Alcademics.com

Ambitious Cocktails

Greg Lindgren from Rye was cited in the Wall Street Journal this weekend, but unfortunately his cocktail recipe didn't get printed along with the others.

Perhaps the most ambitious entry came from Greg Lindgren, an owner of the San Francisco bar Rye. He proposed poaching quince in honey, water and mulling spices, and then using the warm fruity broth to flavor a glass of brandy. Very nice indeed -- if you succeed in finding fresh quince.

I asked Greg if he actually made the drink or just 'proposed' it. He said he did make it, in fact, and even sent Eric Felten a picture. I guess for Greg getting quince was not the problem- but I think ambitious is an appropriate term. Greg told me that it took almost three hours to poach the quince.

Labels: news, recipes, SanFrancisco

Mixology Summit

Hey bartenders- here's another contest of sorts. You can apply to become one of 100 weekend consultants at the Grand Marnier/Navan Mixology Summit in Vail, CO this March. They pay $1200 for your opinions but you have to pay airfare and two nights hotel. So they money isn't extraordinary but 100 bartenders staying in the same hotel sounds like one hell of a party. Details are here.

Labels: contests

Black (Out) Friday

The SF Chronicle's Wine Section comes out with the now-annual gift guide today. To read the intro and all of the items, start here, then follow the links in the box on the right.

I listed some suggestions for gift books (Felten, Wondrich, In the Land of Cocktails), Gary Regan tells us must-have bottles of each kind of booze for your liquor cabinet, Jay Brooks tells us his ideal beer imports, I give a list of essential glassware for the home bar, and in this list of miscellany I pick some whiskies and a calendar.

Labels: books, camper_clips, glassware, whisky

Hidden bars in Time

Hey look, I wrote a little thing in Time magazine's Style and Design issue on hidden cocktail bars as a national trend. Here it is online, and here is the scan.

Labels: bars, camper_clips

The other agaves

Tequila and mezcal we've heard of, but it turns out there are several other kinds of agave spirits like raicilla and bacanora. William Down gives the run-down.

Labels: tequila

Classic Hotel Bars

Looks who's quoted on ForbesTraveler.com on classic cocktails in classic hotel bars: your old pal Camper English.

Labels: camper_clips, cocktails

Dear restaurant owners

When you open a restaurant, please don't call it a bar. We already have Bar Tartine, B*Star Bar, Bar Johnny, Bar Jules, and others. Just stop. Bars are for drinks. Thanks.

Labels: restaurants

Mexicoh!

I'm back from a week in Mexico, where we toured 5 distilleries 5 days in a row. Between them- 4 Copas, Partida, Cazadores, El Tesoro, and Herradura- I endured at least 9 mariachi bands, 1 bout of Montezuma's revenge, 1 venue in which you can pee in a trough beneath the bar, very few hours of sleep, 1 missed flight, more than 60 pages of notes, 684 photos, 30ish great co-travelers, 1 two-story pour of tequila into my mouth, 6 bottles smuggled home in my luggage, and so much information that I could write tequila stories for the next six months with the information gleaned on this trip alone (editors: e-mail me, okay?).

I'm unlikely to have time to describe the trip in detail now (I'm still three trips behind in that) so instead here are the pictures.

Labels: tequila, travel, writing_life