... or are you sick of all the Sex and the City cocktail tie-ins?
I don't deny the show's importance in kickstarting much of the current cocktail craze, but I think it's safe to say we've collectively moved far beyond the Cosmopolitan.
While trying to find the History Channel's Modern Marvels episode on whiskey on Netflix and iTunes (no luck), I stumbled across their sugar episode. I figured it would include some information on rum, which it did. Molasses is a byproduct of sugar production that can be fermented and distilled into rum. The show did not touch on rhum agricole.
I realize that I never posted about my trip to Martinique over a month ago. On Martinique, like many Caribbean islands, European settlers first planted tobacco, then switched to sugarcane when the market collapsed. On Martinique the sugar market also collapsed, so Homere Clement and other sugar producers turned their giant sugar factories into giant rum distilleries. They just skipped the middle step of making granular sugar.
Rum distilled from sugar cane juice instead of molasses on Martinique is called rhum agricole (they refer to other rums as "industrial"). The agricole distilleries take in sugarcane, smash it and shred it to get all the juice out, then ferment the juice and distill it into rhum. The leftover cane fibers are burned to generate steam, which in turn powers the distilleries. The steam engines are enormous machines at the front and center of each agricole distillery, which makes them some of the coolest to visit- they're loud with big spinning parts. Here's a video I took in Martinique:
The Modern Marvels video didn't touch on rhum agricole, but did mention sugar production in other areas. Hawaii produces a large amount of sugar from cane, but as far as I know no brands of American cane sugar rum are on the market. In Brazil, not only do they make cachaca from sugar cane, they fuel their cars with the distillate.
Something like 40% (I could be wrong on the number) of sugar now comes from sugar beets from colder climates instead of sugar cane from the tropics. But according to this discussion on the Ministry of Rum website, sugar beet molasses is high in salt and doesn't produce good spirit.
A lot of the sweetener used in the US since the 1980's is from corn, in the form of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). I think that with the corn ethanol poor government planning and HFCS/obesity epidemic bad press, the (mostly corn-based) bourbon industry had better start using organic corn if they're going to come out of this retaining their "traditional American heritage" image.
But corn is a different story. For that, you can watch the documentary King Corn, or the History Channel also has a Modern Marvels on that crop.
The New Yorker dedicates five pages to the hangover. Most of the information is not new, but there are some interesting cultural anecdotes:
Elsewhere on the international front, many people in Asia and the Near East take strong tea. The Italians and the French prefer strong coffee. (Italian informant: add lemon. French informant: add salt. Alcohol researchers: stay away from coffee—it’s a diuretic and will make you more dehydrated.) Germans eat pickled herring; the Japanese turn to pickled plums; the Vietnamese drink a wax-gourd juice. Moroccans say to chew cumin seeds; Andeans, coca leaves. Russians swear by pickle brine. An ex-Soviet ballet dancer told me, “Pickle juice or a shot of vodka or pickle juice with a shot of vodka.”
...and a bit of discussion on what cures may work and why. Many of them one researcher dismisses as distraction cures:
Many of the cures probably work, she said, on the same distraction principle as the hair of the dog: “Take the spicy foods, for example. They divert the body’s attention away from coping with the alcohol to coping with the spices, which are also a toxin. So you have new problems—with your stomach, with your esophagus, with your respiration—rather than the problem with the headache, or that you are going to the washroom every five minutes.” The high-fat and high-protein meals operate in the same way, she said. The body turns to the food and forgets about the alcohol for the time being, thus delaying the hangover and possibly alleviating it.
Milk thistle as a liver helper comes up again. That's the only thing this article made me consider changing about my lifestyle. Lately, I've hardly been experiencing any hangovers. I attribute this not so much to reduced alcohol intake, but to two factors:
1. Drinking in venues where they serve a glass water with drinks.
2. Not staying out too late. I've noticed that even when not drinking heavily I feel worse after a late night out than I do after an early one with many cocktails.
The New Yorker story mentions Kingsley Amis, the British writer of three books on drinking that were recently compiled into one volume called Everyday Drinking. I have the book, and it's a riot. The Wall Street Journal's Eric Felten also wrote about this book in a story last weekend called The Hangover Artist.
Esquire's David Wondrich also reviews the book in the June issue. He says, "Kingsley Amis’s drink writing is better than anybody else’s, ever -- even though there wasn’t a single cocktail or category of booze he could write about without making a grievous factual error."
Playboy takes on Amis as well, saying that in the book, "Many quaffs are more interesting in theory than in practice... but the old boy is charming enough to make you think about trying them anyway. " They include a recipe for the Salty Dog, a cocktail with gin, grapefruit juice, and salt.
May 22: Mr. Smith's Whisky Club holds a tasting of Bowmore 12, Achentoshan 18, and Glen Garioch 3 Wood, with Guest Speaker David Stoop.
May 24 and June 2: Uva Enoteca has begun hosting Introduction to Italian Wines classes. The first of the two dates is May 24. Join their mailing list for more info.
June 4th: the Mechanics Institute Library (almost my favorite place in San Francisco except they don't serve drinks) is hosting a talk by Benjamin Wallace, author of The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine.
It's over two weeks since I've been to Beretta, and I'm getting the shakes. I meet there last night for drinks and I find the menu lacking the cocktail I most want: the Rangoon Gin Cobbler. What to do, I ask Eric Johnson, my man behind the stick.
Relax, says he, mixing me one, we change the menu all the time depending on the ingredients in stock.
Fine, I go, and what else don't I see here?
He says we were recently between piscos, so the menu isn't packing Punch, but I'd whip one out for you if you wanted.
I say no thanks, buddy, but you've inspired me to keep this train off the tracks. I ask him for a Ti Punch since they've got rhum agricole laying around like bums in the park, and he makes me one like it's nothing. Thanks for keeping me steady, I say, and blow out of there until tomorrow.
Last night I helped judge the Hendrick's gin cocktail competition at Rye. Hendrick's likes to make things interesting in their events and marketing, so for this contest bartenders not only had to create a cocktail showcasing one of the botanicals in Hendrick's, they also had to recite a limerick to go along with it. The limericks were weighted heavily in the judging but luckily our top contenders were strong in both the poetic and taste categories.
The winner of the contest was Sierra Zimei of the Seasons Bar at the Four Seasons with her Secret Garden cocktail consisting of grapefruit, cucumber, lime, and cilantro syrup with a healthy dose of gin mixed in. She won a round-trip air ticket anywhere in the States, which unfortunately she's not using to join us at Tales of the Cocktail but opting for a baseball game with her husband instead. I believe that marriage should not get in the way of cocktailing, but then again that may be a reason I'm still single. I'll ponder that over drinks later.
After the contest, I went out to dinner with Julio Bermejo of Tommy's, Charlotte Voissey of Hendrick's, Rob Renteria of Martini House, Greg Lindgren of Rye, and some other friends of Julio. Joey and Eddie's (the former Moose's) has a short cocktail menu, from which I chose the Bronx Negroni, which is a regular Negroni with a touch of Averna. Very good.
I ran into Scott Beattie of Cyrus last night at Absinthe's SF Cocktail Week finale event. He had big news to share- as of last weekend, he's no longer be working behind the bar there. He'll still be running the show, though, so your drinks will be just as tasty as ever. So from now on, he'll be a backseat muddler.
In other news, his book Artisnal Cocktails: Drinks Inspired by the Seasons from the Bar at Cyrus, will be released in November. It's available for pre-order on Amazon.com here. He gave me a sneak peak at the contents and it looks like great stuff, with photos like the one below (stolen from his website). It makes me very, very thirsty.
Camper English is a cocktails and spirits writer for publications including the SF Chronicle, LA Times Magazine, Fine Cooking, CLASS Magazine, and many more. Learn about Camper and Alcademics, or read clips of his published work.
- A vacuum tumbler to speed up the booze infusion process.
. I have the book, and it's a riot. The Wall Street Journal's Eric Felten also wrote about this book in a story last weekend called 
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