How Amsterdam’s bar life continues to form the town

“Amsterdam is like a small village,” says my information Isabelle Nelis, her mop of strawberry-blonde hair dancing round her face as she takes turns swigging a small beer and greeting fellow drinkers inside Café Chris. It appears an uncommon assertion to make right here within the centre of the Dutch capital, however within the backstreets of Jordaan I can see what she’s getting at. The music is low and the chatter as snug as outdated slippers. The tobacco-stained wood-panelling and candlelit tables make it really feel like I’ve stumbled right into a village pub.

We’re taking a tour of the town’s bruin cafes (brown bars) — a sort of consuming institution not dissimilar to the outdated British boozer. They’ve been intrinsic to Amsterdam life because the Dutch Golden Age within the Seventeenth century, when sailors would flood the port metropolis on the lookout for a very good time in its bars and brothels; Café Chris, named after an unique proprietor, claims to have been serving the Jordaan neighbourhood since 1624. The ‘bruin’ within the identify comes from the darkish wooden that characterises the bar counters, stools and panelling.

“There are groups that want to make the bruin cafes national monuments,” says Isabelle as we take to the streets, crossing canals by way of humped stone bridges the place Friday afternoon drinkers are congregating in small pockets of sunshine. “We have rules saying you can’t change the exteriors of bruin cafes but it’s up to the owners whether they want to preserve the interiors.” In latest years, she says a number of historic examples within the capital have been offered by ageing homeowners and transformed into up to date bistros and garments retailers, their tobacco-stained panelling typically ripped out.

Amsterdam definitely has a conflicted relationship with its bars. As the Dutch capital celebrates its 750th anniversary this 12 months, native authorities are firmly on the trail to reworking the town from a celebration centre into one in every of Europe’s sustainability pioneers. It has spent years attempting to shrug off its long-held affiliation with weed tradition, brothels and stag dos. Tours of the Red Light District have been banned. Drinking licences have been stymied. New cannabis-smoking legal guidelines are being mooted. Yet, for Isabelle, like many Amsterdammers, these outdated pubs symbolize one thing completely different: neighborhood and luxury.

“The bruin cafe is an extension of your living room. Everybody knows you,” she explains as she greets the barman at Café In‘t Aepjen and we hop onto stools opposite him. Lining the bar’s excessive cabinets are bulbous-bottomed jenever bottles that had been designed to be carried on Dutch ships within the 18th century. They sit alongside monkey figures that nod to tales of seafarers who introduced the animals again from the Far East on profitable colonial expeditions. The bar is on Zeedijk — one of many oldest streets in Amsterdam. Outside the home windows, tall, slender homes tilt ahead barely into the road, topped by stairway gable roofs.

“In Amsterdam, our homes are all quite small, so if I want to have a drink and socialise, I go to a bruin cafe,” says Isabelle as we order a fluitje — a small beer typical of Dutch bars. “You’ve got your home, your office, and then you’ve got this.” She tells me she’s certain this tradition performed into the Netherlands rating fifth on this 12 months’s World Happiness Report. “Because of social cohesion — and that’s absolutely in part down to the bar culture.”

At our subsequent cease, De Drie Fleschjes — ‘The Three Little Bottles’ — teams of rosy-faced, portly outdated males and after-work drinkers in crisp shirts are leaning right into a crescendo of Dutch chatter. Inside, it’s standing-room solely. Isabelle is fast to emphasize it is because it isn’t a bruin cafe — it’s a tasting room for jenever, a Dutch spirit mentioned to have impressed the British to create gin within the Seventeenth century. De Drie Fleschjes is exclusive as a result of it’s nonetheless house to non-public barrels belonging to Dutch patrons. They line one wall, every padlocked with a special identify painted above a tiny faucet.

“Now I just need to find my key,” Isabelle says, rummaging in her bag, earlier than climbing onto a step ladder to achieve hers. “Everyone decides for themselves what goes into their barrel mix,” she explains, unlocking the padlocked faucet to pour amber liqueur into tulip-shaped glasses. She gingerly passes them right down to me one after the other. Hers is jenever blended with an orange bitter; it warms me like a crackling fireplace on a winter’s day.

It isn’t lengthy earlier than we’re joined by a white-haired native man who produces a beer for Isabelle, and presents me one too. Soon the pair are singing a soulful folks tune referred to as ‘Aan de Amsterdamse grachten’. “It’s about how no one could hope to be anywhere better than on Amsterdam’s canals,” says Isabelle, a flush rising to her cheeks because the tune ends. By the time she and I half afterward, I’m feeling equally rosy-cheeked. The final thing she says to me is to take a canal cruise whereas I’m right here. “Amsterdam has to be seen from the water.”

Spice of life

Taking Isabelle’s recommendation, the following day I be part of a ship tour. Amsterdam’s service provider previous reveals itself in small particulars as we putter by the central internal canal ring. On the banks of Oudeschans canal, the red-brick Montelbaan tower ends in a spear’s level — it’s one in every of few remnants of the Sixteenth-century defensive partitions that protected Amsterdam harbour’s riches. A bridge sweeps above my head with ships’ prows carved into ornamental figureheads, a nod to the town’s seafaring heritage.

At Herengracht, the ‘Gentleman’s Canal’, the retailers’ homes get taller and wider. We cross gabled rooftops and crooked timber frames, flowing right down to giant barn-style doorways that may have as soon as opened into spice shops. “Merchants were making €750,000 a month in the 1600s. They had the highest incomes in the world,” says our boat captain Bram Schermel. “Spices were sold for fortunes here and Amsterdam became insanely rich.”

These spices grew to become the muse of jenever manufacturing, in addition to a complete forged of experimental liqueurs that created a requirement for tasting rooms like De Drie Fleschjes. After disembarking, I am going in the hunt for one other: Wynand Fockink. This distiller was established in 1679 and its tasting room is a time warp. Bowed cabinets cradle rows of sticky liqueur bottles with illustrated labels depicting star anise, espresso and — a contemporary replace — stroopwafel (syrup waffle) flavours; and jenever bottles furred with mud.

Here too, the cool, cave-like inside is standing-room solely. “We don’t encourage people to stay,” says tasting room server Boaz Perier, solely half joking. A younger, curly-haired man with a black cross dangling from one ear, his face lights up as he runs me by the model’s historical past, providing a succession of small, fluted glasses with slugs of potent distillates. The ‘young’ jenever tastes like a much less juniper-forward gin; to my shock, the ‘aged’ jenever has extra whisky traits. “It used to be seen as something your grandfather would drink, but jenever has made a comeback in recent years — especially in the world of cocktails,” says Boaz.

Wynand Fockink is now the distiller for Bols, one other prolific Seventeenth-century jenever model and a former rival that’s moved with the occasions. The spirit’s historical past and evolution is documented within the House of Bols museum, beside the Museumplein gardens. Filled with sensory cubicles, digital mixology avatars and flavour profiling rooms, it’s additionally develop into recognized for its cocktail workshops championing jenever.

“In the first cocktail book [published in America], one in four cocktails was made with jenever,” says Roberto Porras, a mixologist with a peroxide-blond quiff who I be part of for one in every of Bols’ lessons within the museum’s coaching bar. The martini glass tattooed on his forearm shimmies as he throws his cocktail shaker up and down, telling me how you can make a caipinebra — a home tackle a caipirinha utilizing jenever as a substitute of white rum. Over the years, jenever has misplaced its worldwide repute; Bols want to regain it. With Roberto main, we make 4 cocktails, and it’s straightforward to see why jenever’s subtleties make it a pure cocktail ingredient.

My last cease is with one other cocktail champion who has an identical ardour. I meet Timo Janse at Dutch Courage, a reimagined bruin cafe he co-owns on Zeedijk road within the historic centre. Behind the dark-wood counter, there’s a stained-glass panel depicting a fluted jenever glass flanked by two wheat sheaves: a image of the grains used to make jenever.

Timo is attempting to get individuals to see this side of conventional Dutch tradition in a brand new gentle. He’s used his expertise as an award-winning mixologist to create a menu of distinctive, experimental cocktails celebrating Dutch spirits, outdated liqueurs and even brandewijn (Dutch brandies); his retailer cabinet now consists of greater than 250 jenevers. “Historically, Zeedijk was the place where all of the botanicals that were used in the jenever production were traded. So for us, it made a lot of sense to open this bar here,” he says, handing me his signature ‘Dutch Courage’ cocktail. It’s a strong concoction starring Bols barrel-aged jenever alongside pilsner beer syrup, a conventional Bittere Lijdenstroost liqueur, hop oil and sea salt.

When the bar first opened, Timo says locals had been on the fence about it. “Cocktails mean more gentrification to them,” he says — particularly in a neighbourhood like Zeedijk. That’s one purpose why he launched a one-of-a-kind merchandising machine allotting pictures of jenever with a chaser of beer, the best way it’s historically served. While the set-up isn’t conventional, it preserves the neighborhood ritual of popping in for a fast drink — and he says locals take pleasure in it. “We’re part of the community here,” he concludes, proudly. And because the tables begin to refill with individuals who deal with the bar employees like outdated mates, I can see what he means.