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This week was big for openings and pisco cocktails. I hit up La Mar early in the week, where I had some pisco drinks and lunch, then the new bar called Pisco just for pisco drinks. This bar was supposed to open in August (I wrote a story about it for that issue of San Francisco Magazine) but they had problems with handicapped accessibility due to the gradient slope of the street outside. (Umm, San Francisco has hills that are kind of hard to work around.) The place was looking groovy and more modern than I expected, but the drinks were lovely- I had the Pisco Punch and the Sideways Sour.

Another bar probably opening this week and also serving a Pisco Punch is Taverna Aventine in the Jackson Square district. The cocktail is on the menu as part of a classic drinks program paying homage to the bar's location right next to two of the most important historical drink sites in SF: Hotaling Street and the Bank Exchange.

The event I attended was a pre-opening party so it's hard to say how it will come together, but the Vintage 415 guys tend to do a good job with this sort of thing.

I also visited the new Nettie's Crab Shack, a big bright space in the Marina District that has no pisco drinks on the menu at all. They're doing a cocktail program with some interesting twists like a Cape Cod made with real cranberries, but they weren't serving them at the pre-party I attended. I'll have to hit them up a second time.

Floral, $28 cocktails at Apotheke in NYC

Flaming absinthe, hand-pressed sugar cane juice, lavender bitters, and no barstools: it all sounds a bit much to me, but it's impossible to say without going there if it all comes together effectively or not. (It sure looks pretty though.) Read about this new bar here . 

Cocktails worthy of a trip to Nicaragua

A few weeks ago, Todd Smith and Luis Sivira won trips to Nicaragua as part of Flor de Cana's cocktail contest in San Francisco. Sweet. Here are the recipes for the drinks that won.

Cafe de Caña
by Todd Smith, Beretta Restaurant
1.5oz. Flor de Caña 18 year rum
1oz. fresh lemon
.75oz. Averna Amaro
.5oz. honey
.5oz. egg white (optional)
Garnish: "Coffee dirt" (ground Nicaraguan coffee beans & dark cane sugar)
Method: Combine ingredients in mixing tin, shake hard. Serve in well
chilled cocktail glass top with "coffee dirt." If no egg white is used rim
1/2 of glass with "coffee dirt"


Caña Brava
by Luis Sivira, Metro Lafayette
2oz.  Flor De Caña   18 yrs.  rum
1/2  oz. Sugar cane syrup
1oz. White cranberry juice
1 oz. Fresh Orange juice
Splash  Campari
2 Orange wedges.
Shake all ingredients (including orange wedges)  with ice and serve up in
cocktail glass.

Congratulations, and remember to smile next time- you're going to Nicaragua you lucky bastards!

Homework for the weekend

More reading material from the internet:

A travel story on seeking the best vodka in Warsaw.

Ayyyy.com has a quiz on the lady lushes of television. (Answer is here.)

Lauren Clark writes about breaking up with your favorite beer. I've had that happen with booze. I love St. Germain but I'm no longer in love with it.

Le Mixeur lists a whole bunch of recipes with my favorite ingredient: Vinegar! VinegarWatch continues...

The Underhill Lounge geeks out on why Savoy Cocktail Book drinks aren't very bitter.

Chuck Cowdery gets all up in your grill about micro-distillers who are not craft distillers.

Matt Rowley lists about a zillion synonyms for "drunk." I like "tangle-footed," because it would be impossible to enunciate while still in that condition.

The bar at La Mar

Yesterday I had a chance to check out La Mar Cebicher'ia Peruana, the fancy new Peruvian restaurant opening up on Pier 1 1/2 in San Francisco. Gorgeous space, delicious food. But you don't come to Alcademics to read about food.

The drink menu is all about pisco, listing 12 pisco-based cocktails. It includes the Pisco Sour and Pisco Punch, of course, but a lot more creative drinks as well. Several of the drinks include chicha morada (a purple corn juice that looks and tastes a bit like purple grape juice), and many of them include passion fruit.

There are some interesting combinations on the list, including the Chilcano de Pisco that's just pisco, ginger ale, and angostura bitters, the Capitan Francisco with pisco, sweet vermouth, and bitters, and the Chicharrita made with pisco, Drambuie, chicha morada, and orange juice. There is also an imitation Cosmopolitan and Bloody Mary in the mix.

I'm not sure how they make their Pisco Punch or the gomme syrup for it, but for the Pisco Sour they throw it in a blender for a brief second to get it nice and frothy, then double-strain it into a glass without ice.

I noticed that they're using BarSol Pisco in the well, and have dozens of bottles of Pisco Vina de Oro on the top shelves. (I haven't tried it yet- could be a paid promotion, could be the good-looking bottle, could be tasty stuff.) There are many other brands of pisco on the shelf, but I forgot to ask the total number.

I went there with Victoria Damato-Moran, who will be the day lead bartender when they open full-time next week. I love that this place has a separate bar area from the restaurant where Victoria will be working, and hope that it won't be chock full of people eating when they should focus on drinking. There's plenty of good stuff to drink there.

Agricole Mule recipe

Oh look, Jordan Mackay's story on ginger in drinks is online.

That means the recipe for Beretta's Agricole Mule is also online. It's a cross between between a Mojito and a Moscow Mule, and it's delicious.

Go make one.

 

SF Whiskyfest events

Can now be found here. A lot more have been added since I last posted.

Is it December yet?

These days it's not unusual to receive a press release about a new cocktail on the menu at a bar, and I applaud this. That's why I go to bars, after all, and tempting new drinks are tempting. But last week I received a release from Clock Bar in San Francisco that's odd because:

1. The full recipes are included.
2. None of the drinks are on the menu yet.
3. One of them won't be on the menu until December, when blood oranges come into season. And of course it looks like the one I most want to try.

The press release clearly states of the recipes  "you are invited and welcome to share and publish." So I guess I will.

CUNNINGHAM by Marcovaldo Dionysos
In memory of Johnny Cunningham (1957-2003)
    1 1/2 oz. Johnny Walker Black
    1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice
    1/2 oz. fresh blood orange juice
    1/2 oz. Benedictine
    1/4 oz. cherry brandy
Shake well and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Garnish with brandied cherries and a flamed blood orange twist.

"Johnny Cunningham was one of the finest fiddlers the world has ever  seen. Some say he played so fast only dogs could hear him. This is my tribute to him."

Maybe it's just the Benedictine/cherry/scotch combo getting me stirred up, but the drink sounds bananas. I can't wait to try it. Could someone please hurry up with the global warming thing so that the blood oranges come earlier this year? Thanks.

Here's that story I wrote about bartenders

Bay Area's best mixologists leaving bars for brands

Camper English, Special to The Chronicle

Friday, September 19, 2008

While you're still likely to run into many of San Francisco's best mixologists in the usual cocktail hot spots, increasingly they'll be standing on the other side of the bar.

That's because many local bartenders have accepted full- or part-time positions as spirits brand ambassadors, bar consultants and sales representatives. David Nepove, Jon Santer, Jacques Bezuidenhout and Todd Smith are some of the top talent who are working behind the stick one night per week, if that. Even more are bartending three nights or fewer.  

(read the rest of the story here)

Check it

As you read this, I am in Bardstown, Kentucky. Yeehaw, y'all.

But I have a story in today's San Francisco Chronicle on bartenders who are no longer bartending. Controversy!

Run screaming to your local newsstand to pick up the story (with exciting graphics, they assure me), or scroll down on this link and look for it. 

New booze for yous

If you're in San Francisco, pick up this week's SF Bay Guardian newspaper, as I have a story in it on new booze I like, including Plymouth Sloe Gin, Remy Marin 1989 Cognac, Square One Cucumber Vodka, Pisco 100, Dimmi Liqueur, Tequila Ocho, Pernod Absinthe, Old Forester Repeal Bourbon, and Loft Liqueurs Tengerine Cello. 

Glossy Booze: mid-September edition

It's time for the monthly-or-so round-up of booze stories in glossy magazines.

In Tasting Panel, an industry magazine to which I'm a regular contributor, I have three stories in the September issue: One on Tales of the Cocktail, a quick blurb on Appleton and Kobrand, and a story on savory cocktails with quotes from Jackie Patterson formerly of Orson in San Francisco, and Stephen Kowalczuk of Room at Twelve in Atlanta.

Bon Appetit (October) has a recipe for the Moscow Mule and a round-up of ten wine bars.

There is also a largeish feature on blended whiskies that I don't believe mentions malted vs. grain whiskies, which, you know, is kind of important.

Also, how do you know when this cocktail thing is getting big? When Triscuit is sponsoring a cocktails/movies/Triscuits promotion. For reals. 

Men's Journal (October) has a round-up of America's Best Beers, regional beers, and craft beers. It's a lot of beers.

944 Magazine (San Francisco edition) has a story on Lotus Vodka.

Playboy has a little blurb on accidentalwine.com.

7X7 has three booze features: One on Clock Bar, one on white summer wines, and a third on ginger in drinks with the recipe for Beretta's Agricole Mule. (mint, cane syrup, rhum agricole, lime juice, gingle syrup, seltzer)

Details lists 5 tequila cocktails, four of them they just describe and one they print the recipe for. The drinks are from the Pegu Club (NYC), TearDrop Lounge (Portland), Bar Pilar (DC), and Violet Hour (Chicago).

Celebrity booze

In today's Washington Post, Jason Wilson discusses celebrity booze- brands by Willie Nelson, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dog, Danny DeVito, Donald Trump, Sammy Hagar, Vince Neil, Marilyn Manson, and Lil John. He also talks about cocktails named after celebrities, like the not-so-delicious Paris Hilton, MC Hammer, and Flava Flav. As usual, a fun read.

I still think a bar or crafty manager at Planet Hollywood should rotate their drink menu to match the celebrity news of the day. So one day you might get the LoSam Kiss made with vanilla vodka, ginger ale, and two cherries, and another day you'd get the DWI Hate Mel Gibson, a shot made with Jaegermeister and

Manischewitz.

All these great ideas are yours for the taking. I'm here for you, people. 

Who's the tallest of them all

I would like to organize my liquor cabinets (I'm up to six now) by spirit, but that's just not possible anymore. Not because I have so many of each, but because brands are all competing to have the tallest bottle on the shelf. I only have a couple of extra-high shelves so these all go there and screw up the organizational system. Frustrating!

They achieve their heights without increasing the volume of the liquid inside in a number of crafty ways. Some, like Pallini liqueurs and Pinky vodka, just make a really long neck. Some, like Luxardo maraschino liqueur, use a thin bottle and wrap it in a big label to make it look thick and impressive. Maestro Dobel uses a fairly standard sized bottle, then puts it on a metal pedestal and adds a tall cap on top of the cork. Milagro *is* a miracle, because the bottle looks full liter-sized but is the standard 750ml. (How?) Skyy 90 just uses an inch of glass at the bottom to give it height.

 

(Wine bottle for height comparison. I should have used a better angle to make this look more dramatic.)

P.S. This blog post doesn't have a point. Feel free to make one.

The Clubs of Pubs

The announcement that the Wall Street Journal was starting a wine club got me thinking: There sure are a lot of publications with wine clubs these days. 

In the UK, there is the Sunday Times Wine Club, but as with many of these clubs, the connection to the publication in the name is unclear. Like the Wall Street Journal's wine club, this one doesn't link to the original publication. There is also the Official Courier Newspaper Wine Club somewhere in the UK I think, but since it doesn't link to the Courier Newspaper (not an uncommon name) I'm not sure exactly where.

NewsDay, which I think publishes a few newspapers in the US, has a NewsDayInsider Wine Club, but you need to be an Insider subscriber to learn about it.

The San Francisco Chronicle's Wine Club makes the most sense, since they have a stand-alone wine section in the newspaper each week. At least, I thought it made the most sense, but when I searched for clubs from the wine-specific magazines like Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, and Wine & Spirits I couldn't find any.

I could, however, find wine clubs for Departures Magazine, only sent to people with American Express Platinum Cards, as well as one for readers of Better Homes and Gardens and Sunset Magazine.

Many wine clubs are sub-clubs of other membership organizations (or their newsletters). You can join a wine club as a member of KQED public media or even the NRA. 

I guess these days for every pub, there is a club.

The three tier system: necessary?

This story in the Modesto Bee discusses the three tier system that keeps alcohol producers, distributors, and retailers legally separated. The story is concerned with all the exceptions that have to be granted to the law each year, such as:

When, for instance, the Bronfman liquor family (Seagram's) bought Universal Studios some years back, it had to obtain a tied-house law exemption because Universal City restaurants sold liquor. When movie director Francis Ford Coppola, who owned a winery, wanted to open a restaurant, he had to do the same.

And the argument here is that the law is silly because it creates all this work granting exceptions, and lobbyists and lawyers to go along with it. But the three tier system is a much bigger problem than that. I like this quote from the story:

A recent Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control appraisal of the law says it all: "A Gordian knot of sometimes inconsistent laws and policies which may or may not reflect the needs and realities of the modern marketplace."

I agree completely, and I don't even know what a Gordian knot is. Producers are getting screwed because they have to go through distributors to get to retailers. The large distributors are consolidating like crazy right now, and this means that little brands don't get picked up in the portfolio of these large companies. The small producers who do get picked up by distributors are often responsible for their own sales, which is supposed to be the job of the distributor. Consumers and retail outlets get screwed that they can't get the brands they want because they're not distributed. But without distributors pushing products, many of them wouldn't make it onto store or bar shelves at all.

In the age of the internet, shouldn't you be able to get the products you read about that are available in other states, or even other parts of the same state?

I've largely avoided talking about the industry-side stuff here on Alcademics, but the industry-side stuff is really screwed up. The question is: is it something you're interested in reading about/discussing?

Not in the mix, and the Problem with citrus

The Wall Street Journal's Eric Felten tries out Williams-Sonoma's new line of high-end cocktail mixes and compares them to the recipes for the same drinks in a new book called Mix Shake Stir (that I don't see on the website yet). Not surprisingly, he finds the drinks pale in comparison to the homemade versions.

But the story is an interesting read on cocktail mixers in general. First he gets sassy:

The flacks for that supermarket standby, Rose's Cocktail Mixers, sent out a press release for their Mojito mix this summer touting it as "a solution to complicated drink-making." Complicated? Crush some mint in sugar syrup and fresh lime juice; add white rum, club soda and ice; stir. Is it supercilious to suggest that those for whom this is a task of surpassing complexity are better off not dulling their wits further with alcohol?

Then he tells us why citrus is so hard to bottle:

The core problem with cocktail mixes is that they almost all involve lemon or lime juice, which are notoriously difficult to bottle. Sara Risch, a food chemist and member of the Institute of Food Technologists, told me why: "Among the major components of citrus flavor are terpenes," she explained, compounds that are grievously subject to oxidation, and that break down quickly, especially when cooked (as in the pasteurization process such bottled juices require). The volatile terpenes in the juices and oils of lemons and limes turn inexorably toward the piney taste and smell of turpentine.

Ahh, citrus, the ingredient that ruins home cocktail mixing for everyone. How much juice is in "the juice of half a lime" anyway? I get the discount limes and there ain't much juice left in 'em. The lemons from my tree are huge and watery as opposed to the store-bought smaller tart ones.

Even if your cocktail recipe lists juice in ounces, the type of juice going in is highly variable. And if the tart/sour aspect of a drink is variable, so too must be the sweet aspect to balance it. So that's two ingredients you have to make "to taste" in each recipe.

Methinks this is why we have pre-mixed versions of the Mojito, Caipirinha, Margarita, Lemon Drop, Cosmopolitan, and Blood Orange Martini, whereas mixers for the no-citrus Manhattan and Martini aren't too popular. Maybe in cocktail books and live classes the instructors should give a lesson on balancing sour to sweet. To make many cocktails, it's not about using the perfect recipe, it's about perfecting that skill.

Distillation Live!

I visited St. George Spirits yesterday and caught the tail end of the kirsch eau de vie distillation. Behold the churning cherries!

The real news...

...is not that Amazon.com will start selling wine soon, it's that:

Hall said wine purchases on Amazon would even qualify for its discount shipping program, Amazon Prime, in which goods are shipped free for a yearly fee of $79.

That could be a huge savings. The reason I haven't joined the Chronicle's Wine Club or any other is because even if the wine is cheap, the shipping will kill you.

Is big bad?

Jordan Mackay discusses liquor at Slow Food Nation last week in San Francisco, and seems to take issue with the choices of slow spirits. Prairie Vodka is owned by Phillips Distilling, Maker's Mark Bourbon isn't made from organic corn, and 4 Copas doesn't provide enough information on their website about their organic nature. All true, but this doesn't necessarily mean these brands are greenwashing.

He then mentions small brands he wishes were represented, like Anchor Distilling, 209 Gin, Del Maguey mezcal, and Clear Creek's Eau de Vie of Douglas Fir. In the case of the fir eau de vie and mezcal, the product celebrate local traditions or ingredients and that's absolutely what Slow Food should be promoting. Good point.

In the case of the gin, at least at 209 they order in high-proof spirit from the same type of Midwestern distillery that Phillips Distilling produces before infusing it with botanicals and redistilling, and additionally you have to truck it all the way to California. It's not that 209 is a bad company- far from it- but it's not like they're growing grain in Golden Gate Park and picking juniper berries from Muir Woods to make the stuff.

I think the underlying prejudice here (not to pick on Jordan; he's just my launch point) is against large companies, whereas small companies get a break in peoples' eyes just for being small. But large companies can accomplish a lot if they want to. Herradura has some pretty major waste and water recycling facilities; bourbon barrels are shipped all over the world to age scotch, rum, and tequila; Distilled Resources and Phillips can afford to get their organic certification to produce Square One and Prairie. I don't think Prairie Vodka is trying to imply that Phillips is a green company; just that this is a green product. 4 Copas spent a ton of money getting organic certified, and they pay for farmers to get their fields certified.

We should certainly celebrate brands like Del Maguey (and grappa from Italy, Scandinavian aquavit, genever from Holland, Amarula from South Africa, etc. ) as the Slow-est of booze and use them as an example instead of Prairie and Maker's. And greenwashed brands like Vodka 360 deserve to be called out on it. But I think it's a mistake to give a free pass to small brands just because they're small and to condemn larger ones just for being big.