ANGOSTURA – MEDICINE FROM VENEZUELA

Should not be missing in any home bar

Pleasure with history

From the recipe pad to the cocktail shaker

The German physician Dr. Johann Siegert ran a hospital in Venezuela and developed a tonic against tropical diseases in 1820. The city in which he worked was then called Angostura, now Ciudad Bolívar.

Whether the tonic was successful in the fight against tropical diseases is not documented. As a bitter, Angostura was a great success, so that the doctor left the hospital and became a successful entrepreneur.

Angostura is now produced by Dr. Siegert’s descendants on the two islands of Trinidad and Tobago off the coast of Venezuela. Every bartender in the world knows this bitter, which gives cocktails an interesting spicy note.

The secret of the ingredients

The exact recipe is still a company secret. The company emphasizes that the Angostura plant, which is used by some imitators, is not part of the recipe for the real Angostura bitters.

The Bitter Angostura almost certainly contains many of the things that GloriousMe loves: cinnamon, tonka beans, cardamom, bitter orange and cinchona bark. Alexander von Humboldt already considered the latter ingredient worth mentioning in his notes on his travels in South America. A stylized cinchona tree is still part of the Peruvian flag today.

Bitter complexity

What we love in a cocktail is complexity. Mixing a few ingredients with ice cubes works for everyone. A good bartender “builds” cocktails that pamper the palate with flavors that are not so easy to identify and offer a well-rounded taste experience with every sip.

A bitter like Angostura fulfills precisely this role in the cocktail.

The then Prince of Wales, Prince Albert Edward, the eldest son of Queen Victoria and her Prince Consort Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, had to wait a long time for his role as King of England.

At the age of 59, he became regent of the English kingdom. His diplomatic skills are still highly regarded today. The Entente Cordiale, a treaty that secured England’s reconciliation with France, can be traced back to him.

Prince of Wales Cocktail

If you love pleasure, you can’t go past France. According to contemporary witnesses, King Edward VII loved indulgence. During his time as Prince of Wales, he is said to have been particularly fond of a cocktail that was named the Prince of Wales Cocktail in his honor.

Charles Schumann gives the recipe in his standard work American Bar as follows:

ICE CUBES – THE BIGGER THE BETTER

1 sugar cube
Dashes Angostura
3 cl cognac
Orange
Style cherry
Champagne
1 cl Bénédictine

Soak sugar cube with Angostura, add ice cubes, pour over cognac, add orange quarters and stem cherry, top up with champagne, then slowly pour over Bénédictine.

The Prince of Wales Cocktail is originally served in a silver cup.

A cocktail that we, as loyal royalists of the English royal family, like to drink, as it contains Bénédictine in addition to the bitters, which GloriousMe readers already know as the tried and tested household remedy Bene ‘N’ Hot.

Enjoyment with history, as the connoisseur loves it and typical GloriousMe.