Gourmet.com has a recipe for making gin out of vodka by infusing it with herbs and berries. I can't wait to try it.
I also think this would make an excellent gift for the gin lover in your life: Hand him or her a bottle of vodka to make them squirm, then in the card that comes with it have all the herbs and the recipe in the envelope. Tee hee!
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.
Last week I was in Sacramento reporting on the local cocktail scene for Tasting Panel Magazine. We stumbled into Ella, a fine dining restaurant
where the signature cocktail is a gin and (homemade) tonic.
I've tried several versions of homemade tonic water and even made my own, and to be honest none of them were mind-blowing. Schweppe's Indian Tonic is better. But this one at Ella is terrific and fresh, and the secret is... not to make it into a syrup first.
Bartender Chris Dooley made the drink by adding ground cinchona bark powder - probably 1/8 teaspoon of it or less- to an empty glass, then adding the gin (209 Gin in their case), lemon and lime juice, cane sugar syrup, ice, and soda water.
Dooley said they found cinchona bark powder doesn't dissolve well into anything except the gin, which is why they put it in before the other ingredients. That said, you could still see particles of the bark powder at the bottom of the glass. Yet this drink didn't taste as barky as the syrup that I made, even though I ran it through coffee filters a couple of times. It was fresh and bitter and really good.
I haven't tried to replicate the drink at home yet, so please let me know if you've made it work (or not) this way. It would be hilarious to find out in that trying to get the tonic into syrup form people have been overthinking what could be simple homemade tonic water.
Eric Felten disses the gun and takes on boutique tonic and Italian sodas. Also, a history of drinking and the Olympics.
Darcy at The Art of Drink finds an early historical reference to falernum- and a recipe.
A New York bar opens that serves only absinthe and beer.
Oh Gosh manages to find four Old Tom gins to compare. One is from a brand called "Secret Treasures." Sounds dirty.
Fermentarium has 8 drunk driving lessons we can learn from beer nuts.
John Hansell has the lowdown on a new rye whiskey coming to market in October.
Siobhan Crosby of Imbibe Magazine is growing hops
in her back yard.
Bill Dowd has the info on the "Urban Bourbon Trail" in Louisville, Kentucky. I'm heading there next month for the Kentucky Bourbon Festival so maybe I'll see some of these spots.
Hendrick's Gin is giving away a theramin.
David Wondrich's Five Best Absinthes story from Esquire is online.
Jason Wilson has a nice story in the Washington Post on the rickey cocktail. I didn't realize it was named after a person and invented in DC. He also took a bar tour to taste some local variations of the drink as part of Rickey Month in DC. This one is my favorite:
I take my hat off to Justin Guthrie, bar manager at Central and winner of the rickey contest, who made a delicious black pepper-lime soda, simply mixed with gin over ice, that also ratcheted up the rickey's flavor quotient.
Mmm, pepper.
