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Cocktail Menu: Trick Dog in San Francisco

The much-delayed and much-anticipated Trick Dog has opened in San Francisco. You've heard about it by now, unless you've been living under a rock without a wifi hotspot. But so far they hadn't released the menu. Here it is.

And if you haven't seen a million pictures of the bar already, here are a few. Click on the thumbnails on top to see the others full size.

 

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I visited the bar for the first time Monday but only had one cocktail, which is unlike me. I look forward to going back and drinking my way through the rest of the menu. 

Hot Oatmeal Stout in a Warm Winter Cocktail: Rum & Oats

Hey, I had this drink at Wo Hing General Store in San Francisco and it is delicious. 

The Rum and Oats, by bar manager John Codd, contains steamed oatmeal stout, dark rum, vermouth, cinnamon syrup, and bitters, and is topped with whipped cream. 

Hot beer? Hot damn. 

Get the recipe at FineCooking.com or hit up Wo Hing in person. There is a nearly all-new menu (the Pina Colada is still there) to try as well. 

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Reading About Drinking in San Francisco on February 5

I'm one of several writers reading about drinking at Drink Think, a series of this sort of thing usually based in New York. 

The event will take place at Cantina on February 5, 2103. More info is here.

I'm thinking about updating a beautiful "poem" I wrote called "Who Do I Have to F-- (To Get a Drink in This Bar)?" I last read this masterwork aloud ten years ago and someone wrote about it in the newspaper. You can read about that here.

So yeah, save the date. 

Keep Warm This Winter With Metaxa (Sponsored)

Metaxa is a Greek spirit dating back to 1888. It is a blend of Muscat wines, wine distillates, rose petals, and herbs. 

To make Metaxa, wine distillates are aged in French Limousin oak casks. These are then blended with Muscat wines from the Aegean Islands, along with rose petals and a secret mix of Mediterranean herbs. 

Metaxa comes in five varieties:

• Metaxa 5 Stars - with the wine distillates matured for up to five years
• Metaxa 7 Stars - with the wine distillates matured for up to seven years
• Metaxa 7 Stars - with the wine distillates matured for up to twelve years and Muscat wines selected exclusively from the semi-mountainous, terraced vineyards of Samos
• Metaxa Private Reserve - with the wine distillates matured for up to 30 years
• Aen Metaxa - 1888 crystal decanters of AEN were created for the 120th anniversary of the brand in 2008, aged in Cask #1 (the oldest one at the facility, more than 80 years old with over 200 blends inside). 

Not all varieties are available in all markets. 

Metaxa Mixology

While the higher end bottlings in the line are best reserved for sipping neat or on a single ice cube, Metaxa offers an entire collection of recipes online. 

One of the simplest, meant for cold weather, is the Metaxa Hot Sun. It is the combination of Metaxa 5 Stars and hot apple juice, garnished with an apple slice and cinnamon stick. 

 

Below find a video of the drink being made at one of the best bars in the world, Berlin's Lebensstern. 

 

 

For move videos, visit Metaxa's YouTube channel.

Metaxa's website also lists a selection of cool bars in which to drink it in Germany, Romania, Hungary, Greece, Germany, England, Bulgaria, and Austria. Check it out!

 

This post is sponsored by Metaxa. 

The Celebrity Tequila Index

Celebrities seem to think this tequila craze is a whole thing, so they're partnering with brands or launching their own. On this page I'll try to keep track of  them all. 

 

 Clooney, George and Gerber, Rande

Casamigos [website]

"The tequila's name, Casamigos, was inspired by their homes in Mexico, and it is expected to be sold at "a reasonable price point." Casamigos will apparently be a tequila that Gerber and Clooney have been enjoying for years." They are about to embark on a distribution tour.

Friedman, Kinky

Man in Black Tequila [website]

"Richard S. "Kinky" Friedman is an American Texas Country singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician and former columnist for Texas Monthly who styles himself in the mold of popular American satirists Will Rogers and Mark Twain. The Tequila line includes a Platinum, Reposado, Anejo and a six-year-old Extra Anejo Tequila – “Tequila Noir”."

 

Gibbons, Billy (ZZ Top)

Pura Vida Tequila [website]

"Pura Vida Tequila was founded by Texas business man Stewart Skloss and ZZ Top lead man Billy Gibbons.  After scouring the tequila distilleries in Jalisco, they settled upon the small family owned Vivanco and associates.  The Vivancos only use hand selected and estate grown agave in their tequilas at NOM 1414. "

Hagar, Sammy

Cabo Wabo Tequila [website].

Former Van Halen frontman founded and then sold this tequila brand to Skyy Spirits/Grupo Campari.

"Cabo Wabo Tequila was born in 1996 on the back roads of Guadalajara by legendary musician and tequila aficionado, Sammy Hagar. After searching for a tequila exceptional enough to serve inside his cantina in Cabo San Lucas, Sammy partnered with a tequila-making family with over 80 years of experience. Today, the agave used to make Cabo Wabo Tequila is grown, cultivated and harvested by this same family."

Jane, Jesse (Cindy Taylor)

Diosa Tequila [website]

"Former model and current adult film star Jesse Jane has launched her own tequila brand, Diosa (a spanish word meaning ‘Goddess’). Marketed as being ‘an orgy of flavours’, the tequila was created in collaboration with an unnamed mexican tequila manuifacturer and comes in four different flavours – Apple, Mango, Almond and Cafe Caramel. As Jesse Jane is a contract performer with Digital Playground (who own her stage name) she intends to market this new brand of tequila under her real name, Cindy Taylor." 

Keith, Toby

Wild Shot Mezcal [website]

"'Blame It On The Worm' is Wild Shot's slogan, and the image of Toby himself with a worm pinched between smiling teeth adorns the site's homepage. Wild Shot Mezcal comes in Silver and Reposado variations. Distributed nationwide and available at all of Keith's I Love This Bar & Grill locations, Wild Shot is quickly becoming a leading brand in one of the fastest growing beverage market segments."

Neil, Vince

Tres Rios Tequila [website]

This tequila was launched in 2007 by Motley Crue frontman Vince Neil but it's unclear if it is still on the market. 

 

Santana, Carlos

Casa Noble Tequila [website]

"Music icon and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member Carlos Santana has joined the Board and is now one of the owners of the brand." 

Timberlake, Justin

901 Tequila [website].

"So when Justin Timberlake, who has a passion for tequila, was looking for something truly special, he simply couldn’t find it. And so he decided to create his own hand-crafted Silver Tequila. He chose the Tequilera Newton distillery in Jalisco, Mexico to help transform a 60 year-old recipe into 901."

Valladolid, Marcela

Tequila Hacienda De La Flor [website]

Celebrity chef, author and the host of the Food Network show "Mexican Made Easy" is behind an organic tequila brand. Soft launched December 2012.

Xzibit

Tequila Bonita [website].

"The company was founded in 2010 by Chris Brown. The Bonita Spirits Company had an opportunity to send Xzibit one of the bottles from their very first production run. Xzibit (Alvin Joiner) is a multiplatinum recording artist, actor and television personality, born in Detroit, Michigan. Xzibit and Chris Brown are now partners in Bonita Tequila. 

Together they have created the first tequila in the world to undergo a 5x distillation process, followed by a proprietary 3x cold-filtration method. Bonita Platinum is 100% organic.

 

 

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If you know of others (where the celebrities are partners/owners, rather than just doing ads) please do let me know.

Cocktails in the Champagne Style

For CLASS Magazine/DiffordsGuide.com, I interviewed Jeff Josenhans of San Diego's US Grant Hotel.

He's been quietly doing pretty cool stuff over there. He implemented one of the first cocktail herb gardens, has barrel aged cocktails that he is able to sell commercially, and now features the "Cocktails Sur Lie" program. 

Cocktail ingredients (minus the base spirit) are fermented like wine, then put into champagne bottles and fermented a second time like champagne. Then they pop off the caps to get rid of the yeast and add base spirit in the 'dosage' step. 

As he partnered with a winery production center, he now has the winery do the production work after he develops the recipes, which not only ensures consistency in the bottled beverages, but they can legally sell them at retail. 

A truly clever part of this system is that the hotel does tons of events, and having these fancy bottled cocktails that pop open like champagne allows them to serve the same quality cocktails as you'd find in the bar at the events- just pop off the cork. 

Read the interview here. 

 

(normally the bottles have a cork unlike in this picture)

 

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The History of Grenadine Use in Cocktails: Literature Review

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New Booze for December 2012

Over at ShakeStir.com I write announcements of new liquor releases. Here's what went up in December.

• HopHead Vodka
• Bowmore Dorus Mor 10 Years Old Small Batch Release No. 1
• Auchentoshan Valinch 2012 Limited Edition
•  Glen Garioch Limited Edition 1986 Vintage
• Nikka Whiskey
• Three Russell Henry Gins 
• Woodford Reserve Spiced Cherry Bitters
• Michter's 20 Year Old Bourbon
• Qui Tequila

Read about all of them and future releases over at ShakeStir.com.

The Wide World of the Ward Eight

In my latest column for FineCooking.com, I talk about how the Ward Eight cocktail is everywhere these days. 

You know how you learn the definition of a word and then suddenly you keep hearing that word everywhere? Over the past month it has been that way with me and the Ward Eight cocktail. 

I had just finished reading the book Drinking Boston: A History of the City and its Spirits by Stphanie Schorow, in which the author spends a great deal of time discussing this drink and its history. The Ward Eight is the most famous classic cocktail from Boston, supposedly invented at the Locke-Ober restaurant in 1898. 

In trying to verify the date of the drink's creation, Schorow studies the history of grenadine, the pomegranate syrup used in the drink. It was a new ingredient in America right around this time.

Coincidentally, I was also studying the history of grenadine on my website. I performed a literature review and drew some conclusions, including the surprising finding that grenadine has been made as an artificially flavored cocktail ingredient forover 100 years!

In another coincidence, two of my favorite drink writers also decided to look into the Ward Eight in the January 2013 edition of magazines. Historian David Wondrich took a look at the cocktail's history in Imbibe magazine, and writer Wayne Curtis covered the drink in searching for the quintessential New England cocktail in Yankee magazine. 

 

I went to look up a recipe to put on the post on Fine Cooking, and found that the Ward Eight recipe is different in nearly every book. 

The simplest is just rye, grenadine, and lemon juice. The most complex is those ingredients plus mint, bitters, and simple syrup. 

So I settled on a common recipe with rye, grenadine, lemon, and orange juice. Get the recipe here.

 

Related articles

When Did Grenadine Become an Artificial Ingredient?

The History of Grenadine Use in Cocktails: Literature Review

The History of Grenadine Use in Cocktails: Theories and Conclusions

How to Remove Pomegranate Seeds and Make Grenadine the Easy Way