Turkey's aniseed grape spirit, clouded with water and set out with white cheese and melon
Origin: Tekirdağ & the Aegean Coast, Turkey
From the journey of Anise.
Rakı is the Turkish member of the Mediterranean anise family and the one with the strictest rules, both in law and at the table. It is made by redistilling suma, a spirit of grape or of raisin, over aniseed in copper pot stills, and Turkish regulation permits no other flavouring whatever. Turkey is the largest producer of anise seed in the world, grown around Çeşme on the Aegean coast and inland in Burdur, Denizli, and Antalya, so the seed and the spirit are both domestic. Tekirdağ on the Sea of Marmara is the name most often on the bottle. The word is the Turkish form of Arabic ʿaraq, and the drink descends from the Levantine still by way of the Ottoman provinces. Evliya Çelebi, writing in the seventeenth century, counted the arak-sellers of Istanbul amongst the city's guilds, which is a plain indication of how established it already was despite intermittent official disapproval. What separates rakı from its neighbours is the base. It is built on grape, which gives it a fuller, faintly fruity body; ouzo is generally built on a neutral spirit and pastis on nothing but alcohol, water, anise, and liquorice. Arak, the Levantine cousin, is also grape-based but is triple-distilled and rested in clay, and is drier as a result. The drinking is codified to a degree that surprises visitors. Rakı goes into a tall narrow glass first, then cold water, then ice, and never in another order; put the water in first and it will be poured away. It clouds to opaque white on contact, which is the anethole coming out of solution, and Turks call the result aslan sütü, lion's milk, as the Lebanese do. It is never drunk alone and never drunk quickly. The minimum accompaniment is beyaz peynir and honeydew melon; the proper form is a long table of meze stretching over three or four hours and finishing with grilled fish, an evening the language has a word for, balık-rakı. The company is considered as much a part of it as the spirit.
Water quality matters more here than it does with almost any other spirit, because the drink is more than half water by the time it is drunk. Soft bottled water gives a cleaner louche and a rounder taste than hard tap water, which can make the emulsion grey and flat. Styles differ. Yeni Rakı is the everyday standard; Tekirdağ bottlings are made with a wheat-free grape base and are generally softer; Kulüp is drier and more anise-forward; and üzüm rakısı, made entirely from fresh grape rather than partly from raisin or molasses spirit, is the premium category and is worth the difference. Rakı also has a place in Turkish cooking, most notably in fish braises along the Aegean, where a splash goes into the pan with tomato and fennel. Its Levantine relative arak is used the same way in Lebanon. A long rakı sofrası would normally add haydari, stuffed vine leaves, acılı ezme, fried liver, and grilled fish to finish. Cold meze come first, hot meze second, fish last, and the melon stays on the table throughout.
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