I love redheads, by the way.

Dubonnet, if you’re not familiar, is a fortified apéritif wine along similar lines as vermouth, and comes in white and red expressions (rouge and blanc, but not a “dry” version as with vermouth). The vast majority of the time when someone refers to Dubonnet they are referring to Dubonnet Rouge. It’s similar to sweet vermouth, although a fair bit sweeter, with fruitier notes, and it’s very slightly more bitter. Dubonnet Rouge does contain quinine, although I don’t detect a whole lot of it on my palate. The sweetness tends toward a ruby port, although not as richly flavored, and one article compared it to sangria, “with a heavier mouthfeel and a spicier aroma.”

Dubonnet was created in 1846 by a Parisian wine merchant and chemist named Joseph Dubonnet, “as a means to make quinine more palatable for the soldiers battling malaria in North Africa.” Still made in France, but for the American market it’s made in Kentucky by the Heaven Hill distillery. There are those who say the American-made product is inferior to the European one. I’ve never tried it in Europe myself, but my pal Martin Doudoroff (who has an excellent site called Vermouth 101 all about vermouth, quinquinas, americanos and other fortified wines) remarked that “[t]he flavor profile is basically the same as the Kentucky edition and it isn’t dramatically more bitter (maybe a touch—it’s still pretty mild stuff in comparison to, say, Bonal) but it’s also clearly a more carefully wrought product. I guess I’d describe the European product as a little move vital and alive.”

I’m quite fond of Dubonnet Rouge myself, and with the proper adjustments I enjoy swapping it in for sweet vermouth for a nice change of pace. It’s lovely in a Dubonnet Cocktail, half and half with gin (one of the preferred tipples of the late Queen Mother, who in her later eyars was probably tipsy all day long, bless her). We also stumbled across this one in the long out-of-print Café Royal Cocktail Book; it’s also up on CocktailDB.

The original recipe called for orange Curaçao, but given the sweetness of the Dubonnet Wesly decided to go for a slightly drier orange liqueur, the excellent triple sec Combier. Cointreau would also work well.

The original recipe, as with so many recipes of its era, also called for precise proportions yet were vague on exact amounts. It read “2/3 Dubonnet, 1/3 gin, 2 dashes each orange Curaçao and Angostura bitters, dash of absinthe on top.” Given some other instructions gleaned from the preface as well as the typical cocktail size of the time, I’m guessing that he was making 2 to 2-1/2 ounce cocktails. I’ve tried to adjust this slightly for the slightly larger cocktails we tend to drink these days, but by all means make the nice little two-ouncers, especially if you have great little tiny vintage cocktail glasses in your collection. Make those proportions 1 to 1/2, otherwise …

I tweeted this recipe after Wesly made this for us one night, and my friend Maitri, who was at the bar at the wonderful Anvil Bar & Refuge in Houston drinking at the time, read it to our pal Chris Frankel, who was behind the stick that night. Chris thought it sounded good and made one for Maitri on the spot. Good gods, I love the Internets.

Photo by Maitri Erwin, used with her kind permission. Drink made by Chris Frankel at Anvil Bar & Refuge, Houston

DUBONNET ROYAL
(collected by W. J. Tarling, American Bar, Café Royal, London, 1937)

1-1/2 ounces Dubonnet Rouge
3/4 ounce London dry gin
1 barspoon Combier Liqueur d’Orange
3 dashes Angostura bitters
1 dash absinthe
1 Luxardo cherry

Combine the first four ingredients with ice in a mixing glass and stir for 20-30 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail coupe. Top with the dash of absinthe and garnish with the cherry.

Wililam J. Tarling was the head bartender of London’s sadly long-lost Café Royal as well as president of the United Kingdom Bartenders’ Guild, and in 1937 compiled a wonderful book of recipes invented by himself, his fellow Café Royal bartenders as well as other members of the UKBG. He was also a good, charitable fellow, as evidenced by this preface to the edition:

ALL Royalties derived by W. J. Tarling from this book are to be equally divided between the United Kingdom Bartenders’ Guild Sickness Benefit Fund and the Café Royal Sports Club Fund.

The book has been out of print for decades, and was quite hard to find for a long time. As with many of the great old out-of-print cocktail books I own, this one was brought to my attention by the inimitable Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh, who once again sent me scrambling across the Internets in search of a near-extinct tome. My search became fruitful when I finally got not one but two hits on ABEbooks.com — one in decent condition and perfectly readable condition, with a weathered and cracked but intact dust jacket even, for $25; the other was a pristine edition, autographed by the author, for $25,000.

After careful consideration I chose the former.

Fortunately Mixellany Books, in conjunction with the UKBG, has produced a facsimile edition, which you really should get:

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Post tags: cocktails

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The long line in which I waited to get into this sold-out seminar last Thursday was unsurprising. Bitters, as you’re undoubtedly aware, are a hot topic among bartenders and cocktail enthusiasts. We were hoping we’d taste things both new and old, and we weren’t disappointed. (As we waited and chatted amongst ourselves, we were offered tastes of … cupcake-flavored vodka. Ah, the diversity of Tales.)

Indeed, when I arrived at my seat and saw what was waiting for each of us I let out a somewhat subdued “Yay!” — several cups of bitters to taste (’cause it’s all about tasting stuff, folks). My only quibble might have been that there wasn’t a larger shot of each, but that’s because I’m weird about bitters. I just want ‘em. I’m a bit greedy, I must shamefully confess.

I seem to have a lot of company, and it seems we’re all willing to pay through the nose for it. Seminar moderator Jacob Briars, global brand director for Leblon Cachaça and the 7th most famous bartender in New Zealand, noted that milliliter for milliliter, bitters were often more expensive than fine Cognacs. Indeed, when Dr. Adam Elmegirab’s Boker’s Bitters replica was first released I of course had to have it immediately. Once shipping from the U.K. was figured into it my two 100ml bottles ended up costing me $52, or $195 for a 750ml bottle. Fortunately that product is much more readily available, but I’ve still paid upwards of $20 for small bottles of domestically-made small-batch bitters.

As expected, Jacob and his co-presenters Sebastian Reaburn and Francesco Lafranconi led an informative and very entertaining seminar.

(Ah, what happens when you start doing shots of bitters? Blurry pictures!)

Bitters in alcoholic beverages undoubtedly pre-date the famous first definition of the “cock-tail” as published in the Balance and Columbian Repository in Hudson, New York on May 13, 1806, to wit:

“Cock-tail, then, is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters; it is vulgarly called a bittered sling…”

Since that was unearthed many have boldly declared that in order for a drink to be a “true cocktail” it must have bitters in it, but Jacob pointed out that this isn’t really reflected by history. The cock-tail wasn’t defined by its bitters; the drink and its alcohol content only existed to mask the usually digusting flavor of the bitters, which were taken in the morning and were strictly and unironically medicinal. Bitters were used in cocktails solely to make the bitters drinkable.

The cocktail bitters we know today didn’t even exist in 1806, but bitters as medicine were widespread. What was going on with the ingredients in these bitters? What were the volatiles doing? What was the medicinal use?

Gentian was the most widely-used bittering ingredient, and it’s the bitterest of them all — a little goes a long way. The gentian plant has meter-long roots which must be harvested by hand, which makes it a rather expensive ingredient as well. Other bittering agents included quinine, wormwood and quassia, as well as myriad other ingredients that were including for supposed medicinal effect — digestive, anti-malarial, etc. — rather than flavor (despite the fact that some of these allegedly “medicinal” ingredients were sometimes quite toxic).

Aside from a number of snake-oily claims made about the medicinal value of bitters in those days there’s one effect we know they had then and have now — bitters are very good for your digestion. Bitter digestifs/digestivos taken about 20-30 minutes after dinner truly settle the stomach and aid in the digestion of your meal, as anyone who’s had a shot of Fernet Branca after an overindugent dinner knows very well. Bitter aperitifs/aperitivos taken before dinner stimulate the palate and the flow of saliva, which in turns stimuates the digestive system to prepare for the intake of food.

The digestive bitters was the most popular type of bitters sold during the bitters-as-medicine days, but the bitters that became cocktail essentials were those that embraced the flavors need by the budding bartenders but which could still lay claim to the medical traditions. Not a single bitters from that medicinal era has survived, however … save one — the mighty Angostura Bitters.

As we began learning about this venerable product, we were given quite a treat — Jacob and Sebastian had brought along several bottles of vintage Angostura bitters, including samples dating from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. I only go to taste one, the 70ish-year-old ’40s version, which tasted amazing — the bitterness was much more pronounced, perhaps due to oxidization and evaporation; it was recognizably Angostura but different from the modern product we’re used to. A bit stronger on the clove, perhaps. Jacob told us that all the bottles tasted completely different due primarily to varying rates of oxidation and evaporation, and one of them was “totally fucked” and undrinkable. This is one of the really magnificent things about Tales — with one taste of a special product you can step back into a time machine, and very few people get to do that.

Jacob ran through the basics of Angostura’s storied history — it was created originally as a health tonic by J.G.B. Siegert, a German doctor who had been appointed by Simón Bolívar to be Surgeon-General of the military hospital in town of Angostura, Venezuela in the early 1820s. The spices are macerated in a dark rum base and are heavy in gentian, cinnamon and cloves, all of which are proven digestive aids. Contrary to popular myth (and to the belief of many would-be imitators of Angostura Bitters throughout the latter part of the 19th Century, the product does NOT contain Angostura bark, but is named after the town in which its creator did his magic.

Continuously made and sold since 1824 (in Venezuela and then in Trinidad since 1875), Angostura is seen as the quintessential bitters, and is the most widely distributed cocktail ingredient in the world. It’s also quite profitable, and has been since the beginning. One reason for this is that Angostura were one of the first companies to vigorously protect their trademarks. In 1864 they sued another company who were making an “Angostura bitters,” made a bit further up the Orinoco River. They won this suit even though the impostor was actually making their bitters with Angostura bark; the original was awarded the patent for “Angostura” and “aromatic” due to their having used the brand for so long, and that it was named for its place of origin (even though the town of Angostura was renamed Cuidad Bolívar). Once they established their trademark, they took over the aromatic bitters world and still rule it today, although there’s a lot more small-scale competition than there once was.

We got the story of their oddly ill-fitting labels too — in a nutshell, they were in a hurry to get their product to a big competition, and two different people were in charge of ordering the bottles and the labels. Once they came together it was immediately apparent that the labels were too big, but it was too late to do anything about it so they were slapped onto the bottles anyway, the top sticking up nearly an inch above the bottle’s shoulder. Alas, they lost that competition, but the judges made sure to mention that they thought the packaging was brilliant.

Many years later an industrial design conference chose the Angostura bottle and label as one of the worst examples of product packaging in the 20th Century … but they were advised never to change it due to its now-iconic look. I concur.

The flavor of Angostura is unmistakable, deep and spicy and beautifully suited to many different styles of cocktails across the entire spectrum. The aroma is woody, predominant of clove and cinnamon and all those “Christmassy” brown spices. On the palate it’s quite bitter from the gentian but not unpleasantly so — seriously, do a shot of Ango sometime — continuing with Christmas cake, clove, citrus and sweet cinnamon.

For all the bitters we tasted the presenters also provided a list of things each bitters was particularly good with, bad with and some surprising combinations they thought worked beautifully. Unsurprisingly Ango is excellent with whiskies and rums, goes very well with lime, and I think with gin as well (remember the Pink Gin, just a good London dry with six or eight dashes of Ango). It doesn’t go well with Cognacs — even though they’re aged spirits the gentle fruit character of fine brandies tends to get overwhelmed. For surprises, try it on vanilla ice cream (I can already tell you this is fantastic), on grapefruit broiled with brown sugar, a few dashes in your coffee (which I have not tried) or in your Coca-Cola (which I have — at home our Coke Zero is never served without dashes of Ango) and … in a Piña Colada!

You can also use it as a base spirit for a cocktail (it’s 90 proof, after all) and it’s not difficult to balance. Our first sample cocktail was this one, which you can find at finer bars including Cure in New Orleans:

ANGOSTURA SOUR
(from Charles H. Baker Jr.’s 1939 book, The Gentleman’s Companion; or, Around the World with Jigger, Beaker and Flask)

1.5 ounces [45 ml] Angostura bitters (yes, you read that correctly)
1 ounce [30 ml] fresh lime juice
1 ounce [30 ml] gomme syrup
1 egg white

Combine all ingredients and shake vigorously without ice for about 20 seconds to froth up the egg white. Add ice and shake until delightfully cold. Strain into the sour-appropriate vessel of your choice, and optionally garnish with a lime peel.

Next came our beloved local favorite, Peychaud’s Bitters, an old family recipe brewed up by Antoine Amédée Peychaud in his Royal Street apothecary shop in the 1830s. (And no, he didn’t invent the cocktail, and the cocktail wasn’t named for a coquetier in which he served his nascent Sazerac brandy-and-bitters drinks. New Orleanians, I know we love a good story but please stop telling that one, because it’s bullshit, has been conclusively proven to be bullshit and telling it doesn’t do us any favors. Instead tell the one about how Huey Long brought his own bartender to New York to train the people there how to make Ramos Gin Fizzes; it’s a better story and mostly true.)  Essential to a Sazerac, these bright red bitters are quite different from Angostura, and until 10 or so years ago were the only other bitters you’d find other than Ango, and not far outside New Orleans at that (unless you were lucky enough to get your hands on what was probably the only remaining orange bitters being made by Fee’s, also hard to find back then).

Much lighter on the nose, with anise hitting you first, an a light cherry fruit note and a tiny whiff of cinnamon.  Jacob said he calls the smell “Old Absinthe House;” not having smelled the OAH recently, I can’t say myself. On the palate: more anise, cherry and cherry stones, sweet cinnamon and a very light bitterness. It’s quite an elegant product.

Peychaud’s is great with whisky, tequila, and Cognac; however, it’s bad with gin. (It seems to bring out the bitter elements of gin, and not the good kind of bitterness.) For the “Surprise me!” bit … Jacob said try it in vodka; a dash per inch brings out the grain. (Now that I’d be curious to try.) It’s also good Islay malts, he says, which didn’t surprise me.  I remember gaz regan saying a good while ago that he prefers Peychaud’s in his Rob Roys, and I’ve been enjoying them that way ever since.

[Also worth mentioning here is a product from The Bitter Truth that we didn't get to taste this time, their amazing Creole Bitters, which has some similarities to Peychaud's but is more bitter and complex, with a greater range of spices in the base. Superb in Sazeracs, Manhattans, Rob Roys or whatever you care to try it in.]

We got another cocktail with Peychaud’s as the base too:

PEYCHAUD’S SWIZZLE

1 ounce Peychaud’s bitters
1 ounce Cognac
1 ounce pineapple puree
Dash of absinthe
Dash of The Bitter Truth’s Jerry Thomas Decanter Bitters

Shake and strain over crushed ice. Insert swizzle stick and swizzle until the glass is frosty.

This was good, but for me the best-ever Peychaud’s-based cocktail by far is the Gunshop Fizz, by Kirk Estopinal of Cure and Maks Pazuniak, formerly of Cure. What an outstanding drink. The only thing that keeps me from slamming them all day all summer is that they’re somewhat labor-intensive (oh, and if I slammed them all day all summer I’d end up in rehab).

Next was a look at Fee Brothers, who’ve been around since 1863 (or 1864, depending on whether you read the company history or the date on the bottles) and have been making bitters since after Prohibition. After old brands like Gordon’s and Old House stopped making orange bitters they were the only game in town until Regans’ and the other modern brands started cropping up. They’re also very responsive to bartenders and their needs and are willing to create flavors as long as there’s some demand; this began back when Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh started bugging them to make a peach bitters several years ago.

Their best product is their aromatic bitters (which do actually use Angostura bark, and their heaviest and most foreward note is cinnamon) but even better are their Whiskey Barrel-Aged Bitters, a result of aging their “Old Fashioned Aromatic” bitters in used Woodford Reserve Bourbon barrels. Cloves, angostura bark, cinnamon, nutmeg, “chubby, chubbiness” as Jacob put it, richness and fatness on the tongue. Powerful and sweet on first drinking, but on the tongue the bitterness arrives late and kicks in the complexity. Really nice product.

Fee’s Whiskey Barrel-Aged Bitters are great with Bourbon and dark rum, bad with tequila or gin (unsurprisingly). For the “Surprise me!” … chocolate, and lemon!  Hmm.  A chocolate tart or flourless cake, or soda, or ganache, maybe a bit in a lemon curd or meringue pie.

Next we tasted (only one, sadly) from The Bitter Truth from Germany, one of my two favorite bitters companies these days. Started in 2006 by Stephan Berg and Alex Hauck, bartenders who had a very large collection of vintage bitters between them, their products flew out of the gate and very quickly knocked everyone on their arses with an outstanding aromatic bitters (a la Angostura) and an orange bitters.  Other flavors quickly followed, including, amazingly, one-off special flavors that theyd do for particular occasions. (I cherish my bottle of Bitter Truth Repeal Bitters, which I only use on December 5. They’ve done a tiny batch based on the botanicals of Beefeater 24 gin, and I understand their most recent special batch was made to commemorate a bar show in Europe.) Stephan and Alex are very secretive about their process and the exact combination of bittering agents, botanicals, herbs and spices that go into each product, and this seems to have served them well. No one else is approximating some of their flavors, including an outstanding celery bitters as well as the product we tasted … Jerry Thomas’ Own Decanter Bitters.

If you’re reading this, I shouldn’t have to explain who Jerry Thomas was (and if you’re scratching your head, the Google is your friend). He had his own formula for bitters that he’d keep behind his bar, which went something like this:

JERRY THOMAS’ OWN DECANTER BITTERS

(Bottle and serve in pony-glass.)
Take 1/4 pound of raisins.
2 ounces of cinnamon.
1 ounce of snake-root.
1 lemon and 1 orange cut in slices.
1 ounce of cloves.
1 ounce of allspice.
Fill decanter with Santa Cruz rum.

As fast as the bitters is used fill up again with rum.

Let me be the first to say … DO NOT MAKE THIS RECIPE! Why? Well, because Virginia snake-root — a bittering agent that also provided a rather nice spicy, woody, gingery flavor — is toxic and causes renal failure. (“But surely an ounce of it in a whole bottle of spirit, of which you’d only use a couple of dashes, couldn’t be that bad for you, could it?”, Dr. Cocktail once asked an organic chemist, who replied, “If it were me, I wouldn’t even take one drop.” Ohh-kay then.)

Needless to say when recreating this recipe Stephan and Alex found a substitute for snake-root (and what it is, they will not say), and they rounded out the original formula with angostura bark and a bit of citrus peel. I’m also more with the organic chemist when you look at Thomas’ instructions — not to dash into cocktails but to serve in a pony glass, a pony being one ounce. If you look through Thomas’ recipes he almost always specifies Boker’s bitters when he’s dashing aromatics into a cocktail — this bitters was meant to be slammed back by the bracing shot for medicinal use.

Of course, that’s not to say that you can’t dash it into cocktails, and it works really well that way (more on that momentarily).  We took shots of it though, ’cause that’s what The Professor wanted us to do.

Ohh, my … it is fantastically bitter! In fact, it was the bitterest product we’d tasted so far in the seminar. Cloves, wood and aromatic spices on the nose (that allspice really came through nicely), and on the palate lemon peel, dried fruit and brown spices, very dry and woody, and VERY bitter. The clove note is very heavy as in the original recipe, so much so that it actually numbs the tongue a bit.  This bitters is great in an Old Fashioned, and with genever; I like it in rum Old Fashioneds particularly. A bad combination would be in white spirits, which would get completely wiped out.  And for the “Surprise me!” … well, this was perhaps the biggest surprise of the day, and it was this “cocktail”:

THE TOM BOMB

1-1/2 ounces The Bitter Truth Jerry Thomas’ Own Decanter Bitters
8 ounces Red Bull, chilled

Put the bitters in a shotglass and the Red Bull in a mug. Drop the shotglass in and chug, just like every dopey frat boy has ever chugged a Jäger Bomb.

Belch.

Now … I hate Red Bull. Therefore, I hate Jäger Bombs.  However, this concoction which was presented by Jacob to Stephan with great glee, was apparently not bad.  Not bad at all, in fact. The flavors worked, and the extreme bitterness of the bitters balanced out the massive, tooth-cracking glucose sweetness of the Red Bull.  “It almost makes Red Bull taste good!” cried Jacob!  We didn’t get to try one of these ourselves (for which I was somewhat relieved), but I might just maybe try it one day (if I were already very drunk).

Next was “Dr.” Adam Elmegirab’s Boker’s Bitters, which began production on a very small scale by the eponymous Aberdeen bartender in 2009 (his doctorate being self-awarded, apparently).  Adam based his bitters on old published recipes for Boker’s — there were a few floating around — from tastes of several vintage Boker’s bottles, and largely based it on the 1883 recipe using quassia bark, calamus root, catechu, orange peel, and cardamom. The botanicals steeped in grain alcohol, then cut with Scottish spring water after 2 weeks.

On the nose we got Christmas pudding, orange, cinnamon, and cardamom. Then we tasted … and holy bejeebies! This was by far the bitterest bitters of the day! Extremely difficult to sip straight, but I got complex flavors of wood, eucalyptus, bitter almonds and fruit stones plus those deep, lovely spices amidst the insane bitterness. This is powerful stuff.

Adam’s Boker’s Bitters are excellent in a Martinez, dashed into barrel proof spirits or  genever, or in any cocktail from Jerry Thomas’s (or one of said cocktail’s descendants) that originally called for them. For example, I must say that the Willett Rye Manhattan (2 year, 57.6% abv) with Cinzano Rosso and 3 dashes of Boker’s I’m sipping as I write is exquisite. I wouldn’t use it in anything delicate, as this bitters will kick the living crap out of it, and remember that great idea of dashing Angostura into your coffee? Bad idea with Boker’s; the bitterness will leap up orders of magnitude and possibly implode your head.

Jacob said his big “Surprise me!” with this one was … a Mai Tai! Not the first thing that’d pop into my head, surely, but I’d definitely give it a try.  He said it also works well with orgeat, which is unsurprising, given the bitter almond and fruit stone notes I picked up.  Try it in a Japanese cocktail, which actually called for the original Boker’s bitters in the recipe Jerry Thomas published in 1862. Go wild with this stuff — the incredible length of flavor will carry other flavors along with it.

Next we got to be perhaps the first people in the United States to try Bob’s Bitters, from New Zealand. The small-batch company was founded in 2005 by Robert Petrie — not the former head writer for “The Alan Brady Show,” but a “notoriously shy pastry chef” (as Jacob described him) from the Dorchester Hotel in London. He’d done a lot of spirit- and liqueur-based work for the hotel’s kitchen and bar, including recreating his own version of the long-lost pommelo-and-honey liqueur Forbidden Fruit, as well as creating a line of cocktail bitters.  The bitters tended to be one-note flavors — chocolate, lavender, cardamom, coriander, licorice, etc. — with a solid bitter base, until he and his partner Jake Burger got the idea to recreate one of the great lost aromatic bitters of all time.’

Abbott’s Bitters were made in Baltimore, Maryland from 1872 until around 1950. The product is almost completely forgotten except for lucky cocktail fanatics who’ve tasted vintage bottles. The pre-World War II version is the superior; from what I remember learning from Ted Haigh the bitters were reformulated with a lower proof when production resumed after the war, and the product never found its footing again. Although Abbott’s did advertise itself as “Abbott’s Angostura Bitters” during some of the latter 19th Century, it was NOT Angostura and did not contain angostura bark. The “Angostura” was dropped from the product name after squawking from the actual trademark holder.

I’ve been lucky enough to taste it from several different batches, and to acquire a small supply of my own. The flavor is incredible, and without a doubt the best Manhattan you’ll ever have in all your born days will be an Abbott’s Manhattan. So of course, everyone who’s tasted it but not acquired vintage bottles has wanted to recreate it. That’s the fantastic thing about bitters — we as bartenders and cocktail enthusiasts cannot make our own Scotch or tequila, but we damn well can make our own bitters.

Although we knew a few ingredients from being listed on the label — gentian, cardamom, cloves, the usual suspects — there was something special and elusive about the unique flavor of Abbott’s. People tried — everything from “mix half Angostura with half Fee’s Old Fashioned bitters” (which was fine on its own but didn’t really work) to multiple experiments with various tinctures — but nothing really came close. Then a gentleman named Kevin, a perfumer and cocktail enthusiast who went by the handle of “PerfumeKev” on Robert Hess’ old DrinkBoy forum on MSN and its successor, The Chanticleer Society, took a sample of vintage Abbott’s and ran it through a gas chromatograph, a formidable piece of equipment “used in analytic chemistry for separating and analysing compounds that can be vaporized without decomposition.” Among other flavor compounds in Abbott’s, Kevin revealed the magic ingredient, the thing that gave Abbott’s its unique flavor. And that ingredient was … (Chairman Kaga cries “Kyo no tema … KORE DESU!”, tears off the cloth and unveils with a flourish …) TONKA BEAN!

Wait, what the hell’s a tonka bean? Dipteryx odorata — aha, we get a hint of it’s aromatic properties just from the Latin name — which contains a chemical called coumarin. That chemical is primarily responsible for its amazing aroma, and it’s the same chemical that contributes marvelous aromas and flavors to bison grass, used to make Żubrówka, the amazing Polish vodka. Tonka is prized by perfumers for its aroma, and by bitters makers and pastry chefs for its amazing flavor, which is reminiscent of cinnamon, vanilla, almonds, cloves, and … something else, je ne sais quoi.

Brilliant! Now we can make Abbott’s again! Well, not so fast … coumarin was apparently shown to cause liver damage in rodents if you feed them a hundred times more than they could possibly ever eat in one day, and coumarin also contains a chemical used to manufacture the well-known blood thinner Coumadin, although coumarin itself is not a blood thinner. Based on this bit of highly unlikely potential damage, our intrepid Food and Drug Administration has banned it for food additive use because of the coumarin content.

Let’s forget for a minute that there’s just as much coumarin in cassia cinnamon and, for instance, that if you consume three or four tablespoons of ground nutmeg you will get spectacularly high … and that these spices are perfectly legal. Until we can convince the government otherwise (and there are several efforts afoot right now to do just that), we’re going to have to do without our magical tonka bean to make bitters, for commercial sale at least. It’s perfectly legal to buy tonka beans, and some folks like John Deragon have begun their own Abbott’s experiments using them as the key flavoring ingredient.

However, Bob and Jake weren’t subject to such doting nannylike laws, and they worked diligently to produce an Abbott’s replica … which is what we tasted.

Although sadly completely illegal for sale in the U.S. at the moment, it is still an extraordinary product, aged for 6 months in toasted oak barrels (the original Abbott’s was the only bitters on the market at the time that were barrel-aged). The flavor was redolent with nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, cardamom, lavender, mallow, spearmint, and our old friend the tonka bean. They’d be fantastic in a Manhattan, and Jacob noted they’d be lousy with tequila. For a surprise use, he suggested trying them neat, like an amaro with a dash of sugar and a slice of orange over ice.

How did they compare to the vintage Abbott’s I’ve tasted? Well, let’s keep in mind Jacob’s advice about not trying to base a recreation of vintage bitters on one bottle, given that all those different bottles of Ango tasted completely different. However, I’ve tasted vintage Abbott’s from at least four different batches, all of which were reasonably similar, so I’m pretty familiar with the flavor profile. Bob’s Bitters were delicious, but didn’t quite taste like the Abbott’s I know. There was much more of a floral note, with pronounced elements of spearmint in the background, and I thought the tonka could have been a bit stronger. That said, I can’t wait to get my hands on a bottle of these, via … um, whatever means. Bob and Jake have done an extraordinary job.

Reeling from this, we moved on to the American bitters-making company that’s doing some of the most exciting work in the business — Bittermens (with no apostrophe, dammit!), founded in 2007 by Avery and Janet Glasser as experiments in their San Francisco kitchen, and now produced commercially in Brooklyn. Theirs is a completely modern approach to bitters-making, without attempting to recreate historical recipes. Their first product was the amazing Xocolatl Mole Bitters, using cacao as the primary flavor with a broad range of spices similar to what’s used in the exquisite Mexican mole negro sauce. They followed this with a bitters called ‘Elemakule Tiki Bitters, formulated for tropical and tiki-style drinks, and Boston Bittahs (heh, they’re in the yaahd not too faah from the caah), a summery citrus and chamomile blend, plus a few more and more still on the way.

The one we tasted was the latest incarnation of their initial experiments in producing a grapefruit bitters, Hopped Grapefruit Bitters. Organic grapefruit peel and oil, fruity Palisade hops, cinchona bark, gentian, cardamom and other ingredients are macerated in neutral grain spirit to make this bitters, which was fantastic. On the nose you get strong grapefruit and cardamom, and there was one offered aroma note of “irie” (“It smells like pot!”). On the palate bitter grapefruit and a bit of grapefruit pith, hops, crisp dryness, and even a note of the French gentian liqueur Suze. Jacob recommended these highly in tequila and mezcal drinks, and in a gin & tonic. Not so good would be the dark spirits of pretty much any variety, and for this one’s big surprise … beer! Not so much of a surprise, really; he said Hopped Grapefruit Bitters are amazing in a shandy gaff — half beer, half ginger beer, with a slice of grapefruit and several dashes of the bitters on top. I’m making that on the next hot Saturday.

Our last domestic producer before the grand finale was Brooklyn Hemispherical Bitters, which I hadn’t heard of until the seminar. The project started as a venture between Brooklyn bartender Mark Buettler and Jason Rowan, one of his bar regulars. After a fair bit of experimentation with bitters they were inspired by a visit to Eau de Vie bar in Sydney, Australia to come up with a name and start marketing them. Their approach is a classic bitter base with “farmer’s market” top-note flavorings. The portfolio includes strawberry, peach, sriracha (!!), Meyer lemon, rhubarb and black Mission fig, plus the one we tasted — Blueberry Bitters. Farmer’s market organic blueberries, gentian, cardamom, cinnamon and other flavorings sit in the bitter base for a week, then are filtered and bottled. I’d heard about other people making homemade blueberry bitters but hadn’t tried any of them, so I was eager for this quaff. There was woody cinnamon and dry oakiness in the aroma; on the palate sweet blueberries and blueberry pie. I could do shots of this one too.

Excellent with American whiskey, vodka and sloe gin, Jacob said; bad with tequila and some gins (the New Western ones would seem to work better then really junipery London Drys) For the “Surprise me!” … fruit salad (not so surprising), or add several dashes to the top of a Ramos Gin Fizz. Now that I can see; I fondly remember the Ramos I had in Audrey Saunders and Tony Conigliaro’s aroma seminar a few years ago, with four drops of cardamom tincture placed on the head, plus the lovely violette-drizzled Ramos John Coltharp made for me a Seven Grand a few years back as well. All their flavors sounded so wonderful that I will, of course, have to have them all. Sigh. You like bitters? There goes your money, honey.

The cruel death blow was saved for last, a product unavailable in the United States with no importation plans yet in sight. Mozart Chocolate Bitters, from Austria.

This new bitters is produced by Mozart Distillerie GmbH, the people who make another product I’ve been coveting, Mozart Dry Chocolate Spirit. Using a proprietary low-temperature extraction process they’ve actually figured out how to distill chocolate; they say the clear spirit is “directly gained from the untreated raw materials cacao and vanilla.” It’s not a liqueur either, it’s a spirit — actual hooch. The flavor is said to be distinctly chocolate, dry, complex and bittersweet. I cannot wait to try this on its own.

I did try it as part of the bitters, though — the production of Mozart Chocolate Bitters is done with cacao nibs and vanilla with a bit of nutmeg and clove, macerated in the dry chocolate spirit. Some might say it’s technically not a bitters, because it contains no typical bittering agents like gentian or cinchona. To that Jacob said, “Balls! It takes all the bitterness from the chocolate!!” Amazingly enough, the inherent bitterness of the cacao is all that’s needed to make this a true bitters (and if you forget how bitter unsweetened chocolate really is, take a bite of some sometime). That bit of news was astonishing and delightful and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on that bottle.

This stuff was so delightful that we just laughed as we tasted it, and the comments were funny too — the aroma was variously described as Valrhona chocolate, Cocoa Pops, and chocolate magic! The taste — bitter chocolate, spices, and more magic! The perfume that it left behind on my hand was intoxicating; we all must have looked like idiots, walking around smelling the backs of our hands all day. Had I lingered a bit longer with the bottle I might have rubbed a drop behind each ear, too. (Sexeh!) This bitters was a revelation, and I sincerely hope we can get it over here before too much longer.

And then, alas, the clock ran out, although we could have tasted bitters all day, and there were many more nascent companies we didn’t have time to get to — Bar Keep Bitters, made by Monrovia, Calfornia-based Modern Spirits (current flavors: Swedish Herb, Lavender Spice and Baked Apple); Bitter End Bitters from Santa Fe, New Mexico (current flavors: Jamaican Jerk, Memphis Barbecue, Mexican Mole, Moroccan and Thai, all containing a tongue-searing amount of chile); and the next most exciting entry to the U.S. bitters market, Miracle Mile Bitters from my adopted home of Los Angeles. Even though they haven’t ramped up to full commercial production just yet (they’ll also be made at the Modern Spirits facility) I’ve gone absolutely bonkers over all the samples I’ve tasted, and they’re already a fixture in L.A. bars — Chocolate-Chili, Yuzu, Castilian, Sour Cherry, Orange, Peach, Gingerbread and the amazing aromatic variety called “Forbidden Bitters,” because its initial formula contained an ingredient that’s not currently allowed in bitters, but when it is … well, I think this one will eventually win the Abbott’s replica contest hands-down. I’ve tasted things.

Exhausted after reading that? I’m certainly exhausted after writing it, and you can guess how our tongues were singing and heads were spinning after this seminar, yet we could have kept going for hours. Bitters are exciting, and anybody who says something silly like “Why would I want some thing bitter in my drink?” might as well be asking “Why would anyone want more than salt and pepper in my spice rack?” Through bitters we’re heading into our future while rediscovering our past — in the 1860s the proliferation of bitters was like the proliferation of vodka in L.A. in the 1990s, and now it’s happening again as even more and more bitters are coming out all the time. From a long, dry time when the only bitters you’d find would be dusty bottles of Angostura at the grocery store and a yellowed-label bottle which sat untouched for decades behind some bars, now we have a bitters explosion, a huge palette from which bartenders and mixologists can build layers of flavor.

Life is good.

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I wish my high school history classes had been a tenth as fun as this one.

Historian-of-booze David Wondrich and guru of all thinks tropical and drinkable Jeff “Beachbum” Berry led us on a survey of the global reach of America’s greatest ambassador to the world at large — the cocktail (and the julep, cobbler, smash, daisy, etc.). It was one of those classes where there’s so much information coming forth that after a few minutes not only can you not even begin to write it all down, it’s a struggle to remember everything. You just have to sit back, let it wash over you, enjoy and laugh and let whatever bits of it stick with you as you practically marinate in history. 

There’s a popular myth that’s been promulgated for years that the spread of the American cocktail and the American bar was due to Prohibition. “Horse puckey,” Dave said, only he didn’t, he said something pithier. It had already been a global phenomenon for generations. In fact, American cocktail making and culture began to spread almost immediately after it began to coalesce at home in the mid-1800s, and within fifty years had spread to nearly every corner of the globe. Almost any country that wasn’t too far off the beaten path had an “American Bar,” and sometimes the beaten path extended very far indeed. In the 1890s there was an American bar in Punta Arenas, Patagonia. “That’s practically the end of the earth, and you could get a Manhattan cocktail there.  There are parts of Kansas now where I can’t get that,” said Wondrich.

People came to the States from myriad places where their drinking choices were limited by tradition, lack of ingredients, what have you. The light came on in their eyes, though, when a simple glass of sherry (perfectly nice on its own) was transformed by the addition of sugar, citrus, shaved ice and fruit decorations into a luscious sherry cobbler. Writers and poets extolled our drinks’ virtues and sang their praises, and before long everyone wanted bars like this where they lived.

By this point you could get an American-style cocktail almost anywhere in the world, and chances are it’d be pretty damn good. American bartenders hadn’t quite made it around the world in force just yet, though — that’s where Prohibition came in — so you’d often get local variations which weren’t always necessariliy a good thing. Bringing in local traditions and ingredients is fine, but Wondrich said some of these bars were like an insect that had been eaten by a spider, “which sucked all the insides out and left only the shell.”

One difference that snuck into American-style bars which continues here in America is a point that makes Dave bristle.  ”Look at any old pictures of pre-Prohibition American bars, especially those in the late 1800s. What don’t you see? … Barstools! There were no barstools in proper American bars!” Barstools were an import from Germany, apparently, and Dave finds them the ruination of the spirit of the American bar.  ”Think about it,” he said. “When you’re standing at the bar, unless you happen to be chatting with the bartender, you’re leaning on it, facing the side or the rear, interacting with the people around you. Nowadays in bars you see only the backs of people on barstools, a phalanx of backs that’s a barrier between you and the bar, and lots of them sit there all night — screw you buddy, I’ve got mine, get yours!” Although I’m as lazy as the next guy, if not more so, and enjoy warming my barstool, I do see his point.  And how that I think of it, two of my very favorite bars — The Varnish in Los Angeles and Bar 1886 in Pasadena — have no barstools. But I digress.

After describing the lengths to which our drinks found the corners of the globe (including two fairly notorious bars opened at opposite ends of the Panama Canal by Mayme Kelley and Max Bilgray, who once named a horrid-looking cocktail after famed evangelist Aimee Semple Macpherson after he spotted her in his joint), Jeff Berry took over and we spent a considerable amount of time looking at one particular drinking destination where the American Bar single-handedly sparked a national tourist industry — Havana, Cuba. It was a fairly sleepy town where not a lot of Americans visited, and then the Volstead Act passed, bringing the Noble Experiment of Prohibition to the entire country.  And look … there, a mere 90 miles from our shores, was a potential haven of drinking. Plentiful drinking, stacks of liquor and some pretty damn good bartenders, too.

“Have one in Havana!” became the rallying cry for tourists, and one enterprising Spaniard by the name of Jose Abial y Ortega opened what became the number one tourist destination for Americans in Cuba — Sloppy Joe’s Bar.

Many American tourists came to Havana, went straight to Sloppy Joe’s, much to the annoyance of some people who thought the reason to visit a country is to see a country.  See Cuba, see more of Havana … for God’s sake, see what else is on the street besides this bar! “Sloppy Joe’s is not Cuba,” snarled one contemporary travel writer. Charles H. Baker Jr, writer for Town & Country, Gourmet and other food and travel magazines as well as the book The Gentleman’s Companion: Around the World with Jigger, Beaker and Flask had a different view of drink-oriented tourists who frequented the place: “Sneer all they please as Sloppy Joe’s, the fact still remains that there are as good, and better, and more varied cocktails suitable to our somewhat exacting taste than at any spot in Cuba.” So there.

Jeff even brought along a bottle of Sloppy Joe’s own house label rum (empty, sadly) — they stocked amazing 30-year-old rums which were apparently extraordinary. 

There was also a signature cocktail at the bar, the first one of which was served free to every guest:

SLOPPY JOE SPECIAL

2 ounces pineapple juice
1 ounce Cognac
1 ounce ruby Port
Dash of orange curaçao
Dash of grenadine

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail coupe.

It’s quite a lovely drink, actually.

In the 1930s Ernest Hemingway, who drank copiously in Cuba, first at Sloppy Joe’s and later at what became his preferred spot, El Floridita, advised his friend Joe Russell, a speakeasy owner, on a new name for his joint, once named the Blind Pig and then the Silver Slipper.  ”What about Sloppy Joe’s?” he suggested (perhaps as a raised finger to his former regular watering hole, as one speculation went). It was his name, after all. Joe thought it was a good idea, and it stuck — much to the chagrin of the owners of the real Sloppy Joe’s in Havana, who found their fame overtaken by the Key West impostor.

Alas, the original Sloppy Joe’s is no longer with us, although the Cuban government, in the interests of encouraging tourism, is busily restoring the bar to its former glory, or at least a semblance of such. Work is proceeding slowly, and will be finished … one day.  The Key West Sloppy Joe’s is still there, though. “If you’re ever in Key West,” went the advice, “do not go to this bar. Worst frakking Daiquiri I’ve ever had.” Only he didn’t say frakking.

Long live the American Bar.

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Fire, red-hot metal, smoke and sizzle — now that’s my kind of seminar! (More in a bit.)

And oh, the punch! We do love our punch, and punch is undergoing quite the revival these days, now that we remember how to do it properly. Punch lost its cachet for a while, thanks to an image of frumpy old ladies with porcelain cups, followed by the frat boys’ version of cheap booze dumped into a garbage can, and that bizarrely violent “Hawaiian punch” guy certainly didn’t help.  Punch is back though, from its 17th and 18th Century origins, but what about the other drinks of the era? How about recreating that style?

“Nobody looks good in breeches, stockings, a frock coat and a three-cornered hat,” said our presenter Wayne Curtis. “Really, who ever thought that looked good? Nowadays it’s a great way to get beaten up in a bar.”

Punch is indeed back, and we’re learning and enjoying the basic flavor profile of punch — “one of sour, two of sweet, three of strong and four of weak, plus spice” — but why aren’t we seeing more colonial-era drinks returning to our modern drinking? Well, it could be that colonial-era flavor profile — “sweet, sweet, sweet and sweet,” as Wayne put it. The drinks were also sweetened in ways we might find a bit unusual today. People at the time didn’t have a lot of access to white refined sugar and used what they had on hand — honey and molasses, but also apple juice, maple sap, dark hard cones of loaf sugar and even dried pumpkin, called for in many recipes of the era due to its native sugar content. We might not want to drink exactly what they drank in those days, but we can certainly modernize them and use elements from them to more suit contemporary palates.

They drank a wide variety of booze back then too. A Swedish traveler and writer named Israel Acrelius kept a meticulous list of every spiritous potable he came across in the colonies at the time:

That’s quite a bar crawl, although we might not necessarily like it all.

Wayne took us through some really tasty modern versions of what our forefathers drank 200+ years ago, starting with a lovely Pineapple Syllabub, which I can see myself having for breakfast in the morning:

It’s a fairly gentle morning drink a hybrid imported from abroad along with New World materials at hand.  It’s an incredibly old style of drink as well, dating back to the 15th century.  Wayne read us an early recipe: “To one bottle of red or white wine, ale or cider, sweeten and grate in nutmeg. Hold under a cow and milk it until a fine froth is on top.”

Well, we had a hard time getting the cow up in the elevator, so our modern version was made with pineapple-infused Cruzan rum, cream, and lemon zest. Yum.

I’ve enjoyed  modern versions of the Stone Fence, but this one was a bit more like the so-named drink of old. The colonials basically drank it as a spirits-fortified apple cider; today’s version was made with Cruzan blackstrap rum, St. Elizabeth’s allspice dram for a bit of spicy complexity, Woodpecker hard cider, and a bit of vinegar for acidity. (Vinegar was a common souring agent used in lieu of citrus, which was unavailable to colonial folks most of the year.)

Spruce sap/resin was very popular in 19th century — spruce gum was one of the more popular chews of the time, with a flavor so long-lasting that a writer of the era said you could chew it half the day, then pass it on to a friend and let him chew it for a while. (Ahem. Very glad I live in the 21st Century.) 

Calibogus was a typical spruce-based drink of the era, which at the time was a spruce beer fortified with rum. Today’s version was made with Cruzan single barrel rum, fresh lime juice (not a typical historic ingredient), Layman’s spruce beer extract, Zirbenz Stone Pine Liqueur for a little bit more of that flavor of the forest, plus a bit of molasses syrup & soda.  Delicious and (to our contemporary palates) pretty unusual.

Aha! But! What about the fire and glowing iron?

About an hour into the seminar we were ready.  Wayne had a reproduction of an 18th century loggerhead made — an iron implement about three feet long, with a small hook on one end and a ball on the end somewhere between a tennis ball and golf ball in size.  Someone apparently had the grand idea that this should be moved into the bar to heat up drinks. (Well, why not? Go figure.)

What Wayne had been saving for us was a Colonial-era Flip, which bears pretty much zero resemblance to what we think of as a flip today (a drink shaken with spirits and a whole egg). Flips in the 1700s were brown ale, rhum and molasses, heated up by plunging a hot loggerhead into the pitcher.  It wasn’t just a way to heat it up quickly, though — the red-hot loggerhead had some other amazing effects on the mixture.  It almost immediately builds up a huge, frothy head, burns the grains, hops and the barley of the ale, caramelizes the molasses and really blends the flavors and changes the taste profile in a way you wouldn’t get by just heating it up on the stove. (Martin Cate once tried using a charcoal starter, and that really didn’t work.)

Here’s how it’s done (tri-cornered hat optional):

Wayne prepared the drink by pouring two bottles of dark ale (Bass Newcastle, in this case), 4 ounces of molasses and 8 ounces Cruzan aged rum. Then … the plunge!

Man … that was good. The sharp tang of the molasses that bothers some people was really nicely tempered, making a deep, rich flavor with developed sweetness from the caramelization.  I could really get used to this drink. Unfortunately, living in either New Orleans or Los Angeles a piping hot drink isn’t going to be terribly appropriate most times of the year … but hell, I’ll enjoy it during the two weeks that it’s actually cold.

Of course, during the question and answer session I was curious as to whether there was any direct evolution from this style of colonial flip with the drink to which we now refer as a flip, spirits shaken with whole egg. “You sir,” Wayne replied, “have just destroyed three days of my life!” Actually, the serious answer was … who knows? The only relation, it seems, is the name, and sometime in the mid-1800s the name was appropriated for the egg-bearing drink. Ah well, the reality might be unsatisfying but it’s good to know.  I’ll do whatever I can to get Wayne those three days back.

And man, that flip was good.

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Most of the time the process is reversed, at least with most bartenders I know. The spirits and flavors form the initial idea, and the name comes afterward. Sometimes, though, you just come up with such a great drink name that you use that as your creative inspriation.

There was one such night several months back, drinking at The Varnish in Downtown L.A. My friend Aaron was with us and was on a roll, tossing out great drink names one after the other. Most of them I don’t remember, given that my memory tends to be a bit hazy with trivial details during periods of cocktail quaffing. I do, however, remember one very clearly.

My friend Zane Harris from Seattle was guest bartending that evening (that was the night he made me the Yellow With Envy cocktail), and one of the concoctions he served up was based on Averna amaro, with a touch of Fernet. It was fabulous, and I loved the idea of using two amari in the same cocktail. Hell, why not try a drink combining bitter elements the way tiki drinks combine rums? Certainly this has been done before, but I hadn’t done it before. Aaron immediately tossed off a perfect drink name — “Something Bitter This Way Comes.” Had he been reading my mind, coming across my lifelong love of the writing of Ray Bradbury, and the fact that Something Wicked This Way Comes has been one of my favorite novels since I was 13? Whether he was mindmelding or not, he nailed this one, and kindly gave me the name to use as I saw fit. (Fortunately I forgot all the other ones, at least one of which I challenged him to actually create.)

I wanted a rye base for this for spice and backbone, and definitely Fernet although not so much that it would dominate. For the primary amaro I chose Amaro CioCiaro — bracingly bitter and herbal but bright and citrusy enough to be refreshing, and sweeter than you might imagine once you’ve had a few sips. What would I use to bind these together, though?

I tried almost everything, or so it seemed; I went through many many incarnations of this one before I was satisfied. Previous versions included maraschino (too sweet) and Aperol (getting there, but no). Cocchi Aperitivo Americano seemed just the thing to ameliorate the sweetness inherent in the amari while adding a bitter element of its own. I tried overproof ryes to attempt to stand up to the amaro combinations but it wasn’t necessary — a 90ish proof rye (Bulleit or Redemption or Sazerac 6) seems to work the best.

And then … I put it aside for a while. Procrastinated. Time passed. Wesly made the amazing Golden Dahlia. The following weekend I thought it might finally be time to run this post, so I’d make the drink again and take some pics … and then I had another thought.

We had just gotten our first bottle of another Cocchi product, the Vermouth di Torino, a fantastic red vermouth from Turin, Italy that’s brand-new to the States. I love it. I decided to give the drink one more incarnation, to let the cocoa and bitter notes of this vermouth work with the other amari and see what happens.

What happened was that the bell rang. This one was it.

That cocoa aspect of the Cocchi di Torino hooked in perfectly with the orangey notes of the CioCiaro, while contributing a bit of citrus of its own along with a great breadth of complexity (in fact, you should be drinking Cocchi Vermouth di Torino by itself as much as possible, and don’t ever let it go bad in your fridge).

The final touch (learned from friends and mentors Kirk Estopinal and Maks Pazuniak after several rounds of drinking at Cure in New Orleans) was a tiny pinch of kosher salt. This helped rein in the bitterness to make it more pleasant and less of an attack on the palate, and helped cut down a bit on the sweetness too. Remember, amari are liqueurs and contain a fair amount of sugar.

Funny thing is … it’s actually not all that bitter, and comes in squarely in the Manhattan variation category. That may not have been what I was initially going for, but it’s what evolved. Who am I to question it? Also, I’m tired of working on it. It’s a mighty tasty drink, but does it live up to the name? That may well be up to you.

SOMETHING BITTER THIS WAY COMES

1-1/2 ounces rye whiskey.
1 ounce Amaro CioCiaro.
1/2 ounce Cocchi Vermouth di Torino.
1/4 ounce Fernet-Branca.
2 dashes Bittermens Xocolatl Mole Bitters.
Tiny pinch of kosher salt.

Combine ingredients with cracked ice in a mixing glass. Stir for at least 30 seconds until thoroughly chilled. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange peel after expressing the orange oil onto the drink.

If you can’t find the Vermouth di Torino near you, Cocchi Aperitivo Americano still works well. Barring either of those, I’d say go for Punt E Mes.

Gaah, I might work on it again. Campari or Luxardo Bitter instead of Cocchi Vermouth? *tear hair out*

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(Oh, crap.)

I was a little nervous about this whole being-on-camera thing to begin with, and after hearing from Tatsu about how he ran the gauntlet the night before, I had a minor panic attack. (Not a real panic attack, but more along the line of all the chickens in “Chicken Run” — “We mustn’t panic!” … *sounds of chickens panicking*)

I wasn’t panicking about doing the work — I was really excited about doing the work, in fact. Other than at home and friends’ houses, and bartending some parties, this would be my first time behind a working bar. I was a bit more concerned about the idea of having shots poured into me all night. Alas, I had to be a party pooper and put my foot down — no 12 shots over the course of the night, as not only did I have to be at work at 7:30 the next morning but I also had to drive myself home. Sigh, what the day job will do to us …

I showed up bright and early to help prep, which was apparently a good sign. Points scored already! Before starting the video I’d like to describe one thing it didn’t portray — in fact, none of the videos did — what Jim called “the pre-shift ritual.” This wasn’t any kind of barback hazing, this was a participatory ritual in which Jim and Rocky would join me. Sure, sounded great, but I wasn’t getting any explanations until we got to the site of the ritual.

The site, in everyone’s case, was the nearest dive bar to the venue where Jim would be guest-bartending. The ritual was for the three of us to consume … a Jäger Bomb.

Would you believe, though, that in my entire life, and after all the spirits and liqueurs I’ve quaffed or merely tasted in my life (I’ve lost count), I have never once tasted Jägermeister, much less some college kid drink made from it.

You’d think it’d be right up my alley, if you look at it for its original purpose — a herbal* liqueur meant as an after-dinner digestivo. Somehow over the years it became some kind of frat-boy shooter, and that whole reputation that developed around it just put me off. Actually though, if the ritual had just been shots of Jäger, I would have been fine with that. I mean, I’ve done shots of Malört, fer chrissakes — very little could be less palatable than that (and I actually kind of like Malört). I started thinking about it and figured a Jäger Bomb would likely be something like a shot of Jäger dropped into a beer, which I imagine would have been palatable enough. Sure, I’d be fine with that.

Nope. You probably already knew this, but that night I learned that a Jäger Bomb is a shot of Jägermeister dropped into a large glass of Red Bull. *groan*

I hate Red Bull. Sickly sweet, tasting like bad cotton candy and with an absurd amount of caffeine … blecch. In fact, I despise all those so-called “energy drinks,” primarily for the fact that they all — every single one of them — unequivocally tastes like shit. I mean, spit-take bad. And Red Bull is probably the best of them.

The bartender at the little dive down the street delivered unwelcome news, though. “We’re out of Red Bull,” he said. “All we’ve got is Rockstar.” Rockstar not even out of the can — Rockstar squirted out of the soda gun, in fact.

Here’s what Wikipedia says about Rockstar:

“As with all energy drinks, Rockstar can cause jitteriness, anxiety, and high blood sugar levels. If mixed with alcohol it may also mask the level of alcohol intoxication. Because of the diuretic effect of caffeine, Rockstar can exacerbate dehydration. [...] Rockstar Original was named Worst Energy Drink by Men’s Health magazine for having 280 calories due to 62 grams of sugar.” Rockstar also has about four times as much caffeine as Coca-Cola. Then there’s that whole tasting-like-shit thing. That, plus I mislike that company for other reasons as well. I found myself wishing they had had Red Bull.

Sigh. Stop whining and just drink it. Yep, it was about as bad as I thought it’d be, entirely due to the Rockstar. I’d gladly have done a few Jäger shots instead.

But enough grousing about the pre-shift ritual (which, other than the Rockstar, was fun). Let’s get down to work!

I was very happy to get a good grade! I was even happier that compared to some other videos, I was pretty boring. (Being earnest at your job is not terribly entertaining.) I’d rather be boring than be “good TV” though, I guess. I’m really glad Rocky and Jim asked me to participate, and I had a ton of fun. Despite what the video’s web page says I learned a lot working with Jim — a hell of a lot more than “Never run unless someone’s chasing you with something pointy,” which I actually already knew.

Jim’s featured drink this time is way better than a Jäger Bomb. I love the combination of gin and Aperol, and the lovely savory note from the sage really makes this drink.

MARQUEE COCKTAIL
by Jim Romdall, Vessel, Seattle

1-1/2 ounces Martin Miller’s Gin
3/4 ounce Aperol
3/4 ounce lemon juice
1/4 ounce simple syrup
2 sage leaves
Pinch of salt

Shake all ingredients with cracked ice until very cold, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a sage leaf.

* — “You say ‘erbs’ and I say ‘herbs,’ because … there’s a fucking ‘H’ in it.” — Eddie Izzard.

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NEENER NEENER
by Jim Romdall, Vessel, Seattle

1-1/2 ounce Dos Maderas PX Rum
3/4 ounce Ramazzotti Amaro
1 egg
dash simple syrup
dash Angostura Bitters
float Green Chartreuse

Combine the first five ingredients in a shaker and dry shake WITHOUT ICE for at least 20 seconds. Add ice and shake to chill. Double strain into a Irish coffee glass and float with green Chartereuse.

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While Jim’s Martini featured a dash of his beloved Ardbeg in the mixing glass along with everything else, this one features his trademark Ardbeg float. While not exactly red, given its name this drink could be a contender for the house cocktail of House Targaryen. Dracarys!

DRAGON’S BLOOD
by Jim Romdall, Vessel, Seattle

1 ounce Martin Miller’s Gin
3/4 ounce Green Chartreuse
1/3 ounce Dry Sack Sherry
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
1 dash absinthe
Ardbeg scotch whisky float
Lime twist

Combine the first 5 ingredients with ice in a mixing glass, stir for 30 seconds and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Drizzle a barspoon or so of Ardbeg on top of the drink as a float, garnish with a lime twist and serve.

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She looked like she had a great time, and fortunately Jim didn’t break her. (“She’s tiny! She’s Li’l Bak!”) Behind the stick at San Francisco’s Cantina, Humuhumu acquitted herself quite well for her barthoritarians. (It’s Neologism Thursday, apparently.)

Today’s featured drink is very refreshing, savory with a touch of sweetness and fruit from the St. Germain. This is something you could easily put down on a summer’s day while reading out in the hammock. You can use whatever gin you prefer, but Jim used Hendrick’s here — its own cucumber notes capture those of the fresh cucumber quite nicely.

CUCUMBER LIME SWIZZLE
(from Vessel in Seattle, 2008)

1-1/2 ounces Hendrick’s Gin
1 ounce fresh lime juice
1/2 ounce Lillet
1/4 ounce St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur
1/4 ounce simple syrup
3 cucumber slices
Soda

Vigorously shake all the ingredients with ice (the ice and shaking will muddle the cucumbers for you). Double strain into a tall glass, fill with crushed ice, top with soda water and stir gently. Garnish with a cucumber slice, lime wedge or both.

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Today’s drink is a riff on the simple but lovely Alaska cocktail, which is gin and yellow Chartreuse, 3:1. It makes a great basis for a sour, and is an excellent example of building on an old drink to get a new one.

ALASKAN SOUR
by Charlotte Voisey, bartender and
portfolio ambassador for Hendrick’s Gin

1-1/2 ounce Hendrick’s Gin
1/2 ounce yellow Chartreuse
3/4 ounce fresh lime juice
1/2 ounce simple syrup
2 dashes orange bitters
1 dash egg white

Combine all the ingredients in a shaker WITHOUT ICE and vigorously dry shake for at least 20 seconds. Add ice, and shake until cold. Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a lemon twist.

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It was back in January. I was at Rob Roy in Seattle, one of my favorite bars anywhere. My friend Jim Romdall, bartender extraordinaire at Vessel (which closed after it lost its lease, to reopen in a better location this summer) was guest-bartending. My friend Rocky Yeh, bon vivant and force of nature, was barbacking with him (as was the usual team effort on Mondays at Vessel). Jim had been making us fantastic drinks all night until closing, and at one point Rocky approached me with a proposal.

“Sure, what did you have in mind?” I said.

“Jim and I are going to be doing a little tour down the West Coast, stopping in bars and doing a little competition. We want knowledgeable booze people who aren’t professional bartenders to barback for us, and we want you. What do you say?”

What else could I say? “I’m in!” This sounded like a lot of fun.

Word of advice, though — be careful what you agree to after six cocktails!

A barback, in case someone you aren’t aware of the term, is a bartender’s assistant. Making sure the bartender has everything he or she needs, keeping the ice bin filled, keeping fresh bottles of booze coming, washing barware, fetching eggs, cleaning, helping with taking orders … whatever needs to be done to make the bartender’s job easier, and making sure he or she doesn’t have to take more than one step away from their station to get a drink made. Speed is of the essence, especially on a busy night. This is what the participants in the Pro-Am and I would be doing. If nothing else, I would also probably hold the title of World’s Oldest Barback.

Word of advice to iPhone and iPad users — the iOS built-in autocorrect always wants to change the word “barback” to “bareback.” Keep an eye on this, or else it could get embarrassing.

As the date of this thing approached and I hadn’t heard anything, I called Rocky and he tossed some dates at me. I managed to get my schedule open that week so that either of the dates he mentioned would be available, and then he emailed me a little electronic flier that described the event in more detail.

Click to embiggen

“Amateur mixologists” were being sought! Okay, I resemble that remark. “The challenge is part of a mini-series to be shown on the Small Screen Network.”

Uh. What? (And what’s with the dead suckling pigs?)

“I could have sworn I mentioned that to you,” said Rocky after I had my first minor panic attack. I swore up and down he didn’t, “This is the FIRST I’ve heard of it!” I cried, but he almost certainly did at the time. Remember that six cocktails thing.

Here’s the thing. I hate being on camera. Hate hate hate. “Camera-shy” doesn’t even begin to describe it, if the camera takes moving pictures. I may be one of the only people in America who has on his bucket list never to be on TV in any way, shape or form. I was once approached to see if I was interested in participating in a reality show. “Does it involve me being on TV? Then no.”

“C’mon, it’s the Small Screen Network — you know those guys,” Rocky said, full of encouragement. “It’ll be great. You’ll be fine. Just relax. We’re going to have a lot of fun.”

I began to think of what kind of bullshit story I could tell my doctor to get him to prescribe me some tranquilizers.

I actually had a major panic attack (not a clinical one, just a Chuck panic attack) the night before, which left me feeling sheepish the next day. “We’re your friends,” said Jim. “You should trust us.” They are, and I do … but after hearing tales of the way the Barback Pro-Am went the night before with the previous victim, I was still a bit wary.

Y’know what, though? It was a lot of fun. (Once I put my foot down and said no, I won’t be doing a dozen shots over the course of the night.) It was actually the first time I’d been behind a working bar doing actual work, and it felt great. Granted, I wasn’t really mixing any customers’ drinks (although I did get to make a Blue Blazer!) and the bar wasn’t as busy as I would have liked, it was still a terrific night. Well, except for when I decided to run. More on that later.

My episode of the series is probably going up within the next week, and I had meant to be posting these all along, but Jazzfest and Houston travel combined with my own absentmindedness and procrastination delayed us until now. Better late than never!

Jim did a fantastic specialty cocktail menu for all the Barback Pro-Am stops, and we’ll be featuring a cocktail along with each video — the cocktails are on the Small Screen Network site along with the videos, but I want to get ‘em in our database here as well.

Follow Jim and Rocky’s Barback Pro-Am for all the videos and recipes, which we’ll also put here for you. First up is Jennifer Heigl of the site The Daily Blender. Let the games begin!

Jim is a passionate lover of Ardbeg whisky, and sometimes seems to think that the crowning touch on any drink is the Ardbeg float. In fact, you can follow him @ardbegfloat on Twitter. This is a lovely Martini — a little bit of sweetness from the Dolin blanc, and a touch of smoke from the Ardbeg.

JIM’S MARTINI
by Jim Romdall, Vessel, Seattle

1-3/4 oz Hendrick’s Gin
1/2 oz dry vermouth (Dolin dry or Noilly Prat Original)
1/4 oz blanc vermouth (Dolin blanc or Cinzano bianco)
1 dash Ardbeg scotch whisky
Lime peel

Combine ingredients in a mixing glass with ice and stir for 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with the lime twist.

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“Left Behind!” cried Chris. “Someone should make a drink called that. Just for the Rapture!”

“Ugh, Left Behind …” says I. “Worst. Books. EVAR.”

“It could be like a Left Hand.”

Hmm, a left hand and another left body part — the left behind as in my left butt cheek, which is what I think about doomsday happening on Saturday. I got yer Rapture right here, pal! *grasps left butt cheek* Yeah, this is sounding better and better.

“I wish we had Port in our repertoire,” he said. “Swap it out for the vermouth. Make it look like blood.”

“No port here either. We should swap out the base spirit. Rum! And Vergano Chinato Americano for the vermouth.”

Chinato (kee-NAH-to) is another style of Italian aperitif wine, the Italian version of a quinquina, as it’s given a bitter component by the addition of cinchona bark, the source of quinine. This one’s lovely, made from red Grignolino grapes in Piedmont and with more bitter oomph than Carpano Antica

“Appleton, Aperol & Chinato,” he said. “Dash Ango, dash mole bitters.”

“That sounds really good in my head,” I said.

It was good — perfectly pleasant. I felt the need for something a bit more bitter, though. We are being Left Behind, after all! The disappearance of Kirk Cameron won’t make up for the bitter tears we’ll shed while we’re weeping, wailing, gnashing teeth, rending clothing and otherwise generally tribulating. I decided to up the Chinato, and instead of reverting back to Campari I thought I’d kick the bitterness up a notch. Cynar, I thought, but not quite so much. I also swapped out Bittermens Xocolatl Mole bitters (a product I absolutely adore) for a local product with a bit more kick — Miracle Mile Chocolate-Chili Bitters. (No link yet because the website isn’t quite done, but you’ll be hearing a LOT more about those bitters very soon.)

I was pretty happy with the result, but it could still stand for some tinkering. As a one-day cocktail menu special, though, it ain’t bad.

THE LEFT BEHIND COCKTAIL

1-1/2 ounces Appleton Extra rum
1 ounce Vergano Chinato Americano
1/2 ounce Cynar
2 dashes Miracle Mile Chocolate-Chili Bitters
1 dash Angostura Bitters
Orange peel

Stir ingredients with cracked ice for 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail coupe, twist the peel over the drink and garnish with the peel.

Doesn’t quite look like blood, but it’s tasty enough. For the Left Behind No. 2 (which we didn’t have time to try but will likely try tonight) I’d swap the Cynar out for Campari and use the original proportions of 1-1/2 to 3/4 to 3/4, and maybe add a barspoon of Smith & Cross for a touch of funk.

So, enjoy your drink special (I hope), and Happy Doomsday!

P.S. — Given that this is a variation on the Left Hand, I think a post about said cocktail plus two tasty variations is due next. Stay tuned.

[P.P.S. -- While my tone may indeed be mocking (the idea of the rapture itself, much less calculating it to the day and hour, is the biggest load of peanut butter and horseshit I've ever heard), I have to say that I feel sorry for that nutbar preacher's followers who quit their jobs, sold their houses and everything they had to spend on end-of-the-world-is-nigh billboards. Come Sunday those people will be penniless and destitute, left with nothing but their betrayal. Beware of false prophets, y'all.]

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It’s a lovely-looking highball, a gin fizz amplified with a bit of Cognac — very refreshing. I like the technique used by the bartender here. Rather than straining the shaken ingredients directly into the ice-filled Collins glass and then topping with soda (as many people would do, and which would require additional swizzling to avoid having a layer of plain soda water sitting on top) he adds the soda to the other half of the shaker, giving it a gentle swirl to combine and then pouring into the ice-filled glass — already mixed! Nice.

STAY UP LATE
(from The Stork Club Bar Book, by Lucius Beebe, 1946)

1-1/2 ounces Plymouth gin.
1/2 ounce Cognac.
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice.
3/4 ounce simple syrup.
3 ounces soda water.

Combine in a cocktail shaker with one piece of ice and shake for 10 seconds. Strain into the smaller half of the mixing tin and add the soda.

However, today you might want to celebrate Tax Day (we’re hoping you got refunds) with an Income Tax Cocktail, which is easy-peasy — basically it’s a Bronx cocktail with aromatic bitters added. In fact, I think you should have every cocktail mentioned in this post this evening.

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ROYAL SMILE
(adapted from The Artistry of Mixing Drinks, by Frank Meier, 1934)

1 ounce gin.
1 ounce apple brandy.
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice.
3/4 ounce real pomegranate grenadine.

Combine with cracked ice and shake for 10-12 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail coupe, and garnish with two thin slices of apple on the edge of the glass.

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This is a drink that I think should get a lot more attention than it does, ’cause it’s damned good. It isn’t a Negroni variation per se, as it developed quite independently from that drink, but fits in with them quite nicely. As Dr. Cocktail said in the above link, “The Boulevardier … appeared in Harry [McElhone]’s 1927 bar guide, Barflies and Cocktails … Obviously, this is a Negroni with bourbon in lieu of gin. The Negroni, however, would not see print for another 20 years, and Americans had never heard of Campari in 1927.”

THE BOULEVARDIER COCKTAIL

1-1/2 ounces Bourbon whiskey
1 ounce Campari
1 ounce sweet vermouth.

Stir and strain. Garnish with orange slice, lemon twist or cherry at your discretion.

Ask for it by name!

Finally, here’s a variation on that which came about one night when bartender Chris Day and I were talking about cocktails in Google Chat. Our Boulevardier and Funky Negroni got together and had a demon spawn, which is actually amazingly good.

The conversation went something like this: I wanted a stiff drink, something with Stagg Bourbon. Chris and I had been talking about Smith & Cross rum. As I was musing about mixing Smith & Cross and Stagg, Chris said almost simultaneously, “Try a Boulevardier with a Smith & Cross float.” My eyes lit up and I said, “A STAGG Boulevardier!” He said, “Oh god, what have I done?” (AWESOMENESS, that’s what you’ve done!)

George T. Stagg Bourbon is arguably the best Bourbon on the planet. It’s certainly my special favorite, so full of flavor that it makes your head spin … quite literally. This is because Stagg is also barrel proof, slightly varying in proof each year but is generally around 144 proof. That’s 72% alcohol, kids — not to be trifled with. It’s a bit hot to drink neat — you might want to add a bit of cool water — but it mixes amazingly well. Given its strength proportions almost always have to be adjusted, but this gets easier with practice.

I wondered if the strength of this whiskey would overwhelm the Campari, but when I tried it with equal proportions I didn’t like it as much. The Campari is still there in the standard Boulevardier proportion, but it’s less assertive. That said, Wes and I both preferred the version below. “The other one was perfectly fine,” Wes said, “but this one … this is the one that makes you pound on the table, say ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ and order it again.” Your mileage may vary; try it 1:1:1 if you like, and see if you like it. Justin Burrow in Houston said, “That drink should be called the ‘Naptime.’” That gave me the idea to call it this:

BOULEVARD DES RÊVES

1-1/2 ounces George T. Stagg Bourbon
1 ounce Carpano Antica
1 ounce Campari
1/4 ounce Smith & Cross rum

Combine the first 3 ingredients with ice, stir and strain into a chilled coupe. Float Smith and Cross onto the surface of the drink. Lemon peel garnish.

Make sure someone else is driving you if you have this one.

And with that, our little series on Negroni variations comes to an end. This should give you plenty of stuff to try at home or in your favorite bar, as they should be pretty easy to order (i.e., “Genever Negroni,” “Stagg Boulevardier with a Smith & Cross float,” etc.). So, give ‘em a try!

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This next one is the one that’s been killing me lately, and I mean in the best possible way. As with so many of us, I just can’t get enough Smith & Cross rum. This “traditional Jamaican” navy-strength rum (coming in at 100 English proof, i.e. 57% alcohol by volume) is so packed with flavor and funk and “hogo” that a bottle doesn’t last long on our shelf. I like it so much I briefly considered pouring a bottle into my humidifier so that I could breathe it. Eric Seed of Haus Alpenz, whoi imports this stuff, should be canonized for bringing this to us alone, not to mention all the other wonderful things he provides — Batavia arrack,Crème de Violette, allspice dram, Old Tom gin, Cocchi Americano … *boggle*

Oh, what’s “hogo,” you ask? From David Wondrich at the above link:

[B]ack when it was young, rum was possessed of a certain “hogo.” Derived from the French phrase for the “high taste” (haut goût) game meats develop when they’re hung up to mature before cooking — and by “mature,” we mean “rot” — hogo used to be a term of art in the rum trade to describe the sulfurous, funky tang that raw-sugarcane spirits throw off. For 300 years, rum distillers have sought ways first to tame and then to eliminate it: high-proof distillation (more alcohol equals less hogo), filtering, tweaking the fermentation, long aging in barrels — all very effective, particularly when used in combination. Perhaps too effective.

A lot of that hogo has been removed from smooth, easy-to-drink rums of today. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing — give me a glass of Zaya or Appleton Extra any day — but there’s something to be said about that funk, properly tamed. Smith & Cross doesn’t exactly tame it but makes for a delicious rum that won’t funk you to death, although it will funkify your life. (Ah, my stream of consciousness calls for a musical interlude …)

I had forgotten what this drink, first sight of which came from bartender Joaquin Simo at Death & Co. in New York was actually called and started calling it the “Funky Negroni” — fortunately Garret reminded me it’s really called …

THE KINGSTON NEGRONI
(adapted from Joaquin Simo, Death & Co., NYC)

1 ounce Smith & Cross Jamaican rum
1 ounce Campari
3/4 ounce sweet vermouth (Carpano)

Stir & strain, no garnish.

Joaquin takes the vermouth back to cut down on the sweetness, but feel free to kick it back up to 1 ounce if you like. The way I first heard about this was without a garnish, but sometimes I enjoy an orange twist with it.

This drink came into my house, mated with another one and begat a Devil’s Spawn … a most diabolical, wonderful one. Stay tuned!

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Jonathan Gold, Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer from the L.A. Weekly, has been drinking his way across town for quite a while now. (This is a job I would not mind having.) All the while, he’s been thinking about essence:

We have, I think, nearly come to agreement on what an essential restaurant might be in Los Angeles, a place that may have transcendent food or occupy a niche in the social ecosystem, but explains something to us about ourselves. Our ideas on the subject are firm. The nature of an essential cocktail may be more subjective. To one man we know, 55 essential cocktails means 55 glasses of Chivas, because that’s all he’ll ever drink. To us, an essential cocktail says something about L.A. [...]

Three years into the cocktailian revolution, there remains little agreement about what an essential bar should be, but a rough consensus about how an essential bar should be run. At the best bars, be it The Varnish or Tiki-Ti, syrups are fresh, juices are prepared daily, and the ice, whether chipped from a giant block or made by a $10,000 machine, is clear and cold. Even a novice can tell a great bar from a mediocre one by the sharpness of the report from the shakers.

But 55 essential cocktails? Why not 99? Why not 82? Why a number associated with that which Sammy Hagar cannot drive? Because I drive. Because I have a human liver. Because however much you may adore the saketini at that little place in Torrance, it is only essential if you happen to be eating a sliver of yellowtail sashimi there at the time.

Bottoms up!

He’s come up with his voluminous list of what he considers to be the 55 very best tipples in Los Angeles, at a variety of places undoubtedly familiar to most of us locals, as well as some I still have yet to try. I think you’ll find it’s a pretty solid list; perhaps it’ll give you some inspiration for a formidable (and, one would hope, weeks-long) bar crawl.

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Last time I was at the venerable Vessel* in Seattle, bartender Jim Romdall made me a lovely, spicy, bracing Negroni variation using a very different style of gin, the aforementioned Gran Classico Bitter, and a different vermouth to kick up the spice and bitterness profile a notch.

Ransom Old Tom Gin comes from Ransom Spirits in Oregon, and is their recreation of one possible expression of the 18th and 19th Century style of gin known as “Old Tom.” It’s lightly sweetened, sweeter than a London dry style, where the juniper is not so forward as in the latter. I’m not sure of the botanicals that go into Ransom, but they provide a nice, peppery spice profile, and the color comes from an amount of barrel-aging roughly equivalent to what the gin might have picked up while being shipped over from the Old Country in barrels. They developed the spirit in collaboration with writer, historian and monarch of the Hereditary Principate of Drunkistan, David Wondrich. If you’re looking to recreate a spirit from the mid-1800s, he’s probably your man. Or prince. Or … well, you get the idea.

Ransom works wonderfully in a Negroni, and Jim kicked it up with the new bitter on the block as well as my second-favorite vermouth after Carpano Antica, most coincidentally made by the same folks.

Feel free to vary the proportions to adjust to your preferred level of sweetness; this is just a guideline.

I don’t remember what Jim called it, but it was probably something like this:

RANSOM NEGRONI
(as served by Jim Romdall at Vessel, Seattle)

1-1/4 ounce Ransom Old Tom Gin.
1 ounce Gran Classico Bitter.
1 ounce Punt E Mes.
Orange peel.

Stir with ice for 30 seconds, strain into a chilled coupe, garnish with the orange peel. You know the drill.

* – Vessel is currently closed, having lost their lease at the old location. They’re working hard to reopen in a new space (which I think will have parking, yay!) by late spring or early summer 2011. That’s a grand reopening party I don’t want to miss.

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The bitterness of Campari sometimes scares folks away, but it shouldn’t — it’s a bracing flavor that’s perfect for awakening your palate before a meal. It can be a bit much if the first time you try it is in a Campari and soda (wildly popular in Italy), but most places tend to serve it tall, in a highball or Collins glass. It works much better short, in nearly equal proportions with soda, to give the sugar in Campari a chance to balance out the bitterness. Too much dilution will tend to let the bitter element take over the sweet. Remember, it’s all about balance. (I prefer my Americanos short too.)

My first introduction to Campari was in the entertaining Combustible Edison cocktail, in which an ounce each of Campari and lemon juice are shaken and strained into a cocktail glass, and then two ounces of warmed Cognac are flamed and poured in a flaming stream into the glass. Entertaining indeed, but not my favorite. Many folks’ introduction to Campari is by mixing it with orange juice, about double juice to spirit, perhaps with a splash of soda or tonic. I’d have to pick the Negroni as my favorite, though, and if you haven’t tried it you should. As with most adult tastes, it’s one worth acquiring.

The drink we know as the Negroni has had various names; the Camparinette is perhaps the most well-known, and according to Andrew the Alchemist it was also called the Cardinale in Italy. It dates back to as early as 1919, although what the Italians were calling a “Negroni” then would seem more like an Americano with gin to us.

All this has evolved into the classic Negroni proportion we’ve come to know — equal parts gin, sweet vermouth and Campari. That can be a bit sweet for some people, and I’ve seen many variations on the proportion — typical is 1-1/2 gin, 1 Campari and 3/4 vermouth, to keep the sweetness at bay. I’ve also been fond of the Cinnabar Negroni, in which the Campari is doubled and orange bitters added.

The basic Negroni formula lends itself quite nicely to variation of spirits and even in the bitter element, despite Campari seeming quintessential to the drink. I’ve sampled many lovely versions that take the gin-Campari-vermouth formula to something more like spirit-bitter-aromatized wine. Aperol is a natural substitute for the Campari, but other interesting bitters outside the dark Italian amaro field have popped up recently. One of my favorites is the Swiss-made bitter called Gran Classico Bitter, based on a recipe from Turin from the 1860s. It contains bitter orange, gentian, rhubarb and wormwood among its botanicals. It’s got quite a bitter punch, not unlike Campari but with a less bright, rounder, deeper flavor. It’s being directly marketed as a Campari substitute, even recommending its use in cocktails like the Negroni, Americano or spritzer.

Jason Schiffer at 320 Main in Seal Beach, CA uses Gran Classico in one of my favorite recent twists on the Negroni, swapping the gin for its malty progenitor, Dutch genever, and bringing down the other two components. The maltiness of genever with the citrus oils accenting the citrus notes in the bitter work beautifully here; this one didn’t last long the last time we visited 320. They’ve just changed their menu and this cocktail isn’t on it anymore, but they’d still be happy to make you one. If you’re in Southern California, and especially if you’re in Orange County, you need to drink here — it’s the best place to get a drink for many miles. The food’s terrific, too. Duck mac ‘n cheese? Oh my.

NEGRONI’S LOSS
(320 Main, Seal Beach, CA)

1 ounce Bols Genever.
3/4 ounce Carpano Antica sweet vermouth.
3/4 ounce Gran Classico bitter.
Lemon and orange peel & oils.

Combine with ice and stir for at least 30 seconds. Strain into an Old Fashioned glass. Express the oil from the lemon and orange peels onto the surface of the drink, and garnish with the peels.

Now, moving on from “Holland Gin” to another older style of gin for our next drink …

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As I’ve mentioned in the past, the Old Fashioned might just be my favorite cocktail ever. It’s certainly at the top of my “comfort cocktails” list, being the first one I ever learned to make — Dad taught me when I was a kid, and sometimes I’d get to make him one after he got home from work. That basic recipe, truly the first “cock-tail” ever, adheres to a very simple recipe — “spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters.” One of my favorite variations has been to make Old Fashioneds with half rye whiskey for spice, and half bonded applejack for the wonderful fruit flavors, along with a variety of different bitters. Turns out that for the last four years or so, head bartender Michael McIlroy of New York’s Milk & Honey has been making essentially the same drink for over three years now. I’m glad to know that my cocktailian brain is wired properly, at the very least!

His cocktail is called the American Trilogy, combining those two very American spirits with orange bitters. Whether he named his drink after Mickey Newbury’s song, an arrangement of 19th Century traditional songs that was a hit for Elvis Presley, I don’t know. It’s a decent guess, at least.

Make sure you use Laird’s Bonded Apple Brandy for this drink (and for all drinks containing apple brandy if you’re not using Calvados), a 100% brandy product not to be confused with Laird’s other product, called Laird’s Applejack. “Applejack” is the proper name for American apple brandy, but Laird’s Applejack brand is not all apple brandy; it’s 60% grain neutral spirits (i.e., vodka), with only 40% actual apple brandy by volume. It’s an inferior product to be avoided if the bonded product is available, so don’t be fooled by the prettier bottle. Laird’s Bonded Apple Brandy is an outstanding product, and an indispensable part of your bar. I really wish they’d ditch that blend and concentrate on the bonded product, which is one of the finest spirits produced in the country.

In the video the bartender is shown muddling a sugar cube with a splash of water. I’m down on the use of sugar cubes in cocktails unless you can be certain that every granule of sugar is dissolved; I don’t like grit in my cocktails, and it takes time to do it this way. I much prefer a 2:1 simple syrup — either brown or demerara sugar in this case.

Thanks to Garret Richard for sending me the video — he’s becoming our semi-official Looka! New York correspondent!

AMERICAN TRILOGY
(adapted from Michael McIlroy, Milk & Honey, NYC, 2007)

1 ounce rye whiskey (we like Rittenhouse bonded rye).
1 ounce Laird’s Bonded Apple Brandy.
1 barspoon rich Demerara syrup.
2 dashes orange bitters.
Orange peel.

Combine with ice and stir for 20-30 seconds, strain over a large ice cube into a large Old Fashioned glass. Express the oil from the orange peel onto the drink and around the rim of the glass, and garnish with the peel.

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Sadly, I don’t have a spiff new prototype iPhone which will take the texted recipe and use its built-in replicator to rez one on the spot. (“Cocktail. South Central. Cold.”)

My friend Garret recently moved back to New York City to go to gradual school and regularly excites/taunts me with reports from their amazing bar scene, including some recipes for drinks he’s managed to pry out of the bartenders. Since my iPhone won’t rez them just yet I have to make them myself — fun, and easy enough … if I can find the ingredients, that is.

The latest one he sent was one he encountered at Fatty Johnson’s, one of the newly trendy “pop-up” restaurants and bars, which will serve for a mere six weeks and then close, perhaps to move on elsewhere, or perhaps not. Fatty’s features a rotating cast of bartenders and mixologists, and recently featured Eben Freeman, head bartender at Tailor Restaurant in NYC, whose amazing cocktails range from perfectly-made classics to complex, modern cocktails employing molecular techniques from the restaurant kitchen, working closely with the chef in developing his cocktail program.

I’ve never met Eben nor have I had the opportunity to sit across the bar from him, but have been reading about his work for quite a while and have been quite eager to sample his concoctions. (His signature drink at Tailor is the Waylon, made from Bourbon with a smoked Coca-Cola syrup … wow.) The drink Garret had and texted me about sounded fantastic, but one specified ingredient was going to give me a bit of trouble.

The cocktail was called the South Central. I liked it already just from the name, having grown up in the south central part of the country, also growing up with our own version of Ma Bell in the form of South Central Bell plus being part of the title of an R.E.M. song I love, so the name rang a few … um, never mind. Two rums formed its base — one light, one dark. In the video below Eben says any light and dark rum will do; he named the drink not for any of the things that the named triggered in my memory, but for the South and Central American rums he mixed. The ones he was using at Fatty Johnson’s have very distinct flavors, though — the rums you choose to make this drink will definitely make a difference, and I wanted to try it the way he was serving it there. The dark one he specified is one of my all-time favorite rums, the rich, brown-sugary, caramelly, spicy, tropical fruity wonder that is Lemon Hart Demerara rum. The other was one I’d never heard of, and that I’d never seen locally — Banks 5 Island.

I looked up Wayne Curtis’ review of Banks rum from about a year ago, and it sounded fantastic. It’s a blend of rums from five different islands, if you pretend that Guyana (the source of Demerara rum) is an island and not a very continent-bound north-coastal nation in South America. Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados round out the actual islands, along with the Indonesian isle of Java. Yep, this blend of rums actually contains some Batavia arrack, the sugar cane and fermented red rice spirit that gives this rum some of the wonderful funk that Garret mentioned in his voluminous text messages. Wayne mentioned aromas and flavors that led him to believe there was an agricole rum in the blend, and was startled to find that there was none. The various rums are aged between 3 and 12 years, blended then filtered through charcoal, resulting in a crystal clear, nicely dry spirit.

I can’t WAIT to get my hands on some of this stuff, but I’ve had no luck locally so far — even the venerable Hi-Time Wine doesn’t seem to have any! I’m unaware of anyone in the L.A. area who’s carrying it at the moment. (Matt, please correct me if I’m wrong.) It is, however, mail-orderable from DrinkUpNY.com, from whom I order regularly, so I’ll have some on the way soon.

“This doesn’t do me any good NOW,” I whined night before last, because I was channeling Veruca Salt and wanted the drink NOW, Daddy! Furthermore, Eben uses his own cacao-mole tincture that he makes “with a crazy process involving liquid nitrogen,” Garret said. Impractical in my kitchen, to say the least. He recommended substituting Bittermens most excellent Xocolatl Mole Bitters, and I concur.

So, except for the housemade mole tincture, here’s the drink you’d get if you ordered it from Eben:

SOUTH CENTRAL
(adapted from the original recipe by Eben Freeman)

1-1/2 ounces Banks 5 Island Rum.
1-1/2 ounces Lemon Hart Demerara Rum, 80 proof.
1/2 ounce white crème de cacao.
3 dashes Bittermens Xocolatl Mole Bitters.
Orange peel.

Combine with ice in a chilled mixing glass. Stir for 30-45 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail coupe. Express the oil from the orange peel onto the drink and garnish with the peel.

First problem — no Banks 5 Island. Second … I was almost out of Lemon Hart. There wasn’t enough to make one drink, much less two, and the future of this brand was in question for quite a while.

If I was going to try this drink — which I really, really wanted to do — I was going to have to improvise and come up with something similar, but not the same. Since I didn’t have enough (or any, in the case of the Banks) I need to do some blending. What the hell, blending one, two or several rums into one drink is a classic Tiki technique, right? And stumbling into a more or less blind blend of rums in order to substitute for and approximate an unavailable rum that I’ve never even tasted before? Yes, that’s crazy talk, but I want a drink and I want it now. Let no man, beast or empty bottle stand in my way.

Given that the review had cited an herbal, vegetal agricole-like flavor, I thought of using a non-agricole cane juice rum like 10 Cane. Checked the rum stash, and … nope. Out of 10 Cane. Well, what the hell, let’s try for that vegetal, herbal, tropical fruity flavor from an actual agricole. And since the blend contained Batavia arrack for a little funk, let’s throw in a little of that. And because I love the funk and felt like funkin’ it up, let’s supplement the Lemon Hart with some magnificently funky Smith & Cross Jamaican pure pot still rum. (Garret used half Banks — available in NYC, and half Smith & Cross, but if I’m blending to try to approximate this other rum that I’ve never tasted I want some of the other described characeristics to come through and not be too funky just yet.) Then maybe a visit to our hometown run to help balance and tie things together.

Okay, okay … it wasn’t all that much alchemical cleverness. It was mostly me finishing up the last few drops of some of the rums I had because that’s what I had on hand, not unlike the chemistry student who says, “Hey, let’s mix some of this stuff together, and hope it doesn’t blow up!” or the explorer who plows into the jungle on heretofore unexplored Skull Island hoping not to become dinosaur or giant spider food.

There was a total of 2 ounces of Lemon Hart left (and that’s the end of my supply of the 80 proof until it’s reimported) and a scant ounce of Smith & Cross. I just needed something else to make up for what I was missing, and I needed to finish up some bottles that had a half an inch of spirit in them. I stumbled right into this one; fortunately, no explosions.

Do I really get to rename his drink? Probably not, but I’ll name this version anyway. Given that I’ve been wanting to name cocktails after some R.E.M. songs, one of the names I had already picked out to use for some future drink was so close to the one he chose for his original that it had to be used for this one. I want to make clear that this is still Eben’s drink, but with the slight variation of my wacky blend of rums. To paraphrase the namesake song, “The wise man built his drink upon the rums / But I’m not bound to follow suit.”

That said, I steeled myself before the first sip. “This is probably going to suck.”

SOUTH CENTRAL RAIN
(adapted by me from Eben’s original)

1 ounce Lemon Hart Demerara Rum, 80 proof.
3/4 ounce La Favorite blanc rhum agricole.
1/2 ounce Smith & Cross Jamaican pot still rum.
1/2 ounce Old New Orleans Crystal Rum.
1/4 ounce Batavia Arrack van Oosten.
1/2 ounce Marie Brizard dark crème de cacao.
3 dashes Bittermens Xocolatl Mole Bitters.
Orange peel.

Combine with ice in a chilled mixing glass. Stir for 30-45 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail coupe. Express the oil from the orange peel onto the drink and garnish with the peel. Just like above!

*sip* … oh my. No, this most certainly did not suck.

I was halfway through drinking this when Wes said, “You know, I think you have a keeper here.” Well actually, Eben has the keeper, I just switched the rums around a bit. Still though, he said I should write it up, hence this post. As the drink was already half-gone I wondered if I should bother with a picture, but what the hell … I grabbed my iPhone and snapped. Imagine a full glass — it’s a big drink.

This was one of those weird combinations of cocktailian effort — part trying to recreate someone else’s drink, part dumb luck and part total fluke. Fortunately it worked, and I hope this encourages experimentation! There’ll have to be more experimentation soon, though — that’s going to be the last Lemon Hart I see until Ed Hamilton completes his Herculean efforts to get Lemon Hart — both the 80 and 151 proof varieties — back into the States, and there’ll have to be yet another variation next time we try it. I have a couple of bottles of Lemon Hart 151 left, but that along with the navy strength Smith & Cross might just knock me flat on my arse. I may just have to do it Garret’s way with all Smith & Cross, or try it with 2 ounces of the Banks and one of the 151. It shouldn’t be too much longer before my Banks rum comes in; I am eager to try different variations, and will stock up on both varieties of Lemon Hart the instant I see them. This is indeed one hell of a drink, and I look forward to finally trying one as close to the original as possible.

I love it when I get a cocktail via text message, and I love it even more when it sends me on an adventure. Thanks to Eben for coming up with this superb drink, and thanks to Garret for sending it to me!

Next, stay tuned for a three-part series on delectable Negroni variations.

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My old friend Chris Caldwell, a writer and cocktailian living in Denver, issued the following post on his Twitter feed the other day:

“And how can this be? For he is the Kwisatz Sazerac!” #cocktailsonarrakis

I laughed, I groaned, I shouted “ARRGGGHHH!”, I wanted to buy him a drink, I wanted to slap him upside the head with a flyswatter. In other words, my natural reaction to a really great/awful pun.

But it got me thinking.

I wrote him back right away and said, “Shai-Hulud’ll get you for that, Chris. That said, The Crysknife would be a great name for a drink.”

He replied, “That was better than ‘I must not beer. Beer is the mind-killer. Beer is the little death that brings total oblivion.’” Oh, gods. *facepalm* Okay, it’s a good thing I wasn’t in the room with him, because he’d have flyswatter prints on both cheeks.

“Or ‘May thy coupe glass chip and shatter.’” Hmm, that’s better. Now we’re getting somewhere.

“Or ‘When you reach the bottom of the drink you dare not drink, you’ll find me staring back at you!’” Oh, oh … the boy’s on a roll.

I told him that now he has to make a Kwisatz Sazerac. It would, of course, have to have a faint whiff of cinnamon, to recall the spice melange — “the smell – bitter cinnamon, unmistakable.”

Not only that, we need to get to work on other Dune cocktails too. The Crysknife, of course. The Heighliner? The Gom Jabbar! Chris said, “A Gom Jabbar would be an awesome drink! ‘I remember your gom jabbar, you remember mine!’” I mentioned this to Matt “Rumdood” Robold, and he immediately said, “You mean a Gomme Jabbar, of course.”

*SCREAM!* Genius!!

A while after our initial conversation Chris got back to me with the results of his experimentation. “Surprisingly good,” he said. It’s really just a simple Sazerac variation, but the geeky pun is just too priceless to pass up, and warrants a post of its own — the first, I hope, of several posts featuring Cocktails on Arrakis.

It’s still a rye base with a rinse of absinthe. A spiced simple syrup is the main difference, plus some orange bitters (the color of the spice) and an orange peel instead of lemon.

Don’t add a splash of the Water of Life, though, because you’ll die an agonizing death. Or, if you’re female and can transmute the poison, you’ll become a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother. Or if you’re male, and you don’t die, you become …

THE KWISATZ SAZERAC
(by Christopher Caldwell)

2 ounces Rittenhouse 100 bonded rye whiskey.
1 barspoon Spice-Must-Flow Syrup.
3 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters.
1 dash Regans’ Orange Bitters.
Splash of absinthe.

As in a traditional Sazerac, coat a chilled Old Fashioned glass with the absinthe and discard all or most of the excess. Combine rye, Spice-Must-Flow syrup and bitters in a chilled mixing glass and stir with ice for 30-45 seconds. Strain into the absinthe-coated glass. Twist the orange peel over the drink. It is the will of Shai-Hulud that you drop the peel into the drink (especially if you’ve cut it to look like a sandworm).

SPICE-MUST-FLOW SYRUP

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1 cinnamon stick
1/8 teaspoon green cardamom seeds (not pods)

Crush the stick and seeds in with a mortar and pestle. Toast the spice gently in a small saucepan, tossing constantly, until it begins to become fragrant. Add the water and sugar and heat gently, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and allow the syrup to steep for 15-20 minutes. Strain out the spice through a fine strainer and pour into a jar. Keep in the fridge; should last about a month.

Stay tuned for the Gomme Jabbar — the high-handed enemy. My idea for the base was a navy-strength gin; Matt thinks Wray & Nephew Overproof, which I may like better and should be sufficiently deadly. Don’t worry, though — it kills only … animals.

P.S. — Chris has one of the most consistently great Twitter feeds of anyone I know. Follow him.

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Heck, I love two-ingredient cocktails, but they’re a bit rarer. There’s just something magical about the alchemy of putting just two or three things together and sipping the results of the alchemy. Plus, on a practical level … well, I do love me the 9- or 10-ingredient tiki cocktails, but I’m not sure I’d want to be knocking them out all night (says the lazy bastard who lives inside me).

When we were hanging out at The Varnish for the Left Coast Libations book release party a couple months ago, guest bartender Anu Apte of Rob Roy in Seattle made one for us and for book co-author Ted Munat that wasn’t actually in the book, or on the bar menu that evening. Always willing to try something new (and always agreeing with Wesly when he says, “What the world needs now is more rye cocktails”), I said I was game.

“It’s called a ‘TLC,’” Anu said. “I came up with it just for Ted.” *

“Sounds lovely!” said I. “Does the name stand for the usual?”

“Nope, said she. “‘Ted Likes Chartreuse.’”

Marleigh, Wes and me: “Awww!”

She may have come up with it for Ted, but it’s also for all the Teeming Millions of us out there who also like (or love) Chartreuse.

TLC
(by Anu Apte, Rob Roy, Seattle)

2 ounces rye whiskey.
1/2 ounce green Chartreuse.
1/4 ounce apricot liqueur (Apry or Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot).

Combine with cracked ice, stir for 30 seconds and strain into a chilled cocktail coupe. Garnish with an orange peel.

* – Conversational details which I attempt to recall from a time during which I have been imbibing may not be exactly historically accurate, but it’s more or less the gist of it.

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Those of you who were at Tales of the Cocktail a few years ago may remember being handed a small, spiral-bound booklet by one of two (or perhaps, if you were lucky, both!) delightfully quirky brothers from Seattle, the Munat Brothers (a.k.a. Charles and Ted), whose liver-straining toil produced a hand-made compendium of cocktail recipes with enlightening and amusing commentary. Since then the idea behind the book evolved into a gorgeous hardback entitled, oddly enough, Left Coast Libations: The Art of West Coast Bartending. One hundred, count ‘em, one hundred original cocktails by craft bartenders from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver. This time Ted’s the principal author, along with Michael Lazar and with lovely photos by Jenn Farrington.

It’s a fascinating snapshot of the West Coast coctkail scene … well, circa 2009, given how lead times work in the publishing industry. If you know Ted at all or read his I-wish-he’d-post-to-it-more-often-but-jeez-who-am-I-to-call-that-kettle-black weblog Le Mixeur you may have encountered his sense of humor, which is in full force in LCL. Ted’s biographies of the bartenders are highly entertaining, although not necessarily … um, well, true. Oh sure, there are bits of truthiness in there, but I wouldn’t swear on any of it in court. Take the bartender character sketches with a grain of salt — well, actually, head down to Avery Island, Louisiana and get the whole mine. That’s Ted, though, and it’s always clear that he adores and admires his bartenders (as do we all, right?). Also, given the book’s lead time, beware going to any particualr bar that’s mentioned to find a particular bartender — you know how it is, I have enough trouble keeping up with where my bartender friends are currently working on a weekly basis.

These are not all cocktails that you’ll find easy to make at home — these are specialty drinks from craft bars, and a number of them call for housemade ingredients that might be easy for a bar to batch and keep on hand in large quantity, but perhaps a bit more challenging for the home bartender.

Some are easy — cardamom and cinnamon tinctures are a cinch, as are simple infused spirits — others not so much. Costus root bitters, various foams, and … smoked cider air? Most you can make in small quantities, and in some cases you’ll find it worth the effort (as for the more complicated ones … you might end up just going to get one from the bartender himself or herself).

Although some of the drinks are quite complicated many are not, and all are more than noteworthy. A couple have been covered here before, including John Coltharp’s excellent Historic Core Cocktail, always worth a revisit.

The party was a blast, starting off with an early event featuring Marcos Tello and Varnish proprietor Eric Alperin behind the bar with a range of cocktails of their creation that were featured in the book. Then the main party took off, with The Varnish’s own Devon Tarby and Rob Royt owner-bartender Anu Apte in from Seattle to mix up yet another selection of drinks. (We were well-preserved by evening’s end.)

Chris Bostick, bartender and general manager at The Varnish, knocks out three at once at the Left Coast Libations L.A. launch event.

I’m going to feature a handful of cocktails from Left Coast Libations over the next few days, starting with this one of Anu’s that I first had at Rob Roy last year. It’s a wonderful take on a gin sour that incorporates comforting flavors of her childhood into a unique signature drink. It requires a bit of advance prep, but don’t be daunted. Saffron is an expensive spice but is available in small quantities, and you’ll get your best price at an Indian grocery store. (Penzey’s Spices is also a good place to start, as is Spice Station in Silver Lake in Los Angeles and The Spice House.) Indian groceries are your best bet for sandalwood sticks, too. Make sure you get food grade, and don’t grate up sandalwood incense.

Saffron Sandalwood Sour

1-1/2 ounces Plymouth gin.
1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice.
1/2 ounce lime juice.
1/2 ounce saffron sharbat.
1 barspoon Angostura bitters.
1 egg white.
Sandalwood, for garnish.

Dry shake all ingredients except the garnish, for 20 seconds at least. Add the ice and shake again until very cold. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with sandalwood — if you have sandalwood sticks, grate over the drink using a microplane grater. (Anu points out that sandalwood sticks are very hard, so if you’re fresh grating it might be better to use chips, grind them in a spice grinder and strain out the larger pieces. Pre-powdered sandalwood has very little fragrance.)

Saffron Sharbat

1-1/4 cups water.
2 cups sugar.
1/4 cup rosewater.
Generous 1/4 teaspoon saffron threads.
1 tablespoon boiling water.

Make a saffron extract by placing the boiling water into a small bowl, crushing the saffron threads with your fingers and adding to the water. Let steep for 15 minutes.

Mix the water and sugar in a saucepan and make a simple syrup by heating gently until the sugar is dissolved.

In another bowl, add the rosewater to the saffron extract. Then add this mixture to the simple syrup. Simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool, and store in the refrigerator.

This makes enough for 16 cocktails, and will keep in the fridge. You can leave the saffron threads in, or strain them out if you like. Anu says the syrup also makes an excellent soda when mixed with lime juice and soda water.

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I first tried this cocktail in September of 1999 on our first visit to Absinthe Brasserie & Bar in San Francisco. I liked it a lot, and came across the original recipe somewhere (now apparently lost in the depths of the web).

It was fairly typical of the type of cocktail I was drinking at the time (vodka-based, oy) but a pretty good use of vodka. As much as we may deride vodka in cocktails, it has its place and uses, one of which is to smooth out and extend the flavor of a sweet liqueur while cutting the sweetness (such as in the Gypsy cocktail), or in this case taking a strong fruit brandy and maintaining that flavor while lightening and extending it somewhat. A bit of lime juice for tartness, a touch of orange juice for smoothness and a bit of sugar to sweeten it up. Nice cocktail. In fact, at a cocktail party Wes and I threw the following year, this was one of the most popular drinks we made all night, and even then I was tweaking the recipe. “More pear brandy!” cried my friend René.

I put this cocktail aside for years, and as I was going through my old Gumbo Pages cocktail and beverages page looking for stray recipes that hadn’t gotten integrated into the Looka! cocktail index I came across this one. I do love pear brandy (or eau-de-vie; these are the clear, dry fruit brandies, not super-sweet liqueurs that are called “brandy” as a misnomer), and I love the crisp flavor of pears in the fall. I also wondered what I could do to bring this drink up a bit, more in line with my current tastes.

Well, first thing — replace the vodka with gin. Guh. That always works.

Except … it doesn’t. Not always.

It’s true, there are myriad vodka cocktails that can be vastly improved by replacing the vodka with gin, and I do it all the time. It’s bitten me in the ass on a couple of occasions, though. I recall a dinner at MiLa in New Orleans a few years ago in which I read the ingredients of a particular drink on their cocktail menu and instantly knew that it would be much better with gin than vodka, and I ordered it with that substitution.

Guess what. It wasn’t that good.

I finished it and asked for another, this time made by the original recipe. It was a lot better.

Given that experience I approached a vodka-to-gin tweak of the Perfect Pear with an arched eyebrow. So the other night I substituted Plymouth gin, a wonderful English gin with a lighter profile than a London Dry, and sipped the result.

Holy hell. That was really, really good.

This cocktail has been on the menu at Absinthe for many years, but a check of the current cocktail menu on their website shows that it’s dropped off. I suspect that this is because they have a new bar manager, now that longtime Absinthe bartenders Jeff Hollinger and Jonny Raglin have moved over to the restaurant’s new venue, the Comstock Saloon. (I’ll bet they’ll still make it for you if you as, though.) If you want to make this cocktail at home the way it was originally done at the restaurant, use vodka … and lemon juice instead of lime.

(Note on the vodka: Don’t spend a fortune on something like Grey Goose or any of those so-called “premium vodkas” if you’re just going to mix it in a cocktail. If you’re a vodka connoisseur and you drink it chilled and neat, that’s one thing. If you’re going to mix it, I guarantee that you won’t be able to tell the difference between a fifty dollar premium vodka and a good quality vodka almost a fifth its price. For the money and the quality I highly recommend Sobieski vodka from Poland.)

The Perfect Pear
(adapted from Absinthe Brasserie & Bar, San Francisco, c. 2000)

1-1/2 ounces Plymouth gin.
3/4 ounce pear eau-de-vie (I used Purkhart).
2 teaspoons fresh lime juice.
2 teaspoons orange juice.
1 teaspoon simple syrup.

Combine with ice in a shaker and shake for 10-12 seconds. Strain into chilled cocktail glass.

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Zane is always challenging my expectations, and did so again with a recent visit to Los Angeles and a guest turn behind the stick at The Varnish, one of the L.A. bars I love. (I still enjoy quoting my friend Chris from Denver, after I brought him to that bar for the first time: “I wish that I had a wardrobe in my bedroom which, Narnia-like, would transport me to The Varnish on demand.”) Unfortunately the only recipe I remember from that night (when you’re drinking, write recipes down à la minute, you idiot, or you’ll forget them!) is this one, which Zane was kind enough to share with me.

Using Chartreuse as a base spirit isn’t something you come across all that often. It’s certainly powerful enough — 40% alcohol for the yellow variety, and a whopping 55% for the green — although most of the time it’s used in smaller quantities as an accent, given its even more powerful, even pungent herbal flavor.

One of my favorite cocktails is the Chartreuse Swizzle, a magnificent creation by Marco Dionysos with a whopping two ounces of green Chartreuse as its base. Zane’s drink uses the same concept — a tall, Chartreuse-based swizzle — but it’s the first time in my life I’d ever had a drink with yellow Chartreuse as its base. An additional boost to the spice is from a spicy peppercorn syrup, which would be pretty versatile once you’ve got it on hand.

Yellow With Envy
(by Zane Harris, Rob Roy, Seattle)

1-1/2 ounces (45 ml) yellow Chartreuse.
1 ounce (30 ml) fresh lime juice.
1 ounce (30 ml) fresh grapefruit juice.
1/2 ounce (15 ml) black peppercorn syrup (see below).

Shake vigorously with cracked ice until the shaker is too cold to hold (12 seconds or so). Strain into a tall glass filled with crushed ice. Garnish with a sprig of mint.

 

Black peppercorn syrup

2 cups (400 g) sugar.
1 cup (250 ml) water.
1/4 cup (use a 60 ml measure) cracked black peppercorns.

In a saucepan, heat the peppercorns until they become fragrant. Add the water and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to very low, add the sugar and stir until dissolved. Remove from heat and allow to stand for 20 minutes. Strain the syrup through a fine mesh strainer to remove all of the peppercorn particles. Add a splash of vodka as a preservative, bottle and store in the refrigerator.

Yield: About 1-1/2 cups syrup

NOTE: Zane may end up correcting me on the amount of pepper in the syrup, but this is what my pickled brain recalled from the evening.

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This anise-scented variation on our local beloved milk punch comes from Chef Susan Spicer of Bayona and Herbsaint restaurants) and features Herbsaint, New Orleans’ original absinthe substitute. While you may substitute Pernod, Ricard, or any pastis or anise liqueur for the Herbsaint, if you want this to be truly New Orleanian you’ll use la vraie chose.

Herbsaint Original, the 1934 recipe

You’ll especially want to use Herbsaint Original, with the above label. Over the years Herbsaint’s formula changed, but in late 2009/early 2010 the Sazerac Company reproduced Marion Legendre’s original 1934 recipe — deeper, richer and with a broader, more complex herbal base.

You are, of course, welcome to use actual absinthe as well, but then if you used absinthe or pastis it wouldn’t be Brandy & Herbsaint Milk Punch, would it? (Well, all you’d have to do is change the name, but still.)

This punch is terrific when the weather starts to turn crisp in autumn and for the holiday season as well, but New Orleanians are fond of milk punches year-round. This would be great at breakfast or brunch, for a pre-dessert nog, or just for a party. Here’s the version to serve in The Flowing Bowl:

Brandy & Herbsaint Milk Punch

2 quarts cold milk
3 cups brandy
1/2 cup Herbsaint
1/2 cup superfine sugar

In a large bowl, mix all ingredients and stir to combine. Add more sugar or brandy to taste. Chill. Pour into a large punch bowl with a large block of ice and serve cold, topped with freshly grated nutmeg.

Serves 16-20.

… and if you’re only making one or two, the single-serving version:

1-1/2 ounces brandy or bourbon
1/4 ounce Herbsaint (especially Herbsaint Original)
1/4 ounce simple syrup
4 ounces whole milk or half-and-half

Shake with ice and strain into a punch cup, and garnish with freshly grated nutmeg.

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This one may be familiar to many of you, but if you’re scratching your head thinking, “Nope, never seen this one before, and grapefruit juice? Ew!” it’s another “forgotten” cocktail that comes to us courtesy of Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh, who first served it to us years ago. The Blinker is the creation of a bartender whose name has escaped into the mists of history, but it was first mentioned in print in 1934 by bartender Patrick Gavin Duffy. (There’s a bit more about it in Doc’s most excellent book, Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails.)

Doc tinkered with the recipe; originally the drink was made with grenadine (and a horrifying amount of it, equal to the grapefruit juice). Raspberry syrup gives it a lovely complexity, especially when considering most commercially-made grenadines. I think it’s a terrific variation.

The thing that made the drink Doc made for us so much better than the first one we made at home was his use of Smucker’s brand raspberry syrup, right from the grocery store, instead of the Torani raspberry syrup we used. Nowadays for prepared syrups I’d generally go with Monin, which would also be good. But man … that Smucker’s stuff had an fabulously fruity, aromatic and intensely jammy quality (unsurprisingly) that really put this drink over the top. Even better was a raspberry syrup from Harry and David, the Fruit of the Month Club folks, which was hands-down the best raspberry syrup I’d ever tasted (and didn’t have the tendency to sink to the bottom of the drink that Smucker’s has). Sadly, the product’s been discontinued.

If you have a really good, homemade pomegranate grenadine or an excellent commercial product like Trader Tiki’s Hibiscus Grenadine, by all means use that if you like. Otherwise, try the Smucker’s, or better still, a homemade raspberry syrup from fresh (or even frozen) raspberries.

Of course, it goes without saying that you should not use bottled grapefruit juice. Freshly-squeezed white grapefruit juice, please. It takes half a minute to cut and squeeze a grapefruit, and it’s eleventy million times better. Also, if you’re one of those folks that doesn’t like grapefruit juice, this may be your conversion moment; you’ll like it here, even if you only ever have it in this cocktail (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Enjoy the Blinker — it’s a simple yet really lovely drink, and don’t worry about the silly name (drives Doc crazy).

Oh, the image below is temporary, shamelessly purloined briefly borrowed from the fine folks at Modern Drunkard magazine, who in turn lifted it from Ted’s book (naturally, since the article was an interview with Ted about his book). I’ll have one of my own up by the weekend, especially since I haven’t had a Blinker in a while, and I want one.

The Blinker Cocktail

2 ounces rye whiskey.
1 ounce fresh grapefruit juice.
1 teaspoon raspberry syrup.

Combine with cracked ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously for no less than 10 seconds, until very cold; strain into a cocktail glass.

Doc didn’t garnish this, and I don’t know if the original recipe called for a garnish, but we like a pretty grapefruit peel curl cut with a channel knife (Doc opts for lemon). Don’t squeeze any grapefruit oil over the drink, though; we don’t want this one to be too bitter.

To quote Wes, “What the world needs is more rye cocktails.” Amen.

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This drink demonstrates how one small, simple addition can completely transform a cocktail. Remove the teaspoon of crème de cacao and it’s an old-school 2:1 Martini (which I frequently enjoy with orange bitters, as was the old method). Put it back in, though, and hat hint of sweetness, that subtle whisper of chocolate — an amount so small that it might take you a moment to realize what you’re tasting — and the perfect flavor combination of chocolate and orange … yum!

Use this old idea to fuel your own experimentation. What can you do to your favorite classic cocktails by the addition of just a barspoon of a liqueur or amaro? For instance, a Daiquiri made with Scarlet Ibis rum and with the addition of one barspoon of Averna is now one of my favorite cocktails, thanks to my friend John Coltharp, currently bartending at Copa d’Oro and The Tasting Kitchen. I have no idea what he calls it (I’ll have to ask him), but I’ve been calling it the Sicilian Daiquiri.

Now … it’s love-love, and it’s your serve.

THE RACQUET COCKTAIL

2 ounces Plymouth Gin
1 ounce Noilly Prat Dry Vermouth
1 teaspoon white crème de cacao (Marie Brizard, preferably)
2 dashes orange bitters

Stir with cracked ice for at least half a minute, then strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a thin slice of lemon peel, twisted over the top and dropped into the drink.

The Racquet Cocktail is a cousin of both the Martini and the Twentieth Century Cocktail (swap the vermouth for Lillet, add lemon juice and up the cacao a bit, roughly). If you haven’t tried the latter, please do so.

Speaking of Wondrich, he will soon regale us with another magnificent tome called Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl. (Pre-order at this link or, preferably, pick it up on its publication date of November 2 at your nearest independent bookseller.) You can now also harass follow him on Twitter and that monstrously big social network that’s having the movie made about it this year, not to mention his own shiny new website, The North Gowanus Institute for Cranial Distempers.

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This is a linky-goodness post, as there have been some fascinating articles of late on the subject of mixing cocktails — to wit, on sweetness, balance, dilution and temperature.

First off, Chicago bartender Todd Appel puts forward a good case for why we should stop using 1:1 simple syrup.

I never have been a fan of 1:1 simple; it’s always seemed watery and not sweet enough, and simple math makes one wonder how a teaspoon of granulated or “powdered” sugar, called for in so many classic recipes, can be justifiably substituted with a teaspoon of something that’s got so much water in it. I’m not a fan of overly sweet cocktails either, but you have to have balance — sweet with the sour or bitter or strong, and plain ol’ sugar water doesn’t cut it. Todd starts off his article with the same observations:

For years I have wondered why my taste buds seemed to be at odds with many of the classic and new cocktails being offered around the country in our modern cocktail world.

I realized something important many years ago

Syrup in cocktails should be sugar heavy, period.

The problem here is twofold. 1-1 syrup offers more water and less sugar. This leads to more dilution and/or overly acidic drinks.

This is a recognized issue, hence the discussion of what many call “rich” simple syrup, made 2:1 with double the amount of sugar as water. This helps a great deal, but is it enough?

He reminds us of David Embury as well — we may have thought some of his ratios a bit wonky, but it’s easy to gloss over the ratio of syrup to water in the simple syrup he made, which was basically liquid sugar. Embury, plus at least one book by William Terrington from 1870, call for a 3:1 syrup!

I’m at the point now where I only use 2:1 simple syrup, for the simple reason that 1:1 simple syrup is by no means a substitute for the same volume of granulated sugar. I’m going to try a small batch of the more concentrated syrup and see where that gets me … mmm, cocktail experimentation.

Moving on!

It killed me to have to miss the 2010 edition Tales of the Cocktail, especially because the quality of the seminars truly shone this year. One of the more talked-about sessions (and one of the ones I was most annoyed to have missed) was The Science of Stirring, taught by Dave Arnold (Director of Culinary Technology at the French Culinary Institute in New York), bartender/beverage director Eben Klemm and Death & Co. bartender Thomas Waugh.

Dave has written another pair of epic posts about the seminar and the cocktail-making science explored within. Part 1 deals with shaking, stirring, temperature and dilution, and Part 2 with temperature and dilution, texture, notes on batching drinks and an epilogue from Waugh about how all this science stuff affects a real live bartender. Here’s the brief introduction:

Cocktail shaking is a violent activity. If you shake for around 12-15 seconds (though shaking longer won’t hurt), and if you aren’t too lethargic, neither the type of ice you use nor your shaking style will appreciably affect the temperature or dilution of your drink. Shaking completely chills, dilutes and aerates a drink in around 15 seconds, after which the drink stops changing radically and reaches relative equilibrium. Shaking is basically insensitive to bartender-induced variables. See my post on The Science of Shaking. [Definitely read this if you haven't already. -- CT]

Stirring is different. Think of stirring as inefficient shaking. It can take over 2 minutes of constant stirring to do what shaking can accomplish in 15 seconds. No one stirs a drink for 2 minutes, so the drink never reaches an equilibrium point. All the bartender-induced variables – size of ice, speed of stirring, duration of stirring, etc. — make a difference in stirred cocktails, so bartender skill is very important in a stirred cocktail.

Because stirring doesn’t reach equilibrium, stirred drinks are warmer and less diluted than shaken cocktails. Stirred drinks, unlike shaken ones, are not aerated. Stirring does not alter the texture of a drink –it merely chills and dilutes. A properly diluted cocktail stored at -5 degrees Celsius in a freezer is indistinguishable from a properly stirred one.

There’s a lot of reading here, and it does get quite scientific (for those of you who might be scared away by such things, don’t — it’s really fascinating and worth the effort). If the science is too much you can always skip down to Waugh’s final list of things for the everyday bartender to remember, the first of which you can begin implementing right away (if you haven’t already copied it from seeing better bartenders do it when you go out):

1. Chill your mixing (stirring) glass — ice works, as does a fridge or freezer.

This is all fascinating stuff, and a must-read for everyone interested in executing a properly stirred cocktail.

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One of our favorite breakfast and lunch spots, the Village Bakery and Café in Atwater Village, is carrying local honey made by Feral Honey (aka “our friends Amy and Russell,” said owner Barbara). The beekeeping is hands-off for the most part, all natural and organic (no pesticides or hormones) and the honey is made by wild bees in the Silver Lake area. All the nectar they gather is from within a 3-mile radius in the neighborhood, and it tastes like what’s growing in the area, and what’s in people’s backyards.

The current batch tastes of lavender with a touch of minty eucalyptus (although not medicinal-tasting), rich and complex and absolutely wonderful. It’s not cheap, but you get a lot of honey-bang for your buck.

Besides just eating it out of the jar with a spoon (which we found to be dangerously enticing, ’cause we just might finish the whole thing if we’re not careful), the first thing we thought to do with it was try it in one of the great classic cocktails that I think needs a lot more attention.

The Bee’s Knees cocktail popped up sometime during Prohibition (although we don’t know its exact origin) as one of many ways to disguise the taste of, shall we say, disreputable gin. It’s a very simple gin sour, but the twist here is that the sweetener, as you may have gleaned, is honey rather than sugar. You have a lot of room for variation and creativity with the myriad flavors of honey that are available, and we thought this marvelously floral honey would be a perfect match with the new Beefeater Summer Edition gin.

Beefeater Master Distiller Desmond Payne, looking for a followup to the very successful Beefeater 24, sought to come up with a gin that’s a bit lighter and more suitable for warm weather and summery drinks. The limited edition Summer gin is lighter in proof, 80 as opposed to 94, a slightly lighter juniper profile and the addition of black currant, elderflower and hibiscus flower to the range of botanicals. In tasting the gin neat you can’t really pick these individual flavors out, but the combination plus the lighter profile makes it very refreshing. It’s floral without being flowery, and the combination of flavors in the gin seems to make it want to leap into the arms of other ingredients. (Wes has been playing with this a fair bit, and once we get back from Seattle I’ll post a couple of his recent concoctions.)

Grab Beefeater Summer Edition while you can, because it won’t be around for all that much longer (and I certainly hope it shall return next year).

Now, for that cocktail …

To make honey syrup, combine equal parts of honey and extremely hot water and stir until the honey is dissolved. For rich honey syrup, use 2 parts of honey to 1 part hot water. It’ll keep in the fridge for a few weeks, and longer if you add a splash of vodka as a preservative. It’s so easy to make on the fly, though, that I’ll usually just prep enough for the batch of cocktails I’m about to make.

You can serve this drink strained and up with a lemon twist garnish, or on the rocks with a lemon wedge. Try more robust gins, or try swapping out the gin for rum or tequila. If you’ve never had this one, you’re going to fall in love with it. Why, it’s so good it’s the … (you know).

BEE’S KNEES

2 ounces gin (substitute rum or tequila)
1 ounce honey syrup
1 ounce fresh lemon juice

Combine in a shaker with ice and shake for 10-12 seconds. Strain into chilled cocktail glass and garnish with lemon twist, or over ice in an Old Fashioned glass with a lemon wedge garnish.

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The finals for the People’s Cocktail Contest will be held at Drago Centro, 525 S. Flower St. this Wednesday the 30th starting sometime after 6pm. I don’t have a hard start time, but that’s when they asked me to arrive. [UPDATE: Judging begins at 7pm!] I suspect there’ll be a certain amount of cat-herding involved to get everyone there, set up and ready to roll. They’ll also be unveiling their new summer cocktail menu at the event, so there’ll be plenty of good stuff to try.

This is going to be such a blast, especially because two of the other three finalists are friends of mine. I’m looking forward to meeting Jeni, week four’s finalist, too; her blog is full of gorgeous food photos.

If you can’t attend the final face-off you can still play along at home; make the cocktails and see which one’s your favorite. I posted the recipe for my cocktail entry in Week 1: Blueberry, the Bell’aspetto, last month. Here are the other three finalists’ cocktail recipes, pulled from Drago Centro’s Twitter feed (no pictures of the drinks, alas; I was too lazy):

Week 2: Fernet Branca
Finalist: Ron Dollete, lushangeles.com

TRAMONTANA

1 oz Fernet Branca
1 oz Krogstad Aquavit
1 oz Cointreau
2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

 

Week 3: Gin (or genever)
Finalist: Matt Robold, rumdood.com

DUTCH ELM DISEASE

2 oz Bols Genever
1/2 oz Scotch
1/4 oz Simple Syrup
2 dashes Angostura Bitters.

Stir with ice for 30 seconds. Strain into a rocks glass over ice. Garnish with a lemon twist.

 

Week 4: Lemon
Finalist: Jeni Afuso, Oishii Eats

MOMO RYE FIZZ

1/2 fresh peach
1 oz simple syrup
2 oz Rittenhouse 100 rye whiskey
1 oz lemon juice
Club soda

Muddle peach with simple syrup. Add rye and lemon juice. Shake with ice, strain into tall glass over ice, top with club soda.

Wish us luck! No matter who wins, it’s going to be a lot of fun. Join us if you can.

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According to its producers, this French liqueur was originally created by Antoine-François de Fourcroy (1755-1809), Napoléon Bonaparte’s personal physician. Mandarines grew well on the isle of Corsica, the Emperor’s birthplace, and supposedly it was de Fourcroy who first macerated mandarine peels in strong alcohol, distilled the maceration and blended it with aged Cognac. The Emperor was so taken with the product that he often invited his physician to share a glass with him. Mandarine Napoléon was first bottled in 1892, and until very recently was still owned by the de Fourcroy family. De Kuyper, the Dutch producer of liqueurs and genevers, bought the product from the de Fourcroys about 9 months ago. However, according to a recent article in CLASS magazine, the Belgian distillery that’s produced the spirit base for the product since 1998 continues to do so, distilling the mandarine peels and botanicals, all of which is “sent to De Kuyper’s production facility for blending and bottling.”

The process is more or less the same as it’s always been– maceration of mandarine peels from Sicily and Spain in grain alcohol, distillation of the result, resting in vats for two years, sweetening and blending with various Cognacs with at least 6 years of age. The result is a deep, delicious liqueur at 77 proof, sweet but not cloying, and a strong mandarine flavor. It’s one of the best citrus liqueurs out there, and deserves some of the attention given to Grand Marnier and Cointreau.

Mandarine Napoléon’s public relations folks kindly sponsored a TDN and encouraged us to experiment, resulting in a number of really tasty cocktails. I, of course, lazy bastard that I am, decided to fall back on an existing cocktail of mine, because it so happened that I had already created a cocktail containing this liqueur. I had to stick with it, because it’s probably the best cocktail name I’ve ever come up with. (C’mon, a pun that doesn’t make you groan? That actually makes you laugh! Such a rarity!)

I hadn’t had one in a while, though I remember it being well-received by folks I had made it for at the time. Perhaps the most memorable fan is a friend of mine who might not be who you’d typically picture when you think of someone quaffing a cocktail made of Belgian liqueur and French apéritif wine — a country & Western bandleader, songwriter and guitar player (and a damned good one too). He came over with some friends one night, fell in love with this drink and quaffed them all evening long. Still, I thought it needed another look, just in case; I whipped one up to revisit and evaluate before submission.

Hmm.

Sure, still tasty. But it was sweet. Definitely sweeter than is our taste in cocktails these days (although perhaps not so much 10 years ago, when I came up with it.) Not quite balanced. Needed a little rejiggering.

Here’s the old post I wrote way back in September of 2000, talking about how I came up with the drink (and, as I recall, it’s the first cocktail I came up with on my own, albeit one that sprang from another):

Consider the Lillets…

(Stop groaning. It’s only going to get worse from here.)

Wes and I were browsing yesterday at a nifty antique shop and, naturally, stopped to peruse the barware section. They had a book on vintage barware, and in it was a recipe for a cocktail that sounded fascinating, and not only because I loved the name — the Tiger Lillet.

Lillet Blanc is, of course, the French aperitif white wine with hints of citrus and spice, and I’m quite fond of it. The recipe they printed didn’t quite add up, though — it called for 1/3 Lillet, 1/3 Van der Hum (a South African tangerine liqueur based on brandy) and 1/6 “Maraschino syrup”. Hmm. That’s only 5/6 of a drink. And what do they mean by Maraschino syrup? Do they mean Maraschino liqueur, or the thin sweet “juice” that the maraschino cherries come in? Was there a cocktail flavoring product back then that was a low- or no-alcohol cherry syrup? Despite this hole in the recipe, I thought the drink sounded very promising.

The web to the rescue! I found a site that had a more complete recipe which stated, as did the book, that the drink was the winner of the World Cocktail Championship in London in 1952, and was created by a barman named Mr. J. Jones (now that’s an unusual name). Here’s the actual recipe:

Tiger Lillet

1/3 Lillet.
1/3 Van der Hum.
1/6 Dry Vermouth.
1/6 Maraschino.

Shake and Strain. Serve with small piece of Orange Peel.

BZZZZZT! The dry vermouth just killed it for me. I do not like vermouth of any kind. I do not like it in a bar, I do not like it in a car. I do not like it in my drink; tastes quite nasty, that I think.

(Good gods … can you believe I actually said that. I used to hate vermouth. Well, in 2000 I was a toddler as far as fine and historic cocktails were concerned, and I think that at the time I was suffering from the same thing most people who think they hate vermouth suffer from — they’re drinking vermouth that has gotten old and gone bad. Ah, the things that change in ten years … in fact, fortunately for me, only a couple of years later I was quaffing vermouth-bearing cocktails with glee.) Now, back to the past:

So … how to go about changing this drink to suit my taste? Well, for starters, in all my digging through the two finest wine and spirits shops in Los Angeles, I’d never once seen Van der Hum liqueur. Fortunately, right there in my bar cabinet is a bottle of Mandarine Napoléon, another tangerine liqueur that’s based on brandy, which I thought would make an excellent substitute.

Another aside — it turned out that there is a “Maraschino syrup” product out there, the most widely-available of which is made by the Reese company, who’ve made some of the viler jarred products I’ve been unfortunately enough to buy in the supermarket. It’s artificially colored bright red, presumably a thicker version of the syrup in the horried neon red “maraschino” supermarket cherries — the use of which we’ve eschewed for years — and therefore vile. It’s pretty obvious that Mr. Jones used maraschino liqueur and not a syrup. Continuing with the old post:

We’re also fine for the maraschino — I love Liquore de Maraschino, and I have a bottle of Luxardo’s fine product right there in my bar.

Now, to replace the vermouth. For a 3-ounce drink, I’m really only substituting one tablespoon’s worth of liquor. I think the 1/3 Lillet content takes care of the aperitif wine flavor without adding more from vermouth, so I thought a bit about what might complement the flavor of both the Lillet and the Mandarine Napoléon. Cointreau and Grand Marnier were out, because I thought we had the citrus flavor covered. How ’bout … Cognac? Hmmmmm. Complimentary flavor, keeps it all French (“IT IS BELGIAN!” shrieks Poirot predictably, while sipping a cordial glass of Mandarine Napoléon) and gives it a slight extra kick. I like it. I liked it even better when I mixed one up and drank it last night.

Now, to name the drink. I can’t call it a Tiger Lillet anymore, since one ingredient has changed. That’s one of the cardinal laws of cooking — if you steal a recipe, you can get away with it by changing an ingredient or two, and then changing the name of the dish.

What’s Up, Tiger Lillet? I like Woody Allen, but that’s too close to the original. Calla Lillet? Kate Hepburn might like it, but I dunno… Gilded Lillet? Hrmm. Lillet Munster? Too silly! Lillet of the Valley? Lillet of the Field? Bleuchh. I really didn’t consider Consider The Lillet, either.

Finally, it struck me. I named the drink for someone I’ve really liked for a very long time and whose work has given me a great deal of enjoyment over the years. And that’s the truthhhhhh.

That old recipe called for an ounce each of Lillet and Mandarine Napoléon, and half-ounce each of Cognac and maraschino.

Okay. On the right track. But tooooo sweet.

A little thought, a little rebalancing. We still want to keep the Lillet as a base, but we want to up the Cognac to give it more backbone. Mandarine Napoléon is good, but a whole ounce of it was too much and lets a candylike sweetness creep forward. Back that off by a quarter of an ounce, and back off the maraschino too. That should be there to help the fruit and Cognac flavors blend and round out, not to add any more sweetness. I decided to switch to the drier Croatian Maraska brand rather than the more powerful (and sweeter) Italian brand Luxardo. Finally, a dash of bitters for spice, edge and brightness.

Y’know, the flavor profile is pretty much the same, but this is a far superior drink. Consider the Lillet … reformulated.

LILLET TOMLIN

1 ounce Lillet.
1 ounce Cognac.
3/4 ounce Mandarine Napoléon.
1/4 ounce Maraska maraschino liqueur.
1 dash Regans’ Orange Bitters No. 6.

Shake with cracked ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Garnish with a strip of orange peel, expressed over the glass and rubbed upon the rim. Garnish additionally with two ringy-dingys and serve to the party to whom you are speaking.

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We’ve been big fans of Chef Drago’s other restaurants around town (and I still miss his late, lamented Sicilian restaurant L’Arancino in West Hollywood). In addition to the enticing menu they’ve got a very good cocktail program (regularly spoken of with enthusiasm by our friend Mark, who’s a bartender there) that’s headed up by sommelier and beverage director Michael Shearin and head bartender Jaymee Mandeville.

Michael and Jaymee have been up to something interesting. They’ve organized something called the People’s Cocktail Contest, and it’s primarily happening via Twitter. Yes, I’ve been dragged screaming and kicking into the Twitter thing (I still refuse to use the word “tweet” as a verb), and despite having had problems with certain Twitter+food combinations in the past, I found myself inexorably drawn into this one (especially since it involves making cocktails and doesn’t involve anyone sending hundreds of the Teeming Masses into my neighborhood to wait 90 minutes in line for an expensive taco). Here’s how it works:

The contest lasts for four weeks. Each week on Monday, a “secret ingredient” will be announced via Twitter. (“Kyo no tema … KORE DESU!”) Participants will create an original cocktail featuring that ingredient. Cocktails are judged on appearance, aroma, taste, creativity, name, and its compatibility with the existing Drago Centro cocktail list. You post your recipe on Twitter, directing it to Drago Centro’s account (@DragoCentro) with the hashtag #pplscocktail to identify it. Include all instructions, muddle, shake, stir, whatever, and use 2-3 posts if you have to. The secret ingredient will be different each week, and each weekly round will end on Friday at noon. After 4 weeks the winners will battle it out live for a panel of judges. The winner will have his or her cocktail featured on Drago Centro’s list.

Week 1 was this past week, and last Monday the secret ingredient was announced, something “seasonal and appearing at all of our local farmer’s markets … BLUEBERRIES.”

Well! That sounded fun. I gave it some thought, then decided to work with flavors that I knew worked well together, to use an Italian amaro and to keep it simple. I’ve enjoyed berry-infused whiskeys before, both Bourbon and rye, and decided to go with a higher-proof Bourbon. I probably would have preferred to steep the berries in the spirit for a couple of weeks, but there wasn’t enough time, so vigorous muddling was called for.

The first tries yielded not enough blueberry flavor, so I upped the number of berries until it seemed right. 12-16 was definitely too few, and about 20 seemed right. Taste your blueberries for tartness and flavor to determine how many you’ll need. The amaro was Ramazzotti, one of my favorites, not too bitter and with a nice flavor from Sicilian orange peels, along with rhubarb and a touch of cinnamon. I love the flavor of blueberries and cinnamon together — I recalled a fantastic risotto I had at Trattoria Tre Venezie in Pasadena with wild blueberries and cinnamon — and wanted to accentuate that cinnamon flavor while bumping up the sweetness just a bit. My friend Blair’s excellent new product did the trick, but you can make your own cinnamon syrup by steeping cinnamon sticks in hot simple syrup, or adding a cinnamon tincture to simple syrup if you’ve got it.

I wanted to name the drink after Violet Beauregarde, who was turned into a gigantic blueberry in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” but “beau regarde” (literally “beautiful look,” in French) didn’t sound like something that’d fit into the cocktail menu of an Italian restaurant where all the drink names are in Italian. A quick (and bad) Google translation of “beau regarde” into Italian yielded “bello sguardo,” the grammatical and idiomiatic correctness of which got a “Nope” from Italian speaker and general manager Matteo Fernandini at the restaurant. He said he’d give it some thought, but I didn’t think to ask him later (and he was somewhat busy with that whole running-a-restaurant thing). Anita came to the rescue yesterday, saying that if we’re trying to be literal with “beau regard(e),” a better rendition would be “bell’aspetto,” an Italian expression for “handsome.” Bingo. Thanks, Anita. (I should really start learning some Italian.)

BELL’ASPETTO

2 ounces Woodford Reserve Bourbon whiskey
About 20-24 blueberries
1/2 ounce Amaro Ramazzotti
1 barspoon (tsp) Trader Tiki’s Cinnamon Syrup
Lemon peel

In a mixing glass, muddle the blueberries thoroughly in the whiskey. Add the Amaro and syrup, ice and shake for 15 seconds. Double-strain over ice into a large Old Fashioned glass, and garnish with a large swath of lemon peel.

We tried another one last night using Knob Creek Bourbon, at a higher proof of 100. We really liked it. We may even have liked it better. (Bonkers Wesly wants to try it with Stagg now.) Play around with your own favorite higher-proof Bourbon, but the “official” version still uses Woodford.

Oh, by the way, yesterday afternoon they sent out a Twitter post that out of fifteen entries — including one described as tasting “just like pot” (?!) — this past week’s winning cocktail was … this one. Hoo!

A new theme ingredient goes up this afternoon. Check the @DragoCentro Twitter feed to find out what it is.

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This time I had some time to think and prepare, and was able to offer an original drink. There was a bit more incentive this time, as our sponsor added this to the fray:

The “Kahlúa Brunch Drink Challenge” — submit your hot or cold (but not blended, please) “Kahlúa Brunch Drink” idea during this TDN and a panel of both marketing and mixology experts will choose one to be featured at a Tales of the Cocktail coffee bar. To find out which drink was chosen, just show up to the coffee bar Wednesday morning of Tales — the selected drink will be credited, of course, and will be available each morning, Wednesday-Saturday.

Sheesh. We’re not going to make it to Tales this year, so if I win I won’t even get to serve my drink. Hrmph. Oh well … whether I win or not, I’m still happy with the drink. My idea was a cold eye-opener that still had a coffee kick. I included Kahlúa as per the rules but added cold brewed coffee to extend the coffee flavor without additional sweetness (New Orleans-style coffee & chicory is, of course, preferred). The rye and brandy base make for a good New Orleans drink too, with a little bitter orange edge from the Torani Amer plus that dash of the newly-resurrected 1934-style Herbsaint Original (a nod to my Italian music teacher in high school, who was fond of a slug of anisette in his coffee).

The rye I used was Sazerac (“Baby Saz,” the 6-year) and the Cognac was Pierre Ferrant 1er Cru du Cognac Ambre, which is a 10-year (substitute any good VSOP). The photo … is nonexistent, ’cause I actually had two drinks to work on last night and I was too lazy to set anything up. You can probably imagine what it looks like. (Maybe I’ll edit the post later on and add one, but for now … sorry.)

LEVEZ-VOUS

1-1/2 ounces Sazerac Rye
1/2 ounce Pierre Ferrand Ambre Cognac
1/2 ounce Kahlúa
1/2 ounce cold brewed coffee
1/2 ounce Torani Amer
2 dashes Legendre Herbsaint Original
1 dash Regans’ Orange Bitters No. 6
Orange peel

Combine ingredients with ice in a mixing glass and stir for no less than 30 seconds. Strain into a 6-ounce cocktail coupe and garnish with the orange peel after expressing the oil and rubbing it on the rim.

Wes remarked that he didn’t see a brown drink as particularly “brunchy,” but people drink coffee or coffee-based drinks at brunch, don’t they? Anyway, I wouldn’t complain if you insisted on a splash of cream, but I like it this way.

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This is one Chris had initially concieved for a cocktail contest. He wanted to start with a Bourbon base and did lots of trial versions until he came up with something that clicked for him. After all that (as I recall the story), he never got around to actually entering it in the contest, and from what one of the judges said afterward, it probably would have won! Ah well, at least we still have this gorgeous drink, which isn’t nearly as sweet as it sounds.

The key to keeping control over the sweetness is by choosing the right crème de cacao. Marie Brizard is the only one you want — it has a rich chocolate flavor but reins in the sweetness that inevitably dominates cheaper brands. The extra bit of spice you get from a couple of dashes of Bénédictine is the secret ingredient to this prescription … wish my childhood allergy medicine had tasted like this, rather than like green mold with a dash of Fernet. (C’mon, I hadn’t developed a palate for Fernet yet when I was a kid.)

And yes, the photo below actually depicts a cocktail that’s been consumed by 2/3 of its initial volume. After the first sip all I wanted to do is drink it, all other thoughts more or less swept to the side, until I realized, “Crap … if I want to write about this drink at this bar, I’d better take a picture.” Better late than never.

DOCTOR’S ORDERS
by Chris McMillian, Bar UnCommon, New Orleans

2 ounces Bourbon
1/2 ounce white crème de cacao (Marie Brizard)
2 dashes Bénédictine

Combine with ice in a mixing glass, stir for 30 seconds, strain into chilled cocktail glass. No garnish.

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(A brief digression … other than truly vintage items like Abbott’s bitters and 13-year-old bonded Old Overholt rye distilled before Prohibition, hidden during and then bottled afterward, a fair bit of the impossible-to-get stuff he’s turned me on to way back when is now available, like allspice dram, Crème Yvette, falernum and more. Life in the cocktail world is really good these days.)

The idea to post this drink this week came from my having bought a bottle of ruby port to make the St. Charles Punch the other day. It was a Warre’s Warrior Port — a perfectly nice, respectable everyday port, about $14 at the corner market. It’s not one I’d rhapsodize about, but it’s perfect for mixing in cocktails. (The Dow’s 1994 Vintage Porto I got Wesly for his birthday is most decidedly not for mixing, but for sipping, savoring and rhapsodizing.) This’ll probably spark several port-based cocktail posts over the next week or so, so stay tuned.

The key ingredient in this drink is Amaro Cora — ahh, I so do dearly love amari — an Italian digestivo (and light enough to work as an aperitivo as well) from Turin in Piemonte, sweeter than most amari, with flavors of orange, cinnamon and other spices. This is a really good entry-level amaro, and probably the one I should have tried first instead of the one which I did, which was Fernet Branca, which at the time scared the crap out of me.

Better yet, Amaro Cora isn’t impossible to find — it’s still made, but it’s a mother to track it down in this country. In the July/August 2007 issue of Imbibe magazine Doc describes how he stumbled across the ingredient in the most excellent 1937 tome The Café Royal Cocktail Book from the UK and describes his reaction to it (something along the lines of “Aha … what is this? It’s still made?! What does it taste like? I don’t care, I must have it!”) and an amusing tale of Argentinean internet auctions, second-hand translations and losing money.

But you can still get it! It just takes a bit of effort, easily done. The only place I currently find it is via Mount Carmel Wines and Spirits in the Bronx, for the princely sum of $9.99. It’s lovely stuff. If you’re interested in Italian bitters you must have it. You can order it over the Internetsss and it’s cheap. So what are you waiting for?

The first drink Doc tried it in was a vintage cocktail from Café Royal called the Amarosa (for which he adapted the proportions for modern tastes and balance), then came up with this original, which he served to Wesly and me at a soirée chez lui several years ago.

This is a wonderful drink … one of the best Doc has ever come up with, I think. With the rich, spicy base of a rye whiskey underneath, the fruity notes of the port explode with ripe cherries and blackberries, and the Cora provides a hint of bitterness but marvelous citrus and cinnamon spice to accent the fruit, and the Regans’ give a perfect little boost to both the bitter and citrus notes. So much going on in here, and it’s all fun.

Even though he doesn’t mention it in his Imbibe piece, I could swear that when Doc first served this to us it was garnished with a cinnamon stick, a perfectly logical garnish given the spice notes in the drink. (Caveat — I was undoubtedly hammered at the time, an occupational hazard everlastingly delightful side-effect of being a houseguest of Doctor and Nurse Cocktail.) If one is not handy, an orange peel would not be at all inappropriate.

THE CURARI COCKTAIL
(by Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh)

2 ounces rye whiskey
3/4 ounce ruby port
3/4 ounce Amaro Cora
2 dashes Regans’ Orange Bitters No. 6

Combine in a mixing glass with ice, stir for 30 seconds and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a proper cherry on a cocktail pick.

You really should pick up some Amaro Cora. Did I mention that it was cheap? (Well, I mean inexpensive, of course.)

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As the story goes, back in the 1940s the bar’s partners Benson “Pat” O’Brien and Charlie Cantrell were forced by liquor wholesalers to order as many as 50 cases of rum along with whatever other spirits they wanted, or else no deal. There was a glut of rum post-Prohibition and the dealers wanted to move it. Problem was, Pat and Charlie couldn’t care less about it. What the hell are we going to do with all this rum?! Their solution — create a drink to use up all this rum. After some tinkering they wound up with a powerful mixture of rum, passion fruit syrup and fresh lemon juice and created a taste sensation.

Pat O’Brien’s is quite possibly the most popular bar in the French Quarter, certainly among tourists — (a Times-Picayune article on the history of the place from a couple of years ago said that 95% of all first-time New Orleans tourists go there. You’ll even sometimes see some locals in there, although probably not so much as in older days. The Main Bar and Piano Bar in the front were once popular haunts for locals, and the Courtyard Bar, with its flaming fountain, is one of the most beautiful bar spaces in the city, and you should really go see it if you haven’t … as long as you don’t mind sharing the space with loud tourists and Texas frat boys.

There’s just one little problem — the drinks are pretty terrible.

Oh, you can get some okay mixed drinks there, but … well, Pat O’Brien’s put me off Mint Juleps for years because I made the mistake of ordering my first one there. I got a bright green concoction made with mint syrup and not a speck of fresh mint other than a wilted garnish that looked and tasted like Scope, and the bartender actually mocked me when he served it to me.

Regarding the Hurricane as currently served at Pat O’Brien’s, I have one word for you: sweet sweet sweet Sweet SWEET! (Okay, one word five times.) Rum? Oh yes, and lots of it, four whole ounces per drink. They go through a lot of it; it’s said that Pat O’s is the single largest purveyor of rum in the world. Passion fruit? Um … not so much. I’d say that flavor is undetectable in the drink. Lemon juice? Zilch. There is no balance of tart in this drink. Did I mention that it’s SWEET? Teeth-shatteringly sweet.

“A stealthy drink” is how my friend Chris Clarke once described it, and that it is. It’s like an alcoholic kool-aid in which you cannot taste the alcohol. And you can forget about any fresh ingredients — the recipe at the bar is rum (I don’t know which one they use in their well) plus “Hurricane mix,” which at the bar is a premade, artificially colored, artificially flavored bottled red stuff, which is also available in envelopes in powder form.

If you’re serious about cocktails, this isn’t anything you really want to be drinking.

In fact, in a post from Tales of the Cocktail’s weblog a while back, the Hurricane was listed as one of the worst drinks on Bourbon Street (then again, can you get a good drink on Bourbon Street anywhere past Galatoire’s?). Research for this post resulted in a highly amusing photo of a bunch of cocktail bloggers sucking down their Hurricanes like mother’s milk.

Shamelessly purloined from Trader Tiki

They look thrilled, don't they?

I don’t know when Hurricanes stopped using passion fruit syrup and citrus and when they started being red, but if you look at the list of ingredients — rum, passion fruit syrup and lemon juice — you don’t see anything red in there. Perhaps someone dumped grenadine in it once, and that evolved into the syrup … I really don’t know. If you do, let me know.

When I was in college, having just moved to Los Angeles from New Orleans, I was really homesick and didn’t know a damn thing about proper drinking. My homesickness caused me to bring back many envelopes of that awful powder and throw “Hurricane Parties,” the object of which was to socialize and get stinking drunk. (To be honest, we did have a great time, even though after the first round or two I stopped using “the good rum,” i.e. Bacardi, ahem, and started mixing them with plain wrap rum that was probably a step above tiki torch fuel.) If I didn’t have the powder, I used a a “faux-Hurricane” recipe that I found in an old local cookbook called La Belle Créole calling for a mix made with 46 ounces of Fruit Juicy Red Hawaiian Punch (back in the olden days, that was “one large can”), one 12-oz. can of frozen orange juice concentrate, and one 6-oz. can of frozen lime daiquiri mix. Though it didn’t taste all that much like the Hurricanes served at Pat O’s it was fruity, red, and we were too drunk to be able to tell the difference anyway.

A long time ago I found a recipe somewhere — I think it may have been in the Times-Picayune — to make a Hurricane out of all fresh ingredients. It looked pretty good, and I tweaked it to suit my tastes. It didn’t taste much like what was served at Pat O’s, but it was a pretty nice tropical drink and it was still true to the rum-passion fruit-citrus base. (It’s also nothing like the actual Original Hurricane; I’ll teach you how to make that in a bit. Keep reading.)

I had that older recipe up in an previous version of the website for ages, and it ended up in Gary Regan’s The Joy of Mixology. Here’s that version, slightly adapted; gaz swapped out lemon juice for my lime. If you can find fresh passion fruit juice or purée, use 2 ounces of that plus 1/2 ounce of simple syrup instead of the passion fruit syrup, otherwise mix as below:

Hurricane Cocktail: A Variation
(adapted from my recipe as published in The Joy of Mixology)

1-1/2 ounces light rum
1-1/2 ounces dark rum
1 ounce fresh orange juice
1 ounce fresh lime juice
2 ounces passion fruit syrup
1 teaspoon of real pomegranate grenadine

Shake with ice and strain into an ice-filled Hurricane glass or tiki glass. Garnish with a “flag” made of an orange slice and a cherry on a cocktail pick.

This is still a bit sweet but not nearly as sweet as the Pat O’Brien’s premix Hurricane, and it’s all fresh and not artificial.

Oh, and don’t skimp on the passion fruit syrup, either for the above variation or the real thing below. The go-to passion fruit syrup for years has been Trader Vic’s, but it has been reformulated with artificial ingredients and is no longer acceptable. You can get passion fruit syrup from Monin or Torani, opinions of which range from decent to acceptable to yuck, but you’ll really want to go to Aunty Lilikoi from Hawaii and order the best in the world. Seriously, it’s an order of magnitude or two better than the aforementioned ones.

As I understand it the original drink was made with lemon juice. If you’re a stickler for history and if you prefer it that way, use freshly squeezed lemon juice and you’ll be drinking some true New Orleans history. However, I think that lime works so much better and so perfectly in this drink that at home we make it with lime juice. Try it both ways and see which one you prefer.

For the rum try Appleton V/X from Jamaica, or Old New Orleans Amber Rum for a local touch. Jeff “Beachbum” Berry likes Gosling’s Black Seal, and Matt “Rumdood” Robold prefers Coruba “by a factor of about a billion point seven.”

This is for a reasonably-sized drink, not the super-sized one you typically see; unless I’m seriously getting my tiki on, perhaps quaffing at Tiki Ti when someone else is driving, the original proportions might be a bit much. That proportion called for four ounces of spirit, and two ounces of each of the other ingredients. If you want a big one served in a hurricane glass, just double this recipe, then prepare for blottofication.

The Original HURRICANE COCKTAIL
(adapted from the original recipe as seen in
Beachbum Berry Remixed, by Jeff Berry)

2 ounces dark rum
1 ounce Aunty Lilikoi passion fruit syrup
1 ounce fresh lemon juice (the original recipe) or lime juice (which I prefer)
Orange slice and cherry.

Combine rum, syrup and juice with ice and shake vigorously until the mixing tin frosts. Serve in a double Old Fashioned glass or tiki glass over crushed ice, and garnish with an orange and cherry "flag."

Now THAT’S a Hurricane, brah.

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To describe my reaction as “intrigued” would be a fairly massive understatement.

(If you’re not familiar with Chris, read Wayne Curtis’ article about him in Imbibe, and watch some videos of him making cocktails, especially the Mint Julep. Well, maybe not that last one; that one’s better seen and sipped in person.)

While we were home in New Orleans for two weeks a visit with Chris, dean of New Orleanian bartenders and his lovely wife Laura, both of whom are founding board members of the Museum of the American Cocktail, was pretty high on our list. We’d been hoping to get to Cure and French 75 as well, but seven days at the Fair Grounds, a trip to Acadiana and visits with family and friends cut down on our bar time. We were lucky enough that timing worked out such that we were right near Chris’ bar when he was on during one of our only free days in the Quarter/CBD.

Laura stopped by not long after we arrived and we were having a grand time all around when Chris asked if we’d like to taste something. Despite his great talent and profoundly deep knowledge of New Orleans and cocktail history, Chris is a pretty modest guy and doesn’t consider himself the type of bartender/mixologist who’s constantly coming up with new drinks. “If I come up with two new drinks a year that’s pretty good for me,” he says. In my experience those two drinks tend to be worth waiting for, and this was no exception.

The drink he prepared for us falls into the category of “Why didn’t anyone think of this before?” or even, “Hell, why didn’t I think of this?!” (Well, because he’s Chris and I’m me, that’s why.) The drink was so simple, yet so sophisticated and absolutely delicious.

It has its history in a few different places, starting with the classic Champagne Cocktail. Traditionally it’s a sugar cube soaked with Angostura Bitters, dropped into a Champagne flute and topped with bubbly. The Champagne treatment in a cocktail is often acknowledged by appending the word “royale” to a drink’s name, as in the classic variation on the Kir cocktail. That began as a combination of crème de cassis (blackcurrant liqueur) poured into white wine, a drink that was once commonly called blanc-cassis but was eventually called Kir in honor of Félix Kir, a mayor of Dijon, France in the early 20th Century who loved the cocktail and was frequently seen quaffing it. Substituting Champagne for the white wine made it a Kir Royale.

Simple enough, then — give a Sazerac the Royale treatment. This is an ideal apéritif and a perfect Sazerac variation to serve to those for whom a strong whiskey cocktail is a bit overwhelming. This drink is a knockout.

THE SAZERAC ROYALE
by Chris McMillian, Bar UnCommon, New Orleans

1/2 teaspoon Herbsaint Original or absinthe
1 sugar cube
3-4 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
1 ounce rye whiskey (Chris used Old Overholt)
4 ounces chilled Champagne
Lemon peel

Rinse a Champagne flute with the Herbsaint or absinthe and discard the excess. Drop the sugar cube into the flute and soak with the bitters. Add the whiskey, then carefully top with the chilled Champagne. Twist the lemon peel over the surface, rub it around the rim and commit the sacrilege of dropping it into the drink.

I’ll post Chris’ other new one later this week.

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Yes folks, it’s another Thursday Drink Night, starting right now in that wretched hive of sum and villainy delightful chat room called The Mixoloseum Bar. Our sponsor this evening is Kahlúa coffee liqueur, who sponsored us last year with their limited edition holiday release Kahlúa Cream. From 4pm Pacific/7pm Eastern until midnight/3am various bartenders, cocktail nerds and assorted smartasses will gather to make original cocktails featuring Kahlúa, critique them (and quite likely, make rude remarks about one another’s mothers). You are more than welcome to join the fray.

Alas, I won’t be participating tonight, as tonight I’m still back home in New Orleans, getting ready to leave the Fair Grounds after the final performace of today’s Jazz and Heritage Festival (I think it’ll be Elvis Costello and the Sugarcanes, or else Bobby Lonero’s tribute to Louis Prima with Johnny Pennino and the New Orleans Express, or perhaps Cedric Watson & Bijou Creole) and then heading to dinner at Le Foret. And as I had to prepare this post several days in advance, before leaving for NOLA, I was far too lazy to come up with something original.

Better still is something from a couple of terrific bars.

My friend Damian Windsor made me a lovely cocktail at The Roger Room which I thought was one of his, but he told me it came from Bourbon and Branch in San Francisco. It features the somewhat unlikely combination of Bourbon, coffee liqueur (they use Tia Maria, but we’ll use Kahlúa tonight) and orange bitters. Y’know what? It works, really well. The orange plays off the chocolatey notes of the liqueur and gives it a desserty feel without making it overly sweet (one of the banes of cocktaildom, as far as I’m concerned). Lovely after dinner or any other time.

REVOLVER

2 ounces Bourbon whiskey.
1/2 ounce coffee liqueur (Tia Maria or Kahlúa).
2 dashes Fee’s orange bitters.
Orange peel.

Combine with ice in a mixing glass, stir for 30 seconds and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with the orange peel after expressing the oil.

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Our sponsor last week was Casa Noble Tequila, and we were lucky enough to have José “Pepe” Hermosillo, a founding partner of the distillery, joining us from Jalisco, Mexico (unfortunately, by the time I got home he was just logging off). The samples that were sent out were their blanco tequila, which they call “Crystal” — 100% agave, slow-cooked and only the hearts and cores are used in fermentation. I have yet to try any of their other varieties but I loved the Crystal. It had a rich, profound agave flavor, nicely vegetal and spicy, some black pepper and citrus rind. I don’t normally sip blanco tequila but I enjoyed sipping this one, and it occurs to me that this would make a pretty tasty Improved Tequila Cocktail (not that Jerry Thomas had tequila in the 1860s), which I’ll try next. (It’s also got a pretty bottle, so hush.)

I wanted to play up the vegetal and spice qualities in my original cocktail for the evening, and I was inspired by a terrific drink that Brian Summers of the Library Bar at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood made for me back when he was at Bar Centro at The Bazaar by José Andres a year and a while ago called the Archangel. That was gin and Aperol with a little cucumber, which was my launching point. I thought cucumber and Aperol would work really well with this tequila.

The Aperol’s low alcohol content smooths out the spirit’s edges and gives a nice, gentle bitterness, and the orange flavor complements the tequila’s citrus notes. I wanted to bring that up a little bit more with the Créole Shrubb without making it too sweet. I also wanted to bump up the bitterness a tiny bit, so I used Cynar, hoping that the artichoke enzyme cynarin would help make the sweet elements taste a bit sweeter without adding more liqueur. It seemed to work pretty well, although it took a bit of tinkering. One barspoon wasn’t enough, two were too many and 1/4 ounce — a barspoon and a half — was just right. The cucumber adds another vegetal element, again gentle, and helps tie everything else together and make them play nicely. I’m really happy with this one, and I think it’d be a good aperitivo for a Mexican meal.

The name comes from a town in Jalisco where my old friend Luie was born. It was near Guadalajara, but the town’s own growth and Guadalajara’s massive growth caused it to be swallowed up by the greater Guadalajara metro area, and it’s now considered a neighborhood of Guadalajara. It’s from the Nahuatl language, sort of pronounced “tlah-kay-PAH-kay,” and it’s really fun to say. Even more fun to drink.

TLAQUEPAQUE

2 ounces Casa Noble Crystal tequila, or other blanco tequila
1 ounce Aperol
1/4 ounce Clément Créole Shrubb
1/4 ounce Cynar
2 slices cucumber, about 1/4″ thick, for muddling
2 thin slices cucumber for garnish

Muddle the cucumber slices in the spirits, add ice and shake 10-12 seconds. Double-strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and garnish with two thin cucumber slices.

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Unfortunately, I can’t say the pics are necessarily obscenely gorgeous this time, as for some reason the camera was set at the lowest possible resolution, and that plus extremely low light equals highly mediocre pictures. You’ll get the basic idea, though.

The usual semi-annual routine for Wesly’s and my birthdays is that the birthday boy gets taken out for dinner, and never knows where until the moment the car pulls up in front of the restaurant. We’re big believers in the element of surprise, combined with sometimes absurd levels of misdirection. Usually each of us would conspire with Mary as to where to take the other (although sadly, this was the last time for that), and our conspiracy ended up with my plan to take Wes to Bouchon, Chef Thomas Keller’s French bistro in Beverly Hills, for his mumblety-mumbleth birthday on March 8.

Unfortunately, for a change Wesly was quite forceful in expressing his birthday wishes this year. “I wanna go to Bouchon. And I wanna go see ‘Dreamgirls.’” Well, so much for the element of surprise.

We don’t frequent Beverly Hills, unsurprisingly, but we were familiar with the location as it’s right up the block from Spago (which is one of our favorite occasion restaurants and not nearly as expensive or out-of-reach as you might think). This is the third Bouchon location, after the Michelin-starred original in Yountville in Napa Valley and the glitzier one in Vegas. The building in which Bouchon resides is called Beverly Hills Gardens, and shares a beautiful courtyard with the Montage Hotel. There’s a narrow veranda along the side of the restaurant overlooking the courtyard, which will be a really lovely place to dine once spring has sprung.

Upon passing the intriguing-looking Bar Bouchon on the ground level, which we must explore later, we entered and ascended a rather grand staircase into the restaurant and were seated at a cozy table after passing the rather grand curved zinc bar not unlike ones we’d seen in Paris.

The main dining room is vibrant without being overwhelmingly loud, and we still felt well-connected to the whole space while still being afforded a good bit of privacy at our table. (Ours was the two-top in the lower left corner, below.)

Around each napkin at the place settings was folded a crisp brown piece of paper that turned out to be our menus, leading immediately to the problem of what to order when everything on the menu looked so good — I imagine the menu is more or less the same at all three branches, and this one has a terrific chef, Rory Herrmann, formerly of Keller’s New York three Michelin-starred restaurant Per Se. Some of the dishes were eye-raisingly pricey (unsurprising, considering the world-famous chef-owner and its posh location) but many were quite reasonable. We saw (and smelled … holy frak) magnificent plates of steak frites go by, Gargantuan steaks accompanied by what looked like a basketball-sized clump of crisp Belgian-style twice-fried frites for $36.50 which we could easily have split. But not tonight.

(...)
Read the rest of Bouchon (1,587 words)

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The flag of the Four Provinces of Ireland

I don’t suppose I could have gotten away with not making a post today, although I wasn’t particularly planning one. I did get a big of a nudge while talking to an Irish cow-orker this morning (and when another cow-orker passed us, he said, “You two shouldn’t even be allowed to talk to each other today … critical mass!”), while we chatted about “Father Ted” and shouted “FECK!” and “ARSE!” and “DRINK!” to each other, as is our wont.

Those of you who’ve seen my previous years’ St. Patrick’s Day posts will remember my own rules for the day:

1. NO GREEN BEER. I really shouldn’t even have to explain that.

I remember back in gradual school my mentor and favorite teacher Ian Conner, a native Glaswegian, overheard one of my fellow students on St. Patrick’s Day say that he was planning to spend the evening going to a local bar to drink green beer. “Is that what St. Patrick’s Day means to you?” asked Ian. “That’s not what St. Patrick’s Day means to me. What St. Patrick’s Day means to be is starting at noon at the closet Irish pub to where you live, having some whiskey, then moving on to the next one, having another whiskey, and continuing thusly throughout the day!” One of many thousands of anecdotes which add up to a truly great teacher.

2. Wear the green, but keep it subtle. I find that Irish people don’t particularly wear a lot of green anyway — one fun game I’ve played in Dublin with my Irish friends is “Spot the Yank,” terribly easy when there are so many Americans festooned in bright fluorescent kelly green, especially green mesh-back baseball caps with a shamrock and the word “IRELAND” on the front, plus the Bermuda shorts of course. Today my socks are a light forest green, and that’s perfectly nice.

Of course, given the Irish flag has green, white and orange (representing the nationalist tradition, the Orange Protestant tradition and the hope for peace between them), you could wear a bit of each. Then again, Ian continued his story … “On St. Patrick’s Day, my grandfather — a fierce adherent to the Church of Scotland — used to pin orange ribbons to his clothing and go through the Catholic sections of town, shouting anti-Papist slogans.” No need to go quite that far.

A clever, amusing t-shirt will do fine too. I have a few from a shop in Spiddal, Co. Galway called An Spáilpín Fánach featuring clever or witty sayings in Irish (I like the one I have that says, “Ná cuir céist orm — níl fhois agam!” or, “Don’t ask me, I don’t know!”) and some not-so-clever (such as the ubiquitous “Póg mo thóin”). I’ve seen a few other good ones around — “I ♥ Irish boys” is an old favorite, “Craic dealer” made me laugh, and perhaps the best one ever is the one that said, in a rather recognizeable typeface and layout …

(Heh.)

3. Stay out of Irish pubs/bars. Seriously. Find a great Irish bar and go any other day of the year. On St. Patrick’s Day it’s strictly amateur hour, and unless you like being packed like sardines in green beer, drunk collge students, the Dropkick feckin’ Murphys and lots of police sobriety checkpoints there and back, stay home. Well, unless you’re actually in Ireland, where avoiding an Irish pub might be a bit more difficult.

4. Drink Irish whiskey. It is good. It is very good. And the whole “Catholic whiskey / Protestant whiskey” thing is bullshit — don’t buy into it. Nobody in Ireland would. If you like Bushmills (and I do, especially their single malts and aged expressions like the 16- and 21-year), then do so! Black Bush is lovely stuff and quite affordable.

My own preference goes toward the 12-year expressions of John Powers and Jameson’s, plus Tullamore Dew, all good for sipping or mixing. I also adore Redbreast, the only pure pot still Irish whiskey we’re getting over here now, and I’ve recently fallen in love with Tyrconnell Single Malt, one of the many wonderful products of the Cooley Distillery in Co. Louth, the only truly independent Irish whiskey distillery (Midleton in Cork is owned by Pernod-Ricard, and Bushmills by Diageo). The Tyrconnell line also includes whiskies finished in sherry, madeira and port barrels — I’ve only had one of them so far, but it was wonderful, a great balance between maltiness and strawberry-fruit sweetness.

I’m also a fan of Kilbeggan, another Cooley product. Wesly and I visited the Old Kilbeggan distillery about six years ago and enjoyed seeing the place. In ’07 the folks at Cooley actually got working pot stills going at Kilbeggan again, with the plan to actually have them produce whiskey again after 54 years. Kilbeggan’s lovely, with notes of raisins and vanilla. Interesting tidbit — from 1843 until its closure in 1954 the distillery was called Locke’s, after the man who purchased it and whose family ran it for over a century. His name will be familiar to those of us who are “Lost” fans … John Locke. (As far as I know, that John Locke’s body is not currently inhabited by a smoke monster.) Locke’s 8-year single malt is still produced by Cooley — it’s a blended single malt, which does include a bit of peated whiskey, so actually Locke’s has a touch of the smoke monster after all.

5. Drink Irish whiskey cocktails. We’ll be doing numbers 4 and 5 tonight, at home.

Here are the 10 Irish whiskey-based cocktails currently in my list; doubtless you can find more. I’m favoring the Tipperary tonight, I think; Gaz Regan wrote about it again today in the San Francisco Chronicle.

A few Irish whiskey cocktails to peruse

Bushmills in the Afternoon
Dubliner
Irish (Channel) Coffee
Irish Whiskey Toddy
James Joyce Cocktail
St. Dominic’s Preview
The Swell Season
Tipperary
Weeski

6. Listen to Irish music. You’re always good with The Pogues (even though most of them aren’t from Ireland), but your best bet are the modern classics of Planxty and The Bothy Band. Go on iTunes or eMusic and get some now if you haven’t already. You’ll thank me later.

And have a happy and safe, snake-free St. Patrick’s Day!

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I used to watch it all the time. The ability to watch Mario Batali every day? Damn right! Hometown chef Emeril Lagasse too. (His studio show “Essence of Emeril,” not the silly live show when they cheered every time he seasoned something.) And my weekly obsession, Iron Chef — the real one from Japan, not the American version, which despite the presence of Alton Brown and (for a while) Mario and Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto I never really cared for. Oh, how I miss わたしのきおくがたしかならば!

Now the network is mostly crap, with pretty much all the actual chefs swept away and Alton Brown being pretty much the only thing worth watching; I still do catch “Good Eats” on occasion. Worst of all, though, and what has brought Food Network down to its nadir, is the truly awful Sandra Lee of “Semi-Homemade” and mindbogglingly enough some other show as well in which she mixes together a lot of pre-packaged crap and calls it cooking.

The thousand injuries of watching her “cooking” I had borne as best as I could, but when she ventured upon insult — making what she called “cocktails” — I vowed revenge. (OK, not really, but I love quoting “The Cask of Amontillado.”) By “revenge” in this case I mean “intense public mocking.”

Yeah, I know, I don’t usually diss people in this forum — it’s a lot more fun to write about what I like — but I do enjoy see perpetrators of mediocrity (and worse) actually get a bit of comeuppance.

This video has been making the rounds of the bartender world during the past few days after being brought to everyone’s attention by Jeff Morgenthaler via his Twitter feed, where said he hated to pick on her (uh huh) yet invited everyone to “watch Sandra Lee’s face in slow-mo as she tries to choke down one of her own cocktails.”

Yeah sweetie … what did you think a mixture of lemonade, heavy cream and vodka would taste like? Mmm, cream curdling right in your mouth. That entirely involuntary reaction displayed upon your face is your nervous system telling you, “Hello! You’ve just consumed something that might kill you or make you really sick! It’s a pretty noxious stimulus, so I might just have to engage your emesis reflex. Heads up!” Whether or not she actually hurled I can’t say.

Jeff continued with an epic weblog post in which he links to the ten “cocktails” Sandra Lee came up with last week, one for each of the 10 films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar — “the ten sweetest, vanilla-flavored, blue curaçao’d, nastiest cocktails of 2010, and an “appalling affront to the craft that so many of us have worked hard trying to restore over the past fifteen-plus years.”

Let’s hope not too many people actually made one of those awful drinks. (To be fair, her “Inglourious Basterds” drink is basically just a Negroni with a splash of orange juice — highly unoriginal yet probably drinkable. But ugh.)

In the interest of full disclosure I have to say that I too made a blue cocktail for the Oscar party, where all the food or drink that’s brought in has to tie in to one of the films nominated in any category, even if only via a bad pun. Inglourious Custerds was one of my favorites (honorable mention to Steve’s “Inglourous Basturma”). We also had A Serious Man-icotti, some great BBQ ribs for “The Lovely Bones,” an apple cider-glazed turducken (because the Fantastic Mr. Fox stole chickens, ducks, turkeys and cider from Farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean … brilliant!) and perhaps the best and most groanworthy pun of the night … the beers Diana brought that had Band-Aids stuck to the bottles. Why? “Hurt Lager!”

Cocktail-wise, rather than a flavored vodka sweet swill as Lee is always wont to dump into her cauldron of evil, I made a Daiquiri in one of the classic proportions of 4:2:1 and added a quarter ounce each of maraschino liqueur and blue curaçao, evening out the tart and sweet balance. I find that large general non-cocktailian crowds like this tend not to like citrus cocktails as tart as I like them.

The curaçao I used is Senior Curaçao of Curaçao as well — it’s a really good product, despite its intense blueness, and remains the only curaçao actually made on the island of Curaçao. I usually keep both their orange and blue versions around.

Plus, I was talking to Audrey Saunders the other day and she expressed her love of blue cocktails (”as long as they taste good”), so I consider that to be official permission.

The crowd seem to like them, for what it’s worth. I batched enough for about 24 small servings, and they were gone long before the end of that interminable Oscar broadcast.

I will confess, though, that I did not come up with a terribly clever pun to name the drink, though … lame lame lame.

NA’VI’QUIRI

2 ounces Cruzan light rum
1 ounce fresh lime juice
1/2 ounce simple syrup
1/4 ounce Luxardo maraschino
1/4 ounce Senior Blue Curaçao of Curaçao

Combine with ice, shake for 15 seconds, strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a little sparkly airborne floating jellyfish-looking thing from Pandora, or a lime wedge.

Perfect for sipping on those balmy Pandora days while you’re lounging under your Home Tree, wearing 3-D glasses and a breathing mask, or while watching “Dances With Wolves.”

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Have you ever served someone a pink Mai Tai? Or thought you could just mix rum and pineapple juice? Or gotten some kind of blended slush? Or worse still, come across a bartender who thinks that a Mai Tai is “aah, just some rum and a buncha juices?” I’ve been unfortunate enough to have all of the above (that quote is a direct one, and in a tiki-themed restaurant no less), more times than I care to count. The most recent one was in a local restaurant and bar which supposedly prided itself on authentic cocktails. They listed the Mai Tai on their menu as “The Original Trader Vic Mai Tai,” listed all the correct ingredients even … and then proceeded to dump a jigger of fake Rose’s grenadine into the mixing glass at the very end. *facepalm*

(I returned it — gently, politely and even apologetically — but the bartender instantly hated me anyway. Sigh. To be fair, I was assured later that none of the other bartenders in the joint would have done that, and nobody liked the one who happened to serve me.)

The Mai Tai is one of the greatest tropical cocktails, and one of the most sadly abused. It was created by Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron in his Oakland bar in 1944 and, as the story goes, first served to a friend who was visiting from Tahiti. Supposedly the friend exclaimed in Tahitian, “Mai ta’i roa ae!, variously translated as “The best!” or “Out of this world!” and hence the name.

If you’re not a cocktail geek, or if you haven’t been frequenting the right bars, it’s entirely likely that you’ve never even had a truly authentic Mai Tai, although I’ll bet you’ve had a lot of rum ‘n juice. A lot of folks don’t realize that the only juice in a proper Mai Tai is lime — no pineapple, no orange, no grapefruit. The orange flavor comes from curaçao, the sweetness from rich simple syrup (or “rock candy syrup,” made 2:1 sugar to water) and orgeat, a French-style almond syrup with hints of orange blossoms and roses. No grenadine. No red, no pink.

When you taste one, it’ll be like dawn breaking. You’re going to love the interplay of flavors, the sweetness and tartness in perfect balance, and the blend of fruit and nut and the tiniest hint of flowers make it taste truly exotic. You won’t get that from “rum and a buncha juices.”

If you haven’t done so yet, as of today you are now going to carry the torch for a real Mai Tai, and you’ll be taught by the best.

Now, we must admit that the really authentic Mai Tai will cost you more than you’d likely care to spend. Vic used a 17-year-old Wray and Nephew Jamaican rum for his initial Mai Tai which hasn’t been made in over 50 years, and remaining sealed bottles of it have sold for tens of thousands of dollars. However, if you’re idly rich or a Lotto winner keen on squandering your fortune on drink, there is an original, authentic Mai Tai to be had. Go to The Bar at the Merchant Hotel in Belfast in the north of Ireland. There bartender Sean Muldoon will make you a Mai Tai with one of their precious bottles of Wray and Nephew 17-year — I think they only have one left — and serve it to you as Vic served it to his Tahitian friend, for the low, low price of £750. That’s about $1,129.42 at today’s exchange rate. If you have one, please let me know how much you enjoyed it.

For the rest of us, a good aged rum will do, preferably a blend of two.

Let’s watch Martin Cate, owner of the fabulous Smuggler’s Cove in San Francisco, show you how it’s done. This is from Chow.com‘s series, “You’re Doing It Wrong!” (Sorry about the commercial.) Martin likes Appleton Estate 12-year from Jamaica and El Dorado 12-year from Guyana, which is a great combo. I like to mix Jamaican rum (that Appleton being one of my very favorites) with a Martinican rhum agricole like Saint James Hors d’Age or Clément VSOP. Whichever you choose, make sure they’re dark and aged, and use one ounce of each.

Take it away, Martin!

The Mai Tai
(Original version by Trader Vic Bergeron, 1944, and therefore the ONLY acceptable version!)

2 ounces aged rum (preferably a blend of two)
3/4 fresh lime juice
1/2 ounce orange Curaçao
1/4 ounce rich simple syrup
1/4 ounce orgeat

Combine in a mixing glass with crushed ice and shake until the metal portion is frosty. Pour the whole thing into a double Old Fashioned glass. Garnish with half of a spent lime shell, face down, and a healthy sprig of mint (spank the mint before garnishing to release oils and aroma).

Remember Martin’s rules — no mixes! (That’s a general rule that if you read this site or any other cocktail-related sites you should know by now.) No juices other than lime. No grenadine. No flavored rums. Make rich simple syrup — it only takes a few minutes. Buy Trader Tiki’s orgeat! It’s ready-made, authentic and delicious!

And raise your glass to Trader Vic. Mai ta’i roa ae!

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It’s deceptively simple — only two ingredients in a simple proportion — but what a pair of ingredients … oh so complex.

First off, Old Raj Gin. There are two that you’ll see on your spirits store shelves if you’re lucky — one at 92 proof and the other at 110, the more common of the two and the one you want. Despite its alcoholic heft it’s quite smooth and has no burn, juniper present but not overly forward, plenty of citrus and earthy spices. The straw-yellow tint comes from a bit of saffron among the botanicals, but the saffron is very subtle and understated.

Next, our old friend Chartreuse of the green variety, an herbal knockout also at a hefty 110 proof. The alcohol-by-volume in these combined ingredients is, as you may have noticed, 55%, hence the name of the drink. These two powerful ingredients combine with that delightful cocktailian alchemy into a very well-balanced, highly sippable drink in which the herbal onslaught of the Chartreuse is stretched, rounded and balanced by the gin and its own herb-and-spice profile. What you might think would be over the top is anything but, and might be just the thing to offer a Martini drinker who might be looking for something a bit more exotic for his or her next drink.

You knocked this one out of the park, Chris … thanks!

The 55º Cocktail
(by Chris McMillian, Bar UnCommon, New Orleans)

1-1/2 ounces Old Raj Gin, blue label.
3/4 ounce green Chartreuse.

Combine with ice in a mixing glass and stir for 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. No garnish.

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La Descarga has been open almost three weeks now, after a grand opening night on February 2. I absolutely love how the bar is revealed to you — you read a brief description of the entrance in the above-linked article, but fortunately it didn’t give away the good parts. When you do walk in you’re transported to Old Havana, pre-Fidel and ignoring the despotic dictators and corrupt American corporations, concentrating on the good stuff — rum, cocktails, music, floor shows and letting the good times roll (I don’t know how to say that in Spanish, sadly).

Check out the profile video from the Los Angeles Times …

Steve Levigni, formerly of The Doheny, is the general manager and Pablo Moix is behind the stick with a talented crew of bartenders, all of whom took good care of us on our first visit (first of many, I hope). We actually had reservations on opening night, as part of a group of friends, but unfortunately we had to cancel. We finally made it in four nights later, and they were already in full swing.

This isn’t really a full review, as we’ve only spent the one evening there so far, but Pablo and the rest of the folks behind the stick kept us and a two-deep Saturday night crowd well-oiled with excellent drinks from a good menu that will likely only get better. As it’s a rum bar that’s the featured spirit in the currently offered drinks, but I’ll be looking forward to seeing what else they’ll be offering, including cocktails blending different rums (always a favorite among aficionados of that spirit). I’m also looking forward to having a chance to sample tasting flights from their collection of 70+ rums … I’ve got my work cut out for me.

For an extra treat, if you go on the weekend, you’re treated to a bit of Caribbean cabaret as well.

You’ll want to call ahead for a reservation — they’re not required at this bar, but it’s a good idea to have one, so that you can be escorted right in without having to wait, especially on weekends. We tend not to go out on weekend nights anyway, as crowds are not my thing — and if they’re not yours either do as we do and go early, as after 9 or so it gets very, very busy — if you don’t mind them let the bar know you’re coming and you’ll become part of that crowd a lot faster. You’ll want to dress up as well; the bar prefers ladies and gentlemen to don their snappiest outfits when they visit, and at this place it’s warranted. Besides, who wants to be underdressed in Old Havana? Be a part of the fabulousness!

The three drinks I had were excellent, and this one, which Pablo was kind enough to confirm my guess of proportions, was probably my favorite. I love aromatic cocktails, and it’s particularly nice to enjoy a complex rum cocktail that contains no citrus (not that there’s anything wrong with that). It’s currently made with the new incarnation of Zaya rum from Trinidad, and fortunately not with rum from a barrel containing the remains of Admiral Nelson.

Tapping the Admiral

2 ounces aged Rum (Zaya).
1/2 ounce Carpano Antica sweet vermouth.
1/2 ounce Cherry Heering.
1 healthy dash Fee’s Whiskey Barrel-Aged Bitters.

Stir with ice for 20-30 seconds and strain into a chilled cocktail coupe, orange peel garnish.

I had a couple of others for which I didn’t get a recipe, as I was actually talking to my friends and having fun instead of being a cocktail geek and watching Pablo like a hawk. The Tropical Holiday was nice, with a J.M. Rhum Blanc base (mmm, rhum agricole!) sweetened with simple syrup and John D. Taylor’s Velvet Falernum for a dose of island flavors, plus lime and bitters, topped with soda. Tangy and refreshing. Wes’ Honey Swizzle is based on Cristal Aguardiente, a rather fiery cane spirit from Colombia with an anise flavor that I found surprising and ultimately delightful when I first tried it about 10 years ago (and a belated thanks to Patrick for bringing a bottle of it to that cocktail party at our place back in ’00!). Besides the honey syrup and citrus I forget the rest of the ingredients, but I’ll return to this one as well.

I’m going to have to visit a couple more times in the next few weeks, but y’know … I think I could fall in love with this place.

They don’t serve food at La Descarga but have no fear — right next door is Tacos de Patio, open late and serving excellent street-style Mexican food. Mmmm, tacos al pastor …

If they were smart, given who’s just opened up right next door, they’d add Cuban sandwiches to the menu.

La Descarga is at 1159 Western Ave., Los Angeles CA 90029, between Lexington and Virginia, just south of the 101.

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That’s not just an oversight on my part. For a long time I wasn’t a fan of that spirit’s major flavor component.

Aquavit is a flavored spirit, usually distilled from grain or potatoes, which comes from the various Scandinavian countries. I see it as a fellow traveler to gin — they’re both neutral spirits flavored with botanicals, with gin’s primary botanical being juniper, and aquavit’s being caraway. (That was the taste I had to acquire.)

Although a cousin to gin in that respect, the cousins get once or twice removed fairly quickly. A lot of aquavit spends time in wood and thusly picks up color and flavor. Linie, from Norway, is perhaps the most well-known example. It’s a potato-based aquavit that’s made in Oslo, then stored in oak sherry casks and aged in the holds of ships, as it travels across the equator through temperatures hot and cold to Australia and back (“linie” means “line” in Norwegian, referring to the equator) — for the makers, just the right amount of time and temperature variation spent in the barrels for a deeper flavor. Aquavits from other countries tend to be lighter in color, and some, like Krogstad, a domestic aquavit produced by House Spirits in Oregon — is clear. (However, North Shore Distillery’s Aquavit Private Reserve, which I have yet to try, is oaked, and I’ve just picked up a small bottle of experimental Krogstad that’s spent some time in oak as well. More on that, and some other House Spirits experiments, in a later post.)

In its native lands aquavit tends to be drunk neat and chilled from the freezer, but talented mixologists are finding it to be an intriguing cocktail ingredient. At Copper Gate in Seattle aquavit is the house spirit (and there’s a housemade one to boot), with several aquavit-based cocktails on their menu.

There aren’t a whole lot of aquavit-based cocktails (CocktailDB lists 18, most of which are fairly obscure), but what’s probably my favorite one isn’t on that list. It’s an original by Robert Hess, who about 10 years ago was playing with Fee Brothers’ Peach Bitters plus thinking about trying a variation on the Negroni. Aquavit replaced gin, Cynar (the Italian artichoke-based bitters) replaced the Campari, and sweet vermouth gave way to dry sherry. The peach bitters added a nice aromatic, fruity finish and the final product is a really lovely and complex drink from three really offbeat ingredients (to many folks, at least).

Murray put it on the menu at Zig Zag, and according to Robert that one drink on that one menu is responsible for Zig Zag being the largest consumer of Cynar in all of Washington State. So nice to see how all our Seattle friends drink so well (and even better to drink well with them!).

The Trident Cocktail

1 ounce aquavit
1 ounce Cynar
1 ounce dry sherry
2 dashes peach bitters

Stir with ice for 20-30 seconds and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Lemon twist garnish.

[2/22/10, 4:06pm - Post updated to mention North Shore Distillery's Aquavit, which I forgot about when I wrote this because apparently my frontal lobe fell out.]

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On my previous Anvil visits I got to hang out with bartender/co-owner Bobby Heugel and have him take me through Anvil’s always challenging and exciting menu. This time Bobby was in South Africa, happily swilling Pinotage and having a well-deserved vacation, and behind the stick this was Justin Burrow, one of the other owner-partners who I finally got to meet at Tales last year. Justin took great care of us on a busier-than-usual Sunday night, as he and his crew accommodated not only the usual locals but the entire cast of the touring production of “Miss Saigon,” who are performing in Houston at the moment and who descended on the bar en masse.

The first drink on the new seasonal menu that caught my eye was the one with the most unusual mix of ingredients — Batavia Arrack, Strega, Falernum and lime. Wow, now that’s a combination I hadn’t thought of, and I immediately ordered one. My sister said, “The only one of those ingredients I’ve ever heard of is lime!” whereupon Justin very kindly poured a little sip of each ingredient into a glass for her to taste, “a deconstructed version.”

If you’re not familiar with these ingredients either … Batavia Arrack is a sugar cane-based spirit also made with fermented Indonesian red rice, and is a basic component of Swedish Punsch. Strega is an Italian herbal liqueur with over 70 herbs and spices (the yellow color coming from saffron), and falernum is a sweetining and flavoring syrup originating in Barbados with flavors of almond, ginger, clove and lime. It’s frequently non-alcoholic, but this particular incarnation, John D. Taylor’s Velvet Falernum, is 11% abv. Melissa tasted each one … “Ooh, that’s funky,” to the arrack; “Wow, that’s really complex,” to the Strega; “Um, I’m draining this – you don’t get any” to the falernum. Hmm, guess I’ll have to buy her a bottle.

Justin explained that they had been doing inventory at the end of the year and there was an excess of arrack, Strega and falernum, and they wondered what they’d do with it as none of the drinks on the Anvil 100 call for them, and the current seasonal menu didn’t either. Justin started mixing, using the Last Word as a template, and lo and behold … they worked together beautifully.

(...)
Read the rest of Cocktail of the Day: the Eulogy (68 words)

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Now that we’ve had our break, Wesly and I hope to charge into 2010 (or “oh-ten,” as we’ve heard some people say, to our mocking delight). With Marleigh’s help I’ve gotten started on another new feature. Note that there’s a new link up in the header that says Cocktails — it’s a work in progress at the moment, and when complete will be a compendium of every cocktail recipe I’ve ever posted on Looka!, going back to 1999.

I’ll be importing the old cocktail recipe posts into WordPress and backdating them so that the index can add them, and for the most part I’ll be leaving them more or less intact. This means that I’ll be keeping in the embarrassing shit like “I’m not a big fan of gin” and “I don’t like vermouth” in posts from 10+ years ago, plus embarrassing drinks like the Velvet Hammer. I will be updating recipes for clarity and accuracy, however, plus fixing dead URLs as I can and throwing in an annotation here and there. All original posts (plus the rest of the old content) will still be there in the stone-knives-and-bearskins section of the archive.

So far I’m about halfway into 2002, and I’ve got along way to go. It’ll likely take a couple of weeks, but by the time I’m done importing we’ll have a very handy and convenient index of cocktail recipes here on the ol’ blawg, and future cocktail recipe posts will be automatically added to the index.

Whoever of y’all that have been nagging me to do this for years (Barry? Chris?) … good things come to those who wait!

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Or specifically, “Burns Nicht” if you’re going to be holding the traditional celebration for the Bard of Scotland tonight, in honor of his 214th birthday.

(Quite a handsome bloke, wasn’t he?)

If you were hoping for that most traditional of Scottish dishes, always served on Burns Night by those celebrating the poet’s life, prepare to unleash a joyous shout of “Gie her a Haggis!” The USDA is going to relax its ban on the importation of the real MacCoy, made of the heart, lungs and liver of a sheep, mixed with beef suet, onions, oats, black pepper and stuffed into the stomach of the animal. (Mmm.)

This is great news! See, thing is, though … haggis is good. I’ve had it, in Edinburgh, Scotland, no less. If you’re a Louisianian or a lover of Louisiana food who’s eaten and enjoyed boudin, then you’re pretty much there — it’s a very small leap from boudin to haggis. Think sheep instead of pork, oats instead of rice, stomach instead of intestinal casing (and the stomach is just that, a casing — you don’t eat that bit). It’s a big fat sausage, basically, no big deal, and as a waiter in a Scottish restaurant in New York said, “If you can eat a New York hot dog and not ask what’s in it, you can eat haggis.” It’s particularly good when served with the traditional accompaniments of “neeps and tatties” (mashed turnips and potatoes), some strong Scots ale, a wee dram (or four) of whisky … and, um, in my case in Scotland, a few dashes of Tabasco that I snuck out of my bag and applied when no one was looking. Untraditional but yummy nonetheless.

Of course, you’ll be needing plenty of guid Scots whisky tonight, whether you’re having haggis or not. There’s a huge world of it that I’m still only just beginning to explore, but these days I’m enjoying the maritime flavors of Islay whiskys — the wonderfully smoky Laphroaig 10-year (“like drinking bacon”), the intense “Band-Aids, sweat, leather and iodine bouquet” of Lagavulin 16-year (seen below) or the delightfully earthy, smoky, spicy, almost chocolatey Ardbeg Supernova, if you can still find it. Find a good blend too — don’t discount blended whisky, as there are many superb blends. Compass Box Asyla is a favorite, Famous Grouse is our regular mixing Scotch, and I loved the complex, nutty, spicy, fruit-and-toffee flavors of the Chivas Regal 18-year I tried recently.

If you’re a cocktailian, though, how about something (presumably) named after the Bard himself?

(...)
Read the rest of Cocktail of the Day: The Robert (Bobby) Burns (926 words)

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My biggest (well, maybe second-biggest) and best surprise of the evening was seeing someone in a 50s-style tiki panel shirt and thinking, “Wow, that guy looks like Blair from behind.” The guy turned around … and it was Blair! Yay, Trader Tiki himself! There was much rejoicing. He was kinda-sorta in the neighborhood, having done BarSmarts in Las Vegas (a mere 200 miles away), entered a punch that was accepted as a finalist (I had no idea) and made the hop to L.A. All this punch plus a nice visit too — good way to start!

It was a formidable group of competitors. Besides Blair the others were Chris Bostick from The Varnish, a good friend and monstrously talented bartender (who had Forrest Cokely as his proxy mixer-server, as he had to work that night); Zach Patterson from STK, also superb behind the stick; and someone I’d heard of but never met before, Jason Schiffer from a restaurant and bar in Seal Beach called 320 Main, and thanks to them you can get excellent Manhattans and Old Fashioneds in Orange County.

It was a lot of fun, and good experience. I’d wanted to enter a cocktail competition for a long time now, but they were either at bad times and/or filled with so many great bartenders that I would have had my ass handed to me in two seconds (which would be great experience, really), or else other competitions I thought about entering that I ended up getting asked to judge instead. That was very flattering, of course, and quite an honor, but I began to wonder how long it’d be before I could get myself into a competition which would actually accept my entry and in which I might have had a ghost of a chance. Local cocktail competitions tend to be made up of bartenders with exponentially greater skills than mine. I was over the moon to be a part of this one … although it was technically not a cocktail competition, actually, as the Bowl of Punch predated the cocktail by a couple of centuries.

There were originally six finalists but unfortunately one couldn’t make it, so the five of us presented our punches to a paying and thirsty crowd of about 100 people at Malo. Here was mine:

PONCHE RELAJANTE
(“Relaxing Punch”)

32 ounces Gran Centenario Rosangel tequila.
8 ounces Del Maguey Minero Mezcal.
8 ounces fino sherry.
1 cup Demerara sugar.
2 lemons and 4 limes (or enough for 1/2 cup juice from each)
6 ounces Guaycura Liqueur de Damiana
2 ounces Licor 43 (Cuarenta y Tres)
48 ounces (3 pints) Té de 7 Azahares (Mexican “7 Blossoms” herbal tea)
16 ounces water
35 dashes (about 1/2 oz) Bittermens Xocolatl Mole bitters
35 dashes (about 1/2 oz) Fee’s Whiskey Barrel-Aged bitters
Lemon, lime and orange slices
Pomegranate seeds

Peel the lemons with a sharp vegetable peeler (zest only, no pith). Juice the fruit, strain the juice and measure until you have 1/2 cup each of lemon and lime juices for a total of 1 cup of citrus. Add the sugar to a punch bowl and muddle the lemon peels in the sugar until you’ve extracted the oils, and the sugar gets a bit wet and clumpy with lemon oil. Let that sit for a while if you have the time.

Add the tea and citrus, and stir until sugar is dissolved. Remove the peels with a slotted spoon. Add the spirits, sherry, liqueurs and bitters. Chill. Add a large block of ice (freezing a stainless steel bowl full of water works well). Garnish the punch and ice block with slices of lemon, lime and orange, and scattered pomegranate seeds.

Serve about a 4-ounce serving in a punch cup. Garnish each serving with a lime wheel and a spoonful of pomegranate seeds.

YIELD: 34 four-ounce servings.

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Having only one day in which to do it is beyond frustrating.

All in all, though, we did a fairly good job imbibing on our whopping one whirlwind day in London, culminating in some truly fabulous cocktails. Before all the tippling began, we started our day with a non-alcoholic beverage which was memorable enough not to get lost amidst all the ciders, beers, bitters, ales, porters, stouts and cocktails.

Fiona made us breakfast both mornings at Hampton Court (and for the next three days in Shropshire too!), and her breakfasts featured a wonderful product called Copella Apple & Elderflower Juice from Boxford Farm in Suffolk. Holy bejeebies, that stuff’s good — fresh-pressed and filtered apple juice, not from concentrate, and very gently infused with elderflowers. It makes me want to get out the Laird’s Straight Apple Brandy and St. Germain and start making cocktails. I now want this for breakfast every day, but it seems that I’ll have to move to the U.K. to do it. Sigh. (You lot across the pond are lucky to have this!)

While we were omnomnomnomming on our bacon and sausage baps, pork belly butties, bits of black pudding and tastes of curries at Borough Market, we sampled another of the great British institutions — cider. Specifically, New Forest Cider from Hampshire, who had a lovely little shop in the market. Hard ciders these were, of course, in varying strengths and varieties, including the wonderful pear cider that’s called “perry.” As it was a bit nippy that day we had a hot mulled cider with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and allspice (oh boy), plus I sampled the perry as well. Wonderful stuff that, fairly hefty at 7% ABV, which can sneak up on you. Just a bit of a fizz, light and peary (perry!) and very refreshing.

We couldn’t be in London without going to a pub, of course, and although I could spend days doing nothing but pubbing we kinda had to pick just one. John’s first choice had closed for the afternoon, and then we found a fairly traditional place called The Mudlark, near London Bridge. Not the world’s best but perfectly nice, a small inside with a much larger heated outdoor seating area, what looked to be quite good pub food (bangers and mash with a variety of local sausages available) and some truly excellent beers. The ones we had were all from Timothy Taylor, a Yorkshire brewery. John and Fiona had their Landlord Bitter, a strong pale ale. Wesly got an Autumn Brew by a brewery which escapes me (care to fill that in, Wes?), and I had another Taylor’s brew, the Golden Best, an amber-coloured brew classified as a “mild.” A bit lower in alcohol that what the others were drinking, nice citrusy notes and hoppy bitterness … yum.

Sadly, I didn’t get pictures of any of the beer. Ah well. I guess I was too busy drinking it!

Whirlwinding around London the rest of the afternoon finally took us to the Connaught Hotel in Mayfair. One of London’s nicest hotels, they’ve revamped their bars a few years back and are now one of the city’s top cocktail destinations. Our gracious guide for the evening was our friend Jay Hepburn (cocktailian extraordinaire and author of the superb weblog Oh Gosh!). Of the hotel’s two bars he suggested we meet at The Connaught Bar, and we did, only a few minutes late — highly uncharacteristic of us! Well, when cocktails are concerned, we can surely walk a little faster.

It’s a beautiful space — a wonderful Art Deco look, gorgeous sparkly-silvery walls, mirrors all around, etched glass panels, a beautiful bar, very comfortable leather furniture in the booths and around the tables, and a pretty stunning cocktail menu. The main sections of the menu are “Revisited,” featuring classic cocktails, often done with the Connaught’s own twist; “Seasonal,” featuring the best of what’s in the markets now, and “Fusion,” which is kind of anything-goes, old-meets-new, and the like.

Typically difficult choice when looking at a menu like this, but after some hemming and hawing I decided on my first drink, from the Seasonal section:

THE NJ SOUR

1 fresh fig
35ml applejack brandy (I’d recommend Laird’s bonded)
10ml orange curaçao
10ml Averna amaro
20ml fresh lemon juice
15ml homemade pomegranate grenadine

Muddle the fruit and shake all the ingredients with ice. Double strain into an ice-filled Old Fashioned glass. Garnish with a dry lemon wheel.

Oh man … absolutely delicious! I’m kicking myself that I didn’t do more with our wonderful Black Mission figs from our backyard (other than eat them) and that I didn’t learn this drink while the tree was about to fall over with the weight of all our figs, because I would have made this a few times a week. Beautiful sweet fresh fig flavor, nice touch of bitter from the amaro, just enough balance in the sweet and sour, and very refreshing.

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My friend Steve was reviewing the show for Variety and kindly offered to bring me as his plus-one (read his review here). After several uncertain moments regarding misplaced will-call tickets that made me worry we’d miss the show entirely, we finally got in the door thanks to a very nice and helpful manager at the theatre, only having missed about half of Josh Ritter‘s wonderful opening set. That was a nice surprise; I didn’t know he’d be playing support until we got there. If you haven’t heard of him I highly recommend you check him out — he’s an Idaho-born singer and songwriter in the folk and folk-rock vein, lesser-known here but huge in Ireland, mostly thanks to Glen having spotted him early on and championed his work.

When The Swell Season finally took the stage it’s as if we got three shows in one — Glen and Markéta began solo, as their previous performances had been, and then were joined by The Frames as a backup band. For one large part of the set we were treated to Glen performing solo (including a great rendition of Van the Man’s “Astral Weeks,” which I’ve heard him do before and could hear him do again a hundred times) — we could have all been on Grafton Street.

Markéta did get to take a few turns on lead vocals (including one with a Czech singer whose name escapes me), and although her piano playing is a strong part of the band’s sound I do agree with Steve’s observation that it’s a bit of an uneven musical partnership. Glen’s definitely way out front, with Markéta sometimes feeling like a sideman. She’s a wonderfully talented musician but the force of her personality is no match for Glen’s — almost nobody’s is, really. He’s a powerhouse, and I agree with Damien Dempsey’s comment that Glen’s the most passionate singer he’s ever seen.

Glen had mentioned that thanks to someone giving him the complete DVD box set of “Freaks and Geeks” he had become a huge fan (yay!), and to top that off got a chance to meet Jason Segal at a gig. They remained in touch and became friends, and we got an extra-special L.A. treat when Jason came on stage, sat at the piano and performed his own composition — a deeply moving, heartfelt and introspective song about using his celebrity status to coax a willing female Swell Season fan from the audience into the sack. I’m pretty sure this video was shot by the person sitting right in front of me.

And yep, apparently that’s really his phone number.

The show ended on a pitch-perfect note, with Glen bringing up The Clancy Brothers and noting that Liam Clancy is the only one left alive. He did a Clancy Brothers song for us, a traditional number called “The Parting Glass” that I actually first learned from the singing of The Voice Squad. It’s a longtime favorite and one that never fails to get the tears welling up.

Last year when Glen and Mar won their Oscar I came up with a cocktail in their honor, one that included both Irish and Czech ingredients. Wes and I revisited it the other night, and it’s still a keeper, I think. Yet another Manhattan variation, but it works and it’s tasty.

THE SWELL SEASON COCKTAIL

2 ounces blended Irish whiskey.
1/2 ounce Becherovka.
1/2 ounce Punt E Mes.
1 dash Angostura bitters.
Lemon peel.

Combine with ice, stir for at least 20 seconds and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Express the oil from the lemon peel and add as garnish.

For the Irish whiskey, I recommend Jameson’s or Tullamore Dew, especially the 12-year-old varieties. Otherwise, your favorite blended Irish will do nicely.

Finally, check out this terrific video clip Mary sent me — it’s from a Swell Season concert in Houston. Glen likes to have people sing along, and he’ll usually do a little run-through of the parts that require audience singing. He heard a voice in the crowd that he liked so much he invited her on stage to sing it with them.

Wow. I wanna go up on stage and sing with The Swell Season! I guess I’d better start practicing.

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A few months ago they debuted several new house originals on their cocktail menu, and I’ve been working my way through them ever since. Head barman Vincenzo Marianella is primarily responsible for the menu, and consequently we see lots of bitters and amari, plus some other Italian ingredients. One of these is the newly-reformulated liqueur Galliano, first developed in Italy in 1896 by a distiller named Arturo Vaccari (but now owned and developed by Lucas Bols in The Netherlands). Galliano’s infamy came about with the development of a drink in the 1960s called the Harvey Wallbanger, merely a Screwdriver with a Galliano float. The old liqueur, in that tall, beautiful bottle that doesn’t fit in your bar or on any shelf, was a very sweet vanilla-heavy concoction that most bartenders didn’t seem to have much use for, and if you ended up with a bottle chances are it remained rather full for many years, until its yellow coloring faded.

Recently Bols reformulated Galliano to its original recipe, now calling it Liquore Galliano L’Autentico. It’s a lot less sweet, with a higher proof, anise predominant in front but a broad base of herbs and spices, and the vanilla relegated to much more of a supporting role. Actually, it’s really good now, much more useful in cocktails, and you see it popping up in drinks at Copa here and there, both in improvised “market cocktails” as well as on the menu.

The new one I tried is the Custer, with Galliano providing sweetness and a spice base to the already nicely spicy base spirit, accented by two kinds of bitters taking the directions out to both fruity-tart and vegetal. I watched the bartender pretty closely, and this recipe seems to be spot-on.

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One of the very greatest cocktails in the history of Humankind, in the top five certainly, is the Manhattan Cocktail. Even though it’s basic — whiskey, sweet vermouth, bitters — there are many subtle variations. Bourbon or rye (I prefer the latter, but I’ve had dynamite Bourbon Manhattans depending on the Bourbon), brand of sweet vermouth, 2:1 or 3:1 (I think 4:1 is not enough vermouth), type of bitters. We’ve made dozens of variations, and enjoyed them all.

For the record, you may not omit the bitters in a Manhattan any more than you would cook a steak without salt and pepper. It’s worse than that, actually, and you are free to politely but firmly correct anyone who claims that “nobody wants bitters in a Manhattan,” which I’ve actually had some bartenders say to me. It’s like a chef saying that no one wants their food seasoned.

Here’s how we make them at home most of the time.

The Manhattan Cocktail

2 ounces Rittenhouse 100 proof rye whiskey.
1 ounce Carpano Antica Formula sweet vermouth.
2 dashes Angostura bitters.

Combine in a mixing glass with cracked ice and stir for 20-30 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a brandied cherry or, for a drier and more sophisticated flavor, express the oil from a lemon peel over the drink and garnish with the peel.

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Last Thursday night was another edition of Thursday Drink Night, taking place as usual in the Mixoloseum Chat Room. Bartenders, mixologists, cocktail writers, enthusiasts and more join into an affable rabble as we mix drinks and stay up too late.   TDN always has a theme, and sometimes an official sponsor, and last night it was a new product called Square One Botanical Spirit.  “Botanical Spirit”?  What the hell’s that?  Good question.

DRAMATIQUE™ bottle photo by CocktailNerd

Square One is most well known as a company that makes organic vodka. I understand it’s quite good as vodkas go, but as I’m not a vodka man I never paid it much attention.  Then came their second release, a cucumber flavored vodka that I got to try at The Sporting Life, a monthly gathering of local L.A. bartenders and cocktail nerds, with drinks made with the product by H. Joseph Ehrmann of Elixir in San Francisco.  H. made us some mighy fine drinks with it, and I found it to be quite a bit more interesting than most flavored vodkas I’d come across.

Recently Square One released Botanical, which is quite pointedly not labelled as a vodka.  It’s far, far more than a flavored vodka, and almost resembles a gin in its botanical complexity.  In fact, if it contained juniper (which it does not), it’d be a pretty tasty New Western-style gin.  As it is, it’s a pretty tasty … um, something.  We don’t exactly know what to call it.  It’s not flavored vodka, but more.  It’s not gin because there’s no juniper, not aquavit because there’s no caraway.  So far, it’s pretty unique, and perhaps “specialty spirit” comes closest, clunky as that is.

Square One Botanical’s botanicals include pear (which is the most forward), lavender, rose, chamomile, lemon verbena (a flavor and aroma that I adore; I wash with lemon verbena-scented soap every day), rosemary, coriander and citrus peel, in a base of neutral rye grain spirit that’s given as clean a fermentation as possible, just one pass through the column still and one simple filtration.  Another difference between this and a gin (besides the lack of juniper, of course) is that the botanicals go in afterward, and aren’t in the still during distillation.

The pear comes up in front, not like a pear-infused vodka (most of which I don’t really like) and not nearly as strong as a pear eau-de-vie, but still impossible to miss.  The lavender and rose gently envelop it, and any other lavender element you’d care to add to a cocktail based on this spirit (syrup, tincture or bitters) would go quite nicely.  The other spices are subtle, but provide a cushion upon which the flavor structure rests.  I really have to hand it to Square One for thinking outside the box on this one.  They wanted to produce something different, and they did — not only that, it’s good.

In coming up with an original cocktail for TDN my first thought was to treat it like a gin and make something Martini-like with it, just Square One Botanical with perhaps some Dolin Blanc sweet white vermouth to accent its fruity notes, but I decided to skip over that and head for something a bit more complex.  (I still might try that, though.)  I wanted some citrus to go along with that pear, some ginger too (I love that combination), and I wanted to boost the pear and lavender notes inherent in the spirit.  Here’s what I came up with.

THE AQUARIA COCKTAIL

2 ounces Square One Botanical spirit
1/2 ounce Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur
1/4 ounce fresh lime juice
1/4 ounce fresh orange juice
2 barspoons pear eau-de-vie (I used Purkhart)
1 dash Fee’s Old Fashion Aromatic Bitters
1 dash Scrappy’s Lavender Bitters (or lavender tincture)

Combine in a mixing glass, add ice, pop the shaker tin on and shake for a slow count to ten. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass, garnish with an orange peel.

The lavender bitters are optional, since they’re not easy to get.  Scrappy’s Bitters are a small-batch bitters maker out of (I think) Seattle, and while their lavender bitters are pretty one-note (lavender, with a bitter base) it works beautifully with this drink.  I think it’d work even better with Bobby Heugel’s house-made lavender-vanilla bitters from Anvil, but as I didn’t have any this did the trick.  In fact, I’m considering adding some vanilla extract to Scrappy’s to see how that works.

See the Mixoloseum weblog for more original recipes using Square One Botanical that flew into the ether that night — there were some mighty fine ones.

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Alas, no photos, because it was dim (like I like it) and my iPhone camera doesn’t do well in dim, and I didn’t have my regular camera with me, and y’know, sometimes I just want to drink and talk and socialize and have a good time and not have to worry about lugging cameras around and popping off flashes in dim bars for the frakkin’ weblog. (Sorry, I love you all but I’m sure you understand.) I’m happy to write about it, though!

First cocktail was an Aviation Gin take on a classic Dry Martini, which Ryan referred to as a 7th Street Dry. “For a true dry Martini, I really think you need a London Dry Gin, which Aviation is not,” Ryan said. But treating Aviation as if it were in a 4:1 Martini was still mighty tasty. Take two ounces Aviation Gin, a half ounce of Dolin Dry Vermouth (specifically) and two dashes of Angostura orange bitters, with a nice big spray of oil from a lemon twist. The other botanicals in the gin, the cardamom and lavender especially, play beautifully with the herbal bouquet of the Dolin vermouth. Yummers.

The second one I had … well, I have to confess, it was so beautiful I kinda wish I did have a good picture of it. Amongst the Florence flasks full of cocktail ingredients that were arrayed along the bar was one containing a slightly foamy, brilliantly deep-red fluid that almost looked like Tru Blood. It was, in fact, fresh extracted red bell pepper juice, key ingredient in another of Ryan’s originals:

PEPPER SMASH

2 ounces Aviation Gin.
1 ounce fresh extracted red bell pepper juice.
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice.
3/4 ounce clover honey syrup.
2 mint sprigs.

In a mixing glass, lightly bruise one mint sprig (do not crush), then add the spirits, juices and cracked ice. Shake until cold, then strain into a cocktail couple. Spank the other mint sprig over the cocktail, and garnish.

This was really, really lovely. I love savory cocktails that have more vegetal flavors, and this one was perfectly balanced between sweet (with nice flavor from the honey) and sour, plus the bell pepper juice with its own sweetness and crispness … you can almost feel the texture of biting into a piece of pepper. Gorgeous color too. I wanted to go home and juice a bunch of red peppers! Ryan consulted on the cocktail menu at the Westside Tavern in West L.A. and this is on their menu, so head on over and have one or three.

Among the others we tasted were an Alaska Cocktail (2:1 gin to yellow Chartreuse, and 2 dashes orange bitters) and an Aviation (natch), plus we watched him make for someone else a Blackberry Honey Collins that looked and sounded delicious, but I needed to drive home, alas, so it was water by that point.

I didn’t ask how to make a Blackberry Honey Collins, but off the top of my head I’d say 2 ounces gin (Aviation, in this case), 1 ounce lemon juice, 3/4 ounce 1:1 honey syrup, four or five blackberries muddled in the gin first, shake and strain into Collins glass over ice, top with soda, stir, lemon wheel garnish.

Ryan was encouraging us to create new cocktails that play specifically to the flavor characteristics of Aviation, as a “New Western Dry” style gin, rather than simply drop it into coctkails thave been traditionally made with London Dry. Given that the liquor fairy just brought me a bottle, I think we’ll do just that. Let’s see if I can manage at least one or two by the end of the month. (Good luck with that!)

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A week ago last night Malo Taquería in Silver Lake hosted a live, in-house edition of Thursday Drink Night. In case you hadn’t seen a mention of it around these parts, TDN is a presentation of The Mixoloseum, hosted weekly in its online chat room from 4pm until around midnight Pacific Time (7pm until when the East Coasters get tired, Eastern Time) in which a topic or particular spirit is explored by the participants, many drinks are made far and wide and we sample, critique and discuss. It’s a lot of fun, and you should join in sometime (there’s usually always someone in the chat room, not just on Thursday nights).

On Thursday, September 10, the sponsored product was Kahlúa Coffee Cream, a not-yet-released product that should be out within the next month or so, in time for the holidays. It’s a cream version of the well-known coffee liqueur, and should prove to be very popular.

Of course, I being me, problem child that I am … I’m not a fan of cream liqueurs in general. Kahlúa Coffee Cream is a good product though, with a robust coffee flavor (100% Arabica beans used in its production, as with the main liqueurs) and the creaminess isn’t too cloying, with a relatively light mouthfeel. It’s excellent on its own over ice, or poured into coffee … but liqueurs like this are notoriously difficult to mix with. Despite my dislike for cream liqueurs, I wanted to come up with a drink that did justice to the sponsor’s product, but was tailored to my own taste.

My solution? Add a trainload of bitters to it.

My first idea was for what I called the “Caffè Flip,” in which Kahlúa Coffee Cream was the base and which I augmented with Fernet Branca (Fernet and coffee is a well-known combination). I tried it at home and really liked it. Some tasters in the chat room preferred it with 1/2 ounce Fernet, but I like it at 3/4.

CAFFÈ FLIP

2 ounces Kahlúa Coffee Cream.
1/2 to 3/4 ounce Fernet Branca.
1 whole egg, separated.
3 dashes Fee’s Aztec Chocolate Bitters.
3 dashes Fee’s Old-Fashion Aromatic Bitters.
Nutmeg.

Separate the egg, reserving the yolk, and dry-shake the white without ice for 30 seconds. Add the remaining ingredients and yolk with ice and shake for 15-20 seconds.

Strain into a wine or port goblet and top with grated nutmeg.

I packed my bartending kit and headed to Malo, armed with the necessary bitters just in case the bar didn’t have them. They did, in fact (well-stocked bar, y’all!), but to my surprise they had no Fernet Branca in the bar! Ah well, I should have known that a tequila bar might not necessarily carry strong Italian bitters. It is for this very kind of occasion (plus indigestion, overindulgence and sheer craving) that I keep a flask of Fernet with me most of the time. However, I neglected to refill it before heading over, sigh.

I was searching behind the small service bar for something I could substitute, when Marleigh suggested, “How ’bout Angostura? I think that’s all we’ve got.” Bingo!

Marleigh and me, mixing at Malo. Photo shamelessly stolen from Matt Robold

This version, which I think I like even better, switched languages from Italian to Spanish, as Trinidad is closer to South America than it is to Italy. If it’s too bitter for you, use the smaller amount of Angostura, but I prefer it with the 3/4 ounce amount.

In case you were wondering, the reason for the separation of the egg is because when I tried to shake all of it together, I didn’t get a satisfying head of the kind I like when I make egg drinks. There must be some food chemistry at work here with the cream content of the liqueur, I suppose. When I tried separating the egg and dry-shaking the white first, then adding the remaning ingredients and yolk, I got the nice, thick, creamy head you see above you (which would be even nicer, thicker and creamier had my egg been and not two days after the sell-by date).

CAFÉ FLIP

2 ounces Kahlúa Coffee Cream.
1/2 to 3/4 ounce Angostura bitters.
1 whole egg, separated.
3 dashes Fee’s Aztec Chocolate Bitters.
3 dashes Fee’s Old-Fashion Aromatic Bitters.
Nutmeg.

Separate the egg, reserving the yolk, and dry-shake the white without ice for 30 seconds. Add the remaining ingredients and yolk with ice and shake for 15-20 seconds.

Strain into a wine or port goblet and top with grated nutmeg.

I thought about a No. 2 version of this with Kahlúa Especial and rum instead of the cream liqueur, and tried it. Y’know what? It works better with the cream liqueur. Lesson learned.

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One of my friends wrote us a real estate ad: “Mordor-adjacent, with dramatic views of Mount Doom.”

That’s about eight miles away. It’s far, and we’re not particularly worried so far, but it’s scary and freaky and very disquieting to see sheets of flame coming off the top of that mountain. So, a sheet of flame that’s about 3/8 inch tall from eight miles away is how tall exactly? 0.375″ in degrees of arc, divided by …. uhh … math geeks, feel free to chime in. (I’m figuring about 80 feet.)

Well, we figured that if the air was going to be full of smoke (oddly enough, we hardly smelled any last night, due to the lack of wind), we ought to drink some smoky drinks too. Scots whisky was appointed.

Copper Swan Cocktail
(Created by Gary Regan, 2000)

2-1/2 ounces Highland Park single malt Scotch whisky.
3/4 ounce apricot brandy (liqueur, not the eau-de-vie).
Lemon twist.

Stir with ice for 20 seconds. Strain into chilled cocktail glass and serve up with a twist or, if you prefer, into an Old Fashioned glass with fresh ice.

The name came from the swanlike copper neck of old copper pot stills, which are traditionally used to make single malt Scots whisky. This was one of a series of single malt Scotch cocktails Gaz created, resulting in aghast cries from those who assert that one should never mix a single malt Scotch. “Garbage in, garbage out!” he rightly replied. I chose to use Rothman & Winter’s Orchard Apricot rather than Apry for its lower sugar content. We didn’t have any Highland Park 12 in the house, so I went with the 18. Lest you gasp in horror … this was a frakking fantastic drink.

Lucques Restaurant in West Hollywood, CA makes a variation of this that looks interesting, kind of a blend between this, a Rob Roy and a Breakfast Martini. It’s sufficiently different such that it should have its own name, I think, although they still call it by the same name as the original. I think it deserves at least a numeric distinguishment.

Copper Swan Cocktail No. 2
(Adapted by Lucques Restaurant, West Hollywood, CA)

1-1/2 ounces Highland single malt Scotch.
1/2 ounce sweet vermouth.
1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice.
1 tablespoon apricot preserves.
2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters.

Combine with ice, shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange twist.

Given the proximity of the fires, and the “Oh, FECK!” factor, even though they weren’t close enough to be really worrisome, we resolved to keep drinking, and stayed in the Scotch oeuvre. This next one is from Harry Craddock’s Savoy Cocktail Book, yet in a Gargantuan quantity for six people. We adapted it thusly and found it to be delightful, like a Rob Roy but with near-equal proportions, far more bitters and a little more sweetening to offset the bitters. Lovely.

Flying Scotsman

1-1/2 ounces Famous Grouse Scotch.
1-1/4 ounces Carpano Antica sweet vermouth.
1 teaspoon Peychaud’s bitters.
1 teaspoon simple syrup.

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Lemon twist garnish.

We’re still not getting much smoke tonight, although my eyes burned a bit this morning. The fire’s moving toward Altadena, and we have good friends who are only about a mile away from its current position. Wish them, and everyone else in Altadena and La Cañada-Flintridge, the best of luck.

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As usual, Alton has done his homework (which I suspect included reading David Wondrich’sImbibe!), and right off the bat taught the Teeming Masses the long-cherished basic formula for punch … while dressed as a 17th Century buccaneer:

ONE of sour
TWO of sweet
THREE of strong
FOUR of weak, plus
SPICE.

(Alton, of course, being a fellow geek, had has deckhand recite, as he got to the fifth part, “He who controls the spice controls the Universe … the spice must flow!” Heh.)

He started off with a very simple punch recipe, using pints as the measurement and making a rather huge batch. One of lime juice (with the spent hulls), two of Demerara sugar, three of Batavia Arrack (to my surprise and delight) and four of tea (warm, so as to help dissolve the sugar), with grated nutmeg. The arrack will likely be difficult for some folks to find, but a title card said that it’s available “on the world wide web” (the source for all things).

The main punch recipe he dealt out, though, looked mighty good, and I’m looking forward to trying it:

CAPE FEAR PUNCH

For the base:
750ml rye whiskey.
750ml water.
1/2 cup Demerara sugar.
3 bags green tea (although I’d be tempted to substitute oolong).
375ml rum.
375ml Cognac.
4 whole lemons.

For the punch:
2 small oranges, thinly sliced.
4 small lemons, thinly sliced.
2 750ml bottles of sparkling wine.
1 liter sparkling water.
Large ice block.
Nutmeg.

For the base: Pour the rye whiskey into a 4-quart container. Fill the now empty rye whiskey bottle with water, pour into an electric kettle or saucepan, and bring to a boil. Add the sugar and stir until the temperature drops to 190 degrees F. Place the tea bags in the kettle and steep for 3 minutes.

Add the tea, rum, and Cognac to the whiskey. Peel the zest from the lemons, being careful to get only the yellow zest and not the white pith. (A vegetable peeler works best.) Wrap the peeled lemons in plastic wrap and reserve in the refrigerator. Add the lemon zest to the mixture, and stir to combine. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

For the punch: Strain the base into a large punch bowl. Juice the reserved lemons and add to the punch bowl. When ready to serve, add the sliced oranges, lemons, sparkling wine, and seltzer water; stir to combine. Add the ice block and serve with freshly grated nutmeg per serving to taste.

You can do this in two batches, to keep the bubbles fresh. Add half of the base with one bottle of the sparkling wine and half the seltzer, and repeat when your guests have drained the bowl.

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When I went through this list and counted, I found that I had had 89 of those libations. Last night, I decided to start for the finish line and raised the total to 90.

Fourth Degree
(as served by Harry Craddock, Savoy Hotel, London, 1930s)

3/4 ounce London dry gin.
3/4 ounce sweet vermouth.
3/4 ounce dry vermouth.
2 barspoons (1 tsp) absinthe.

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon peel.

Erik, as part of his long exploration of the Savoy Cocktail Book, wrote about the Fourth Degree and said he’d enjoyed it more by drying it out a bit, upping the gin to 2 ounces (and using Junipero) and 1/2 ounce each of the vermouths. However, the original proportions worked out beautifully for him by using Tanqueray, Dolin Dry and Martini & Rossi Rosso. Last night we used Beefeater, Dolin Dry and Dolin Rouge (with PF 1901 as the absinthe), and it was pretty damn good. I’ll try the drier version too, and see what I think.

Next, the Coffee Cocktail will make it 91.

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After the lovely Decadence & Elegance, in the section of the menu called “The Boys from Out of Town,” featuring drinks by bartender friends from around the world, I spied one that made me go “Ooh!” It’s yet another Manhattan variation, but man … there’s something about Manhattan variations that I just can’t get enough of. Simple tweaking of the bitter component, or a small addition of another flavor, can transform it into such a new and wonderful drink. (The Manhattan itself might just end up being my favorite drink, period … it regularly gets into a shoving match with the Sazerac for that position.)

I really like the bartender who came up with this one — great guy, and a monstrous talent. I hope I finally get my procrastinatory behind to his city and into his bar sometime soon. You can use any good sweet vermouth for this, but Carpano Antica is specified (as it’s the best). Use Laird’s 100 proof bonded apple brandy for this, too. I think they had run out the other night and were using Laird’s applejack, and the former is far superior. I decided to kick this up a notch and used Laird’s 12 Year Old Apple Brandy the other night, as I was feeling extravagant. Hoo-boy …

NEWARK
(by Jim Meehan, PDT, New York)

2 ounces Laird’s bonded apple brandy.
1 ounce Carpano Antica Formula sweet vermouth.
1/4 ounce Maraschino liqueur.
2 barspoons Fernet Branca.

Combine with ice and stir for 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. No garnish.

This drink is wonderful. The alchemy created brings notes that are chocolatey with even a hint of mint from the Fernet, the medicinality of which fades far into the background with the combined efforts of that beautiful, bright apple flavor and the deep, rich spiciness of the Carpano. Bravo, Jim! (And thanks to Roberto for making it for me, and for taking such good care of us last Wednesday night, and thanks to Joel for confirming the proportions for me.)

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So yes, a Clover Club to start, please! I was considering continuing in that vein to save a little money, but the rest of the drinks on the regular menu are so damned good, and then of course I spied the bottle of housemade Pimento Dram behind the bar (Damian’s recipe, I believe) … well, that did it. I watched him make this one, so I’m pretty certain about the proportions.

DECADENCE & ELEGANCE

1-3/4 ounces Courvoisier Exclusif Cognac.
1/2 ounce Apry.
3 barspoons Pimento Dram.
2 barspoons Cynar.
3 dashes Angostura Orange Bitters.
2 orange peels.

Spray the inside of a chilled cocktail glass with the oil from a large piece of orange peel. Discard the peel. Combine ingredients and stir for 30 seconds. Strain into the prepared cocktail glass, and garnish with another orange twist.

Lovely drink. The Apry, allspice and Cynar play together very nicely, and the double dose of orange oil kicks up the aromatics that much more.

I’m breaking this post into two to make sure the cocktails index separately, so on to Part 2 …

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Rittenhouse Daisy
(by John Coltharp, Seven Grand, Los Angeles)

1-3/4 ounces Rittenhouse 100 bonded rye whiskey.
1 ounce fresh lemon juice.
1/2 ounce Grand Marnier.
1/2 ounce simple syrup.
2 dashes Angostura bitters.
2 small splashes soda.

Combine with ice in a shaker and shake for at least 10 seconds. Strain into a Delmonico glass or an Old Fashioned glass.

That was mighty good. Now, my rather liberally-interpreted, memory-marinated-in-whiskey version that I came up with the next day, which isn’t too bad if’n I do say so myself.

Rittenhouse Daisy No. 2

2 ounces Rittenhouse bonded rye whiskey.
1 ounce fresh lemon juice.
1/2 ounce yellow Chartreuse.
1 teaspoon simple syrup.
1 dash Angostura bitters.

Combine with ice in a shaker and shake for at least 10 seconds. Strain into a Delmonico glass or an Old Fashioned glass.

Back in the old days, a Daisy cocktail was spirit (brandy, rum, whiskey, gin, etc.) with lemon juice and sugar (differing from a sour in that there was usually only 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of sugar) plus a few barspoons of grenadine. To a lesser extent then, and far more often now, I see herbal liqueurs like Bénédictine, Grand Marnier or yellow Chartreuse being used instead of grenadine. This is A Good Thing.

Why? Speaking of grenadine … as you know, it’s easy peasy to make at home with real pomegranate juice. This grenadine works beautifully in countless classic cocktails that callf or that ingredient. Sadly, what you see in bars these days is more often than not red-dyed sugar syrup with artificial flavoring of some kind, which hasn’t been within five miles of an actual pomegranate. This does not work well in cocktails. At all.

Last night I was served the most execrable Mai Tai ever (in a place which shall remain nameless, from a bartender who was later described to me as being at the bottom of the talent scale at this particular establishment). It was described on their menu quite nicely, with the proper classic recipe: two rums, orange Curaçao, fresh lime juice, orgeat and simple syrup. That sounded good enough for me. A tall glass was filled with ice (okay, tall rather than short, that’s OK too), some premix was added (uh oh … well, maybe it was a housemade Mai Tai mix with the lime and syrups). Rums were added (Myers’s Dark and … Bacardi, sigh. Then just as I was about to think I’d be satisfied the bartender added what looked like a full jigger of grenadine, turning the entire drink beet red. One sip revealed that it also rendered the drink undrinkable. Sigh.

I returned it, politely and apologetically, saying “I’m so sorry, but this is so sweet I can’t drink it. I wasn’t expecting all that grenadine, as the menu didn’t specify it,” and politely asked if I could exchange it for something else. It was exchanged, but the waves of attitude signifed that that bartender now hated me. Oh well. What’s a guy to do? I’m not paying $10 for an undrinkable cocktail, especially when it’s not made the way that the establishment’s menu (which even described the history of the drink and touted that this was the original, proper recipe) specifically says it’s made.

Just say no to fake grenadine, and to grenadine abuse!

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That’s our theme this month for Mixology Monday XLI, hosted by Amelia at Felicia’s Speakeasy. Actually, to be specific, the theme is …“Vodka is Your Friend.”

What? C’mon, let’s not get hasty here. Then again, as she said, “The recent high profile bashings of vodkainterspersed with a few weak “yeah, buts…” left me wondering, is vodka the axis of evil, our most dangerous enemy? While it may not be the life of the party, experts agree: Vodka’s obituary does not have to be written just yet. Vodka can be a “safer” spirit for those who can’t be convinced to take risks. Vodka also offers a Zen-like simplicity. Because it is relatively flavorless, using vodka as a base of a cocktail means you get to start with a blank chalkboard. Beginner’s mind. What flavor would you like to be today?”

Sure, good points all. Haven’t we made progress, though, in getting the public to drink more adventurous spirits? Yes, but it’s still the best-selling spirit in the United States, although its hold on the market isn’t as strong as it once was. Perhaps the “I don’t get no respect, no respect at all” attitude from multitudes of bartenders and cocktail geeks for the last several years might have made an impact. There is the little detail that it doesn’t really taste like anything, and quotes like the one from Audrey Saunders I’ve always liked: “A vodka cocktail is a cocktail with a hole in it.”

But true confessions time … I had my vodka period. I had my infused vodka period. I had my time back in the ’90s when I drank … Cosmopolitans. I’ve come a long way since then — so have many of us. We scoff at the vodka & tonic drinkers who drink it just to get a buzz, and specifically because it doesn’t taste like anything (leaving less telltale traces on their breath). We scoff, we snort, we p’shaw.

But vodka has its uses, and we all know it.

Okay, there’s the “I only use vodka for making tinctures and preserving syrups,” which I admit saying. Then again, there’s … Moscow Mules! C’mon! Who doesn’t love a Moscow Mule? It’s summery, it’s refreshing, and you get to drink out of those cool copper mugs, if you have any (vintage ones are usually readily available on eBay). One of the first vodka cocktails I thought of when I started to think about this topic was one I had learned from Dave Wondrich in his book Esquire Drinks, which is the Gypsy cocktail. Paul Clarke wrote about that one at length for his MxMo post today, how vodka can be used to soften and stretch a liqueur as the primary flavor component of a cocktail (and the Gypsy’s a damned fine one).

Although some of us may look down at flavored vodkas or cocktails based on them, there are lots of excellent flavored vodkas out there. (Lots of crappy ones too, so caveat emptor.) To name two, the products from Hangar One and Modern Spirits are outstanding. Flavored vodkas have a long tradition in eastern Europe, from homemade infusions to more commercialized products like the Stolichnaya line. My absolute favorite of those, though, my favorite vodka and perhaps one of my favorite spirits, is Żubrówka.

Or “bison grass vodka”, which is perhaps a bit easier to pronounce than “zhu-BROOV-ka”. I had first heard about it from Dr. Cocktail about six years ago, and although I’d been meaning to try it for a while I’d never quite gotten around to it. Then our good friends Gregg and Mike had brought us some back from Paris, but the bottle sat there for a while. It’s the classic traditional Polish vodka, infused with native bison grass, which gives it an extremely distinctive flavor and straw-green color. Doc had been singing the praises of it for ages, while telling us the American brands have been artificially flavored for a while. Bison grass contains coumarin, a substance with anticoagulant properties that’s also responsible for much of its flavor, but the FDA bans it as a food additive in this country, and it hasn’t been legally imported since 1978. There was no Żubrówka at all in this country for two decades, until it was allowed back in 1999 when Polish producers figured out a way to come close to the flavor of the real thing while “neutralizing” the coumarin in the bison grass.

Waiting for an occasion, I suppose, we still hadn’t cracked open the bottle of Żubrówka that had been in our freezer since the boys brought it from Paris, but opportunity presented itself for a taste in November of ’04. We had dinner at Warszawa, the excellent Polish restaurant in Santa Monica, before heading to McCabe’s to see the Savoy Family Band play. It had been years since I’d been, and it was even better than I remember — bacon wrapped plums, crispy potato pancakes, grilled kielbasa sausages, pierogis of every description, beef stroganoff, thick pea soup with smoked ham and marjoram, smoked fish salad with dill … and Żubrówka! There it was, listed on the spirits menu, and what better time to try it than before a Polish meal. It arrived in a little vodka glass, ice cold right from the freezer.

I know a true Pole would scoff at me, but instead of knocking the whole thing back, I took a healthy sip first, as I wanted to savor it and get the entirety of the aroma and flavor.

Oh, my.

I instantly fell in love with this stuff. Spicy, yet almost sweet but not syrupy like a liqueur; paradoxically, it was dry yet reminded me of candy — traces of caramel and nougat and vanilla. It also tasted like green herbs, but not medicinal. I tasted flowers, and lemon, and even coconut (!), and so many things going on in there. This stuff’s dangerous. I immediately wanted more.

I’ve never read Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, but in it one character describes the flavor of Żubrówka as smelling of “freshly mown hay and spring flowers, of thyme and lavender, and it’s soft on the palate and so comfortable, it’s like listening to music by moonlight.” I can dig it.

After enjoying our Polish meal and two-plus hours of the finest Cajun music to be heard, the very first thing we did when we got home was to crack open our bottle of authentic Polish Żubrówka. The difference between the domestic Polish and European version and the type produced for export to America is that the most authentic Żubrówka has a long blade of bison grass in the bottle, and some American versions don’t due to USDA regulations. There’s a bit of artificial coloring and probably at least some artificial flavoring in the form of neutralized extracts to avoid the coumarin problem (at least one website claims that “true” bison grass vodka is now legal in all 50 states). The French bottling, which we had, looked like this.

It was goooooood. It was … well, it was like the stuff we had at the restaurant, only a bit more complex, certainly subtler. It was great. Unfortunately we ran out of that stuff pretty quickly once it was opened, and barring more trips to Paris or expensive shipping from Europe I think that for the time being I’ll still be happy with the American-export version.

They say that if you travel to Poland and start drinking with the locals, don’t ever try to outdrink them (unless you’re Russian, and then only maybe). I’d better be very careful. If I’m in Warszawa or Cracow, drinking with locals, and they bring this stuff out, I’m a dead man … ’cause it’s so good I would have no incentive to stop unless I become unconscious.

From what I understand, most if not all Poles would consider the consumption of Żubrówka in a cocktail as being a crime, an offence against decency, utter blasphemy. It’s to be consumed ice-cold, alone and quickly. However, there is one major exception …

This drink, which translates from Polish as “apple tart” or “apple pie” and is also sometimes called “Tatanka”, appears to be the one exception to the prohibition against mixing Żubrówka with anything else, and seems to be looked upon fondly.

Szarłotka
(pronounced “shar-WOT-ka”, I think)
1 ounce Żubrówka (Polish bison grass vodka).
3-4 ounces apple juice.
Lemon wedge.

In a heavy rocks glass, build over ice and stir.
Garnish with the lemon wedge.

This is a fantastic drink. It’s sweet, because it’s mostly juice, but if you use a good unsweetened one like Martinelli’s (or a good fresh-pressed cider, even) you won’t mind that a bit. Not only do our friends go mad with joy when they taste Żubrówka, they go even madder when they taste this drink. The flavor combination is wonderful. (“Can I have a pitcher of these?” our friend Gregory asked after his first taste.)

I think the proportions in that drink are pretty flexible — we’ve had success with 2 parts juice to 1 part vodka. As for other drinks … I’ve found a few web pages here and there with some other Żubrówka recipes, but most if not all of them look too liqueur-heavy and pretty unappealing. CocktailDB only had two, and one of them looked icky (3/10 Goldschlager, gaah). Contrary to what seems to be Polish popular opinion, I think that Żubrówka would make an excellent cocktail ingredient if used judiciously and carefully. The first one I decided to try is simply a takeoff on the above drink, only made drier and with a little bit more seasoning.

I reduced the juice content and added a complementary-flavored dry spirit, plus two other ingredients that lent some allspice and cinnamon to the flavor profile — they are apple pie spices, after all. It’s still a bit on the sweet side, but as all that comes from the juice it’s not cloying at all. If you want it drier (and stronger), cut the juice back to 1 ounce and up the brandy a bit. The proportions on this drink are very pliable — tweak them as you will.

I decided not to use a garnish but changed my mind after taking the picture and putting the lights away. I was too lazy to get them out again, so please do add the garnish.

Tatanka No. 2

1-1/4 ounces pure unsweetened apple juice.
3/4 ounce Żubrówka.
3/4 ounce Laird’s Bonded Apple Brandy.
1/4 ounce St. Elizabeth’s Allspice Dram.
1 dash Fee’s Old Fashion Aromatic Bitters.

Combine in a mixing glass with ice and stir for 30 seconds. If you’re using unfiltered apple juice that’s not clear, feel free to shake instead (10-12 seconds). Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a curly lemon twist.

Na zdrowie!

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Hmm, we’ll have to see about that new drink. Colbert Bumps for cocktail hour tonight!

THE COLBERT BUMP
(by Dave Wondrich, created for Stephen Colbert)

1-1/2 ounces gin.
1 ounce Cherry Heering.
1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice.
Soda water.

In a Collins glass, build over ice: gin, Heering, lemon juice, then top with soda and stir.

Contrary to stated instructions, feel free to use Democratic gin.

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TDN is a weekly gathering at The Mixoloseum Bar, a chat room where cocktail webbloggers, readers, enthusiasts, authors and even spirits industry folk gather on Thursday nights from 4pm-midnight Pacific time to make original cocktails, talk about them, make fun of each other and stay up too late. There’s a theme each week, whether it’s a specific product or a general base spirit or something like last night’s theme, “Equal Proportions.”

Can you make a good drink using equal proportions of the ingredients? Well sure, it’s been done all the time in cocktail history. My favorite example of this is the Negroni, equal parts of gin, Campari and sweet vermouth. The Sidecar began as an equally proportioned cocktail, of brandy, lemon juice and Cointreau. Thing is … that particular Sidecar doesn’t really taste balanced to me. I prefer it as 3:2:1, others at 2:1:1 (and some like the wacky Embury proportion of 8:2:1). Cocktails are all about balance, and when you’re constrained by a rule like this it can get tough to make a cocktail that’s properly balanced, and therein lay the challenge. The rules were to make an original cocktail using only equal proportions of your ingredients, with the exception being dashes of bitters or an egg white.

I was pretty happy with my entry, I must say. I started thinking about it on the way home, wanting to do something tequila-based and remembering something Misty Kalkofen of the bar Drink in Boston said recently, about how grapefruit bitters work well with yellow Chartreuse. DING! This one sprang fully-formed from my head, not unlike Athena. While I reserve the right to tweak the proportions later (e.g., the soda element won’t be constrained to the 3/4 ounce anymore, although I measured that amount in the original drink), I think it was pretty darn good as it was.

The grapefruit soda should be a high-quality one with a signifacant juice content. I thought that Ting, the Orangina-like grapefruit soda from Jamaica, would be ideal, but it’s not always easy to find. I couldn’t get to Galco’s before closing (and I knew they had some), so I ended up using IZZE Sparkling Grapefruit, which is 70% juices (grapefruit, apple, orange and white grape) with no added sugar. It had a terrific, fresh flavor and I think I’ll stick with this one, although I do want to try it with Ting. I wouldn’t use Fresca, but some of my bartender friends speak highly of Squirt, which I must confess I’ve never tried.

The name came from a rather infamous trip I took to Mexico back in college with some close friends. There were many adventures and inside jokes that survive until this day, and when I was trying to think of a name for a new tequila-based drink this one popped right out.

THE ANIMALITO

3/4 ounce añejo tequila (I used Partida).
3/4 ounce Laird’s bonded apple brandy.
3/4 ounce yellow Chartreuse.
3/4 ounce fresh lime juice.
2 dashes Bittermens Grapefruit Bitters (substitute Fee’s).
2 dashes Angostura Orange Bitters (substitute any other orange bitters).
IZZE Sparkling Grapefruit or Ting Grapefruit soda.
Grapefruit peel.

Combine the firsts four ingredients with the bitters in an Old Fashioned glass. Add ice and stir for 15 seconds or so. Top with grapefruit soda and stir briefly. Garnish with grapefruit peel.

Tart and refreshing, with a nice little bitter edge! I liked this very much, and so did the folks in the Mixo Bar (thanks, y’all!). I may try making it shaken and up with half the bitters and no soda, just for kicks.

This drink is dedicated to Mr. John Norbutas. (“I want those goddamned Animalitos.” Long story.)

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I had had a little trouble remembering the details about the Mezcal Old Fashioned I had, which thanks to the magic of post-editing due to Maks reminding me in email the morning after I posted this I was able to remember. (“Of course! How could I forget that one!” Um, maybe because you had about seven drinks that night?) Fortunately, it was not lost to history.

However, my last drink of the night I remembered very well. Maks and I had been talking about my experience at Anvil in Houston, and how Bobby Heugel made me that wonderful room temperature cocktail from their menu called The Brave (smoky single-village mezcal, blanco sotol, amaro, Curaçao and bitters, merely swirled together in a wine glass with a flamed orange peel), plus the knockoff of that drink that I came up with for one of the Drink.Write sessions (more on that one later). He pondered, and came up with another room temperature digestivo cocktail that I enjoyed very much, and which I don’t think had a name. I decided it to name it after the bar, in Italian, but if Maks has kept making it and has another name for it by now, I’ll most certainly change it.

Cura
(A most excellent digestivo whipped up on the spot
by Maks Pazuniak, Cure, New Orleans)

1 ounce rye whiskey.
1 ounce Aperol.
1 ounce Amaro Ramazotti.
3 barspoons Cointreau.
1 dash Peychaud’s bitters.
1 dash Regans’ orange bitters.

Combine in an Old Fashioned glass and swirl to mix.

That hit the spot.

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This is a drink from the book by Cure bartenders Kirk Estopinal and Maks Pazuniak [currently out of print but soon-to-be-reissued] which was created by Kyle Davidson from The Violet Hour in Chicago. It appears on Cure’s side menu, not the main one, and is a must-get. Again based on half-spirit, half-amaro, all the ingredients play off one another so well. It’s absolutely out of this world. It’s another one of those drinks that let the bitterness of the amaro be more assertive but still keep it in check (Cynar is relentlessly bitter, and one of the only amaros I don’t drink by itself). The description from the book tells you exactly what to expect:

Picture yourself in the limestone-walled courtyard of an Italian villa off the coast of the Riviera. You are surrounded by fragrant herbs and flowers, and the sea air is blowing gently. The sun is bright, but it’s not hot, and you have nothing to do all day but relax and savor the sensations all around you. Drinking this cocktail is kind of like that if somebody suddenly punched you in the stomach just as you were begining to doze off in the sun. In a good way.

Um … yeah you right.

THE ART OF CHOKE
(by Kyle Davidson, The Violet Hour, Chicago)

1 ounce white rum.
1 ounce Cynar.
1/8 ounce fresh lime juice.
1/8 ounce rich Demerara sugar syrup (2:1).
1/4 ounce green Chartreuse.
Sprig of mint.

Bruise the mint sprig with the other ingredients in a mixing glass. Stir with ice for half a minute, then strain over fresh ice into an Old Fashioned glass. Garnish with another mint sprig.

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Cynar is but one of many amaros I saw on the shelf behind the bar, Cure’s wonderful wall of booze. They had all my favorites, most of the ones readily available in the States, in fact, and then I spotted one that I’ve been having a hard time finding. Nobody in L.A. seems to have Amaro Nardini, which is produced by a maker of grappas and grappa-based liqueurs. Amaro Nardini is a grappa-based amaro too, with a flavor profile that (according to what I’d read) featured bitter orange, gentian and a bit of peppermint. I told Kirk I’d been wanting to try that one, so he poured me a taste. I tasted all that, plus a bit of nutmeg and clove, cinnamon, anise, a hint of coffee and a little candy sweetness, almost like toffee. Hoo, yum! Then Kirk smiled and asked if he could make me a cocktail with it. That’s a silly question. He then proceeded to apply a 2×4 to the side of my head … again, in the gentlest and best possible way.

NARDINI FLIP
(by Kirk Estopinal, Cure, New Orleans)

2-1/2 ounces Amaro Nardini.
1/4 – 1/2 ounces simple syrup (to taste).
1 whole egg.

Dry shake the egg for at least 20 seconds, then add the other ingredients with ice and shake hard. Strain into an Old Fashioned glass and add a single large ice cube.

A flip, containing nothing else but simple and amaro. I’d never thought of it, and I’m not entirely sure but I think Kirk made it up on the spot. It was fantastic — creamy and rich and spicy and sweet … there’s a magic, an alchemy that happens when an egg yolk goes into a cocktail, as Maks and Kirk talk about in their book when they show you two whole egg-bearing drinks, one of which I’ve had and the other I haven’t. The Coffee Cocktail (port, brandy, whole egg, simple and Angostura) is named for its color rather than its flavor, and the Chocolate Cocktail #2 (ruby port, yellow Chartreuse and whole egg), which apparently tastes something like chocolate (“a mindfuck cocktail,” they call it). Whole eggs in cocktails, folks. It’s a good thing. Drink more flips!

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Post tags: cocktails

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Next came the drink that wins the award for the longest cocktail name I’ve ever encountered, which we had difficulty remembering even while sober. Maks apologized for the length of the name but very pointedly did not offer to change it.

GROWING OLD AND DYING HAPPY IS A HOPE,
NOT AN INEVITABILITY
(by Maks Pazuniak, Cure, New Orleans)

2 ounces Cynar.
1 ounce Rittenhouse 100 proof rye whiskey.
Pinch of salt.
2 pieces of lemon peel.
Herbsaint.

Combine the Cynar, rye and salt in a mixing glass and stir briefly to dissolve the salt. Express the oil from the lemon peels and drop into the mixi