Reading material

- A nice summary of micro-distilling in Oregon. They have 17 micro-distilleries already! The article also alerted me to a surely fine Oregon product called Bu-Tay vodka, which comes in regular and blue. It's hard to beat their tagline: "Make Bu-Tay Your Call."

- Eric Felten rediscovers the Twentieth Century cocktail, and an annual celebration of the drink by train (and Sherlock Holmes) enthusiasts.

- The "Richard Branson of India," Vijay Mallya, announced a patent on diet vodka and diet whisky. Approximately .0002 seconds later, the Scotch Whisky Association announced "that ain't no whisky."

- This article from Plenty Magazine lists some eco-cocktails. I learned from it that there is an organic Pisco, an organic line of liqueurs including brandy, orange (could this be the orgo triple-sec we've been waiting for?), chocolate, and coffee, as well as two more organic rums called Matraga and Papagayo.

- Madison approves banning cheap liquor in the downtown area to discourage panhandlers. That's ridiculous. If they can do this, can't neighborhoods ban cheap anything to keep out the poor and middle classes? You suck, Madison.

- Mmm, tacky fashion wine box.

Organic sake

Momokawa sake in Oregon will launch the first USDA certified sakes in June. But they're not changing over the entire production:

SakéOne will bottle two different saké under the Momokawa brand; Organic Nigori and Organic Ginjo (Junmai). Both will come in 750 ML and 375 ML bottles that clearly communicate the difference between Momokawa and Momokawa Organic. The organic bottle strays from SakéOne's signature blue glass and embraces the more easily recycled green. The cap is short to minimize the use of raw materials and is itself recyclable. Labels are printed on "Tree Free" paper made from bamboo and grasses, and carry a different look and feel than the traditional Momokawa line while retaining the iconic Tori Gate image.

I'm curious about the "more easily recycled green" glass. I've read that green glass is harder to recycle and is less recycled than other colors (though I'm sure it's more recycled than blue). Like green glass, brown glass is colored with metals according to this website, so I'm not sure whether or not it's easier or harder to recycle than green glass. I'll have to look into this later.

Anyway, congrats to Momokawa for taking the extra step.

Now that's what I call recycling

Via Blair:

LONG TRAIL BREWING CO. in Vermont has cut a deal with a local utility to purchase power, for just a few cents more, derived from the methane gas given off by the manure on dairy farms. The brewery, in turn, will contribute mash to feed the cows.

Drinks at Fish and Farm

There's another organic cocktail program in town at Fish and Farm. Mixologist Brian Livesay uses spirits like Square One vodka and 4 Copas tequila in his drinks, along with some brands not certified organic but that use organic ingredients. Some of the fresh herbs in the drinks are grown on the chef's rooftop garden.

The drink list includes some interesting elements like rosemary and citrus-infused gin, but seems largely dependent on fresh juices and mint. The real creativity, however, comes from the modifying ingredients.

Since there are no commercial organic vermouths or triple secs, Livesay makes his own using an organic neutral base spirit and organic ingredients. He makes sweet and dry vermouths, triple sec, a delicious apple liquor, cherry-vanilla and orange bitters, and is working on a few more cordials like cocoa-blueberry. Hand-labeled bottles sit atop the back bar and line some of the shelves, so you know he's got a bunch of other experiments in the works as well.


All in all, a very cool project.

Organic Rain

Rain Vodka, which has been made from organic corn since it was launched, is now USDA certified organic. Finally.

Bottle weight

Dan Berger in the Napa Valley Register has a story on wine bottle weight. According to the story, the weight of some glass bottles has doubled over the last 20 years, increasing raw material, transportation, and other costs and the resulting environmental impact.

While the wine industry is ahead of the spirits industry in their concern on this (and should be- you don't drink a bottle of vodka in one sitting), I can see this becoming an important issue going forward, especially amongst organic and green spirits. It doesn't matter much if your label is printed on recycled paper when your bottle weighs a ton.

CHOW booze round-up

CHOW.com is just cranking out the booze stories lately. Currently on the front page there are:

• A take-down of Vodka 360's greenwashing
• A terrific Japanese whisky primer by Aaron Gilbreath that even has taste comparison notes to scotch brands
  
• An analysis of why nose grease tames beer foam
• And why Champagne's AOC is expanding
  

On the organic happy hour circuit

Kuleto's, which has the first and only all-organic cocktail menu in San Francisco, has expanded their program. Now from 3-5 PM on weekdays they offer an Organic Happy Hour with reduced prices on orgo cocktails, wine, and beer. They also deny you plastic straws and paper napkins to rub it in, err... set the mood.

And as an after-party for that, the W Bar at the W Hotel is starting an "ecolicious" happy hour in April. The party goes from 5:30 to 7:30 (so walk slowly from Kuleto's) on weekdays, serving two each of organic wines, beer, and cocktails. The $10 cocktails are a vodka-elderflower drink with a prosecco float, and a tequila-watermelon-chili drink. A portion of the proceeds goes to Save the Bay.

Powered by whisky

From the Financial Times, by-products of the scotch whisky production will be used to generate heat and electricity.

The Combination of Rothes Distillers (Cord) would replace its dependence on fossil fuels by taking as fuel the used malted barley known as "draff" and the "pot ale" residue left by the distilleries on Speyside.

The plant would be able to generate 7.2 megawatts of electricity, mostly for export to the national grid - enough to power 9,000 homes. It would also save about 46,642 tonnes of CO 2 being emitted annually, compared with an equivalent level of coal-fired generating capacity.

The plant would also convert the pot ale left after the first distillation of whisky into a concentrated organic fertiliser for use by farmers on crops such as the barley used in the malting process.

My obsession with distillery waste products is no secret, so this is very exciting news to me. I think what they refer to as the "pot ale" is the heads and tails. Some other distilleries, such as 4 Copas tequila, also turn this into (organic) fertilizer when mixed with the discarded leaves of the agave plant. Others sell the heads and tails to industrial alcohol companies. In the US and Canada anyway, much of the solid waste from the spent corn and other grains is used as animal feed.

Bottles vs. cans

Slate has a great analysis of the environmental impact of bottles vs. cans for your beer. It's another one of those questions answered with "It depends." Aluminum mining has bigger environmental impacts, yet the cans are more often recycled. Bottles are heavier and some municipalities don't recycle green bottles (who knew?) so if they're shipped from long distances they're definitely bad. Here's the short answer:

If your chosen tipple is produced very close to home and your town has a robust recycling program, then glass bottles are probably the way to go. But if your preferred suds are brewed far away, by a company that's even mildly eco-aware, aluminum cans are the wiser choice.

But the analysis is interesting, so read the whole thing.

One more organic vodka

The people at Modern Spirits, who produce the line of vodkas in flavors like pumpkin spice and chocolate orange, have launched an organic vodka made from American wheat. The line is called TRU, and the initial launch is a plain, lemon, and vanilla flavors.

For those keeping score at home, we have organic vodkas made from Italian wheat (Purus) American rye (Square One), German rye (UK5), and American corn (Rain, though I don't think this is certified organic). So far, everybody gets to own a category.

Beyond being made from organic wheat, TRU plants a tree for each bottle sold and uses a lighter bottle (25% lighter at 620 grams according to the press release).

I think bottle weight is going to become a larger issue with the new eco-booze awareness. And I'm sure it will be a sticking point for vodka companies: on one hand, you want to give customers a big heavy bottle so they feel they paid for something valuable. And on the other hand, you can't brag about your eco-friendly booze if you stick it in a weighty vessel that burns extra fuel to ship.

A different kind of grog

Eco-friendly French to ship their wine under sail
60,000 bottles on a 19th-century barque from Bordeaux to Dublin is just the start

Interesting tactic, and a great PR move. Coincidentally, I'm reading Scotch on the Rocks, a book about a ship full of scotch that crashed off the coast of a small Scottish island and lead to looting and police chasing after looters and then a movie about it all. Let's hope the wine suffers not the same fate.

EcOJ

Slate has a thorough article on the carbon footprint of orange juice, in a story on deciding whether frozen or fresh from the carton juice is more eco-friendly.

In the end, not-from-concentrate orange juice sold by the carton comes out slightly ahead of frozen OJ sold by the canister in terms of energy use. As a green consumer, your worst choice would be to buy juice that's been rehydrated by the supplier, then placed in cartons (such as Minute Maid Original). If you prefer juice from concentrate, whether for the lower price or more Tang-y taste, it's better to rehydrate it yourself.

What about squeezing your own OJ? Keep in mind that, unless you live in Florida or California (the nation's No. 2 orange producer), chances are those Valencias traveled a long, long way to get to your grocery aisle. And transporting enough oranges to yield six servings of juice requires nine times more cardboard waste than transporting a 12-ounce canister of FCOJ.

The juice industry also claims that its manufacturing process is much more efficient than drinking squeeze-your-own, since factories waste no part of the orange: The rinds are turned into cattle feed, the oils into food flavorings.

The conclusions are that the production of orange juice has a bigger impact/cost more than the transportation of it. In that case, you should be drinking the stuff that tastes best. Refreshing!

I buy frozen orange juice because it has less of an impact- on my arms when I'm trying to cart it home from the store on the bus.

At the end of the day I wouldn't be sweating my orange juice consumption unless I was drinking a gallon a day. It's fine to consider the eco-impact of everything you use, but when you start stressing about it you've gone too far.

Screwy math

This story says that screw tops release four times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as corks. This is mainly because corks come from trees that suck up carbon dioxide, not because the aluminum is so much more labor intensive. While I think the whole cork-versus-screwtop debate is silly (science versus romance), I don't mind seeing battles reduced to their impact on the environment.

Wine's carbon footprint

Neat article. I'm sure it's the same for beer and spirits, but at least you don't (often) drink a whole bottle of vodka in a night.