birch bark that’s kick­ing you out the door.

Snap

So when I heard Art in the Age of Mechan­i­cal Repro­duc­tion gave birth to Root’s sib­ling, I had to try it. And what do you know, it also has an inter­est­ing back sto­ry. Intro­duc­ing Snap.

The Story of Snap

My Snap bot­tle lists the organ­ic ingre­di­ents as such: black­strap molasses, clove, brown sug­ar, cin­na­mon, gin­ger, nut­meg, rooi­bos tea, vanil­la and pure sug­ar cane.

Ok, it smells like gin­ger snaps trapped in a bot­tle. All of a sud­den I have this strange urge to build a gin­ger­bread house. Shake it off! We’ve got work to do. I know it’s hard to con­sid­er sip­ping liq­uid gin­ger­bread cook­ies work… ok it’s not work. I’ll drop it. You’ll notice a bold vanil­la pres­ence, accom­pa­nied by the bak­ing ingre­di­ents of nut­meg, cin­na­mon, clove and of course gin­ger. Sure it’s a sweet one, but what I like about this liqueur is that you get the sweet notes from the molasses and brown sugar.

Goulet Bruleé

I must say I enjoy sip­ping Root neat more than I do Snap. How­ev­er, both liqueurs are ver­sa­tile when it comes to mak­ing cock­tails. Here’s a cock­tail recipe that I named the Goulet Bruleé using Snap. It was fea­tured at one of my Liba­tion Lounge events.

• 2 oz pecan bour­bon
• 3/4 oz Snap
• Bar spoon of sweet pota­to purée
• Grand Marnier foam
• Top with Turbina­do Sugar
• Angos­tu­ra flame bruleé

Add pecan bour­bon, Snap and the sweet pota­to purée, in a mix­ing glass with ice and shake. Dou­ble strain into a chilled cock­tail glass. Top with Grand Mariner foam and place some Turbina­do sug­ar in the mid­dle of the foam. With an olive oil mis­ter filled with Angos­tu­ra bit­ters and 151 rum bruleé the top of the cock­tail. Always use cau­tion with fire.