Nea Fane – Un Biet Român Pripășit în America / A Hapless Romanian Stuck in The US

I stumbled upon the domain donsteffano.com and, naturally, I snatched it (my friends know why naturally).

Years ago, it was taken. Two weeks ago, it was available. Apparently, the internet decided that I had waited long enough.

Useless information: it’s on WordPress, and I’m keeping the basic plan. I don’t foresee anything fancy happening there. No elaborate bells and whistles, just bottles, glasses, opinions, and probably an unreasonable number of commas, m and n dashes. I decided that I’m going to use donsteffano.com for my scientifically questionable alcoholic beverage reviews (as suggested by other friends who want to make me an influencer – the fact that I’m not on social media is of no importance to them). That way, I can keep them separate from this website, which is much more personal.

There is another reason for the update. I would also like to bring some peace to my [other] friends who, seeing how frequently I’m posting, seem to have entered full panic mode over the possibility that I’m drinking my brains out. I’m not. Although, let’s be honest, I have every reason in the world to do so. But getting wasted isn’t a solution. It doesn’t fix anything, and tomorrow still arrives, usually with a headache. What I do like, however, is tasting: food, alcohol, or anything else that may have something interesting going on.

Actually, I have one complaint about the whole spirits industry: I wish every 750 ml bottle came with a 50 ml bottle next to it. I would be their best customer. Instead, they come in 1.75 liter sizes, which I studiously avoid. I remember being at Total Wine when one of the staff members was offering Tamdhu for tasting. She had the 12-year-old, and was also telling us about the 15 and the 18.I said something along the lines of: “Wouldn’t it be nice if they sold small bottles? The 18-year-old is $199.99.”

The lady looked at me and said: “Look over there!” I turned around. On the shelf was a set of three 50 ml bottles: the 12, the 15, and the 18.

Well…joy. I bought them, I tasted them, and yes, the 18-year-old was definitely the best. So, if I ever win the lottery, I know precisely what I will be getting. Until then, I’ll keep tasting the little bottles whenever I can. And writing about them.

A Little Historical Context

Going back to the quantity of alcohol my liver has filtered over the years, there is a little bit of context worth mentioning. I am now retired, and I grew up in a communist country. A lot of years in between. At first glance, that information may seem completely useless when discussing drinking habits. Actually, I think it sheds some light on what young people were drinking back then, and, even more important, why. Those were the years of “have not.” Have not meat. Have not eggs. Have not bread. Have not pretty much anything that was remotely enjoyable or available in reasonable quantities.Yet, somehow, we could buy vodka, beer, and wine.

Oh, and cigarettes.

Apparently, the Supreme Leader had decided that all comrades, regardless of age, had to at least have those things. Food? Not necessarily. Heat in the apartments? Hot water? A decent pair of shoes? Have not. But vodka? Absolutely. The quality was generally abysmal, with a few notable exceptions. Stalinskaya was then drinkable. Zubrowka was something special (with the bison straw and everything). And then there were cigarettes.

Chinese and Bulgarian (BT) cigarettes were around, and then there were Kents (the American cigarette no American had ever heard of) – scarce, found only in special stores. Kent was not merely a cigarette. It was practically a currency. If you had a pack of Kents, you had something people wanted. It could be traded, exchanged, or, more importantly, used as a very effective method of persuasion. In other words, Kent was one of the prime bribing methods of the era.

Looking back, it is somewhat bizarre. We lived in a country where basic food could be difficult to find, but alcohol and cigarettes were reliably available. The priorities of the system were, shall we say, interesting. And perhaps that is worth remembering when we look at the drinking habits of the generation that grew up during those years. We didn’t exactly grow up in a culture of craft cocktails andcarefully curated tasting notes. We drank what was available.

Then There Was the Homemade Stuff

But here comes a quick incursion into Balkan culture. People made their own beverages. Wine will get a full chapter later; Țuică, a plum brandy, arguably, the national beverage of Romania; and Vișinată, a sour cherry liqueur. Basically, if you could ferment it, distill it, soak it in alcohol, or otherwise turn it into something that could make you forget about the shortages, somebody was doing it. Oh, the memories…And here is the funny part. If you ever visit a Romanian’s home and open the refrigerator, you learn very quickly not to trust a single bottle. You see a plastic Pepsi bottle containing a liquid of any color (from black to colorless), you grab it, you open it, and, before you take a sip, you have to smell it. There’s a 50/50 chance that there is absolutely no Pepsi inside.

It could be homemade țuică. It could be wine. It could be vișinată. It could be something else entirely. Whatever it is, it was almost certainly homemade. Over the years, you learned who made the best of each. So-and-so makes the best țuică. Her vișinată is incredible. Don’t drink his wine unless you want to lose the rest of the afternoon. But there is another important rule: If you are offered some, you accept. It would be rude not to.

A friend of mine, from the small city where I did my internship, once explained to me that homemade beverages had their own hierarchy. There was the stuff you made to sell, the stuff you made for your own daily consumption, the stuff you kept to drink with friends, and, finally, the really good stuff, the stuff you drank with your best friends.

My father, however, had his own extra category. He would look at some particularly very good homemade liquor and say:“I don’t have friends good enough to deserve to drink this.” I have to admit, I always admired that philosophy. And perhaps this is another piece of the puzzle when talking about how much alcohol a Romanian’s liver has filtered over the years. It wasn’t necessarily about getting drunk. Alcohol was (and still is) simply part of the culture: you made it, you offered it, you accepted it, you compared it, you argued about whose was better, and, occasionally, you even hid the really good stuff from your friends.

And Then I Started Remembering…

I wrote:
“Don’t drink his wine unless you want to lose the rest of the afternoon,” which made me remember a friend’s special wine, and a couple of “mishaps” from my college years. Actually, I was told about the mishaps. I don’t remember them. Apparently, my good friends felt that this was very important information to pass on to my son.

My baby was about 15 or 16 at the time. The first time he heard the stories, he laughed politely. He didn’t say anything. The second time, another friend started telling him the exact same two stories. My very polite and remarkably patient son listened for a while and then said: “It seems that I heard the same stories a couple of days ago. If you have any other stories about my father’s drunken adventures, please do tell. Otherwise, it seems that two times in so many years is a pretty decent record. How many times did you get drunk?” He finished the sentence while fixing them with a very cold gaze. That was the last time those stories were told. I have to admit, I was rather proud of him.

And now I have completely lost track of where I was going with this. Where did I start from? Oh, right, I was talking about alcohol and I started reminiscing. Again.

Back to the Point

So, to get back to the point I was trying to make, I drank these things over many years. Some I remember fondly. Some mean something to me. Some I have completely forgotten about. And then there are the photographs. I have many of them. I look at a picture, and suddenly a memory comes flooding back. Sometimes it has nothing to do with the drink itself. The bottle is simply the trigger. One memory leads to another. Then another. I jump from one to the next, with absolutely no regard for chronology, geography, or any other organizational principle normally expected from a person attempting to tell a coherent story.

My memory dictates the order.

So, if you were expecting a carefully organized history of everything I have ever tasted – reviews with dates, locations, and tasting notes in chronological order, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. This is not really a catalog. It is, in fact, a collection of memories, with alcohol occasionally serving as the bookmark. And apparently, every bookmark leads to another story.