“Come and see me if you get a chance,” read the message from Chris McMillian. “I’ve got a new drink for you.”

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.

If you’ve wondered what to do with coffee liqueur other than put it in your coffee or defend the integrity of your White Russian as The Dude so memorably did, here’s another idea. In fact, you may get several tonight.

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.

I managed to make it to another Thursday Drink Night last week, in which cocktail nerds, a few bartenders and occasionally an honored guest such as a distiller converge in The Mixoloseum Bar chat room, discuss that week’s sponsoring spirit or theme, geek out and come up with some new drinks.

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.

I don’t watch the Food Network anymore.

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.”

Well, not you personally, probably. Maybe. Have you? Fess up!

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!