Alcademics.com

Hot bottle

Check out this $1.9 million dollar bottle of cognac on Bill Dowd's site. I can only get into bottle design so much, but that thing is freaktastic.

Labels: cognac

Juiced up

Via BevNet, Ocean Spray is introducing an energy juice drink called Cranergy, "to help fight America's energy crisis." I'm not sure if that slogan comes from BevNet or Ocean Spray directly, but it's pretty ridiculous. The drinks are juice with Splenda, fortified with B vitamins and green tea extract. This provides drinkers with "a natural energy lift they can feel good about."

Sure. From the Splenda website:

The process selectively replaces three hydrogen-oxygen groups on the sugar molecule with three chlorine atoms. Chlorine is present naturally in many of the foods and beverages that we eat and drink every day ranging from lettuce, mushrooms and table salt. In the case of sucralose, its addition converts sucrose to sucralose, which is essentially inert. The result is an exceptionally stable sweetener that tastes like sugar, but without sugar's calories. After consumption, sucralose passes through the body without being broken down for energy, so it has no calories, and the body does not recognize it as a carbohydrate.

Refreshing! I can't wait to try this delicious drink that's "the first ever energy beverage to hit the juice aisles."

Labels: funny, mixer

Cocktails at Epic

On Thursday I visited Epic Roasthouse, and not for the roast. I was there to try Camber Lay's cocktails.

The menu is divided into classics and Epic Originals, but even the classics have been upgraded with touches like key lime sugar on the rim of the Sidecar and gigantic house pickled cippolini onions in the Gibson.

In the original drinks section, my two favorites were the Copper Pot with Partida blanco, calvados, and apple juice, with a spiced pecan dust rim, and the surprisingly bright and aromatic Conversos, made with white pear tea-infused gin, Lillet, Chartreuse, and a lemon twist. The recipe was printed in the Chronicle a couple weeks ago.

I also had the old-world-esque Prohibition and the Fennel Gimlet (with fennel and citrus infused vodka). And though I didn't try it, there is almost no way to go wrong with the Farewell to Arms, made with Oronoco rum, grapefruit, vanilla, and key lime.

The drinks were delicious, but I caution people not to go between 6 and 10PM unless you're interested in big crowds and long waits behind people ordering "a dirty Grey Goose martini on the rocks." Ack. I got there at 4:30 and was the first person in the bar before happy hour rush. It was nice and breezy up until about 5:30. But then the crush came and it was difficult to squeeze through the room at all and the bartenders were so swamped it was painful to watch. So blow off work early or go for late night drinks because the comfy seats and beautiful views in the pictures are blocked by too many people during prime time.

Labels: bars, SanFrancisco

All about rum

Here's a nice history and summary of rum on Slashfood, with an introduction to several styles including rhum agricole.

Labels: rum

A different kind of grog

Eco-friendly French to ship their wine under sail 60,000 bottles on a 19th-century barque from Bordeaux to Dublin is just the start

Interesting tactic, and a great PR move. Coincidentally, I'm reading Scotch on the Rocks, a book about a ship full of scotch that crashed off the coast of a small Scottish island and lead to looting and police chasing after looters and then a movie about it all. Let's hope the wine suffers not the same fate.

Labels: eco-booze, scotch, wine

Flora drinks

Michael Bauer, food critic for the SF Chronicle, gave Flora in Oakland three stars this week, and also made special mention of the cocktails. (This rarely happens.)

There's nothing wrong with the wine list at Flora. It's very good, with 82 diverse selections, but on my three visits, I couldn't pass up the cocktails, which made ordering a bottle of wine impossible if I wanted to keep my wits about me.

This restaurant is serious about its spirits, especially when you see the absinthe apparatus on the bar, which is lined with premium pours.

The cocktails are credited with their place of origin in small type below the description. The Corpse Reviver No. 2 made with Lillet Blanc, Cointreau, lemon and absinthe ($9), for example, is from the American Bar in London.

The drink program was developed by Erik Adkins from the Slanted Door, so that's why it's so tasty. When I was there (order the Carter Beats the Devil) Erik wasn't working but the execution was still terrific.

Labels: bars, SanFrancisco

Video Bartender: On the Irish Whiskey Trail (2006)

This is part of an ongoing project reviewing every booze DVD on Netflix. Wow! Who knew whiskey could be so boring? On the Irish Whiskey Trail leads us through Irish and Irish whiskey history and production, and takes us to visit the Jameson, Bushmills, Middleton, and Locke's whiskey distilleries. On the way there are three full musical interludes during which we're treated to a traditional Irish song at a much higher volume than the rest of the video, while being shown countryside slides.

While the Scotch Whisky Trail DVD was pretty entertaining and got me psyched for my upcoming visit to Scotland, this one was painful to watch and got my psyched for the ending.

Going with the theme, I next watched Great Irish Drinks (2003), a DVD that purported to visit the same distilleries as On the Irish Whiskey Trail.

As it turns out, it not only visited the same distilleries, it used the same footage, and in some places the same voice-over narration. But either it was a better and more lively edit or I was just in a better mood, because I enjoyed this one more than the first.

Labels: irish_whiskey, video, whisky

Naturally fermented sake

W. Blake Gray has a story on Yamahai sakes in the Chron, those naturally fermented in an old-school style that produces robust flavors. I'll have to give them a try.

Labels: sake