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.

THE CUSTER COCKTAIL

2 ounces Sazerac rye whiskey (6 year).
3/4 ounce Galliano L’Autentico.
3 barspoons Cynar.
2 dashes celery bitters (Bitter Truth).
2 dashes rhubarb bitters (Fee’s).
Orange peel.

Combine ingredients with ice in a mixing glass, stir for at least 20 seconds and strain into a chilled Old Fashioned glass. Garnish with a large orange peel after expressing the oil.

Mighty good, and lots going on in there — make one and enjoy it. Better still, if you’re local to L.A. head out to Copa and have one of the crew make it for you. Then stay for a few more, and have a grilled panino with ‘em.

UPDATE: I’ve revised my estimate of the recipe — knock the Galliano down to 3/4 oz.

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First, the New York Times writes about the upcoming New Orleans Po-Boy Preservation Festival. Why, you might ask, would such a venerated bastion of New Orleans cuisine need special efforts to preserve it? Read up on the situation, which includes one of my most hated interlopers, the invasion of the mass-food monoculturalism of horrid chains like Subway, the lack of off-street parking at po-boy shops, and more. Fortunately, there are still many places in the city where you can get it done right. And, of course, the bread is just as important as the filling, some say more so. The filling can be great but if the bread ain’t right, it ain’t a po-boy.

The associated po-boy makers have also managed to prove that po-boys are actually good for you!

Recently, Leidenheimer [one of the top po-boy bread bakers] financed a nutritional analysis that Katherine Whann said found that a gravy-dressed roast beef po’ boy, on Leidenheimer bread, with mustard, lettuce, tomato and pickles, has fewer calories from fat and less saturated fat than a comparable tuna sandwich from Subway.

That, plus anything from Subway tastes like cardboard that’s been put through a de-flavorizing machine.

I wish I could be in town for the festival, not only to eat lots of po-boys, but to see this battle royale:

And in what organizers are calling a French Bread Fight, a combatant portraying Jared Fogle, the calorie-conscious Subway pitchman, will square off against a combatant representing John Gendusa, the baker who, in 1929, fashioned the first modern New Orleans-style, French bread loaf, the base on which po’ boys have since been built.

If all goes the way it’s planned, as fragments of crust fly and a partisan crowd shouts, Mr. Gendusa will beat Mr. Fogle with a loaf of stale bread.

Jared, your ass is goin’ down.

Second, Doug MacCash writes a tremendous recollection of one of the greatest music venues ever, the riverboat President in New Orleans. You’d get on board a ship. The ship took off down the Mississippi, and the band began to play. By the time the band’s finished, the ship’s docked once again. How can you beat that?

I saw a lot of great shows there, but not nearly as many as I could have. The list of people who played there makes my knees weak. Man, I remember some great shows there, though … from local acts like The Cold and The Radiators to a bunch of unknown kids from Ireland who called themselves … what was it, You Two? Oh no, wait … they were called U2.

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We entered Galco’s for the first time. Our jaws dropped, and grabbed a shopping cart. Before us was an array of nearly 500 different kinds of small-batch sodas, an equal number of beers from all over the world, two long cases full of hard-to-find, old-school and regional candy bars (from Mallo Cups to my beloved Zagnut) and a deli counter making great football-sized sandwiches. Oh my.

When we wheeled our cart up to the counter, the girl at the register gave us an amused but friendly look and said, “Hm. First time here, huh?”

“How’d you know?” I said.

“Because you have an entirely full shopping cart with one of each item. Kind of a dead giveaway.”

We chatted as she rang us up, and we mentioned that we were looking to possibly buy a house in Highland Park. She lit up, said we’d love it there and could get some great deals, then glanced at the back of the line and said, “Ooh … you should talk to Angel back there.” From the back of the line a disembodied voice said, “You wanna buy a house in Highland Park, you talk to me! I’ve been in the business for 35 years!” We couldn’t see her because she was maybe 5′ tall in her stiletto-heeled leather boots. That was where we met the force of nature in her perfectly coiffed ‘do, Jackie O sunglasses, long thin brown cigarettes, silk jacket from a poker casino in Henderson, Nevada who was made of awesome and indeed named Angel, and 10 months later she put us in our house not in Highland Park, but next door in Eagle Rock.

We have Galco’s to thank for that, as well as a lot of great beer and great sodas. Here’s a wonderful 12-minute look inside their operation, guided by their owner and passionate engine John Nese.

Even though we’re not actually in Highland Park we’re right next door and it’s part of our neighborhood. Come on down to 5702 York Blvd. in Highland Park and let yourself loose in Galco’s. I suspect you’ll end up with a full shopping cart with one (maybe two) of each item.

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So, after much suggesting, wheedling, cajoling, pleading, coaxing, flattering, obsequity, bewitching, bothering, alluring, urging, perseverence, ass-kissing and just plain nagging (”Ahh, ya will … go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, GO ON!!!”), Wesly Moore has agreed to become a (semi-)regular author and contributor to Looka!, when he feels like it.

He’ll be writing about … well, whatever tickles his fancy, be it cocktails or food or travel or whatever.  Now that I’ve publicly put him on the spot, I suspect he’ll have to come up with something soon.

Please make him feel welcome.  And of course, Team Chuck ‘n Wes means more free content!

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Then 23-1/2 hours of door-to-door travel (including fifteen hours on planes, ugh), lost luggage, found and late-delivered luggage and the joys of jet lag — I was completely loopy yesterday, and this morning I sat bolt upright and wide awake at 4:30am.  Ah, it was all worth it.  It was a supremely fantastic trip, full of great food, great drink, great friends and great sights.  There should be a number of travelogue posts, featuring food and drink, coming over the next few weeks.

Best news of all coming home … all the booze arrived intact!  Hooray!  Here’s the haul:

Plymouth Navy Strength Gin, relaunched in 2007, is a higher proof version of the original Plymouth with a richer and more intense flavor.  It’s also unavailable in the U.S., hence my burning desire to possess and drink it.  Weighing in at a hefty 100 proof — and that’s English proof, which is actually 57% alcohol — it should be quite the tipple and should make one hell of a Martini.  This high-proof version was approved by the British Royal Navy for distribution aboard ship as it “would not prevent gunpowder from igniting, should it be compromised by spilled spirit,” according to its producers, who supplied the Royal Navy with this gin from the early days of the 19th Century.  Plymouth Navy Strength supposedly made its first inroads into cocktail history during those days as well.  As the story goes, Royal Navy surgeon Sir Thomas Gimlette tried to think of a more palatable way for his sailors to take lime juice as a scurvy preventative, squeezed some into Plymouth Navy Strengh, and thus was born the Gimlet.  (Good story, whether or not it’s even close to being true … never let that stop a good story, though.)  I’ve got 2 bottles of this stuff.

Rhubarb Liqueur from Chase Distillery in Herefordshire.  It all began with crisps, too.  Potato chips, that is.  A gentleman named William Chase (to whom the Birmingham [U.K.] Post referred as “the Willy Wonka of British potato vodka”) bought a potato farm and bet everything he had that the British public wanted a better potato crisp.  He won.  His brand, Tyrrells Potato Chips, launched in 2001 and swept the country because they were so damned good.  I, of course, being The Potato Chip Monster, fell hopelessly in love with Tyrrells Chips and will soon commence a heated campaign to find them in the States.  (More on this in a later post.)  Chase sold 70% of his interest in Tyrrells for a cool £40 million, so I’m hoping that whatever larger company got them will make them more widely available.  From those proceeds Chase opened a distillery and wanted to make the first British potato vodka, which has been very successful and is apparently good stuff, if you’re a vodka drinker. (”Almondy and buttery” are the tasting notes I’ve read. Incidentally, Chase now makes a clear spirit he calls a vodka but which is distilled from local cider as well — now that I’d be really interested in.)  From vodka Chase moved on to liqueurs based on his vodka, and there’s quite a range of them — blackberry, blackcurrant, elderflower, white peach and rhubarb, the latter of which I brought home.  I’d have gotten them all if there had been room.  Sigh.  (Actually, The Whiskey Exchange in London, where I bought my gin, carries them all and mail-orders to the States, which is actually almost worth it if you order enough bottles. They’ll be getting more of my business – great selection and really nice folks.)

Seville Orange Gin from Tipsage Farms in Worcestershire, which is actually a gin-based liqueur into which peels and a touch of juice from the bitter oranges has been macerated, with a touch of sugar added.  It’s delicious, bracingly bitter in the finish, and great on its own, chilled or on the rocks.  I’m going to see how it mixes too — the problem, of course, being that I only have 500ml to play with and I don’t want to waste it on trying to make cocktails I won’t be able to reproduce easily.  I think it’d be lovely tall with some soda and a bit more gin to oomph it up, for starters.  I’d also swap it out for the Rose’s Lime Cordial for something like a Bitter Orange Gimlet.  Tipsage also make several other flavors, including lime, Damson, blackberry and sloe, but this one piqued my interest the most, especially after our friends John and Fiona gave us a taste at their house … mmm!

Elixir Végetal de la Grande Chartreuse, a concentrated, more potent (at 71% alcohol) version of Chartreuse liqueur, as yet unavailable in the U.S.  Its flavor has been described as a more intense version of Chartreuse V.E.P. (the barrel-aged version).  I’ve been after this stuff for a while, and it seems as if every bartender I know who’s travelled to Europe ends up bringing some of this stuff back.  In France it’s generally taken as a tonic or digestif, and dispensed by the drop — a couple of drops on a sugar cube, or in a little sugared water, is the usual dose.  It comes in 100ml bottles with a dasher top, stored in a lathed wooden case to protect it from light.  I suspect I’ll be dashing this into cocktails left and right! You’ll get a concentrated bit of Chartreuse essence and flavor with less sweetness than you would from the liqueur. (The sugar cube after dinner sounds very nice, too … it seems as if it’d certainly cure what ails ya.)

Metté Eaux-de-Vie, copper pot-distilled clear brandies that come in an astonishing 87 varieties.  Some of the ones I saw at Lavinia in Paris included fruits of every description — quince, Poire Williams, raspberry, rarer fruits like fraises de bois, the small wild strawberries, plus spices like anise, vanilla, even cumin. They also make a black Périgord truffle variety! There were many at Lavinia but some that they didn’t carry, including cumin, woodruff, asparagus and garlic. (Hmm, I don’t know about those.)   Sadly, I was only able to bring home two — Cacao and Pêche (peach), both described by the lady at Lavinia as “fantastic.” They do have an American distributor, and I know I’m going to want more.

Suze, the bitter French apéritif based on gentian root, and pretty much impossible to find in the States these days.  (I’ve only got dregs left of a bottle I found at Wally’s years ago.)  It’s a flavor that takes some getting used to, but if you’re a fan of Campari or other bitters, you’re already well on your way.  Its sunny yellow color belies a musky, somewhat floral, almost horseradish-like flavor (on the bitter rather than hot/pungent side).  It’s really terrific stuff, and all the more frustrating in that it’s so hard to get now.  There’s always mail-order from Europe, where the shipping costs more than the bottle, but if you order at least four bottles from places who ship then the costs even out a bit.  Suze is definitely worth getting.  Sadly, our bottle had to stay behind at Dule’s place, as it wouldn’t fit into the shipping container we’d brought!  (Danged tall 1-liter bottles.)  We’ll make arrangements later.  Once it gets here, I think I’ll try this cocktail, served at The Pegu Club in New York when they have Suze on hand:

WHITE NEGRONI

1-1/2 ounces Plymouth gin.
1 ounce Lillet blanc.
3/4 ounce Suze.
1 dash orange bitters (optional).

Combine ingredients with ice in a mixing glass, and stir for 20 seconds. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. No garnish.

I’d say it’s worth mail-ordering, but without a doubt you should go in with friends on several various bottles of stuff to make the shipping charges less painful.

Nikka Whisky from the Barrel, a Japanese blended whiskey to which we were introduced by Arthur, one of our two favorite bartenders of the trip, at Curio Parlor in Paris (more on him, the bar, and the other bars and bartenders later).  This is absolutely wonderful stuff, full-flavored, citrusy, woody and with lots of character.  I have very little experience with Japanese whiskies, but this one was more like a big brassy Bourbon to me than the few others I’ve tasted.  Arthur made me an Old Fashioned and Wesly a Manhattan, the two tests of mettle of a bartender for us, and both drinks were pure perfection.  Indeed, they were entirely new experiences for us, as they used this wonderful whiskey. Unfortunately I think this one’s going to be hard to find as well, meaning more expensive mail-ordering. Next time I’m at Seven Grand, we’re going to be talking about this one. 

Patxaran Ordoki, from Navarre, Spain.  While we were in Barcelona Wes and I fell in love with patxaran (which is the Catalan and Basque spelling; it’s pacharán in Spanish). It’s a liqueur based on the sloe berry, just like sloe gin, and is frequently made at home as many folks in the U.K. made sloe gin when the blackthorn bushes are heavy with sloes.  However, patxaran is soaked in an anisette base rather than a gin base, and is often flavored with a few coffee beans and a vanilla pod in its homemade version as well as some of the commercial ones.  The first one we tried was a brand called Baines (pronounced bah-ee-ness), which was really good but proved difficult to find in spirits shops.  The other we had was Etxeco, which was good, but not as good as Baines.  We didn’t manage to make it to the Barcelona branch of Lavinia (we took a half-hour Metro ride there one evening, forgetting that most businesses in Barcelona are closed on Sundays … d’oh), but we did make it to a shop closer to our hotel, La Cava de los Faros, better known to pre-legalization absintheurs as The Fine Spirits Corner.  It’s a fairly small shop actually, stuffed with liquor, and the nattily dressed older gentleman in charge assured us that of the brands he carried, Ordoki was the best.  Tonight we’ll see how it stands up to Baines and Etxeco.  If you’re intrigued by this very tasty liqueur too, you can mail-order it without too much trouble.  Spirits Corner has it, but the shipping charges may stop your heart.  Another company called Products From Spain.net have a whole patxaran/pacharán page, but they’re based in Madrid and their shipping will more than double the cost of your $49 bottle.  However, Beltramo’s Wine and Spirits in the San Francisco Bay Area carry Ordoki for $21.99 a bottle, with much more reasonable domestic shipping charges.  We also picked up a couple of miniatures of the oldest and most widely distributed brand of pacharán, called Zoco, now owned by Pernod-Ricard.

So … all in all, not a bad haul!

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Well, yeah.

So, Looka! is likely to be rather unattended for the next two weeks. I may try to make a few brief posts via the WordPress iPhone app, but I certainly can’t guarantee that.

As we’re still figuring out how the new digs work around here, strange things might happen, like legitimate comments to posts getting caught as spam. For that reason I highly encourage to you register for this site as a subscriber if you plan to be a regular participant in the comments (and I hope you do!). Go to the link on the right-hand sidebar under “Looka!dministration” (yeah, I know, it’s silly and I’ll probably change it) and click the “Register” link. You’ll be prompted to enter a username and email address, and a temporary password will be mailed to you. You can change it when you log in, set how you want your name to be displayed, etc. By registering you’re telling the system that your email address is legit and you’re not a scumbag spammer, fit only to be boiled in a vat of molten chewing gum (which is actually too good for spammers).

So … where the hell are we going? (Oh right!)

This evening Wes and I are taking off for a two-week trip to Europe — London, Shropshire in rural western England, then on to Paris for a few days, finally ending up in Barcelona for four days. We got amazingly cheap flights and are staying with friends for the first 2/3 of the trip, which is the way to travel and keep it affordable. Ah yes, the patented Chuck-’n-Wes-mooch-off-your-friends-as-much-as-possible method.

We’re particularly excited to visit our friends John and Fiona, namesakes of the Hoskins Cocktail (who, sad to say, never actually met gaz regan), who’ll be taking us around London for a couple of days and then whisking us off to their home in rural Shropshire and stuffing us full of pork.  (Mmmm, bacon butties …) Also part of the plan while we’re in London is to meet up with our friend Jay Hepburn of Oh Gosh! and hit a few of his favorite London cocktail bars. (Rumor has it that Morgenthaler will be there too … hoo!)

Then off to see our old friend Dule in Paris, where fantastic food, wine, cocktails, art and everything that is the City of Light awaits.  Finally Barcelona — Gaudí, tapas and … well, everything!  I’m still kind of overwhelmed by the prospect of it all, and I really wish we had more than two weeks to do this.  (Limited vacation days and not being independently wealthy, sigh.)

There should be tons of food and drink porn when we get back.

Cheerio, au revoir y hasta la vista!  See y’all the first week in November.

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In 1959 the well-known and popular author of Western novels Louis L’Amour wrote one called Taggart (hey, catchy title). I must confess I’ve never read a L’Amour novel, not being a huge fan of Westerns, but I have been wanting to read this one. Here’s the summary from the flap:

“His name was Taggart and he rode with a price on his head through the blood-red canyons of Apache country. Behind him was a ruthless bounty hunter — he deadliest lawman in the West. In front of him was a fortune in gold — and a pretty young woman hell-bent on carrying that fortune to safety. Suddenly Taggart was faced with a choice. He could either keep riding and leave the stubborn lady to fate and the Apaches. Or he could stay and help her make it out alive. But for a man like Taggart the answer was simple. He would stay. Even if it meant cutting off his own escape — even if it meant doubling his chance of death.”

Hm, he sounds tougher than I am.

The first time I ever heard of this novel was way back when I was in school, when I found out that Universal Studios had made it into a film. I found that out when, as a wonderfully surprising birthday present, my friend Bill Mitchell (who had stumbled across the poster at random while shopping at Hollywood Book and Poster) gave it to me. It’s still one of the coolest birthday presents I ever got, and I immediately called HB&P to see if they had another one. I did, and got one for my dad for Christmas. He had it framed, and it hung in the waiting room of his dental office for about 25 years. Dad recently retired after 49 years of dentistry, and he told me that one of his longtime patients brought a camera to his last appointment and took a picture of the poster.

I’ve been collecting some of my favorite movie posters since I was in high school (sadly, with very little room to hang them these days, and I have to rotate the ones I have). Just recently, I decided to Google “taggart movie poster” to see if I could find an online image of it, and I came across quite the bounty. First off, I found a great scan of the original poster that Dad and I have, in all its glory:

Dad and I both thought the tag line, “They’re all waiting for you!” was particularly appropriate for display in a dental waiting room. (Incidentally, Dad’s sense of humor was tempered by his professional propriety — I tried suggesting that he hang a movie poster from “Marathon Man,” but he wouldn’t go for it. That said, on one occasion when he had a patient in the chair who was a close friend and who had seen the movie, Dad held the drill over his face, tapped the pedal to make it go “ZZZZ! ZZZZZZZ!!” and said, “… Is it safe?” The reaction was priceless. But I digress …)

To my squeals of delight, the Googling I did in the past couple of weeks yielded not only the original “Taggart” poster Dad and I had had for so many years, but some new ones too. This one’s even more turgid:

“…AND A GIRL WITH A GUN IN HIS GUTS!” That poster, my friends, is made of awesome.

I’m getting that one, and another one for Dad. Ssshhh, don’t tell him. He hates computers and is unlikely to read this, so I think our secret is safe. (Then again, now that it’s out on the internets, someone will probably tell him tomorrow. Sigh.)

I really should read the novel. I can get it into the Kindle app on my iPhone in about ten seconds, for about four bucks. ‘Bout time.

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“Borski Diluted Vodka?” The word “diluted” is actually in the name of the product. Bottom-shelf, plastic-bottle vodkas are a dime a dozen, and I pay no attention to them except this time that extremely odd word “diliuted” caught my eye. And diluted it is, to an ABV of 25% (50 proof). Nice and cheap too, about eight bucks for the 1.75 liter plastic bottle.

This seems to be nothing more than a product manufactured and sold solely for the purpose of getting drunk, cheaply, and without burning your mouth quite so much. To top it off, here’s a video review some guy did of it. (F. Paul Pacult needn’t fear for his job.)

The lamest, saddest booze ever? I’m sure that Thunderbird and all the other bum wines are far nastier than this, but in the category of distilled spirits I’m not sure I’ve seen anything quite as sad.  Flavorwise, I suppose Victory Gin would be worse, though …

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As of today, we’ve got the basic look of the blog down.  The theme is based on the free Vesper theme by Valen Designs, which had the kind of layout we were looking for, if not so much the exact look.  (I wasn’t really down wit’ da urnge.)

The custom Looka! theme was designed by my friend Marleigh Riggins Miller of SLOSHED! fame.  Not only is she a terrific cocktails and spirits writer and drink-maker, she’s a very talented graphic designer — the kind of stuff she does for a living — and she did a really lovely job.  It’s still a work-in-progress, and over the next few days or week or two we’ll roll out other features, including navigation along the header with links to full archives, an about page, a list of cocktail recipes (i.e., the old “Cocktail of the Day” feature, which I will gradually import into WordPress going as far back as I can), a page of links (instead of that really long frakkin’ sidebar) and maybe some more.  We’ll see!

I also want to thank my friend Jay Hepburn of Oh Gosh! (the UK’s premier cocktail and spirits weblog, in my humble opinion) for his preliminary work in helping get this place ported to WordPress.  He’s meeting Wesly and me at the Connaught Bar in London next Thursday, and I think there’ll be a drink or three there with his name on ‘em.

Onward and upstairs!

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Finally Steve was the one to get it. “It’s swine flu!”   We thought the snot streaming out of the pig’s nose was the killer touch.

On a less disgusting note, we did have absolutely fantastic pastrami as ever, thick and spicy and hand-cut, with the perfect amount of fat — just enough, and not too much.  (I already had a good picture from a previous visit, so I got lazy and didn’t take another one.)

There was one other picture I took while we were there, though.  Our dear friend Dave passed away in July, and we miss him terribly.  Dave loved Langer’s and we felt he should have been there, at least in some way.  So we bought several extra side orders of their kosher pickles, and spelled his name out:

Then he was there.  We weren’t able to finish all those pickles, but it was worth it.

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Well, gnash your teeth no more.  As of now, if you care to read this weblog on an iPhone, iPod Touch or Android phone, it’ll look like this:

Pretty spiff!  (Yes, I know I’m easily impressed, but this kinda entering-the-current-century stuff is all very new to me.)  You can read posts, comment, forward them, log in as a user/subscriber, forward to Twitter and a bunch of other social bookmarkers, or flip a switch to turn the mobile theme off and look at the full site. Alas, you can’t look at Flash videos, but that’s a limitation of the phone.  If you have some other kind of mobile, at least the new WordPress site should load a lot faster than my ridiculously bloated hand-coded versions did (most of which averaged around  200K of code alone, not counting pictures!).

Making life easier for our readers!  I’ll drink to that.

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One of the very greatest cocktails in the history of Humankind, in the top five certainly, is the Manhattan Cocktail. For a spot-on perfect tutorial on how to make one, watch Bobby Heugel of my favorite bar between L.A. and New Orleans, Houston’s Anvil Bar and Refuge:

You may have noticed that Bobby used Sazerac Rye, the six-year-0ld variety we’re fond of calling “Baby Saz,” even though the printed recipe calls for Rittenhouse 100-proof rye.  Baby Saz is really good stuff and we use it all the time, but for a Manhattan I think the bonded Rittenhouse product can’t be beat.  The higher proof gives it a bigger kick and more body and brings out more of the rye’s spicy characteristics. I highly recommend this for use in your Manhattans.

The vermouth here is Carpano Antica Formula, simply put the greatest sweet vermouth on the planet.  Sure, Cinzano and Martini & Rossi are good, and Dolin Rouge is quite good, but nothing beats Carpano (car-PAH-no).  You’ll want to drink this alone, on the rocks with a twist of orange, even more so than other sweet vermouths (all of which make excellent aperitivos).  The depth of flavor, the spice and tempered sweetness, all the Christmassy brown spices in there, are a joy to the senses.  The only disadvantages of Carpano are that it’s more expensive — $26 a bottle as compared to about $10 for Martini & Rossi, and the difference in price is justified, and entirely worth it — and that it only comes in one-liter bottles.  Half-bottles would be ideal for keeping it from going bad on you.  Vermouth may be fortified wine that keeps longer than the bottles you basically have to finish on the same day, but it’s still wine and won’t last forever.   Perhaps you could split it with a friend and decant into smaller bottles, or just use LOTS of it so that it’s still in good shape by the time you get to the bottom.

Finally, when visiting Houston, do not miss a trip to Anvil.  You’ll thank me for it later.

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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.

© Chuck for Looka!, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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5is37m2zre

I’ve actually got to clutter the place up with this? I can’t hide some code somewhere?  Meh.

Truly nothing to see here, move along, move along … next post is about booze!

© Chuck for Looka!, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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This horribly ugly and plain page using a basic, off-the-shelf WordPress template is merely a placeholder until we get some codeslinging done.  I have to confess, it’s going to take time.  My dear friend Marleigh Riggins Miller is building a custom template (which will retain as much of the look and feel of good ol’ Looka! while “moving it a bit into Web 2.0,” as she says) and doing the conversion for me, but it’s on her own time so it might be a bit before we get started.  Plus, I’ll be in Europe for 2 weeks starting in the 3rd week of October, so that’ll slow posting down a tad. This temporary template up now will at the very least allow me to get posts up. They’ll be ugly, but readable.

In the meantime, to backtrack and access the archived Looka! weblog for September 2009 (its final month as a dinosaur-like hand-coded weblog) and to read the final post if you followed this from the Networked Blogs link, visit this link:

http://looka.gumbopages.com/archive/2009-09.html

You can scroll down the right-hand sidebar and read any of the archives over the last 10 years as well.

To complicate matters, I’m changing the URL of the weblog! (Couldn’t you just strangle me?)

From now on, please update all links to this weblog to:

http://looka.gumbopages.com/

The old URL, http://www.gumbopages.com/looka/ should still work, but will redirect to this one.  All old links to that URL should still work.  (*fingers crossed*) If the old URL link includes “index.html” after the trailing slash (i.e., “http://www.gumbopages.com/looka/index.html”), it WILL NOT WORK.  I had to throw that one under the bus, but I don’t think too many inbound links are formatted that way.

UPDATE: The RSS feed is changing to http://looka.gumbopages.com/feed/, which I was able to fix from the one I posted earlier … ignore the one I mentioned in the previous incarnation(s) of this post.  I’ve rewritten it about ten times while I tried to tweak everything, broke everything horribly and somehow managed to get it all fixed so that, unbelievably, everything seems to work, and

Sigh.  This WordPress thing is gonna be good in the long run, but it’s a huge pain to set up.  (”The famous five-minute installation,” my fishbelly white Irish ass.)

This’ll be exciting! Stay tuned.

xo

Chuck

© Chuck for Looka!, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
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