Looking through the Tales of the Cocktail listing this year yet another seminar caught my eye — Vermouth, conducted by Dr. Cocktail, Martin Doudoroff (his partner in CocktailDB) and Erica Duecy of Fodor’s. I was keenly interested in attending this seminar as I am a born-again vermouth drinker. Yes, a long time ago I used to fear vermouth, not unlike how I used to fear gin. As my interest in fine and classic cocktails began to develop, and I began collecting and studying old cocktail books, I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to get very far if I kept eliminating cocktails that contained gin or vermouth.

Quick lesson — vermouth is a fortified, aromatized white wine (even the red vermouth comes from a white wine base) in three main flavors — dry (or French), bianco (sweet white) and red (sweet, or Italian). The word vermouth itself comes from the German “wermut” which means … wormwood. That’s one of the bitter herbs used (or at least once used) in the making of this herb-infused wine, used initially as an aperitif and a tonic and as a way to mask the flavor of cheap white wine. Over the years it found its way into myriad cocktails due to its great flexibility as an ingredient.

I finally came into the world of vermouth via Italian / red / sweet vermouth, whichever appellation you prefer, about 8 years ago, and via the Manhattan, which quickly became one of my favorite cocktails. From there I made my way through countless classics, then to the Vermouth Cocktail itself (consisting solely of vermouth, bitters and grenadine) and eventually on to the summit of Mount Everest for those who quest to overcome a fear of gin and vermouth — the classic Martini, 2:1 (although I prefer a 5:1 proportion myself).

Unfortuately my keenness to attend this seminar didn’t keep me from being grievously late for it (we kept running into people we knew along the way), but we did get to taste a few things and hear about the Big Vermouth News — that Noilly Prat, maker of what’s probably the best dry vermouth in the mass market (“and that’s swill,” says Martin, which doesn’t say much for the rest of it), is reformulating its vermouth to go back to their old 1856 recipe, which will be spicier, more herbal, perhaps even a bit more bitter, and will perhaps change the face of Martini drinking. Sadly they managed not to get their promised samples to them in time for the seminar, but apparently we can expect to see this stuff everywhere before too much longer. [2009 update: The new product is now called Noilly Prat Original Dry, and it’s great stuff.]

Perhaps the most important lesson one can take from this seminar is this — unless you are a bar with high volume or you swill a lot of Martinis every day, buy white / dry vermouth IN SMALL BOTTLES 9375ml), and KEEP IT IN THE REFRIGERATOR. Even better, every time you open it spray in some of that inert wine preserver gas befoer you seal it up again. This stuff is wine, and wine goes bad; even fortified wines go bad eventually. The shelf life of white vermouth is a MAXIMUM of six months, maybe a year for the red in the fridge. I think one of the reason a lot of people say they hate vermouth in their Martinis is because someone’s made them a Martini using a bottle of cheap dry vermouth that’s been in the cabinet or bar for years and years and gets used a few drops at a time. The stuff went bad during the first Clinton adminstration, and you expect to be able to make a decent drink with it? Write a six-months-from-now expiration date on the label with a Sharpie, keep it in the fridge, and if you don’t use it up by then throw it away and buy more — it’s cheap.

One nice goodie we got at the seminar was a handout (yay, I love handouts!) of interesting things being done with vermouth at some top bars and restaurants these days. I’d be pleased to share those with you. Let’s start with this one.

Eve
House Apéritif, The Pegu Club, NYC
Created by Audrey Saunders

A 1-liter bottle Noilly Prat Original Dry vermouth.
8 Macintosh apples.
1 crab apple.

Slice the apples thin on a mandolin.

Pour vermouth over the apples until they’re submerged. Cover and refrigerate for 5 days, agitating the mixture a little bit each day.

Strain mixture back into the Noilly Prat bottle.

Serve a four-ounce pour, well-chilled, in a coupe glass (kind of a large Champagne saucer). For garnish, float a thin slice of crab apple over the drink.

This sounds fantastic, but I fear I might have a hard time finding one of the ingredients. Where, outside of Orr’s cheeks, am I going to find crab apples? Farmers’ markets, here I come — they’ll be in season during the fall.

Here’s another cocktail by Todd Thrasher of Restaurant Eve and The Majestic Café in Alexandria, Virginia, showing creative uses of vermouth.

Bittersweet Gin Fizz

2 ounces Bombay gin (regular, not Sapphire).
1/4 ounce sweet vermouth.
Dash of cherry bitters.
Carbonated sweet vermouth.

Pour over ice. Top the glass with the carbonated sweet vermouth (it will look like thte foamy head on a root beer). Garnish with microplane-grated orange peel.

Todd makes his own homemade sweet vermouth; use Carpano Antica for the drink, and perhaps Martini & Rossi or Cinzano for the carbonated version.

For the carbonated sweet vermouth: From 750ml sweet vermouth put 1/2 cup of it in a saucepan and heat. Remove mixture from heat and add two sheets of bloomed gelatin (1/2 of one envelope if using powdered). Whisk to dissolve the gelatin into the vermouth. Combine the vermouth-gelatin mixture with the remainder of the 750ml bottle of sweet vermouth. Let it cool and rest for a day. For service, pour the vermouth mixture into an old-fashioned soda siphon.

Wow. That sounds fantastic, but might be a bit much for home use rather than regular restaurant service. That’d be something great to serve at a cocktail party, though. Cherry bitters might be a bit of a stretch — there isn’t a good commercial product on the market at the moment. Fee’s makes a Cherry Bitters, but it tastes too Robitussin-y to me. For the moment you’re out of luck, unless you make or yown or if Jamie Boudreau lets you buy a bottle of his housemade cherry bitters at Vessel in Seattle. (He should be going commercial with those soon, though.)

This was one of the cocktails served by Audrey Saunders and Dale DeGroff at their Spirited Dinner at Commander’s Palace during Tales of the Cocktail 2007. Well, sort of.

The original recipe was a Coconut Water and Ginger Caipiroska, being made with Absolut vodka rather than cachaça. Still a good drink, but when I make them at home I swap out the vodka for cachaça. If you want to try the exact drink we had at the dinner (which was full of stunning cocktails and stunning food), just use Absolut and change the name to a Caipiroska.

Coconut Water and Ginger Caipirinha

1-1/2 ounces cachaça
4 eighths lime
1 ounce coconut water
1 piece of ginger, peeled, the size of a fingernail
1 ounce agave nectar or aloe vera nectar

Muddle the coconut water together with the ginger. Add the limes and the syrup and muddle again. Using the Old Fashioned glass the drnk will be served in measure a glass of ice into the shaker glass and shake well. Pour the entire contents of the glass back into the Old Fashioned glass.

This was one of the two best pairings of the evening, and a drink we’ve made at home since. I love coconut water (which is what sloshes around inside ripe and especially young coconuts, which we buy for a buck each at the nearby Filipino market, hacking off the top, drinking the glassful of water it contains and scooping out the tender, creamy flesh with a spoon), and I love to see it used in a cocktail instead of the thick, overly sweet cream of coconut you see all the time. The ginger’s peppery counterpoint to that was wonderful, and the mysterious element added by muddling the ginger with agave nectar instead of sugar as the sweetener was genius.

I was a little baffled by the use of vodka instead of rum, though, and I suspect it had to do with certain requirements that sponsors’ products be used throughout the event. I understand — events like this could not take place without the support of the sponsoring liquor companies, and bartenders and consultants often make a big chunk of their living creating cocktails on commission from spirits companies. That said, my personal taste runs toward having little to no use for vodka in cocktails, I think I’d definitely use a nice cachaça or white rum.

The brilliance of this drink particularly came through once the course was served:

Rum Butter-Poached Lobster Calaloo, with Caribbean curry, ginger, okra, taro, sweet potato and house-distilled roasted coconut liqueur. Oh my Gawd.

Calaloo is sort of the Caribbean version of gumbo, often thickened with okra, usually containing a mixture of greens, and like gumbo can be done a zillion different ways. This one was a stew rather than a soup, featuring that beautiful, beautiful lobster. I learned the technique of poaching lobster in butter from Chef Thomas Keller of The French Laundry after reading his book (and eating the dish), and next time I do it you can be damned certain that I’ll be adding rum to the butter, and serving this drink with it.

Gary Regan’s most recent Chronicle column is out as well, with the Professor’s substitute bartender Jake filling in. Jake gets an email from the Professor with the recipe for today’s cocktail, a close relative of the Cocktail of the Day above. This sounded fantastic, and it was — we made them last night . We sure do love St. Germain (and its pretty bottle), and it’s always a pleasure to use pisco in something other than the ubiquitous Pisco Sour.

The classic proportions are in effect.

The Peruvian Elder-Sour

2 ounces pisco.
1 ounce St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur.
1/2 ounce fresh lime juice.

Shake with ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lime wheel.

I’m gonna start playing with St. Germain and silver tequila next, probably just swapping out the pisco, but I’m sure someone’s already thought of that.

This true classic, dating back to Professor Jerry Thomas in the mid-19th Century, was served at Tales of the Cocktail 2007 at a seminar entitled “The Cocktail’s Family Tree,” a look at how the cocktail used to be just one particular kind of drink — specifically, it meant a spirit of any kind with water, sugar and bitters, and was not a catch-all term for all mixed alcoholic drinks.

Back in the Days of Yore there were cobblers and daisys and fixes and flips and sangarees and punches and shrubs and lots more. Going through all this was moderator David Wondrich of Esquire magazine and many other publications (boy, what a gig he’s got), bartenders John Myers from Portland, Maine and Jim Meehan of PDT in New York, and Ryan Magarian, mixologist and one of the developers of Aviaton Gin. The only drawback to a panel like this is that you can’t possibly fit all the history into a 75-minute seminar; we’d need to spend a week drinking our way through the development of the cocktail with all its fellow drinks for the last couple of hundred years (and how much fun would that be?). The guys all did a great job though, and it was fun and fascinating.

We also got to sample two drinks from the cocktail’s family tree, one daisy and one fizz, the latter near and dear to the heart of New Orleanians (a Ramos, of course). The daisy, a forerunner to drinks like the Sidecar or what Gary Regan classifies as a “New Orleans Sour,” generally was a spirit with fresh lemon juice, sugar, a bit of Curaçao and sometimes grenadine. No grenadine in this one, and the Curaçao is a damned good one. Here’s the modern version:

Brandy Daisy

2 ounces brandy.
1/2 ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice.
1/4 ounce Grand Marnier.
1 teaspoon rich simple syrup.

Strain into a chilled rocks glass and add 1 ounce chilled seltzer water or soda. Twist a thin-cut lemon peel over the top and drop in for garnish.

For comparison, here’s Professor Jerry Thomas’ version from his 1862 classic The Bartender’s Guide, or How to Mix Drinks:

Brandy Daisy
(from Jerry Thomas, 1862)

3 or 4 dashes gum syrup
2 or 3 dashes of Curacoa cordial
The juice of half a small lemon
1 small wine-glass of brandy
2 dashes of Jamaica rum

Fill glass one-third full of shaved ice. Shake well, strain into a large cocktail glass, and fill up with Seltzer water from a syphon.

A daisy can be made with any base spirit — bourbon, rye, gin, genever, even tequila, although such a thing was unheard of in Jerry Thomas’ day. In fact, it’s been surmised that the Margarita was really just a tequila Daisy, in spite of all the stories about its origin, and who the lady Margarita, its apparent namesake, really was.

The biggest clue? Well, other than the near-identical recipe? The Spanish word for “daisy” is … margarita!

By the by, here’s an appropriately fuzzy picture of Wes and me with Gaz Regan and Dave Wondrich, taken after we’d quaffed our daisies and fizzes at the seminar.

Ah, but we hadn’t yet even begun to drink …