Alcademics.com

Casa Noble Distillery Visit

Way back in February I took a quick trip to Mexico to visit the distillery La Cofradia, where they make Casa Noble tequila. They make other brands there too, but I was there as the guest of their flagship brand Casa Noble.

A Beautiful Distillery

La Cofradia is located about a mile outside of the town of Tequila in the Lowlands of Mexico about 45 minutes outside Guadalajara. In Mexico a few distilleries cultivate a garden-like environment but here they take it to another level. There is a central courtyard with trees, a duck pond, a little cafe, and a set of four cottages where visitors like me can stay. 

Casa Noble Tequila Production

Casa Noble is a certified organic 100% agave tequila. In order to be organicaly certified you need to prove that the land has been organically farmed and not had chemicals used on it for a certain number of years. Casa Noble avoided that problem by purchasing virgin land in Nayarit and planting fresh agave there. Nayarit is one of the five states where it is legal to grow agave, though nearly all of it comes from the state of Jalisco where the distillery is located.

Thus Casa Noble uses estate-grown agave. This is a growing trend in the tequila industry; producers owning or renting the agave fields so they can control the both the care and harvest of it, but also the price, avoiding the dramatic gluts and shortages of agave in the industry as a result of its long, 6-11 year growing cycle.

(Agave pina (pineapple))

The fields in Nayarit are at an elevation of about 4000 feet, higher than some of the Highlands. Yet the agaves I saw at the distillery were much smaller than Highland agave I've seen. Those are often 200 pounds compared with the 110 pound or so average at Casa Noble (and thus only had to be split in half before baking; some Highland producers split theirs into quarters). They purposefully chose an isolated location for their fields, because they are organic: they wouldn't want airborne agave diseases to spread to their fields.

After harvest, the agave pinas are brought to the distillery where they'll be baked, shredded, fermented, and distilled. Baking converts the complex sugars in the agave into simpler, fermentable sugars.

(Closeup of piece of agave. You can see the fibers. The sugars are stored between these fibers which is why agave is shredded after baking to release them.)

Baking and Shredding

La Cofradia has 5 hornos (ovens), 3 large 40-ton ones and 2 smaller 20-ton ones. The agave is steam baked for 36-38 hours. Then it cools before the next step. They hasten the cooling process by using large fans blowing through the two sides of the oven.

When agave is cooking with steam, the first water than runs off the bottom is called "bitter honey" and it is discarded. The next mass of water is called the "oven honey" and this is collected. We sampled this water- its sweet, watery, and has a vinegar note to it. (David Yan, Marketing Director there, says he's used a refined version of this as a vinegrette on salads.)

(Baked agave.)

After baking the agave is shredded to expose the fermentable sugars that can be washed out and fermented. At La Cofradia they have a unique system: First the baked agave pinas are put through a sort of wood chipper (not a roller mill) with water. This water is collected and they call it the "fat extraction."

Next the chipped agave goes into a two "extractors" that are shaped like horizontal metal tubes. The first part of the extractor is like a corkscrew that compresses the fibers in the agave. Then it passes through to a set of paddles on a central axis that spins the agave fibers outward and washes them with water.  Apparently this helps separate the fibers without neccesarily shredding them.

(Diagram of extractor from my notes.)

Fermenting and Distilling

Now, onto fermentation. They ferment the combination of the oven honey, fat extraction, and agave juice from the extractors. Yeast is added that feeds on the fermentable sugars and converts it into alcohol plus CO2. While filling the fermentation vats, they bubble air into the tank, which they say makes the yeast reproduce more. This increases their alcohol conversion by an extra 1-2%.

(Ready for fermentation.)

After fermentation (3-5 days, depending on the time of year), the yeast has died and the juice is called "mosto muerto." Now it's time to concentrate the alcohol through distillation.

At La Cofradia they have large and small stills for the first and second/third distillations. The first, large stillas are called "destroyers" and their job is to get rid of most of the heads and tails.The resultant spirit is 22% alcohol.

(Destroyer stills closer, smaller stills further away.)

The smaller stills are used for both a second and third distillation that refine the spirit. Though the first distillation cuts most of the heads and tails, there are smaller cuts on the second and third distillations. Both bring the alcohol to 55% ABV. (For most of the other brands that are produced at La Cofradia, they distill only twice. As this is the flagship brand they refine it more.)

After distillation (or, in the case of the aged tequilas, after aging) the tequila is filtered through micro-cellulose fibers and diluted to proof. The blanco (only?) is oxygenated before bottling for 8-12 hours.

Aging and Tasting

The barrels for aging Casa Noble come from the Taransaud cooperage in France. They're new French oak with a light #1 char, and nobody else in Mexico uses these barrels.The tequila goes into the casks at 55% ABV from the still (not watered down before barreling).

(New French oak barrels.)

Interestingly, the tequila destined to be anejo (minimum 1 year aging) goes into new casks. The reposado (2 months to 1 year aging) goes into refilled caks. (More often, brands will use newer casks for reposado tequilas and older ones for anejo so that the wood affects the spirit more in a shorter time for the reposado.) They refill these casks for reposado 7-8 times.

Cristal/Blanco: This tastes of nickel and minerals, white and red pepper, and "agave sticks" according to my tasting notes.

Reposado: The reposado is aged for 364 days, the maximum amount before it would be in the anejo category. Reposado is aged in all 228-liter barrels. My tasting notes were: Boo-berry, strawberry cream popsicle, and white flowers.

(Tasting.)

Anejo: Here's where Casa Noble separates itself from the pack yet again. Though all barrels are new French oak from Taransaud, they actually use three different sizes of barrels: 114 liter, 228 liter (about the size of bourbon barrels), and 350 liter barrels. These are blended together to create the anejo.

The anejo is aged for 2 years. (Anejo is aged a minimum of one year. Extra-anejo starts at three years.) You can definitely taste all three of the below flavor profiles in the anejo.

We were given the opportunity to taste tequila aged in each of the three sizes of barrels, each of them for a little under two years.

114 liter: bitter wood, used peanut oil
228 liter: fruit, dusty Boo-Berry, most similar to the reposado
350 liter: floral, strawberry juice, light

Now, besides Casa Noble, I can only think of one other set of brands that ages their spirit in similar casks of different sizes: Jim Beam. Laphroaig and Ardmore both do "quarter cask" programs.

So, Wow.

This is a distillery that uses traditional methods in many ways (stone ovens, gentle agave processing) yet has built their system from the ground up (new agave fields, agave processing methods, distillation, aging). And it's all done in a lovely setting to which I'd love to return someday.

 

New Bar-Within-A-Bar: The Wilson at Bourbon & Branch

To get into The Wilson, also known as the Wilson and Wilson Private Detective Agency, you make a reservation and enter at the main door of Bourbon & Branch. You're escorted through the bar to a locked interior room near one of the bathrooms.

Inside you're given an envelope that contains the menu, which is split into Aperitifs, Mains, and Digestifs. You can order drinks a la carte at $12 or get one from each category for $30. There is also a small section for punches that are served out of a teapot for $40.

Many of the drinks contain homemade tinctures and bitters like sasparilla infused aromatic bitters, black pepper tincture, and cinnamon infused orange bitters. They also plan to keep the menu fresh and rotating frequently with bartenders Jayson Wilde and Ian Scalzo on the case.

I had the Phantom, made with clove infused cognac, Stranahan's whiskey, Cocchi Aperitivo, lemon, cacao and vanilla syrup, and orange bitters. So good. I also had the Dark City, one of the punches made with mezcal, Zacapa rum, lime, Benedictine, pineapple gomme syrup, Cherry Heering, vanilla infused Angostura bitters, and a beer float. 

One of the goals of this room is to have some space where bartenders can interact with customers more, unlike the main bars where they're so busy making drinks they barely have time to look up. Here I think they're staffing two bartenders and a server for just this small room. So in a way they're getting back to the limited-capacity bar that Bourbon & Branch was supposed to be in the first place. 

 

New Products from Beam: Devil's Cut, Rose Cognac, and a Twelve Dollar 100% Agave Tequila

I wish all the major spirit companies would do this: Instead of being contacted by a million different PR agencies, I sat down with a Beam Global employee and she took me through some of the new product launches for Beam's brands over the next half a year. 

Beam has partnered with Thatcher's Organic Liqueurs so we may be seeing those around more. They're pretty low in alcohol level so I think they'll be more for home consumers than for bartenders. Of the ones I tried I think the apple-ginger one has the most potential.

Jim Beam is releasing the "Devil's Cut" in July/August. A play on the angel's share (the alcohol that evaporates through the barrel), the devil's cut is the bourbon that is trapped absorbed in the wood when the barrel is emptied. Apparently they've developed a way to get some of this whisky out. (Chuck Cowdery gets the info here.) They add a touch of this devil's cut to six-year-old Beam (with the same mash bill as their four-year-old) and release this product at 45% ABV.

I sampled the Devil's Cut and found it to be light bodied like regular Beam, but definitely a lot more woody. Not so much caramelized vanilla, but raw wood.

Knob Creek Single Barrel is just regular old Knob Creek but unblended and sold at 60% ABV instead of the usual 50%. The one I tried tasted like Knob Creek, at higher proof.

Courvoisier Cognac is coming out with a Rose' - a blend of cognac and wine. Sounds to me like it's a Pineau des Charentes but I don't know enough about it yet. Courvoisier continues to release new products - last year saw the launch of a 12-year and a 21-year bottlings. Finally cognacs are getting creative.

Sauza is launching a 100% agave tequila called Sauza Blue for  $11.99 and $13.99  $18.99 (the product was just released at this price- must have changed since speaking with me), in time for Cinco de Mayo. Sauza is usually a mixto, whereas their other lines - Tres Generaciones and Hornitos are 100% agave.

I think this is a pretty significant event, because:

• While 100% agave tequilas are growing even in the bad economy, the cheaper mixto tequilas are actually selling less. It seems Sauza is acting on this.
• We're currently in an agave glut, but the price of agave must be super low to offer this for twelve bucks. Will it be sustainable?
• 100% agave tequila must be bottled in Mexico, whereas mixto tequilas are usually trucked to the US and bottled there. Because Sauza is the #2 selling tequila their production is so big that they added an additional bottling line in Mexico to handle the bottling volume of this product.

So between Cuervo launching the 100% agave Tradicional Silver in the US ($24) and this 100% agave Sauza, things are moving in the right direction.

Visiting Trinidad: Doubles, Butterflies, Sharks, and Parties

Luckily on my recent trip to Trinidad we didn't spend the whole time inside the distillery. We took our rum to go and this is what we did.

The only bar I was able to visit was Shaker's, on my first night on the island. It was an indoor/outdoor place with lots of Angostura branding and food.

One street food in Trinidad is Doubles: taco-sized bread with Indian chic peas. I added hot pepper sauce to mine - and every time after that. So good.

The night after our distillery visit, we went to a welcome party at Wayne Yip Choy's little house by the water.

There they gave us a Carnival preview with stilt-dancers,

India-meets-Africa professional dance troupes,

and the requisite bevy of beautiful babes in butterfly wings.

The next day the journalists took a trip to the beach. Trinidad, unlike most Caribbean islands, doesn't need your tourist dollars: it is an oil-rich nation. Port of Spain is the large city on the island, and all the big hotels are business hotels, not resort hotels. Residents of Trinidad (at least where we were) live in the city then head to the beaches on the weekends. 

On the way there we stopped at a coconut stand to drink fresh coconut water from the shell. They split it over with a machete then hand you a straw. After you drink the water they'll split the coconut open you can eat the white meat. I tried it and the texture was very clingy and slimy like an oyster.

When we got to the ocean - a little under an hour drive over a windy mountaintop road- we had a great time by the ocean. We were at Maracas Beach, apparently one of the most popular. The waves are really fun to bodysurf on.

The local delicacy is Bake 'N Shark, pronouced like "bacon shark" and sometimes called Shark 'N Bake, but meaning fried shark. Shark apparently is an inexpensive fish so this is a cheap-ish snack. You eat it like a hamburger with a big station of sides and sauces.

As a vegetarian I did not partake of this delicacy. Most of the time I ate roti and other Indian foods, which were available at pretty much every meal. But one snack I tried on the beach was this fresh pineapple in a mild pepper marinade sauce. It was amazing and I want to learn to made the marinade at home.

Later that night we took in this massive steel drum competition called Panarama. It was in a giant stadium and the bands were massive - the "medium" sized bands probably had 50 people in them.

After the Angostura Global Cocktail Challenge competition the next day, we went to a pre-Carnival party at Brian Lara's house. Brian Lara is a famous cricket player from Trinidad, and from the size of his house and property a very rich one too. There things just got goofy.

And then it was time for me to leave early the next morning. Thanks much to Angostura for hosting a fantastic trip. When you invite me back (hint, hint) I'll make sure to stay for Carnival. If it's anything like the warm-up, that is one heck of a party.

Contest: Blog About Cognac to Win a Trip to Cognac (Sponsored)

Over at the Palate Press Ad Network they're hosting a contest in conjunction with the BNIC (Cognac Bureau), called the 2011 Cognac Writing Contest.

The winner gets a trip to the Cognac Blues Passions Festival, which this year is hosting acts including ZZ Top, Moby, and Aloe Blacc. Second prize is five hundred bucks, which isn't too bad either.

So: you write a post about cognac, submit it for approval, and they give you a stat counter on your post. The first round of the contest is based on number of hits for your post (so the sooner you get started the better), and then a panel of judges chooses the winners in the second round (so don't just make it a bunch of search engine keywords).

I've been to the Cognac region with the BNIC and they do a lovely job as hosts. So if you were thinking about blogging about cognac, now might be a good time to do so.

And should you need inspiration or information, the cognac posts on Alcademics are here.

Read the rules before you get started, and good luck!

Angostura Rums Distillery Visit

In my last post I talked about the history and production of Angostura Bitters. In this one I'll talk about the history and production of Angostura Rums. I visited the distillery on Trinidad in March 2011.

History of Angostura Rums

The House of Angostura was in the bitters business since 1824, but didn't enter the rum business until after their move to the island of Trinidad in 1875. At first they were dealing with bulk rums rather than distilling their own, but in 1945 they purchased their own distillery. It wasn't until the 1960s that the profits from rum outsold those of bitters. In 1973 they purchased the Fernandes Distillery located next door and incorporated those brands (including Vat19) into their production.

According to the film we watched at the distillery, in 1991 they had a production capacity of 22 million liters of alcohol per year. According to their website, it's now 50 million liters. Wow! The distillery takes up 20 acres of land. They make both their own brands, rum for other people, and sell bulk rum. More on the other brands later.

Production of Angostura Rums

Currently all the products are made on enormous column stills. They say they've been experimenting with some pot still stuff, but they're not making anything yet.

No sugar has been produced on the island since 2003, so all the molasses to make these rums is purchased on the open market. (10Cane, which is also made on Trinidad but I don't believe at this distillery, uses some fresh local sugar cane juice in their rum blend.) We tastes molasses off the grate where it is poured into the system- it reminded me of old-style black licorice.

(Grate through which molasses is poured.)

For different rum products made at the distillery they use different strains of yeast. Their barrels are ex-bourbon barrels. These are reused to age rum three times before they're discarded or recycled. We weren't allowed to enter the aging warehouse as they said it's a bonded property. From outside, it didn't look nearly big enough to age all the rum produced here, but they said it's their only aging warehouse it turns out they have five other aging warehouses also.

For further reading, I suggest Ed Hamilton's write up on MinistryOfRum.com. 

The Line of Rums

After the distillery tour we did a tasting of some of the rums with Master Distiller Jean Georges. Oh, by the way, the line of Angostura rums is finally coming to the US soon, and they are tasty. 

The 3-year reminded me (keep in mind my tasting notes aren't supposed to make sense to anyone but me) of the insides under-ripe banana peels, with a soft creaminess that wasn't too vanilla-y. 

The 5-year, interestingly, is actually filtered to remove some of its color. It has the caramel-vanilla notes you'd expect from a rum of this age, but with a nice fuzzy texture. I was also picking up a lot of notes of liquid limestone. The finish had some mint/oregano spice to it and it was just a touch tannic. 

The 7-year rum is actually the 5-year rum which is blended and then put back into casks to marry for 2 years. The nose is all warm caramel apple and cheesecake pie crust on this one, with a spicier mouth with notes of peppermint. It's also oily in texture and slightly ashy. 

One thing Jean Georges said about all of their rums is that they have a short finish. "None of our spirits overstay their welcome. They do their thing and move on, leaving you to want another sip."

I am not sure if their "single barrel" is coming to the US or not, but I enjoyed drinking that during my visit. Most of the time I drank that or the 7-year-old. When I wanted a mixer, I'd mix it with their soft drink Lemon Lime & Bitters, locally known as LLB. (Note to Angostura: you should consider bringing this to the US also in select markets.)

Angostura also produces Zaya rum, The Kraken spiced rum (according to MinistryOfRum), Vat 19, and White Oak (which is very popular in Trinidad).

 

The History and Production of Angostura Bitters

In March I visited the Angostura distillery in Port of Spain, Trinidad. They make not only Angostura Bitters here but also the line of Angostura rums and rums for several other brands. In this post, I'll focus on the bitters. 

The History of Angostura Bitters

Angostura Bitters were created in 1824 by Dr. Johann Siegert. They were originally called "Dr. Siegert's Aromatic Bitters" and later renamed Angostura Bitters. (The folks from The Bitter Truth Bitters have some interesting information about a lawsuit over the name "Angostura" between these bitters and Abbott's Bitters.) 

(One of the other Angostura Bitters bottles from around the world on display at the museum.)

The bitters were created for tropical stomach ailments in Venezuela, as Dr. Siegert was the Surgeon General of Simon Bolivar's army.  In fact the town of Angostura is now called Ciudad Bolivar. The bitters were first exported to England in 1830.

(Simon Bolivar)

According to this good history on Angostura's website, Siegert's son exhibited the bitters in England in 1862 where they were mixed with gin. Thus the Pink Gin was born.  

(Angostura used to produce Pink Rum - rum laced with Angostura Bitters.)

After Dr. Siegert died in 1870, his sons relocated the business from the politically unstable Venezuela to Trinidad in 1875. The company was renamed Angostura Bitters in 1904. Sometime shortly after this,  the son in charge of Angostura lost all of his money in bad business deals and Angostura was taken by his creditors.

Why is the Angostura Bitters Label Too Big for the Bottle?

For a competition of some sort, one brother designed the bottle and another brother designed the label. By the time they figured out they should have consulted each other on the size of each, it was too late to change. On the advice of a judge in the contest, they kept it as their signature. Here, our tour guide does a better job of explaining it in this 1-minute video.

 

How Are Angostura Bitters Produced? 

The secret ingredients for the bitters are shipped from wherever they come from to England. There the ingredients are put into coded bags and shipped to Trinidad. I believe they said they have a long-standing arrangement with customs that the bags are not inspected when they arrive in Trinidad to maintain their secret.  

At the distillery, there are five people known as "manufacturers" who prepare the ingredients. They weigh out the relative quantities of each in a room known as the Sanctuary. The ingredients are then dropped into a crusher that crushes them all together as they fall into the room below - the Bitters Room. 

At the base of the crusher are carts that hold the ingredients. We weren't allowed to take pictures in the room due to the high-proof alcohol vapors (but later did of the bartenders there), but we did get to peak into the crushed herbs. I remember seeing largish chunks of something that looked like gum arabic, and a lot of rice-sized grey grains about the size of lavender seeds, though I doubt they were because there was a lot of them. (There you go: gum arabic and lavender- make your own Angostura at home :) )

The crushed herbs then go into a "percolator" tank with 97% alcohol to extract their flavor.  After this infusion is done, the liquid is then transferred to another tank where brown sugar and caramel color are added. Then the liquid is transferred again and distilled water is added to bring them down to the 44.7% alcohol level for bottling. 

This is all done in a relatively small room with a bunch of tanks in it. It's impressive that the world's supply of Angostura Bitters is made here. 

Later that day, they did publicity shots with the bartenders in the Bitters Room. They let the professional photographers take photos and let me take them without flash. As you can see the bitters tanks have the bottle labels on them. Except in this case, they actually fit. 

Cocktail Menu: Sneak Peak at Locanda in San Francisco

Locanda is a restaurant in San Francisco opening around April 19th according to current plans, from the folks behind Delfina.

Bar Manager Brian MacGregor, formerly of Jardiniere, has been working on the cocktail menu and took some of it out for a test run on Sunday at The Hideout at Dalva.

He says he's not sure if he'll put the Saratoga on the menu, since it was on for a long time at Jardiniere. I love that drink especially with Yamazaki whisky.

The Corriandolo Correcto was pleasingly rich and bitter. They ran out of the Empress Bianca before I could try it.

I was present at the creation of the "Stir Key." I was in New York at Lani Kai and we were sitting in front of bartender Ivy Mix. Brian asked her for something "Stirred and Murky" and this is what she came up with. (He didn't want to call it the "Sturkey" -my suggestion- as he didn't want people to assume it was some heinous turkey fat-washed drink.)

Anyway, I'm looking forward to another great cocktail program in the Inner Mission Neighborhood.

*update* There will be a second Locanda preview night at BlackBird, Sunday, March 27 from 8:00pm - 10:00pm.