“Hi Chuck, hope you’re doing well. I am working on the launch of the new Bulleit Rye, and we’d like to send you a sample.”

Well … sure! Okay then! Twist my arm, why dontcha?

I love getting emails like this.

It’s exciting news that Bulleit are putting out a rye. I’m a huge fan of their Bourbon, its own high rye content being one of the reasons (about 28% of the mashbill, in fact). Such a high rye content gives wonderful spice notes and produces a drier product that one that’s mostly corn. (Remember, by law Bourbon whiskey must be at least 51% corn, and rye whiskey must be at least 51% rye.) The new rye won’t contain any corn — the mashbill will be 95% rye with 5% malted barley for natural grain-based enzymatic action for converting the rye grain’s starches to sugars in fermentation. Their rye grains have been obtained from Germany, Sweden, Canada as well as the U.S., and they use a proprietary yeast strain for fermenting the mash. The age is described as being “between 4 and 7 years.” It’s a hefty dram too, with the finished product coming in at 90 proof (45% abv).

I had read that Tom Bulleit and his distillers had been working on this product for about 7 years, talking to whiskey lovers as well as bartenders for ideas and inspiration. That’s plenty of time to give it some age and fine-tune. I could hardly wait to taste it.

Whiskey has quite a history in this family –- the Bourbon made from a 175-year-old recipe by Augustus Bulleit, Tom Bulleit’s great-great-grandfather. The production process for the Bourbon also uses a proprietary yeast culture (I wonder if it’s the same one as the rye) and a Kentucky limestone-filtered water source originating from the Salt River, both of which help impart a unique character.

There’s a lot of fascinating history to their Bourbon. I’m not one to parrot liquor company press releases, but when it involves a good story, mysterious disappearances and the city of New Orleans, I take an interest. Here’s the story, courtesy of Bulleit:

“[In the 1820s the young Augustus] emigrated from Alsace-Lorraine, France. Augustus arrived in the city [of New Orleans, Louisiana] during a time of great growth and prosperity. The United States had recently obtained the territory from Napoleon Bonaparte in the Louisiana Purchase, and New Orleans had successfully defended itself from a British invasion during the War of 1812. The population of the city doubled in the 1830s, and by 1840, New Orleans had become the wealthiest and third- most populous city in the nation.

“The strategic location of New Orleans, at the base of the Mississippi River, made it one of the primary gateways to the West for many early pioneers. To service this ever-growing community of frontiersman, a sizable industry selling needed products for the journey West was forming along the banks of the Mississippi. It’s easy to imagine a young Augustus Bulleit observing the growing American population, the swelling movement west, and noting the ease of transport from the North as a result of the river.

“Around 1840, Augustus Bulleit took his newfound entrepreneurial ambitions and moved from New Orleans to just outside Louisville, KY. Augustus established himself as a tavern keeper, where he began producing small batches of bourbon. Relentless in his pursuit of perfection, he experimented with countless recipes, finally finding one that consistently met his expectations. And thus, Bulleit Bourbon was born.

“Augustus’ bourbon was sold throughout Kentucky, Indiana and New Orleans where it quickly gained the reputation as the bourbon of choice for America’s most haled and hardy adventurers—the frontiersmen.

“In 1860, America was rapidly expanding further west, and Augustus’ adopted hometown of New Orleans had become a major distribution point for his whiskey. That year, while transporting barrels of whiskey from Kentucky to New Orleans, Augustus Bulleit mysteriously disappeared just outside of New Orleans.

“Walter Q. Gresham, a farm boy from Augustus’ neighborhood, who later became Secretary of State under President Grover Cleveland, formed a search party to travel from Indiana to New Orleans in search of Augustus. The searchers came back empty handed, with no knowledge of what happened to Augustus. However, they did discover that his whiskey and flatboat had been sold. His body was never found.

“Shortly after Augustus’ disappearance, the Civil War began and his case was lost in the chaos of the time. While presumed dead, his death has never been certified.

“After Augustus’ disappearance, it seemed the making of his legendary bourbon would disappear with him. However, as decades passed, the Bulleit family never lost its passion for telling the story of Augustus Bulleit, nor the desire to resurrect his signature creation. After more than a century, the family returned at last to bourbon making. In 1987, Tom Bulleit fulfilled a lifelong dream by reviving his family’s ancestral distilling enterprise, using the original recipe of his great-great-grandfather.”

That’s a hell of a story!

About a week after I enthusiastically responded to the email, the Liquor Fairy — dressed in brown with brown shorts as usual — deposited a package at my door containing this:

I must confess I was looking forward to seeing that big pretty bottle with the new green label, but I love getting little medicine bottle samples. Given the limited quantity though, we were going to have to taste and mix carefully.

Into the Riedel Bourbon glasses it went, one ounce each.

First impressions on the nose: fruity! A bit of dark berry but the thing I noticed first was bananas. No, not quite. More like banana esters, like the ethylene gas from when you keep bananas in a paper bag to help ripen them. (This is a good thing.) Tropical, almost floral. Dry spice, a touch of toffee, unburned tobacco (an aroma I love; why must people ruin that aroma by setting it on fire?). Very round and inviting.

On the palate: Lean, robust, medium dry, very crisp. It’s spicy but not overwhelmingly so, and not necessarily the brown “Christmas” spices; it’s almost lightly peppery. Great rye flavor. The brown sugar and nutty toffee notes from the nose come in here too but it’s not the kind of sweetness you get from a high corn Bourbon. The finish is dry and nutty with that little touch of sweetness and a really nice rush of spices. It’s big and complex and spicy and absolutely delicious. Wow.

We couldn’t wait to mix this. We had just enough left to make one Manhattan. I had barely an ounce and a half left — to that I added 3/4 ounce of Carpano Antica vermouth and a dash of Bitter Truth Aromatic Bitters. Lemon twist.

Superb. This rye is not only great for sipping but for mixing as well — that was a terrific Manhattan.

I wish I had more of it to do a more studied tasting, but you can bet that as soon as I see this on the shelves I’ll be picking up a couple bottles. Release date was a week ago on March 1, but I have yet to see it pop up at my usual spirits emporia. Keep an eye out. You’re going to want this one.

Well done, Bulleits!

Via my old friend Chris, via the Vintage Ads LiveJournal:

Chris adds, “I’d read significance into this ad and the brand, were it not published three years before the Kinsey Report.” Doug adds, “So what’s that book concealing?” Heh. (Come to think of it, The Kinsey Report might be a great name for a cocktail. I’ll have to come up with something.)

I was curious about not only the advertising but the whiskey behind it, so I did some further digging. It seems that’s not the only Kinsey Whiskey ad I’ve come across that’s had an element of … er, camp to it. This ad is from Christian Montone‘s vintage ad collection on Flickr:

One more:

Um …

The whiskey does indeed date back to 1892, and was produced at a quite lovely distillery on the banks of the Schuykill River near Linfield, Pennsylvania. Taking a break (of course) during Prohibition, the stuff was produced until the mid-1980s, although I don’t ever recall seeing it; it must have been primarily an East Coast brand.

Notice the fine print in the ads, which says that Kinsey Whiskey is “65% grain neutral spirits,” i.e. vodka. That’s even higher than the 55% grain neutral spirit content of the spectacularly uninteresting Seagram’s 7 Crown, which along with its slightly less dull sibling Seagram’s V.O. was quite accurately referred to by my friend Darcy O’Neil as “brown vodka.”  ”Light whiskey … for pleasant taste” was one of their ad slogans, and I imagine it was fairly accurate.  This particular “Gold Label” blend was a fairly typical example of blended American whiskies produced after World War II, when supplies were limited and could be stretched by the addition of column still-produced grain neutral spirits. Of course I’ve never tasted Kinsey Gold Label, but I imagine the adjective I’d use to describe it would be the same ones I use to describe 7 Crown and V.O. — “bland.”

However, according to this excellent article they also made a bonded rye whiskey as well:

Now THAT would have been something to try.  Fortunately we have our beloved Rittenhouse bonded rye to cuddle and quaff these days, but sadly we don’t have much in the way of bonded ryes these days to compare it to.

Here are a couple more ads:

Oh sure, he’s showing them a football play, but had this ad been 1965 and not 1945 I’m sure he would have been showing his buddies how fabulously he can sing “Stop In The Name of Love.”

As you may have noticed, Kinsey (as did many if not most liquor producers of the time) put out a cocktail booklet. The whiskey itself might have been nothing to write home about, but they sure knew what to do with it still, even as late as circa 1950 when this booklet came out:

It’s sad to say that these days it would likely take what’s at the moment being called a “craft bartender” to even know what a Daisy, Flip or Sling is, and if you ordered a Whiskey Sour in most bars these days you probably wouldn’t get fresh squeezed lemon, but some artificial “sour mix” crap out of a jug. This is slowly but surely changing, especially in higher-end bars and restaurant, but please … can we at least get things back to 1950, if not 1920 and earlier just yet?

Flickr vintage ad collector alsis35 adds, “You have to wonder: Why did drunks need number puzzles to play with? Maybe they took away the darts after somebody lost an eye.”  Heh.

I think this one is my favorite Kinsey Whiskey ad of all, though. From the January 14, 1946 issue of LIFE Magazine:

That slogan speaks the truth. To accompany their regular meeting of the He-Man Woman Haters’ Club, at least these fellows know how to mix a cocktail. Perfect recipe, perfect glassware. Of course, I’m sure it’d be a much better Manhattan with Kinsey’s 100 proof bonded rye product — one made with such a blend containing so much grain neutral spirits would be limp and limpid at best, with barely a whisper of whiskey flavor — although I don’t know if Kinsey was still making it at this point.

Thanks to Chris Gaal for inspiring this post! Incidentally, Chris’ blog is well worth following, full of interesting tidbits of Los Angeles, Glendale and Pasadena history and photos. The Vintage Ads LJ is also a regular hoot too — the mind boggles at what admen used to think would sell products.

This morning I watched an amazing cocktail video, produced by Shlomo M. Godder at the bar Dutch Kills in New York City. It’s absolutely gorgeous — beautifully directed and photographed, entirely visual (no dialogue at all), nicely integrated graphics and lush music. It begins with a fascinating look at the unnamed bartender’s custom ice prep before shift, moving onto a cocktail that I had been making for quite a while and didn’t even know it.

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.

[N.B. -- If you 1) haven't read Frank Herbert's Dune novels, and/or 2) aren't a geek, then this post is likely to make little sense to you.]

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.

I love three-ingredient cocktails.

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.