A Garden of Sensory Delights: Distillerie Metté
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Distillerie Metté is tucked into a small corner of the impossibly quaint Alsatian village of Ribeauville (we said village, it’s simply too cute to be a town or city). Founded in the 1960's by Jean-Paul Metté and now run by his godson Phillipe Traber, Distillerie Metté produces a phenomenal range of small-batch, hand-crafted, artisanal spirits called Eaux de Vie d’Alsace. Yes, all these descriptions have become fodder for P.R. clichés, but in the case of Metté, they definitively apply.
High quality fruits, flowers and botanicals, as well as roots and herbs are purchased by Phillipe and each batch is made by passionately by hand. He oversees the entire process, from maceration and fermentation, through distillation, aging and bottling. When we visited this last June, strawberries were macerating in a small, blue fermentation vessel and a cherry eau de vie was in the process of distillation. It was a stunning cacophony of rapturous, heady smells mixed with the noisy exhalations of steam escaping from the shiny, copper alambic stills.
We are going to be very honest here and tell you these are not the easiest things to sell. But if you are interested in something very fine, something that concentrates the very essence of whatever flower, fruit or root that began the process, something truly rare and unique, these are for you. They are complex and intriguing- a cocktail onto themselves with no need for mixers or enhancements.
Here is what you do: leave a bottle in your refrigerator. Here at Michael Corso selections we are pretty mad about the Prunelle Sauvage (wild plum), but there are many different flavors from which to choose. Also, please have two small cordial glasses chilling in there at all times. When you need a little aperitif, or digestif, you will be ready. Perhaps you might even want to go down an Alsatian style rabbit hole, a mid-meal glass of eau de vie affectionally known as the “trou" (literally a hole). Who doesn’t want to feel gloriously dazed and confused, mid-meal?