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Saturday Events in San Francisco

Two events in the Bay Area this Saturday November 22 worth checking out:

Elixir's 5/150 Party:

The celebrations kick off November 22^nd at noon with a daytime party to celebrate the 5^th anniversary of Mr. Ehrmann’s proprietorship, featuring a Celebrity Chef Barbeque with Mission District culinary dignitaries Justin Deering (Conduit) and Scott Youkilis (Maverick).

Wristbands to enjoy the feast will sell for $10 and the funds raised from the BBQ will go to a new Distressed Bartender Fund to be established with the local chapter of the United States Bartenders Guild (USBG), for Guild members who cannot work because of accidents or injuries and lack of insurance.

Other activities for the day include a sidewalk sale for local Mission charities, a 1pm toast to the 150^th anniversary (with the Clampers!), a “Blue Blazer” cocktail demonstration (at 2PM), games, raffles, giveaways and more.

Hangar One/St. George Spirits' Holiday Party and Open House:

After months of hard work in our holiday workshop, we have found the solution for this year's holiday shopping gloom: a Holiday Open House! Seriously, shopping while eating and drinking is a lot more fun than waiting outside in the cold for a department store to open.

Like always, the stills will be running most of the day, allowing you a rare opportunity to see the process up close with a live distillation. Entrance will include 3 lil' cocktails, our spirits (including the new Hangar One Spiced Pear Vodka release), and the iced vodka luges. Music and food will be supplied throughout the day to keep everyone upright.

To make the shopping even easier (and tastier), our friends, who just happen to run some of the best specialty food companies around, will be there to sample and sell their wares: Recchiuti Confections with truffles and chocolates; June Taylor Jams, with amazing jams, preserves, and syrups; Boccalone with salumi, cured meats, and all things pork; and La Cocina, with a variety of sweet treats made with organic ingredients.

All of our delicious spirits and holiday gift packs will be available for sampling and sale, naturally, including the St. George Absinthe Verte and the Hangar One Spiced Pear Vodka.

Finally, we are once again providing shuttle service between the West Oakland BART station and the Alameda Main street ferry building to and from the distillery. Yes, it's free --- just get on!

BART Shuttle service begins at 12:30pm and continues at 1:30pm, 2:30pm, 3:30pm with the last pick-up at 4:30pm. From the ferry at 1:45pm and 4:15pm.

Will-call tickets will be available in the distillery store starting today and by phone for $30. Call us at 510.864.0635 to reserve your spot. We sold out last time so don't wait!

Tasting tickets to try both the Absinthe Verte and De Profundis (20-year aged Pear Brandy) are $10.

Entry, if not sold out, will be $40 at the door.

Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 from 1pm to 6pm
St. George Spirits/Hangar One Distillery
Entry Fee is $30 in advance, $40 at the door.
This is a 21 and over event. Please bring your picture ID!

Look Who's Advertising

I think it's interesting to see which normally-quiet brands decide to launch big advertising campaigns all of a sudden. I've been seeing Drambuie ads all over the place recently- at least in all the men's magazines. And now I'm starting to see more Kahlua ads as well. I wonder if it's a winter thing- darker liqueurs for colder weather.
 
I also found another "cocktails = sophisticated vacation relaxation" themed ad, this time for Lufthansa, and this time not with cocktails but wine.

Eau Duh

This post is a couple months late, but no matter. A while back I visited the St. George Spirits (and Hangar One Vodka) distillery in Alameda, California, while they were finishing distilling raspberry eau de vie and about to distill pear. I've known Hangar's distiller Lance Winters for a while, but this time I was hearing from Jorg Rupf, the distillery's founder. He too, is awesome.

German lawyer Jorg Rupf started making eau de vie in California in the late 1970's (while on a sabbatical at UC Berkeley that doesn't appear to have ended) because he says he thought the Europeans living here would like it. He was the first licensed distiller of eau de vie in the US- but that didn't come until 1984. He's been making the stuff ever since.

Interestingly, his philsophy of making eau de vie extends to the full range of products made at the distillery. But first, some definitions.

Eau de vie is colorless fruit brandy. "Brandy" comes from "brandywine" which means "burnt wine." Wine comes from fruit (as opposed to beer, which comes from grains and is distilled into vodka, whiskey, gin, etc.) I think of most brandy as divided into a few categories- the aged brandies including cognac and armagnac (grapes) and calvados (apples), the usually-unaged and often leftover grape brandies (grappa, marc, pisco), and eau de vie. In my mind, what distinguishes eau de vie is that you're trying to get the whole unadulterated fruit into the bottle. The other categories are focusing on the juice or the solids, and aging adds another category of flavors.

The ancient word for most spirits (whiskey, vodka, eau de vie, etc.) means "water of life," which I'd always taken to mean life-stimulating liquid. Early booze was usually given as medicine, and could also be used to purify (kill the germs in) unsafe drinking water.

But on this visit it finally occurred to me the other side of the term: that distillation acts as a preservative to retain/extend the life of the fruit or grains. It's not just human life, it's the life of the base ingredient. (In many subjects, the obvious answer occurs to me last.)

At St. George Spirits, they generally try to capture the full flavor of whatever they're distilling. For the eau de vie and liqueurs, they distill whole (fermented) fruit- including the skins. For the Hangar One vodkas, they're not distilling vodka, they're distilling natural fruit flavorings to add to vodka. For the absinthe and the basil eau de vie, they add fresh herbs to the still to try to get the full flavor into the bottle, not pre-distilled essences.

And for the agave spirit (tequila, but can't legally be called tequila) launching next weekend, they distill the whole agave fibers- not just the sugary juice squeezed from the agave heart.

As this post is getting way too long, I'll keep the rest of it to bullet points.

• They're distilling 250,000 pounds of pears this year.
• You don't get a high alcohol percentage after fermenting many of these fruits. This means you have to distill a lot of it to get the final product, which means you have to start with so much. 
• 400 pounds of fruit (I think we're talking pears) produces a whopping 2 gallons of raw spirit.
• They wait until the pears turn ripe, which happens fast, causing a rush to ferment/distill immediately before they spoil. Rupf says, "We think it won't happen on the weekend, but it always happens on the weekend." 
• The philosophy: "Our job is not to make anything better than the fruit but to not screw it up so the fruit shines through at its best."

But my takeaway from the day was really about what eau de vie means- and how it tastes. When you're talking cognac and calvados and grappa and other brandies, you ask yourself "Does this taste good?" whereas for eau de vies you ask, "Does this taste like the real thing?"

Wines' Wine Picks Win

In last week's battle to see what paired best with food- wine, beer, or cocktails, wine came out the winner. In particular, the wines chosen by Emily Wines, Master Sommelier at Fifth Floor Restaurant in San Francisco, beat out the beer and cocktails pairings by other local experts as voted on by the diners in attendance.

I was rooting for cocktails, but from all accounts it was a close race. Congratulations to Ms. Wines. My spies who attended spoke:

"It was excellent-  Friendly, well organized, great service."

"The food was divine, spirit selections from all three experts were spot on, and the company around the table perfect. Everyone seemed to have a wonderful time, I know I did. Wine took the evening, Emily's pairings were awesome. However, Dave (beer) and Jacques were right there with her, I think only a point or two ever separated them."

I also got word that the next "Three on Five" competition will take place Wednesday, December 17th. There will likely be different pairing experts competing this time- sake? scotch? champagne? We'll know closer to the event date.

Glossy Booze: November Edition

Glossy Booze is a round-up of cocktails and spirits stories in magazines.

Men's Journal has this story on the increasing popularity and price of bourbon, along with some recommendations by Wayne Curtis, a few recommended brands of merlot, and a review of The Wettest County in the World.

The December issue of Men's Journal is also out, and has a recipe for the Midnight Manhattan,  a mention of Palo Santo Marron as a good winter brew, an endorsement of Three Thieves Bandit wine in the box as "adventure-ready wine," and a list of "Top Shelf Hooch" including Bluecoat Gin, Vodka 14, Nouvelle-Orleans Absinthe, and Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey.

In San Francisco's 7x7 Magazine, Jordan Mackay lists some steak-pairing red wines, and feature's Jennifer Colliau's Small Hand Foods, her vintage syrup business.

In Details, Rob Willey has a story on eggnog, with some recommended products to put in it- Remy Martin CROP cognac, Old Forrester Signature 100-proof bourbon, Brugal Anejo rum, and El Dorado 15-year-old rum.

Esquire is also on the rum kick, with David Wondrich telling us about how rum ages faster in the hot environments, and recommends a few to try: Clement Cuvee Homere, Angostura 1824, and English Harbour 10-year-old Reserve.

And finally, Bon Appetit has a slew of stories: A recipe for the Algonquin Bar Punch, some suggested champagnes, a fun list on what drinks cost around the world, a recipe for Christmas Caipirinhas (with ginger, ginger beer, and mint added to the usual mix), and a whole vintage cocktail party feature with food and old-style drinks.

Also from the Bon Appetit website, check out these pictures of bartenders in New York making the Blue Blazer.

Eco-Packaging

For your morning reading, a story about eco-packaging for wine.

I promise to  generate some of my own content again soon- this week has been hectic (emphasis on the heck).

Diamond Tequila, Now for Reals

I bet the people from Maestro Dobel didn't expect that their "diamond tequila" could actually be turned into diamonds, but it turns out it can, according to this scientific study.

Cocktails for Catfish

Scott Beattie's media onslaught continues! The Wall Street Journal's Eric Felten calls some of the drinks  in Beattie's book Artisanal Cocktails "cocktails for catfish" because there is so much food on the bottom of the glass. Ha! (Read the story here. )

Though Beattie's drinks do include tons and tons of herbs, spices, flowers and other pretty garnish, Felten doesn't mention that they actually do contribute significantly to the flavor of the drink. Beattie takes largely simple base ingredients like vodka and unaged rum and builds complex drinks using fresh herbs and spices rather than using complex spirits and simple garnish. In the same way an east coast bartender might reach for the bottles of creme de violette and rose flower water, Beattie would reach for the hedge clippers.