AA Badenhorst Caperitif Lot 12

FROM SKURNIK WINES: Caperitif (a portmanteau combining Cape and aperitif) was first commercially made in the Cape of Good Hope in the 1800s by the Castle Wine and Spirits Company using fynbos found in the Cape Floral Kingdom, the smallest but richest of the world’s six floral kingdoms (regions recognized by botanists for their distinctive plant life). Fynbos, or “fine bush” in Afrikaans, is a small belt of natural shrubland and heathland vegetation in the Western and Eastern Capes, accounting for half of the Cape Floral Kingdom’s surface area and containing 80% of its plant species. Furthermore, while comprising only 1% of Africa’s land mass, fynbos contains 20% of the continent’s flora with over 9,000 different species, 6,500 of which are endemic. Inspired by the vermouths of Europe, Caperitif’s origins lie in the practical and medicinal. Like many aromatized wines of the time, herbs were macerated in wine during long sea voyages and infused with chinchona bark to ward off malaria. By the early 1900s, Caperitif had become a popular recreational beverage in South Africa and caught on as a cocktail ingredient in Europe. Though last believed to be produced sometime in the 1940s, much of Caperitif’s longevity can be directly attributed to its frequent appearance in Harry Craddock’s The Savoy Cocktail Book. Originally published in 1930, this book, still in publication, gained revitalized popularity during the cocktail renaissance of the early 2000s. Over a dozen recipes called for Caperitif, sparking a renewed interesting in the aperitif that came to be nicknamed the “ghost ingredient.”