review: Taounate

• Category: aniseed liqueur
• Alcohol: 36,4%
• Origin: Morocco
• Manufacturer: Les Economats du Maghreb
• Bought at: Supermarket, Morocco (thanks Eert’s father!)

Taounate apparently refers to a locality in the north of Morocco, close to Fes. This Moroccan liqueur (sweetened liquor) fortunately is not very sweet. Instead it has a strong aniseed aroma (it smells like arak), but the combination with the sugar makes it taste more like licorice than like anise. It is not too bad, but the aftertaste slightly has an industrial flavor to it, albeit by far not as dominant as in Tamrirt. It is unclear what the spirit is made of, but the palm trees on the cover might indicate that it is made of dates, similar to the Egyptian arak Meliniotis (qv). The taste also resembles that of arak Meliniotis. The rather cheap (plastic!) bottle is interesting as well: it features a familiar topos (palm trees) in addition to a rather unexpected hand of Fatima (symbol against the evil eye) on the bottleneck. However, the khamsa (as it is more correctly referred to) serves the same purpose in Judaism, and in this case this relation seems to be more likely. 6,5/10.

External link: Map (Arabic), Map (French) of the region
External link: Wikipedia: Khamsa