Alcademics.com

The Ethical Blogger

Yes, I am giving three talks in 28 hours next week at Portland Cocktail Week and Drink.Write 2010. Fun! 

Drink.Write: Cocktail Blogging: Ethics, the Law, and You

Friday, October 22 @ 10:30am

Disclosure laws, brand relationships and interacting with public relations firms can create a minefield of ethical challenges and legal risks for cocktail writers and bloggers. Recent changes to sample disclosure laws, identifying and managing potential ethical conflicts and minimizing risk will be discussed in this session.

Paul Clarke and I will be leading this talk. We will discuss the topics above that are your ethical responsibilities as a cocktail blogger, but also the outside world's responsibilities to you: copyright of content and recipes, plagiarism, and content licensing. 

It's a lot to cover, so I've got to get back to researching the topic. Hope to see you there. 

Ice: Live!

Next week during Portland Cocktail Week, I'll be speaking about my favorite thing: ice! 

Rocks Off! Ice Seminar    

Sunday, October 24 @ 1:00pm

Join some of the most creative minds in ice including Anu Apte, Evan Zimmerman and Camper English as they talk about their favorite cocktail ingredient: ice. They will discuss their innovative applications of ice including: Camper’s clear ice technique, Evan’s flavored ice, and Anu’s ice carving technique in this hour long session.

With three of us there that means I only get to talk about ice for 20 minutes! 

Luckily for you, you've probably read most of my research on making clear ice here on Alcademics already, though I'll have a few surprises I'm saving just for the session. SURPRISES.

I'm also excited to learn ice carving techniques from Anu. Soon I will master the ice ball. 

Run screaming to this website to buy your tickets!

How to Get Rich Blogging About Cocktails

Next week I'm giving a talk at Drink.Write 2010, the cocktail bloggers' convention held during Portland Cocktail Week.

Cocktail Blogging: Where Do We Go From Here? 

Friday, October 22 @ 3:30pm: Explore the evolution and future of cocktail blogs with panelists who have successfully adapted their blogs and writing to leverage social media, support their own special projects, connect with new readership and maintain existing readership.

In speaking with my seminar co-leader Darcy O'Neil, it seems that we think similarly about cocktail blogging: It's not going to make us rich on its own. Advertisers want to see zillions of hits and don't seem to care about content quality. Neither of us is interested in running that kind of site. 

Thus, we're beginning to think of the blog and writing on it not as an end in itself, but as a hub, or home base, for all our various outlets and projects. 

At our talk on Friday, we'll discuss ways to generate income around content including ad networks and affiliate marketing, plus other ways to expand your empire. These include self-publishing, services like guest bartending, and speaking on your area of expertise. 

I think any blogger, not just cocktail bloggers, who wants to expand their reach (financially or just influentially) will find the session useful, and it should inspire some spin-off projects that you can track back at home base- your cocktail blog.  

I hope you can join for the seminar. Tickets are available here. 

The Cocktail Bloggers' Convention

Come join me in Portland, Oregon October 20-24. I'm speaking at and attending Drink.Write 2010, the cocktail bloggers' convention. 

The convention is put on by the Cocktails and Spirits Online Writers Group, a collective of some of the top cocktail bloggers internationally. 

More information is available here, and tickets are for sale here.   

The topic I'm speaking on is this one:

Cocktail Blogging: Where do we go from here?

Explore the evolution and future of cocktail blogs with panelists who have successfully adapted their blogs and writing to leverage social media, support their own special projects, connect with new readership and maintain existing readership.

Panelists: Darcy O’Neil and Camper English

The conference is really just two days, October 21 and 22, with three sessions per day.

However, we've planned it to coincide with Portland Cocktail Week that has a range of events happening at the same time. That way you can learn by day, and find something to blog about at night. 

The end of PDX Cocktail Week is the Great American Distillers Festival, even more events celebrating small-batch distillers from around the nation. 

If you've been considering a visit to Portland to check out the fantastic local cocktail and distilling scene, you couldn't pick a better week to do it than October 20-24. I hope to see you there. 

Glossy Booze: Big October Edition

Glossy Booze is a regular Alcademics feature in which I cover the liquor coverage in glossy magazines.

Bon Appetit (October)lists a recipe for the Highland's Fall from Peter Vestinos, available here. Also, a story on dry cider and one on dessert wines. In November St. John Frizell has a recipe for the coffee/rum drink Koffie Van Brunt.

Everyday With Rachael Ray (October) has a story on "gum cocktails"- not something you get at Tailor, but combining flavors of gum to make new flavors.

GQ (September) had a big feature on the six best drinking cities in the US. They were San Francisco, New Orleans, Chicago, Portland (OR), Nashville, and New York.

Conde Nast Traveler has a list of three tropical island bars in the Bahamas, plus a recipe for the Goombay Smash.

7X7 (September) has a story on Rickhouse. In the October issue, Jordan Mackay writes about relocated NYC sommelier David Lynch. 

Men's Journal (October) list America's best beers here, and the top five beer towns here.

Sunset (October) has beer and food pairings for Octoberfest, and a story on green wine packaging.

Esquire has a recipe for the Grasshopper. Really!

Details lists some "really excellent canned beer,"and a few places in which to drink it.

And the winner for best drink coverage goes to Food & Wine- and they didn't even have any cocktail recipes. Their stories are:

• What sommeliers know best.
•  Understanding Oregon Pinot Noir country
• Wineries by the sea all over the world- France and Spain, US, Australia, Portugal, and South Africa.
• Wines for drinking, not overthinking
• American Wine Awards
• A preview of the F&W Wine Guide 2010
• How to be a smarter wine shopper
• Gruner Veltliner
• 50 classic wines to try
• 15 rules for wine and food pairings

The Intercontinental Cocktails of Charles H. Baker

I wrote a story in this weekend's San Francisco Chronicle about Charles H. Baker's cocktails and their popularity, centering around the program at Heaven's Dog in San Francisco.

"A hazy memory of a night in Havana during the unpleasantnesses of 1933, when each swallow was punctuated with bombs going off on the Prado..."

This line by Charles H. Baker Jr. introduces not an account of Cuban rebellion but the cocktail Remember the Maine, which he was drinking there while it took place. Baker wrote about drinks from his travels around the world in the early 1900s, mostly during Prohibition, when the drinking in the United States wasn't legal - or very good.

Other drinks in Baker's two-volume "The Gentleman's Companion" are introduced from such ports of call as Beijing, Monte Carlo and Bombay (now Mumbai), ripe with mentions of princes, peacocks, cruises up the Nile and hanging out with Hemingway.

Bartenders in particular have latched on to Baker as a patron saint of good living, and his cocktails and quotes from his writings are both appearing on drink menus.

"I've always thought that when you have a drink there's so much that comes with it: your friends, who you're with, the time of the day," says Erik Adkins, general manager of Heaven's Dog in SoMa. "And (Baker) captured all that.."

But for all the excitement about Baker's cocktails, they share an unfortunate common trait.

"I think the recipes mostly need a lot of work," says Adkins.

read the rest of the story here.

In the story I also mentioned the forthcoming coffee/cocktail bar Fort Defiance, in Brooklyn, that should be opening later this month. But that's not the only bar to put Baker back on the menu:

The Brooklyn bar Clover Club dedicated a small section of the menu to what owner Julie Reiner says are Baker’s best cocktails this winter, including the Remember the Maine.

In Portland, Ore., the bar Beaker and Flask, named for the subtitle of one volume of “Gentleman’s Companion,” is set to open. Owner Kevin Ludwig says he’ll be featuring Baker drinks on the menu, though not exclusively.

In Amsterdam, speakeasy-style bar door 74 recently offered several pages of Baker drinks, with the menu letterhead mimicking the Baker’s own.

Baker's globe-hopping cocktail book is now helping those cocktails hop back around the world.

Borscht: The New Vinegar?

What will take vinegar's place as the freaky new cocktail ingredient to sweep the nation?

It could be beets. A couple of years ago I had my first beet drink, at Mint and 820, the Portland, OR bars where Lucy Brennan rules the roost. Soon thereafter, Brennan's book Hip Sips came out with the recipe. The drink is merely beet-infused vodka with lemon-lime fresh sour mix. It's delicious.

That was the only beet drink I'd seen until a few months ago. In October, Double Cross Vodka was promoting a set of drinks including the Borscht Martini. It is merely muddled beets, vodka, and horseradish. (picture to the right, recipe on the website) I haven't tried it yet but I'm tempted because I also love horseradish. (And maybe I love horseradish because I love vinegar.)

Now I see Boston's Eastern Standard promoting a beet drink. The Russian Tea Room is described as "evocative of borscht," which isn't a slogan I'd have thought up. It contains vodka infused with beets (roasted this time), orange juice, tarragon, and spicy Greek yogurt. Freaky.

Or... is yogurt the new vinegar? It's served both at the Eastern Standard and in the Laughing Lassi at Dosa on Fillmore in San Francisco.

Future study is needed.