Caperitif

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.”

It’s at the height of this cocktail boom where the story of Caperitif picks up again. Once lost to time, shuttered and consolidated distilleries, and languishing intellectual property rights, the ghost ingredient was revived by Lars Erik Lyndgaard Schmidt, a bartender who was determined to faithfully recreate and adapt the many nearly forgotten cocktails found in The Savoy Cocktail Book that call for Caperitif. As chance would have it, Schmidt met winemaker Adi Badenhorst at a wedding near Cape Town where he pitched his vision to recreate Caperitif. Badenhorst—a renowned figure in South African wine, known for his biodynamic farming practices and traditional winemaking techniques—proved the perfect collaborator, and the two began experimenting with fynbos infusions after acquiring and tasting an original bottling of Caperitif.

Now, Caperitif lives on in this contemporary iteration, reverse engineered using wines produced at Badenhorst’s Kalmoesfontein farm that are fortified with local neutral grape spirit and infused with locally sourced South African fruits, herbs, spices, and other botanicals. A light aperitif that may be enjoyed over ice or mixed with tonic or soda water, Caperitif was remade for the many cocktails found in The Savoy Cocktail Book and offers contemporary bartenders a historic cocktailing ingredient perfect for recreating classics such as the Jabberwock.