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Original Gins

Check out my story in today's San Francisco Chronicle about new-to-market old-style gins, including genever, old tom, and aged gin. The story is here.

This month's sponsors

Alcademics thanks this month's sponsors- please give them a click!

Oval Vodka- Nominate your drink for the Oval Office

Hiram Walker Liqueurs- Now in Pumpkin Spice and Gingerbread flavors.

Absinthe Mata Hari- She's sure to steal your heart. 

Hotel Wine MacGuyver

Say you find yourself in a hotel room on a cold London night, caught in a bout of sleep-free jetlag, but prepared to take the edge off with a bottle of wine. Unfortunately, you forget to bring a corkscrew. You don't have any cash to tip room service for bringing one up. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO?

I can tell you what I did tonight. First, I paid the 20 dollar wi-fi fee (note to Cumberland Hotel- screw you!) and looked up a solution. The suggestions included banging it on a tree and using a hammer/screw. Having neither a tree nor a screw loose, I  gathered materials from around the room.

I tried the banging method in several ways- held in my knees with a shoe, against the wall with a pillow, against the floor, an unturned chair, using the hotel bible. None of them worked. Then I moved on to stabbing at it. The cork was synthetic, and seemed designed specifically to thwart me. I did get a paper clip through the cork, but that didn't accomplish much. Various methods of bending it and trying to create a hook were failures as well. Then I tried to make a two-pronged wine key out of... two keys, but I couldn't get them into the sides of the cork at all. Neither could I get the handle of the coffee spoon into the side of the cork.

I looked around the room for another time (this was an hour long process) and found something that I'd overlooked- the coat hangers! Without a moment to spare (I was really thirsty) I grabbed a hanger and bent it at the neck, so that the spiral part separated- a natural corkscrew! I plunged it into the cork, but was having  a difficult time getting it all through. But in doing so, I must have loosed it up, because the cork began to slip into the bottle. I removed the hanger, grabbed the spoon, and banged in the cork using the hotel bible. The cork plunged into the wine, spraying only enough of it out of the bottle to make it dramatic.

The victory was delicious! If I only I could say that for the wine.

So all you need to open wine without a corkscrew is a hanger, a spoon, and a bible. If this information helps just one person get his or her drink on in equally dire circumstances, it will all have been worth it.

Clearly a Failure

There are various methods people use to make the clearer ice. To remove the air bubbles that make ice cloudy, people suggest boiling or refreezing the water. I decided to give a few options a try to see what worked best. But as we'll see, my results are less than conclusive.

Using individual sized apple sauce cups (these are great large cubes for drinking whisky, as you don't want the ice to melt too rapidly and water it down) I froze the following into ice:

• Control ice- regular ice poured from the Britta filter, probably two days old
• Re-frozen- above style ice cubes, melted and refrozen
• Boiled in pot for about 10 minutes
• Microwaved for about three minutes of boiling

Then I lined up all the ice in order of most clear to least. I had two of each style of ice, and my results were: Control, Control, Boiled, Microwaved, Refrozen, Microwaved, Refrozen, Boiled. None of the ice was totally clear. And the control should have been the least clear, not the most.

So... that didn't work at all. I will need to repeat this experiment. Any ideas on what I did wrong? the cups in the picture are upside down, so the most air/cloudiness was on the bottom of the container. Perhaps I need to pour it slowly into the tray to avoid adding air at that point? Drip it through a filter? Use a colder temperature? Suggestions gladly welcomed.

The Pisco/Vodka Border

Vodka can be made from most anything- corn, wheat, potatoes, grapes, maple syrup, honey, molasses, sugar beets, etc. But it is distilled to high proof to remove most flavor, and most of these base materials don't come in a lower distillation proof, unaged form. (Barring corn likker, of course.)

But trying some recent products made me realize there is a closer boundary between pisco and vodka. Pisco 100 is a brand I've written about before that's a very light, sweet, floral pisco. At the SF World Spirits Competition Double Gold Winner tasting event in San Francisco a while back, I sampled Primo Vodka. It is an Argentinian grape-based vodka that comes in Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Chardonnay varieties. The one I tried is very grapey and flavorful for a vodka.

I think in the near future, we're going to have to address vodkas that not only taste like something, they taste like something with which we're already familiar.

Glossy Booze: Late October Edition

Glossy Booze is a round-up of booze stories in magazines.

In the industry magazine Tasting Panel, I have a short write-up on the Ocho Tequila launch event in San Francisco, and a long piece on the evolving cocktail scene in Sacramento. (Oh, and I just noticed my report from last month about Tales of the Cocktail is online.)

Conde Nast Traveler (November) has two booze stories: One on in which bars and restaurants republican and democrat candidates eat, and a long travel piece on Kentucky Bourbon and the KY Bourbon Trail. The story also includes ratings and cocktails from the likes of Joel Baker of Bourbon & Branch, Brian Miller from Death & Co., and Adam Seger from Nacional 27. Oh look, the main body of the text is online already.

Playboy's November all-James-Bond-issue has a few bits and bits on booze: a mention of Drank Anti-Energy Drink, a blurb about Cabo Uno, and The Playboy Advisor takes on the difference between seltzer and soda water.

Men's Vogue, also with a Bond theme for November (I guess there must be a new movie coming out) has Lawrence Osbourne writing a full feature on Karlsson's potato vodka- probably the longest story on a single brand of vodka I've read in years. The story isn't online yet, but will probably show up in the archives next month.

Esquire packs a bunch of stories in different sections: Tom Chiarella reviews  The Wettest County in the World (a book I have at home but haven't started),Charles P. Pierce endorses Clontarf Irish Whiskey, and Ryan D'Agostino suggests drinking red wine with breakfast. Are they letting everyone write about booze now? Where's Wondrich? Oh here he is, discussing rinsing as a cocktail technique. 

Online at Esquire.com, they list 24 alcohol gifts including Wonrdich's book, Karlsson's vodka and a bunch of other spirits products, a few tools (meh), and only one thing that's sort of awesome- a USB beverage chiller! (It's the last item in the slideshow, so click backwards.)

A day with Charbay

The other week I sat down on the patio behind Swirl on Castro with Marko Karakasevic and Jenni soon-to-be Karakasevic of Charbay and tasted through their line of products.

Charbay is a family-run winery and distillery in Napa Valley. And boy do these people like to play with the still- in addition to wine, they make flavored vodka, rum, whiskey, walnut liqueur, grappa, pastis, port, and now some aperitifs. It's hard to keep up with them.

The aperitifs are neither eau de vie nor typical liqueurs, but flavored fortified wines. Currently they produce a pomegranate and a green tea flavor, which they like to think of as cocktails-in-a-glass. Importantly for retailers, these can be served at beer and wine-only venues.

We then tasted through the vodka line. When they make vodka at Charbay, really they're making extractions that are added to plain vodka to flavor it. (Most flavored vodkas are vodka plus flavors purchased from flavor companies.) Not only is this unique, they make their extractions using whole fruit- not just the peel or juice. They throw the entire fruit (okay, not the pomegranate, but the citrus) into a leaf shredder and into the tanks, then distill the mixture to extract the flavor components they're looking for. Marko told me he was able to get the Meyer lemon flavor less bitter than before (emphasizing the pith less and peel more). The grapefruit flavor is as bitter as it should be.

The Tahitian vanilla rum is triple pot distilled and made from concentrated sugar cane juice (not molasses) from Hawaii. All rums are made from sugar cane products. Rhum agricole and cachaca are made from sugar cane juice. Most rums are made from molasses (the leftovers after sugar is extracted from sugar cane juice). Ron Zacapa is made from a form of concentrated sugar cane juice without the sugar taken out. The sugar cane juice used by Charbay is flash dehydrated under a vaccuum to remove the water and concentrate the liquid. I want to research how this is different from what Zacapa uses. Project!

I think they should just call their whiskey "weed-lovers-whiskey", because it really tastes like marijuana. This is the second release of the product that was pot distilled from pilsner beer with three kinds of hops (this is probably where the weed aromas come in) and aged six years in new barrels. The first release was after three years in barrels.

Finally, they're going to release a pomegranate dessert wine (they really like the pomegranate over there) that smells like it's going to be ultra-syrupy, but is just pleasantly sweet. A nice way to end a meal, or a tasting session.

To sample the products in person, check out the early happy hour at Tra Vigna in Napa Valley, during the weekly Charbay tasting. Hopefully Jenni and Marko will be there, because they're really fun people with whom to share a drink. Or ten.

New Booze: Tru 2 Organic Gin

Why it's interesting: While nearly all gins are vodka that is infused with herbs and redistilled, Tru 2 Gin stops at the infusion- and proudly advertises that. (It's a light gold color because of this.) Also, I believe it is only the second organic gin on the market.

The product is made by Modern Spirits, a company that produces a range of flavored vodkas, as well as the Tru Organic Vodka line. Like most gin (and many vodka) companies, they purchase their spirit elsewhere and blend and dilute it in-house. Here they use their creative infusion talents to turn this vodka into gin.

The mouthfeel on this gin is oilier than your average London dry, and I'd go so far as to say it has a softer "nosefeel." (Can I copyright that?) According to the website, the ingredients in the gin are juniper berries,  fresh lavender, fresh lemon zest, angelica root, orris root,  coriander seeds,  cardamom, vanilla beans, cloves, fennel, cinnamon, allspice, chamomile and star anise. To my palate (which is dumb, keep in mind), it's floral soft vanilla juniper on the nose and lingering cinnamon/allspice in the mouth.

Availability: It is supposed to be in "major markets" this fall. (This map should help you determine if it's in your state.) Retail price is $34.99.