Akevitt

The story

The roots of akevitt, a potato-based spirit flavored with caraway and other spices, reach back to the early 16th century. The oldest known record, from 1531, mentions a spiced “burning wine” sent to an archbishop as a remedy for assorted ailments, at a time when distilled spirits were above all an apothecary's goods rather than a merchant's. Centuries later the potato replaced grain as the base ingredient, because grain was too costly to spend on drink, and Christopher Blix Hammer, the 18th-century figure who promoted the potato as a crop of peasant self-sufficiency, is remembered as the “father of Norwegian akevitt.” The best-known version, Linie, takes its name from the equator, the line its casks cross twice. The effect was discovered by accident in 1805, when casks shipped to Indonesia came back with an unexpectedly better, rounder flavor: the rolling of the ship and the shifts in temperature and humidity over the months-long voyage had sped up the aging in oak sherry casks. Today the practice is repeated on purpose, and every cask of Linie akevitt has literally sailed across the equator before it reaches the Christmas table.