What Is Morel Liqueur?

In the mushroom world, few varieties are as coveted as morels. Identifiable by their slender cap covered in honeycomb-esque ridges, morels (Morchella) are a prized find among foragers and mushroom hunters for various reasons. For one, these mushrooms are notoriously hard to cultivate. Preferring to grow in the wild under specific conditions and with a short season of availability (typically between March and May), they're not a variety one can easily find at the grocery store or plant and grow at home. However, they are worth the hunt, as they're also highly desired for their taste. Boasting a meaty, chewy texture and a flavor often described as earthy and nutty, morels are beloved among chefs and gourmands.

With morels being such hard-to-find fungi, it stands to reason that a liqueur derived from this ultra-rare mushroom would also be a rarity. While not a common item at liquor stores or on bar shelves, morel liqueur does exist and can be used for cooking or adding earthy notes to cocktails. Demand may not be terribly high, but morel and mushroom connoisseurs can certainly find use for such a beverage, especially since morels only grow for a few months out of the year and are highly perishable, making them difficult to store. With a morel liqueur on the shelf, a taste of this highly sought-after fungi is always within reach. This guide to morel liqueur covers everything you need to know, from how to use it to how it's made.

As you may be able to infer from the name, morel liqueur is a type of liqueur — an alcoholic spirit that has had spices and other ingredients added to it to modify the flavor made with morels. Adding the morel flavor and essence to the base spirit can be done in a variety of ways, like soaking the morels in the liquid to infuse or macerate the flavor.

Flavored liqueurs are not a new concept. However, most well-known liqueurs use fruits and spices for flavoring rather than fungi — a mushroom liqueur is a different beast. Since morels are hard to find and highly prized, odds are slim you've encountered a liqueur made with them. Due to their difficult-to-cultivate nature and preference for growing wild, just finding a few morels is a gold mine, and most people aren't likely to miss out on enjoying fresh morels to make a liqueur with them. Since morels are a rare and seasonal treat with a short shelf life, turning them into a liqueur captures the flavor for year-round enjoyment and enhancement of dishes.

For all these reasons, only a handful of distilleries make morel liqueurs. Even among those select few, some only do one-off releases. If you're in the market for a morel liqueur or find one and are curious, it's best to grab it while you can. We'll dive more into where you can find morel liqueur and which distilleries make them later on.

Since morel liqueur is rare with a select few producers marketing their offerings online, not much information is readily available about how it's made. One producer, which has a morel liqueur as a staple of its product selection, gives us a glimpse into the process.

Founded in 1860, Distillerie du Perigord is a French distillery located in the Perigord region of southwestern France, an area renowned for its truffles and wild mushrooms. Among its products, which include fruit and nut-flavored liqueurs and whiskey, it offers a collection of "culinary liqueurs" to use in cooking and enhance dishes, which features a morel liqueur. In online descriptions, the distillery says it macerates the morels to add the flavor to the white wine and fortified wine base. Maceration is a distilling process where ingredients are cut, mashed, or sliced up and left to marinate and soak in alcohol to allow them to absorb the aromas, flavors, and other compounds like color. Based on the ingredients list, Perigord added some other ingredients, like oleoresins of chili pepper and pepper, as well ascaramel coloring.

Maceration isn't the only method — infusing (where the ingredient is usually left whole rather than cut up) is another option. However, it's important to note that raw morels aren't safe for consumption. If you want to try making your morel liqueur, make sure to follow proper morel-cooking guidelines and ensure they're safe for consumption before using.

What is the difference between regular morel mushrooms and morel liqueur? At its most basic, the difference is that one is a spirit and the other a type of food. However, both can be used in cooking.

Both are also safe to eat and imbibe, as long as the morels have been cooked. Morels contain a toxin called hydrazine, which can impact your stomach. In most cases, eating raw, unprepared morels only results in gastrointestinal issues like vomiting or diarrhea. While unpleasant, those ailments aren't hazardous to your health, but in some cases, eating raw morels has been deadly. Even for mushrooms that are as easily identifiable and known to be safe as morels, it's still essential to follow proper procedure for gathering and preparation. If you're not a seasoned mushroom hunter, use other resources to identify and verify the mushrooms you're picking. Even better, take them to an expert to double-check. When preparing them for consumption, never eat them raw. Make sure to wash them well and cook them over high heat.

Both morels and morel liqueur offer the mushroom's distinct and sought-after flavor, so either can work for preparing dishes. However, there is one downside to using morel liqueur as opposed to the real deal. Morels are prized for their texture, which is meatier than other mushrooms, and the honeycomb-like ridges offer a rich, tactile eating experience. With the liqueur, you miss out on the morel's signature texture and sensory qualities.

Just as limoncello tries to capture the sunshine, citrusy essence of a lemon, or Chambord delivers the decadent taste of raspberries, morel liqueur embodies the unique flavor of morel mushrooms. If you've never tried a morel before, you're missing out. Even non-mushroom fans often find morels to their liking, as this particular variety is a great example of umami.

Known as the fifth sense, umami is a complex but robust flavor that's often described as brothy or meaty. Rich and savory, this flavor is further enhanced by morels' tender, chewy texture. Along with umami, morels have also been described as having a somewhat sweet and nutty flavor. Earthy is another common descriptor.

Through different processes like maceration or infusion, morel liqueurs seek to capture that one-of-a-kind savory flavor. While some people may not be on board with the idea of drinking a mushroom, a liqueur that tastes and smells of morels is a fantastic tool to have on hand in the kitchen for cooking, as we'll explore in the next section.

There are several different ways you can use morel liqueur in your cooking. Unlike regular morels, which require thorough cleaning and prep work like removing the stem before use, morel liqueur is much more straightforward. There are also lots of mistakes you can make while cooking mushrooms. Morels are delicate specimens and require careful cooking to avoid toughening up the meat and losing the texture, so using the liqueur is an easier process to achieve the same flavor.

With its umami-boom flavor profile, a morel liqueur would work nicely with a variety of dishes. It can complement meats like steak and poultry or add flavor to mushroom pastas and risottos. If you're making a hearty stew or soup, you can add this to enhance flavor (just be sure to let the alcohol cook off). Distillerie du Perigord says its morel liqueur works well for preparing fish. For technique, it can be used to sauté, marinate ingredients, or deglaze browned residue to make sauces or gravy. If you follow general best practices for cooking with alcohol and work with ingredients and flavors that pair well with mushrooms, you can go wild, experiment, and have fun. Mushroom soups, mushroom sauces, mushroom risotto ... the sky is the limit.

As a type of alcohol, morel liqueur is shelf-stable and can be found throughout the year — but that is if you can find it. Since morel liqueur is so rare, you're unlikely to happen upon it on a supermarket shelf or while browsing your local liquor store. That's why, if find one while shopping, it's best to snatch it up. These liqueurs only pop up in a few places online and are often sold out. Furthermore, since most distilleries that make morel liqueurs are based in France, the websites are in French, making them even harder for English speakers to find online (If you want to go digging through French sites, morel liqueur in French is 'liqueur de morilles').

Apart from French sites, you can find morel liqueurs on a few specialty food websites. Seattle-based gourmet grocery store DeLaurenti Food & Wine lists it among its products, as does online food store and multi-ethnic deli and market Rudca Food. It's not uncommon for the product to be sold out, so don't dilly-dally if you find it available. If you're on the hunt for a bottle of Distillerie du Perigord's morel liqueur, the truly intrepid can make the trek to the distillery's boutique and store in Sarlat-la-Canéda, France, to grab a bottle.

Purchase morel liqueur at Boutique Cherry Rocher for roughly $17 (product listed in euros)

Purchase morel liqueur at DeLaurenti Food & Wine for $24.99

Purchase morel liqueur at Grocery.com for $53.99

The exact nutritional specs of various morel liqueurs may vary by producer. As it's one of the most widely available online, we'll look at Distillerie du Perigord's product as an example. Sold in 6.8-ounce sizes, Perigord's morel liqueur boasts an 18% alcohol by volume content. Apart from that, though, not much information can be found online about other health benefits. As with consuming any type of alcohol, imbibe responsibly. If used for cooking, be sure to simmer the liqueur to help cook off most of the alcohol.

You also may be wondering if morel liqueurs carry some of the health benefits of morels themselves. Containing vitamin D and minerals, morels — like other mushrooms — are a great addition to your diet. They can help support your immune system, boost your gut health, and even aid brain function. Plus, as plants, they're a fantastic substitute for eating meat while still getting protein, vitamins, and minerals. Sadly, all those great benefits are lost in liqueur form as the alcohol and sugar content negates any potential nutrient transfer from infusion or maceration. Moderate drinking can have some benefits, but in general, drinking alcohol usually causes more harm than good health-wise. Don't purchase morel liqueur thinking it has the same nutritional heft as its namesake mushroom.

Just like morels, morel liqueur can be hard to find. Apart from Distillerie du Perigord, only a handful of other distilleries or companies pop up. JB Morilles, a French company specializing in morel products like dried morels, sells a morel liqueur on its website. Boasting a golden color, the liqueur is advertised for use in making sauces, flambeing, deglazing, and other culinary techniques. Vert de Coer, another French distillery, has also made a morel liqueur in the past with added honey and muscovado.

Even if they haven't made a morel liqueur, other distilleries have also experimented with morels. Menaud, a Quebec-based distillery and brewery, sells locally-sourced morels from the Charlevoix area in a vodka and Labrador tea mixture. It recommends using the morels as toppings for toast or as an appetizer. Although morel liqueur may seem eccentric and outlandish, it's not alone in the world of mushroom liqueurs. There's another type of mushroom liqueur called Veda made with shiitake mushrooms, maple syrup, honey, and botanicals. Unlike morel liqueur, however, Veda is marketed more as a mix for cocktails as opposed to a cooking liqueur.

Not much information is out there about how to store morel liqueurs. However, since it's a type of liqueur, we can follow best practices for how to store other liqueurs and follow suit with your bottle of morel liqueur. As a rare commodity, you definitely want to make sure it lasts as long as possible, so taking proper care of it is key.

Under the right storage conditions, spirits don't expire or spoil and have essentially an infinite shelf life. In order to maintain their freshness, flavor, and appearance, liqueurs need to be stored in a certain way. They should be stored in a dark place away from direct sunlight. A pantry or cabinet would be ideal, which is an especially good location for morel liqueurs. Since this type of liqueur can be used in cooking, keeping it close at hand in a cabinet or pantry allows for easy access while also keeping it away from sunlight. The storage location also needs to be dry and cool, with no direct heat. Make sure the bottle is tightly corked and sealed for airtight freshness, and store it standing up instead of on its side to avoid contact with the cork.