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A week in the life

What a week! Monday was relatively quiet- I met a PR friend for lunch at Fritjz (we talked about gin, absinthe, and Tales), then another friend for drinks at Dalva later on.

On Tuesday, though, things got crazy. My friend and fellow booze writer Amy Zavatto was in town so we hit Cantina then Bourbon & Branch for some cocktails. I hopped in a cab late for dinner at Mangarosa in North Beach, where I was dining with Matti Anttila, president of Cabana cachaca. Our dinner was paired with drinks curated by Anthony Dias Blue, who is kind of hilarious. While learning about Cabana, the conversation turned to one of my favorite topics, SkyMall. Matti said his grandfather hated flying but loved SkyMall so he had a subscription sent to his house.

After dinner, we hopped in cabs and headed to Rye for a quick couple more drinks. Then we hit Bourbon & Branch for my second time that day. There, we ran into John Cooper from Canton ginger liqueur, who was having drinks with a pack of writers, a photographer, my PR friend from Monday, and bartenders. It was a lovely reunion, so we had lots of drinks then headed to another bar. That bar was Cantina, where I'd also been earlier that day. We stayed until closing, and then it was long time for that day to be over.

On Wednesday, I met up with a bunch of folks (including two people who were at B&B the night before) for an evening at Opaque, the dining-in-the-dark restaurant beneath Indigo in Hayes Valley. First we had drinks at Jade, then we were lead in groups down into the darkness. They combined their typical meal (in the dark, utensils are useless) with a tasting of the Miracle Fruit that turns sour tastes sweet and makes lemons delicious to suck on.

One of our fellow diners is actually afraid of the dark so for him it was a terrifying experience, which made the dinner all the more fun for the rest of us. He would shuffle a deck of cards to calm down, so we'd hear a thwipp-thwipp-thwipp sound every few minutes. My friend Maria kept making jokes about the waiter rifling through her purse in the dark, then when she left she saw the big sign right by the door that says, "Not responsible for lost or stolen items." Ha!

The next day, I went to a party for The Men's Book magazine that is put out by San Francisco Magazine. (The next issue comes out in September and I have a story in it on sherry cocktails.) There I was hanging out with some people, one of whom told me he saw an episode of CSI where they went to a dining-in-the-dark restaurant and someone was murdered. (The waiter did it.)

After that, I headed over to the new Zare at Fly Trap for a pre-opening dinner. One of the bartenders there was working at Jade the previous night, adding to the continuity of things that is so important in a narrative of this nature. Reza Esmali of Conduit is doing the drink menu (launched next week) but made me the Cardamom My Dearest (the name kills me) with Old Raj gin, cardamom syrup, lime juice, and dry vermouth. It was great on its own but worked incredibly well with the food. And the food was terrific, using a lot of "cradle of civilization" flavors in new ways.

On Friday I met a friend for drinks and dinner at Beretta, a little place in the Mission I am known to frequent. But I got there too early and it wasn't open yet, and while waiting I received a text message from another friend hanging at Cantina saying she got there before the bar opened too. Great drunks think alike.

Anyway, we stayed at Beretta for a few drinks  (Note: I'm about to start a protest to bring back the Rangoon Gin Cobbler) then left for home but didn't make it, because Brooke was working the bar at Range just down the street.

We tried the tomato-based Sungold Zinger, mentioned in GQ magazine and invented by Carlos Yturria a while back, and the Diablo Dulce that combines strawberries with chiles and a chipotle salt rim. Both fantastic. Then Brooke made us a preview of her entry for the Flor de Cana cocktail competition coming up. I thought the drink was delicious but could have used an older rum- and it turns out the competition is with the 18-year-old expression instead of the four-year-old one she had behind the bar. Perfect.

Now after a work week like that, I need the weekend to recover. So if you see me out, please knock me unconscious and deliver me to my apartment. I have a few events next week I need to rest up for.

Sinfully delicious

In last week's Wall Street Journal story on the Planter's Punch, Eric Felten wrote of the accolades it received in the press. One such quote was:

In July 1906, the Washington Post recommended Planter's Punch as "something cool, something novel enough to excite interest, and above all something that will quench thirst."

In my insomniatic state, I read that as "something novel enough to excite incest," which would be one heck of an endorsement.

I love how tiki bar menus usually come with a description like, "The Monkey Cooler will have you swinging from the trees- have two and you'll go bananas!" It would be funny (in the how-to-run-your-bar-into-the-ground sort of way) if a place labeled their menu along the lines of my misreading of the Planter's Punch recipe, like :

• The Goggle: Lock up your sister, because this drink will make any woman irresistible!
• The Smoker: A cocktail so high in proof, you can dowse your neighbor with it and light him on fire!
• The Bull Lima: A cream-and-pisco drink you can take by the horns- it tastes as good going down as it does coming back up!
• Pousse Galore: A layered drink that will have you licking your cat!

This post may not seem as funny when I wake up in the morning.

Complete aquavit

My pal Hope S. Philbrick from Atlanta has a story in Friday's San Francisco Chronicle on aquavit and how it's consumed in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. And she oughtta know- every time I talk to her she's off to somewhere else in Scandinavia. Soon she'll start growing horns like the vikings.

Oh rickey, you're so fine

Jason Wilson has a nice story in the Washington Post on the rickey cocktail. I didn't realize it was named after a person and invented in DC. He also took a bar tour to taste some local variations of the drink as part of Rickey Month in DC. This one is my favorite:

I take my hat off to Justin Guthrie, bar manager at Central and winner of the rickey contest, who made a delicious black pepper-lime soda, simply mixed with gin over ice, that also ratcheted up the rickey's flavor quotient.

Mmm, pepper.

Booze stats

Nick Passmore has a big story in Businessweek on who is drinking what where in the world. He's also got a run-down of the most popular spirits in several different countries here.

A few quotes I found interesting:

• By far the most popular category of liquor in the world was vodka (3.7 billion liters), thanks to Russia's immense appetite for the stuff, followed by whiskey (2.1 billion liters).
• Sales of Scotch in China grew tenfold from 2002 to 2007.
• The U.S. is also, and somewhat surprisingly, the largest market for cognac. In contrast, the French, while embracing Scotch, have fallen most decidedly out of love with their own national spirit; consumption fell by 55% from 2002 to 2007 and now is just 1/20th of that of Scotch.
• The world's largest consumer of "Scotch" is India—the word is in quotes because 99% of it there is not produced by Messrs. Walker, Haig, and their Scottish friends, but a local spirit as often as not made from molasses rather than barley.

Technology vs. Terroir

In Lawrence Osbourne's The Accidental Connoisseur he discusses California wine history and how innovation was the name of the game. Initially the producers in America believed that modern technology could win over old-world techniques and produce better wines. The technology developed (and still is developing) to improve wines or to match specific popular flavor profiles.

Later, some vineyards began introducing old-world concepts like closer row spacing that would necessitate hand-harvesting, and delicate presses to replicate hand-pressing. He visited Opus One and found that at the heart of the high-tech operation they were using old, labor-intensive operations to actually produce the wine, then using all the tech just to measure it. Old-world techniques became the sign of luxury brands- and charged prices to match.

This reminds me of the current state of the tequila industry, which is earlier along on this path. Long ago, tequila was made using the tahona, the stone wheel that crushes the agave, along with fermentation vats in the ground and clay ovens. Now most brands have moved to using more efficient equipment like autoclaves for cooking and diffusion band extractors for getting the most sugar out of the baked agave.

But in recent times, old-style techniques have become a selling point. El Tesoro uses a tahona and most everything else in the original style. In this case, they just haven't upgraded- and don't need to. "We make you pay for it," says their Master Distiller Carlos Camarena. Herradura lets their tequila naturally ferment, which is pretty amazing at the volumes they do. The rest of the distillery has moved to high tech, while they display their original equipment in an on-site tequila museum.

This operating middle-ground between low-tech and high-tech seems to be where many high-end distilleries are today. Tezon may be pulling an Opus One- using a tahona to crush the agave but surrounding it with a high-tech new distillery. (From what I hear anyway, I haven't been there yet.) In many ways, the high-tech people are saying, "We can distill the terroir out of tequila" like the California wineries did  years ago, and the low-tech ones (and every place in the Highlands) use terroir as a selling point.

Safe for work

Lance Mayhew introduces bartender porn.

TOTC 2009

Buried somewhere in a press release about the number of limes used at Tales of the Cocktail this year were the dates for next year's event: July 8-12, 2009. Mark your calendars.

So now we know when. The big question is: Where? At the overcrowded Monteleone again? Or somewhere else?