Back of the Cupboard Booze – Prince Bishop

What are you reading at the moment?

Probably a lot more than you were three weeks ago. I’m currently finishing up the third book in Margaret Atwood’s ‘Maddaddam’ trilogy. That’s not a typo, that is how it’s spelt. It’s about a global pandemic which has wiped out most of the world’s population and how the people that have survived are carrying on. Timed that one brilliantly, didn’t I? To be fair, it’s about a lot more than that but this isn’t a book review, so I’ll save you all the deep dive into the brilliant brain of Atwood for the moment.

It does seem people have more time to spare and that’s giving people a chance to make content that they might otherwise not have. Whilst trapped inside you might have seen loads of amazing articles and videos doing the rounds when it comes to the world of drinks. I’ve seen lots of online tastings, a multitude of at-home cocktail walk throughs and even a virtual whisky festival popping up to brighten the isolated days. Lovely stuff. It’s really nice to see people use their skills and sharing them with others at times like these.

I lack such skills. All I can offer are really, really badly thought out ideas. So that’s what this is. My bad ideas come to life.

I first had the thought of ‘Back of the Cupboard Booze’ quite some time ago. I chuckled when it first popped in my head, but I didn’t really take it seriously. Why would I? It was ridiculous. It wouldn’t go away though – which a lot of my other silly ideas do, so here we are. What’s the premise? Well, I’ve rooted around my dark and dingy cupboards like a pig sniffing out truffles for the strangest drinks I could find. The booze nobody wanted to take home after a party. The gifts from holidays that nobody asked for. The weird stuff that you have no idea how it got there.

I’ll then sit down, do a bit of research on what it is and then taste it to see why it had been abandoned at the back of my cupboard, never to see the light of day. Got it? Good, because the first one is an absolute doozy.

Prince Bishop

I have no idea what the fuck this is.

I have spent so long searching for information about this weird bottle but have come back with nothing. Nothing! It’s 2020 and there is not a single search result that I can find on the internet for the Prince Bishop Poire Mousseux Superieur. I thought about logging onto the dark web, but I was terrified where that might have led me.

I did learn some things whilst trying random combinations of words to find ANYTHING about this. For instance, I now know that a Prince Bishop was a bishop that was also the civil ruler of a principality (we’re looking at you Durham.) I’ve translated Poire Mousseux Superieur from French to English to mean “superior sparkling pear”, so my thinking is that this is some sort of self-important cousin to Kopparberg pear cider. The weirdest thing is that it states that it was produced in Germany – you know, just to mix it up a bit with the name from England and the description in French. It’s 5.5% abv, which seems weirdly low for a 75cl with a cork and cage. Well, it’s as weird as everything else about this particular bottle. It looks like it might have been bottled for a landscaping company in Newcastle, but it does strike me as possibly the weirdest corporate gift that anyone could ever give anyone.

That’s it. That is all the information I have after literal hours of research. I guess it’s time to taste it.

Oh god. I don’t want to taste this.

 Back of the Cupboard Booze #1

Prince Bishop
Poire Mousseux Superieur
Pear Cider? Poison? Who knows?
5.5%ABV
£ Possibly Priceless. It does not exist on the internet.

Colour: We don’t usually mention the colour here at EWB but here, I had to make an exception. For some inexplicable reason, this…thing made of pears has a weird pink tint to it. I have no idea why. If trepidation had a colour this would be it. My already rock bottom confidence has plunged to new depths after actually seeing the liquid in a glass. I actually feel bad for the glass I put this in. It didn’t deserve this.

Nose: There is a lot going on here and none of it good. This might actually be what the lesser circles of hell smell of, before the brimstone hits. The closest I can come to describing it is as if someone took a bottle of fino sherry that they had kept on the shelf for years and decided to add it to a glass of flat champagne which had been rinsed with cheap cider. It’s sharp and musty and horribly sweet all at the same time. It certainly comes from the cider family, that I’m sure of. There are a lot more apples coming through than pears. Cidery death awaits at the bottom of this glass.

Palate: I have no idea how old this bottle is, but there isn’t a single bubble in the glass. For the braggadocios claims of being “superior sparkling pear” there isn’t any pear or sparkle and I never want to meet anything that it might be superior to. This is the worst thing I have ever put in my mouth. I now physically know what regret tastes like. This might have once been drinkable, but no more. It’s actually put me off liquids in general. Is PTSD from writing tasting notes a thing?

Finish: On please let it finish. Let this be over…

Overall: We’ll never know how this was supposed to taste, but right now I hate Prince Bishop more than I’ve ever hated anything in my life. Why did I have to start with this one? Why?!? The only small consolation is that nobody else will ever have to try it. No need to call me a hero.

So, that’s that for the first-ever instalment of Back of the Cupboard booze. I have more. For some reason, I seem to have some of the world’s worst drinks tucked away in my cupboard. I just need some time to heal after what the Prince Bishop has done to me. I’m going to go lie down with my book and consider my life choices.

See you next time!

Jason