We had to get up a bit early today, because today is hotel moving day and check out is by 10:00 am. Dawn’s flight is at 6:00 AM tomorrow, and we decided that checking out of this place at 3:00 in morning and trying to navigate Copenhagen's metro system in the dead of night might not be as much fun as it sounds. Instead we booked our last night in the Clarion hotel that is physically connected to the Copenhagen airport.
We buy 24 hour public transportation cards so that we can zip around on the metro since we’ll no longer be so centrally located to everything. Fortunately we’re able to do an early check-in at the Clarion and then we head out our day’s adventure.
Our plan is to grab lunch and then attempt to visit Copenhagen Distillery. For lunch Dawn finds Wulff & Konstali Food Shop which is on the way from the metro stop to the distillery. When we get there the place is slammed. We obviously underestimated the draw of all day brunch on a Friday in the suburbs. We’re happy to wait and have a pretty good Danish brunch.
Next up we walk to where Google Map says Copenhagen Distillery is. This plan is a bit tenuous. We learned about Copenhagen Distillery by trying the Aquavit at Restaurant Barr. Google Maps claims that this is their location and they have public hours from 12 - 4 on Friday only. We walk into an industrial park and eventually try a nondescript metal door on the warehouse. Much to our surprise, the door opens and there are four guys in the warehouse doing distillery type things. The sales manager comes to meet us and we ask if they are open to the public, he says if made the trip to visit them, then they are open. Over the next two hours we get a full tour of the facility, history of how they started the company, get to meet all the employees, and taste pretty much the entire product line. The guys at Copenhagen Distillery couldn’t have been more generous with their time or knowledge. They explained some of the really cool and innovative things they are doing (making gin from mead!) and their philosophy on product development. What’s more, I learn that one of the gentlemen just co-authored and published a book on aquavit, and it’s one of the few books on the subject available in English. I tell them that I’ll definitely pick it up and they counter with I can get a personalized copy from the author right then. Too cool. I couldn’t be more pleased with this distillery visit. It’s the most thorough and casual tour we’ve ever had.
After the tour we had to head back to the room to drop of some bottles that we purchased to take home… and then we’re back out on the town. Our goal is to visit a cocktail bar named Duck and Cover. Dawn figures out that there is a train that leaves from the airport to the central station that should put us pretty close to the bar. After a short walk we find yet another nondescript door and walk down into Duck and Cover. We opt to sit at the bar and strike up a conversation with the bartender and his friend about how we were told this was the place to visit if we’re interested in aquavit cocktails. The bartender is happy to hear that and offers to make us a few even though the current menu is kind of light on them. We also mention that we just came from Copenhagen Distillery and tell them how excited I was to get a copy of the book (which they also have a copy of). They mention that is one of the two local distillery, the other one that just started is run by some Noma chefs called Empirical Spirits. We have a good nerdy conversation about cocktails in general, and then, things go from great to amazing.
The bartender pulls out three bottles from Empirical Spirits that are beta products. There are no official spirits available from that distillery and asks if we want to taste them. We enthusiastically say sure. They are super focused spirits, extremely sprucy spruce and smoked juniper snaps. After that he pulls out three other bottles that are very interesting….and are products that never got released. Evidently ten years ago there was a project to make hyper-local snaps. Rene from Noma got involved, along with others, to develop the spirits. Aquavit is just starting to make a resurgence now, and back then it was ultimately decided that there wasn’t a market for their product, so it was scrubed and the test batches never got released. But evidently, now some of those bottles are making their way out to a few trusted friends. We also got to try all three of those! Our humble cocktail pilgrimage somehow morphed into a private tasting of ultra-scarce Nordic spirits. Again, the guys at Duck and Cover were super generous with their time and great conversationalist. So much so, that we ended up hanging out there longer than we planned and were a bit late for our dinner reservations.
We had reservations for our last night in Copenhagen at a place name Geist. Once I stayed at a W hotel in Chicago and was left with the impression that the hotel and the staff who worked there were way cooler than I was… Geist invokes that same sort of vibe. Everything is super slick and I start to feel that I might not be cool enough to hang out there. We sit at the food bar so we can watch the chefs do their thing. It is a hive of industry, unfortunately we pick a spot at the bar that has a computer terminal at the other side…. So frequently we’re watching the wait-staff’s chest from across the bar. Gesit has a tapas concept so everything is ala carte, which is fine, but restaurants that charge me $10 for fancy still water always rub me wrong. In the end there is some good food there, but compared to the more earnest experiences we had earlier in the day, it left me feeling kind of hallow. I will say this though, I can now honestly say I’ve used a bathroom with a mirrored ceiling.
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