Alcademics.com

Cover Girl

Did you get your copy of Imbibe Magazine in the mail today? I did. Oh neat, look at that 12-page cover story on scotch whisky. I wonder who wrote it...

Wait a minute, I did! That's my story. Hooray!

 

Recommended Bottles in the SFBG

In the San Francisco Bay Guardian this week I have a story on some recommended bottles to pick up this winter season. Here's the picture.

New Bars and Old New Bars

San Franciscans should immediately leave work and run screaming to their local newsbox to pick up this week's San Francisco Bay Guardian. Why? Because you'll find me waiting for you inside. In the Scene insert I have two stories. One of them is on some new recommended bottles of booze. The other is on new watering holes that have opened in the city this year.

I realized that I've written the New Bars story for the past three years. Maybe it will be fun to compare my brilliant observations over the years. Let's find out:

New Bars Story 2006

• "At least 15 bar-bars, five wine bars, and five clubs opened in the city, as did a bunch of restaurants that serve great drinks. It takes a strong liver to keep current, further blurring the line between journalism and alcoholism."
•  "Several bars went from upscale to downscale this year, proving that not every lounge needs to be ultra."
• "Three more art bars opened in 2006, following the success of all the other art bars in town."
• "American whiskey bars are big, big, big this year, and now there are three new venues in which you can order a sazerac cocktail or a rye Manhattan."
• "A large number of new restaurants have such great cocktail programs they cause certain writers to spend inordinate amounts of time and money in them without ever trying the food."
• "Now that every neighborhood in San Francisco has a wine bar or three, the new venues are starting to specialize."

New Bars Story 2007

• "Whereas in previous years the lines between bars and art galleries got blurry, this year it’s hard to categorize venues as bars or restaurants or wine bars or cocktail lounges or nightclubs."
•  "Most of the new wine bars are not really bars at all, though- they’re either wine retail outlets with tasting bars inside, or they’re small plates restaurants by another name."
• "Some of the best drinking is to be had in eateries with all those fresh fruits, vegetables, and other ingredients in the kitchen just begging to be muddled into cocktails where they belong."
• "The line between bar and club blurs ever more when there is DJ and bottle service and they serve light appetizers and are open at 5PM. Clubs are opening earlier for increased happy hour drink sales and are demoting space for the dancefloor; in effect becoming cocktail bars with a club crowd."
•  "For a while, all the beer and wine-only bars were selling soju and sake cocktails in an attempt to stay trendy. This is still true at restaurants without full liquor licenses, but now we’re seeing more beer-focused venues that build the concept around the brew, not the food."
• "It seems the least popular type of drinking establishment to open this year is the thing we used to know as a bar, where they don’t serve food (or the food only serves to keep you drinking, like the popcorn machine in Tenderloin bars) and there isn’t a dancefloor or cocktail waitresses or bottle service and there still exists a magic time called happy hour."

New Bars Story 2008

•  "Not too long ago I’d come home from a night of barhopping with ringing ears and smelling of cigarettes. Now half the time I get home reeking of braised calamari and elderflower with an earful of soft jazz. Most of the new watering holes to open this year were restaurants and hotel lobbies with extravagant bar programs and cocktail lists."
• "Now that good drinks are in demand at every new restaurant, bartenders are barhopping from venue to venue."
• "Though hotel lobby bars have traditionally been places to find traditional drinks, now many of them are promoting innovation and eco-cocktails."
• "A different grape spirit, pisco, a brandy from Peru or Chile, is showing up on the menu at dozens of the best bars in the city."
•  "Since sitting quietly and sipping is the new raving until dawn, there isn’t too much point in building new warehouse nightclubs. Instead, a few older spots were freshened up and sometimes renamed."

Hopefully the full story will go online soon for the not-in-SF readers. In the meantime, check out CitySearch's Top 10 New Bars of 2008- which includes a few of them I missed.

Store and Pour

In the December issue of San Francisco Magazine, I have a story on venues like Taverna Aventine, Nihon, the San Francisco Wine Center, and the Occidental Cigar Club where you can store your poison of choice on-site. Read it online here.

Alcademics on Epicurious on Absinthe

Hey Look! It's my first story for Epicurious.com! Wahoo!

The Top Five Absinthe Cocktails

Now that absinthe is legal in America, what are you going to do with it?

I share some information about absinthe and suggest the five best cocktails in which to use it.

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.

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.)

Look at me, err, at what I wrote

I have a story in the latest issue of Malt Advocate- my first one for them. Hooray!

It's a round-up of whisky events at Tales of the Cocktail and the increased presence of whisky at the event in general. Run screaming to your local newsstand and read it.

You'll find my story right beneath the picture of Lew Bryson.

Oh, Sherry!

I haven't seen the print edition yet, but the digital edition of my story in Men's Book (by San Francisco Magazine) is viewable online here.

The story is about sherry in cocktails. The story mentions drinks on the menu at 15 Romolo, NOPA, and the forthcoming Gitane, but since I wrote it, sherry drinks have been turning up everywhere.

One of my favorite drinks in San Francisco right now is Joel Baker's "Drink Without a Name #3". It contains Fino or Manzanilla sherry, Chartreuse, and a basil garnish, and was originally created with fresh pears but is on the menu now at Bourbon & Branch with stone fruit instead. (Or at least it was- they recently changed the menu for fall.)

The print is too small to read these screen shots, so follow the link about to read the story online. It's on Pages 90-91.

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. 

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).