“It doesn’t seem like anything. » The judgment is abrupt, but expressed in a tone of admiration. Emylou, a young waitress at the Origins restaurant-cocktail bar, in the heart of Cognac, also evokes grape marc and oyster shells to describe the aromas of an alcohol designed by Miko Abouaf, Michael, his real name. This UFO belongs to the Fractal collection, very personal compositions – “freestyle spirits”, as he calls them, offered here for tasting. The name of the vintage in question: La Perle. It is composed on a base of sauvignon pomace and lees. The magician who makes these potions lives in the large house in front of the restaurant. A ground floor shared between a mini-chai, a room that serves as a laboratory, an impressive library where jars and bottles, in their hundreds, replace books.
Not looking like anyone else, being intensely original, nothing can please this 38-year-old man more, son of a French-Tunisian father and an Australian mother, who was born and lived until he was 21 in Sydney. His mother, Nici Abouaf, still lives there. It was she who transmitted to him, very early, the virus of alcohols, plants and aromas. “We had a homemade still, says the one who made fruit liqueurs in the form of infusions. Miko was barely 14 years old when she started using it. At first it was more like chemistry experiments. We let him do it, otherwise he would have gone to experiment in the mountains, which would have been more dangerous. » Michel, the father, also participated in the emergence of this early passion, who lived in La Soukra, in the north of Tunisia, right next to the distillery of Boukha Bokobsa, a fig brandy. “I grew up with the taste of boukha in my mouth” Miko remembers.
Feeling “more European than Australian”, the young man arrives in London with the aim of “make a fortune” For “stop working at 30 and go up [sa] distillery”. The scenario did not play out exactly as planned: he studied a bachelor’s degree in finance, which he abandoned at age 23, and then went on to pursue a master’s degree in social psychology. At the same time, Miko Abouaf keeps the spiritual flame alive by distilling apple in his room using a mini still. “It was barely edible” he remembers. After a few months in Ethiopia with an NGO, he moved to France with the goal of truly learning the art of distillation.
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