His Very Own Vishnik

My husband and a fellow Rakia-maker in Croatia

by Caren Osten Gerszberg

Every year leading up to Father’s Day, it’s moonshine-making time on my back patio. Like his Eastern European mother before him, my husband collects sour cherries in early June—and more recently gooseberries from our garden—to prepare for his next vintage of vishnik.

After enlisting (read: bribing) our three children to help harvest the berries and de-stem them, he lovingly places them in clear four-liter jugs, blankets them with sugar, and sets them on our patio—amidst the flower pots—where they sit and soak up the sun…for weeks. Every day when he returns home from work, he checks the pressure in the jugs, and pays such detailed attention to his berries’ fermentation that you’d think he was getting ready for a Fantasy Football draft.

So you can only imagine my husband’s joy when he discovered–on a recent bike trip we took to Croatia–that just about every Croatian seems to make his/her own vishnik, or rakia, as it is known there. Although factory-made rakia has an alcohol content of 40%, the homemade stuff can be as strong as 60%, and that’s about all we were served—between bike rides, after bike rides, and naturally, before and after dinner.

The image for his next label

Here at home, people who learn that my husband makes his own booze can hardly believe it. For what reasons would he want to produce this potent alcoholic beverage in his spare time, which he now bottles, labels and gives out as gifts (when he’s not drinking it on his own)? Well, the irony here is that in Croatia, people can’t believe it if you don’t make your own rakia. They live off the land in a way that many of us don’t, and grow nearly everything they eat and drink. Got cherries? Rose petals? Olives? Sage? Lemons? Well, why not make rakia with it then…

So for five days, as we meandered our way on two wheels, up and down the many hills of the Dalmatian islands of Brac, Hvar and Korcula, we were often handed a glass—quickly filled by hosts who are as proud of their rakia as my husband is of his vishnik.