In rural Sweden, one woman's carefully tended herb garden provides the flavours for her unique range of schnapps. Scarth Flett pays her a visit.
Basil and tarragon, rosemary and lavender, sage and mint - the scent that enveloped me was intoxicating. It is the perfume of the herb garden that Lulu Mårtensson has nurtured for the past three years and for which tourists travel miles, to walk among the 200 varieties she cultivates and to inhale their heady bouquet. But that is not the only reason they visit. They also come to taste her schnapps.
My first sip of the reddish brown liquid set a trickle of fire running down my throat. This particular variety was rosehip schnapps, which I was sampling in the bar above the farm restaurant that she runs, with husband Bo, in the southern Swedish village of Illstorp. And there were 31 more flavours to try - magic potions of uniquely flavoured schnapps that Lulu makes by adding her home-grown herbs and assorted spices to 32 per cent proof spirits.
The Swedes' love of schnapps is nothing new. In the 16th century, when farmers used to distil their own alcohol from corn, the only way they could disguise its unpleasant taste was to add herbs, and so the tradition began. Today, most Swedes add their own herbal mixture from traditional family recipes, and every restaurant has its own house schnapps. It is a ritual that with every glass you must sing a schnapps song. Each area has its own songs and there are said to be more than 600, both old and new.
Tall and statuesque with her blonde hair piled on top of her head in a bun, Lulu, 42, fizzes with energy, exuberance and good humour. She first started putting together different flavours when she was 22, and she is still experimenting. "When I add a new combination of herbs I keep tasting every few days until I find the best strength," she explains. The shelves behind the upstairs bar are filled with bottles of liquid in varying shades of yellow, green and brown, depending which herbs have been added.
Into tiny long-stemmed glasses she pours different distinctly flavoured schnapps for me to taste. The vivid yellow Artemisia absinthium (or malört, Sweden's most popular schnapps) is strong and bitter; the pale green peppermint is sharp and minty; and the lemon-coloured lavender and marigold is rather sickly and not one I'll try again. Some are marinated in alcohol for anything up to a year, although others are left in the liquor for a much shorter period. "I'm careful not to leave the lavender in for more than a few days, otherwise it will end up tasting like soap," laughs Lulu.
Production begins in May, when she cuts great quantities of herbs. Some are dried, but some she adds fresh - along with spices such as cloves, aniseed and cinnamon - to the pure alcohol she buys from spirit shops. Due to Swedish licensing laws, she can only sell glasses to be consumed in the restaurant and the garden. But visitors can buy bottles with herbs inside and add their own spirits later. Her house schnapps is a mix of angelica, aniseed, juniper, caraway and fennel, which is left in alcohol for between five and seven days.
The old farmhouse of white stone and red-painted wood sits back from a country road, by a millpond in the middle of the village. Nearby are lakes filled with salmon and woodlands of oak and pine, home to boar, deer, pheasant and grouse. The sea is 20 minutes away and it is an area much visited by Swedish holidaymakers. Indeed, Lulu and Bo bought the farmhouse 12 years ago to use as a holiday home. Initially, it had no inside water and there was much to do. At the time they were living in the coastal town of Trelleborg, where Lulu and Bo had met and married and were running a successful hamper company. They had an annual turnover of two-and-a-half-million pounds, but the pull of the country persuaded them to move permanently to Illstorp, along with teenage daughters Emilia and Marina, in 1995.
A year later, with their decision to sell their hamper business, their change of lifestyle was complete. "One December evening in 1996, we were sitting by the fire and we thought, 'What shall we do now?' That is when the idea of a small restaurant came to us," recalls Lulu. Accordingly, the old barns, which, with the farmhouse form a horseshoe, were converted into the restaurant, farm shop and café. They opened for business nine months later.
"It was a big risk because we had no experience," says Lulu. "We began by serving only salads, then Bo took on the cooking until we got a chef. Sometimes we would be overrun by a group of 12 people arriving together on bicycles, but somehow we coped."
Today, the restaurant is welcoming and rustic, with floor tiles of polished terracotta and old farming tools decorating the whitewashed walls. In winter it is heated with a wood-burning fire and in summer the big barn doors open on either side to allow the scents from the garden to waft through. The short menu is written on four boards hanging above the counter and includes local fish and lamb from the farm, with a heavy emphasis on Lulu's herbs.
After the opening of the restaurant, Lulu turned to the garden. "I wanted the design to be classical Italian," she says. The beds, neatly laid out between paths of red brick and gravel, are packed with every imaginable herb: from marjoram, oregano, thyme and garlic, to chives, fennel, tansy and yarrow. Climbing roses weave over arches, and there is a glass gazebo beside a fountain.
The garden was opened to the public in 1997 as Illstorps Lustgård (literally, 'pleasure garden'), and the guided tours are so popular they are always overbooked. For 175 kronor (£12), visitors taste eight different varieties of schnapps, while Lulu intrigues them with snippets of herbal folklore as she leads them round the garden. When she gets to the yellow-flowering Artemisia abrotanum bushes she tells the bald men that, as well as keeping the devil at bay, it does wonders for hair growth; peppermint, she expounds, prevents wind and keeps the breath fresh for kissing; a handful of wormwood leaves tucked in a husband's pocket makes sure he comes home to his wife; an application of camomile tea will soothe haemorrhoids; and tansy schnapps will quieten hysterical women.
Lulu does not for a moment regret abandoning the trappings of success and adopting a more rural way of life. "We work hard as hell and we don't make as much money as we did in the hamper business, but we love it because we work in our own home and we are very happy with our new lifestyle."
And it seems their rural idyll is appreciated by their visitors, too. "People come here to eat and see my garden. Everything we serve is fresh and we want our customers to take their visit slowly, to relax and enjoy, to taste and to smell," smiles Lulu. "We want them to experience Illstorps Lustgård with all their senses."