Zahradníček’s blog for English speaking students

Part twenty eight: Slivovice, or švestka?

In one of the first blogs I mentioned beer and wine with the notice that beer is typical for
Bohemia and western part of Moravia, while wine is typical beverage in southern Moravia.

Well, besides beer and wine, people also drink “hard” spirits. This habit is most common in
northern part of Moravia, Silesia, but of course, people drinking spirits are everywhere,
especially in winter. In summer, people drink beer or wine combined with water, but in winter they
usually prefer something “for heating-up”. In advent markets on city squares it is sometimes
combined with real heating as the spirits are mixed with hot tea, wine, mead or anything else;
these markets are full of various mixed drinks, sometimes also containing hot chilli pepper to
enable another type of “heating”.

As to spirits, today’s Czechs drink nearly everything, and even in Brno we can find whisky bars
(for example the one on Gorkého), a gin bar (on Jakubská), some bars serve tens of rums or several
tequilas. Nevertheless, there exist also more traditional spirits. For example, Moravian Wallachia
(the eastern Moravia with Beskydy mountains) is famous for its slivovice, a distillate made of
plums, sometimes home-made (with help of still-rooms that exist in many villages), sometimes
commercial. Famous slivovice is that by Rudolf Jelínek company in Vizovice, a small town to the
east of Zlín. Similar, but less famous, drinks are also made of pears, apricots and many other
fruits.

The problem is that only some drinks that seem to be slivovice are real plum distillates. Some
drinks that may even taste quite similarly are made differently: very clean alcohol is diluted with
water and mixed with plum aroma, either natural or synthetic. Many people would call this also
slivovice, but officially it cannot have this name, as it is not a product of distillation of
fermented fruits. It is categorized as “ostatní lihovina” what means “another spirit” (= not a
distillate). And so many companies, including Rudolf Jelínek, offer genuine “slivovice”, that is
quite expensive, but also products called for example “moravská švestka” (Moravian plum) that are
not distillates. In fact, everything that ends with “-ice” should be made by distillation of the
given fruit: hruškovice is made of pears, meruňkovice is made of apricots, třešňovice is made of
cherries and so on.

Of course, not all drink-makers use this correctly. For example, the drink made in Hustopeče that
has an almond taste is not made by distillation of almonds; in fact, it is a very pure alcohol
(distilled of wine) mixed with almond aroma. It is a quality spirit, nevertheless, it should not be
called mandlovice, as it is not distilled of almonds. That is why also the producer was asked to
change the name. Unfortunately the producer, instead of trying to understand, where the problem
was, started to argue and to inform journalists that “European Union wants to damage her business”.
In fact, similar situations already happened in history: what is today called Tradiční pomazánkové
(a typical Czech product, similar to cottage cheese) was originally called pomazánkové máslo. Of
course, that was confusing, as it did not contain enough fat to be máslo (butter). In the first
months people disagreed, but finally they got used to the new name and hopefully some of them even
started to understand why it should not be “butter”.

Back to spirits: people in Czechia also started to be used that Tuzemský rum is now Tuzemák. Of
course, rum (both in English and in Czech) should be something distilled from cane sugar. Today’s
Czech Tuzemák is usually even not made of sugar-beet (as the one made in 19^th century), but just
by mixing alcohol, water and aroma. Well, Czechs are not the only nation with that problem – this
“tea-rum” existed in the whole Central Europe, so Austrian now call it Inländer Spirituose instead
of original Inländer Rum, Hungarians call it Hajós (hajós = sailor) and so on.

Anyway, it is not important how it is called. What is important is that drinking any of the spirits
should be moderate, as some of them can make somebody drunk sooner than you mention in. Even more
than for pure spirits this is valid for mixed drinks, now in advent available in Brno squares. So –
be careful!

                                                            Ondřej Zahradníček, 10^th December 2019