Fieldtrip After Dark

• Sucrine du Berry winter squash (Slow Food Ark of Taste) grown by Treiber Farms, North Fork — fermented, distilled & macerated with figs, etrogs, cacao, chiles, shiso & fortifying distillates
• Aged two years in Amarone casks; finished with cacao, fig, toasted coconut & pasilla syrup
• 750mL
• 20% Alc. by Vol.

Inside this bottle is a squash most of the world has forgotten.
Sucrine du Berry — a winter squash listed on the Slow Food Ark of Taste. A catalog of ingredients and traditions considered worth saving: endangered, neglected, sometimes already gone.
Each year at Matchbook, we choose one ingredient from that list. A small farm tracks down the seeds. They grow it. We ferment it, distill around it, macerate it. And then we pass it along.
This release was grown by Treiber Farms on the North Fork — two thousand pounds of squash, mashed and built into the base of the spirit.
Purple corn and Bloody Butcher for structure.
 Vanilla, cacao, chamomile folded into the ferment for warmth.
Fortified with distillates of orris, angelica, cinnamon, rose, ancho, tamarind, sumac, strawberry.
Macerated with fresh local figs, etrogs, cacao, chiles, fresh local shiso, gentian.
Then left quietly for two years in Amarone casks — where the sugars deepen and the edges round.
Finished with a syrup of cacao, more fresh local figs, toasted coconut, chamomile, and pasilla — a final layer of dusk.
We call it Fieldtrip After Dark because that’s what it feels like:
 the walk home, the smell of the fireplace hanging in the air.
 Soil still under your nails.
 Smoke in your sweater.
 A nightcap of fortified wine and chocolate waiting when you get back.
Slow Food speaks of breaking cycles of loss — saving flavors before they vanish into efficiency. This bottle is our small act in that direction. Agriculture as resistance. As embrace.
Pour it neat.
 Or fold it into hot chocolate and drink it from a ceramic mug.  Or mix it with some citrus and simple to break the heat, which we know is coming.. any day now.
And if it moves you, pass it on. Or order yourself some Sucrine Du Berry seeds.