Hazelnut Spirit

Hazelnut Spirit by Piekfeine Brände from roasted Piedmont nuts

Hazelnut Spirit by Piekfeine Brände is a nutty distillate made from roasted hazelnuts from Piedmont, refined with natural vanilla and cocoa. Because nuts bring no sugar, nothing is fermented; instead, the nuts are macerated and then distilled twice.

Hazelnut Spirit is the nutty hazelnut schnapps from Piekfeine Brände in Bremen, distilled by Birgitta Schulze van Loon. The nuts come roasted from Piedmont, and the distillate is available at 40% ABV in 350 ml and 500 ml – and in our shop, it is one of the brand's best-selling bottles.

Nut nougat, dark cocoa, and a trace of vanilla

What you smell recalls freshly roasted hazelnut kernels and the filling of a good praline, sweetish without being sweet.

In the mouth, the spirit stays astonishingly mild for its 40% ABV: nutty, velvety, and spicy, with a dark trace of cocoa that lingers for a long time. The alcohol doesn't push itself forward; it simply carries the nut. Anyone who thinks nut schnapps has to burn will be proven wrong here.

Vanilla and cocoa are not mere accessories but part of the recipe. Together they bring out exactly what you know from nougat in the hazelnut and give it a depth the nut alone would not have.

After dinner, over ice cream, in coffee

After a long meal, it belongs chilled in a small glass, just before the last espresso.

Over a scoop of vanilla ice cream, it turns a simple dessert into a small celebration, and in coffee it replaces any store-bought nut syrup. It is at home in the bakery too: a splash in the buttercream, a spoonful over the cake base, a dash in the praline filling. The spirit likes anything that has to do with chocolate.

If you like it creamier, reach for the Hazelnut Liqueur from the same house, for which exactly this distillate is stirred with cream and then comes in at only 20% ABV.

Why nuts cannot be fermented into schnapps

The hazelnut belongs to the birch family and is full of oil, but it contains neither sugar nor starch – and without sugar there is no fermentation.

Oil makes up around 60% of its weight, and that is exactly where the aroma sits. A fruit brandy is made by first fermenting the fruit and then distilling it; with the nut, the first step simply does not happen.

So a different route is taken. The nuts are roasted, peeled, and chopped and then steeped in neutral alcohol until it has fully absorbed their aroma. Experts call this maceration, and for nuts it is the only way to a distillate. The finished macerate then goes through the elaborate stripping and spirit runs, in other words twice through the still, as Birgitta Schulze van Loon does with all her distillates.

It is not a high-yield process: around 1 to 2 kg of nuts go into the batch for 1 liter of finished spirit. That explains why an honest nut brandy can never be cheap – and why most nut schnapps on the market are simply flavored neutral alcohol.

Because vanilla and cocoa take part in the process by percolation, the result may legally be called neither Geist nor Brand, only spirit – a legal subtlety that changes nothing about the taste. You can find the entire range from the glass manufactory at Piekfeine Brände, and if you are looking for clear fruit, take the Williams Pear Brandy.