The Snaps Directory: Snaps Bornholm - Lakrids

Since snaps is not widely known in America and a bit hard to find, I thought I’d create a special “Snaps Directory” of all the snaps I encounter. The first snaps I’m writing about is Snaps Bornholm’s Lakrids (licorice) snaps, which I picked up at the Copenhagen Airport in June 2019. A fun and friendly gentleman was doing a Snaps Bornholm tasting in the duty-free store and my partner and I were happy to oblige. We tried three flavors (there are eight total) and hands down licorice was our favorite. Chili came in second. I bought a bottle for myself and a bottle for someone who was watching my garden while I was away.

The snaps bottle comes in a beautiful tin with an embossed logo and an outline of the island of Bornholm. Each flavor has its own number and color—licorice is flavor number 7 with gray. I really like that they mixed an overall clean design with a colorful label in a pattern that looks like mixed paint. While the licorice label is probably a bad example of “colorful” because it’s gray, the pattern is nice and stands out.

On to the tasting. First, I took a quick smell and picked up alcohol and licorice with a dash of sweetness. Next, I sipped the snaps straight at room temperature. It tastes so much like salt licorice! We had bought some salt licorice from the National Museum of Denmark and this snaps tastes just like it. I really couldn’t pick up any other notes than salt licorice, which I’d say is pretty impressive but I don’t know much about making snaps. If you like salt licorice even just a little bit, I think you’d enjoy this snaps very much. I would certainly buy it again on my next trip to Denmark. So far, I can’t find any place that sells it in America.

If drinking snaps straight is too much for you, the Snaps Bornholm website has a couple of cocktail recipes that use the licorice snaps. You might need to know a little Danish or use Google Translate to translate some of the ingredients. I’m really intrigued by the Golden Licorice cocktail because I love carrots, but where do you get carrot oil?

Let me know if you’ve found Snaps Bornholm in the U.S., and if you’ve given it a try, let me know what you think in the comments!

Danishly yours ~ Rachel