Alcademics.com

New Cocktail Program at Sherry-Centric Gitane in SF

Gitane restaurant has a lovely bar with a sherry-centric cocktail program. It was originally designed by Dominic Venegas and later handled by Alex Smith, who recently left to open Honor Bar in Emeryville. 

The new and slightly simplified menu is the work of lead barman Ramon Garcia, with some aid from Neyah White (formerly of NOPA).

Vinegar lovers should be thrilled to see the Sherry Shrub back on a menu. 

SHERRY SHRUB
barbadillo manzanilla sherry,seasonal house shrub, lemon peel 

BOOTHBY
cava, bourbon, sweet vermouth,angostura bitters 

LA PERLA
reposado tequila, manzanilla sherry,pear liqueur 

SMOKED PALOMINO
crema de mezcal,amontillado sherry, grapefruit & lime, soda water

DOBLÓN
yamazaki 12 yr, fino sherry, fresh lemon,honey syrup

JENIBRE SMASH
dry sack sherry, canton liqueur,lemon juice, mint 

MARTINEZ gin, sweet vermouth, maraschino liqueur, orange bitters 

CAIPIRINHA CON MORAS
cachaca, dash px sherry, berries, fresh lime, sugar, nutmeg 

BAMBOO COCKTAIL
amontilladio sherry, dry vermouth, angostura bitters

SEASONAL SANGRIA
red wine, assorted fruits,orange liqueur, apple juice, cinnamon

SAFFRA
gin, saffron, honey syrup, lemon, thyme,orange blossom water

LA RENZA
vodka, elderflower & pear liqueur,maraschino, lemon, peychauds bitters

 

Sherries Sampled

In my recent sherry class at the Beverage Academy at Bourbon & Branch, we sampled many excellent sherries, most of which were donated by the brands. I'd like to thank them. We tried:

• Hidalgo La Gitana, Manzanilla
• Sandeman Don Fino, Fino
• Equipo Navazos La Bota De Fino (No. 18), Fino
• Harvey’s Bristol Cream, Cream Oloroso
• Dry Sack Oloroso 15 Year Old, Oloroso
• Sandeman Royal Corregidor 20 Year Old, Oloroso
• Gonzalez Byass Vina AB Amontillado Seco, Amontillado\
• Sandeman Royal Esmeralda, Amontillado
• Gonzalez Byass Apostoles, Palo Cortado
• Equipo Navazos La Bota De Pedro Ximenez (No. 12), Pedro Ximenez
• Sandeman Royal Amrosante 20 Year Old, Pedro Ximenez
• Macallan 18 Year Old Scotch

Thanks folks - your sherry was well-received! 

Come to my Sherry Class in San Francisco!

On October 24th, I'll be teaching a class at Bourbon & Branch's Beverage Academy! This class was scheduled previously, but foolishly on a holiday weekend so we moved the date. Not only that, we lowered the price to sixty bucks. There is going to be some excellent sherry for sipping at this seminar. I hope you'll join me. 

I'm really excited about it. Sherry is a big category of rather complex fortified wine, so I'll be busting out my PowerPoint ninja skills and a whole lot of tasting glasses. Here's the class description.

Oh Sherry!

Sherry is wide category of fortified wine that’s due for a big comeback. Already bartenders have adopted itas favorite mixing ingredient in cocktails, and wine connoisseurs are giving it renewed attention.

Delicious as it is, sherry is no simple sipper: There are two sweet (Pedro Ximenez, muscatel) and five dry styles of sherry (fino, manzanilla, palo cortado, amontillado, oloroso); plus the dry sherries can be sweetened to create pale cream, medium, and cream styles. All are aged and blended in the famous solera system (in two very different ways) that gives sherry its unique flavor characteristics. Don’t worry, you’ll understand it all by the end of the class.

We’ll taste these styles of sherry and learn the amazing processes by which they’re made, learn how to drink it and where to buy it, and enjoy a sherry cocktail or two.

Instructor: Camper English

Camper English is a cocktail and spirits writer and educator who contributes to the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Fine Cooking Magazine, and many other publications. He travels the world visiting distilleries, blending houses, and bodegas and shares it on his website Alcademics.com. He has visited bodegas in each of the three major sherry producing cities in Spain and written numerous articles on the topic.
    

And we won't be drinking swill, either. I've scored some top-notch sherries, along with some very nice sherry-finished scotch whisky and some sherry-finished rum as well! 

The class starts at 7PM, lasts about two hours and costs $60. It is limited to 14 students. 

Buy tickets here, or learn more about the Beverage Academy here.

Teaching a Sherry Class at the Beverage Academy in SF

[Update- realizing this is Memorial Day, we have decided to postpone it until a later date.]

On May 30th, I'll be teaching a class at Bourbon & Branch's Beverage Academy!

I'm really excited about it. Sherry is a big category of rather complex fortified wine, so I'll be busting out my PowerPoint ninja skills and a whole lot of tasting glasses. Here's the class description.

Oh Sherry!

Sherry is wide category of fortified wine that’s due for a big comeback. Already bartenders have adopted it as favorite mixing ingredient in cocktails, and wine connoisseurs are giving it renewed attention.

Delicious as it is, sherry is no simple sipper: There are two sweet (Pedro Ximenez, muscatel) and five dry styles of sherry (fino, manzanilla, palo cortado, amontillado, oloroso); plus the dry sherries can be sweetened to create pale cream, medium, and cream styles. All are aged and blended in the famous solera system (in two very different ways) that gives sherry its unique flavor characteristics. Don’t worry, you’ll understand it all by the end of the class.

We’ll taste these styles of sherry and learn the amazing processes by which they’re made, learn how to drink it and where to buy it, and use it to make a sherry cocktail or two.

Instructor: Camper English

Camper English is a cocktail and spirits writer and educator who contributes to the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Fine Cooking Magazine, and many other publications. He travels the world visiting distilleries, blending houses, and bodegas and shares it on his website Alcademics.com. He has visited bodegas in each of the three major sherry producing cities in Spain and written numerous articles on the topic.
   

Classes at the Beverage Academy are high-end affairs. We'll be in The Wilson, the latest room at B&B. All students are seated at the bar, there will be proper tasting glassware and tools and equipment to make cocktails.

The class starts at 7PM, lasts about two hours and costs $95. It is limited to 14 students. I hope you'll be one of them on May 30th. 

Buy tickets here, or learn more about the Beverage Academy here.

And if anyone is signing up for the Market to Glass seminar on April 18th, I'll see you there - I'm helping out (washing glasses, mostly) and learning how to run a smooth seminar.

 

Sherry is wide category of fortified wine that’s due for a big comeback. Already bartenders have adopted it as favorite mixing ingredient in cocktails, and wine connoisseurs are giving it renewed attention. Delicious as it is, sherry is no simple sipper: There are two sweet (Pedro Ximenez, muscatel) and five dry styles of sherry (fino, manzanilla, palo cortado, amontillado, oloroso); plus the dry sherries can be sweetened to create pale cream, medium, and cream styles. All are aged and blended in the famous solera system (in two very different ways) that gives sherry its unique flavor characteristics. Don’t worry, you’ll understand it all by the end of the class. We’ll taste these styles of sherry and learn the amazing processes by which they’re made, learn how to drink it and where to buy it, and use it to make a sherry cocktail or two. Instructor: Camper English Camper English is a cocktail and spirits writer and educator who contributes to the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Fine Cooking Magazine, and many other publications. He travels the world visiting distilleries, blending houses, and bodegas and shares it on his website Alcademics.com. He has visited bodegas in each of the three major sherry producing cities in Spain and written numerous articles on the topic.

Sherry is to Tequila as Vermouth is to Whiskey

Sherry and tequila are showing up together on more and more cocktail menus. I wrote a story about that in the Sunday, February 20th San Francisco Chronicle. 

(Del Rio cocktail by Josh Harris of the Bon Vivants. Photo: Craig Lee)

More drinks including Tequila and Sherry
Camper English, Special to The Chronicle

Sherry and Tequila are having a love affair. Bartenders are using more of each ingredient lately, but increasingly you'll see the two sneaking off in a drink together, canoodling in a corner of the cocktail menu.

One of the first outward signs of this attraction came in the form of La Perla, a drink created several years ago by beverage consultant Jacques Bezuidenhout, which is still on the menu at Bourbon & Branch. The cocktail contains reposado (lightly aged) Tequila, manzanilla Sherry and pear liqueur.

A not-too dissimilar flavor combination has popped up recently. At the Hideout at Dalva, a tiny backroom cocktail bar in the Mission District, Josh Harris serves the Del Rio. The drink is made with blanco, or unaged, Tequila, fino Sherry, St. Germain elderflower liqueur, plus a dash of orange bitters and a grapefruit zest.

At Gitane, the Sherry-centric Claude Lane restaurant, bar manager Alex Smith and two other bartenders collaborated on a drink called the Flor Delice, made with reposado, manzanilla, St. Germain and orange bitters, plus maraschino liqueur.

In New York, this combination shows up yet again on the menu at Mayahuel, a bar dedicated to Tequila and mezcal. The Suro-Mago uses blanco, manzanilla, elderflower and orange bitters, and adds a rinse of mezcal to give it a smoky touch.

 Read the rest of the story and get the recipe for the Del Rio, a simple and delicious drink.

Sherry, Reconsidered in the Los Angeles Times Magazine

In yesterday's LA Times Magazine I have a huge feature on sherry.

(photographs by Nigel Cox)

As a wine category, sherry has practically everything going for it: a tremendous range of flavors, a rich history dating at least as far back as the Romans, the ability to pair magnificently well with food and an increasingly hip status as a cocktail ingredient used by top bartenders.

Most people, when they think of sherry at all, consider it an ingredient their grandmothers cooked with rather than something ripe for sipping on its own. Sherry is about due for a comeback, but it’s so unfamiliar to us now that it really needs a thorough reintroduction.

The story features eight drink recipes from the lofty likes of Murray Stenson, Andrew Bohrer, Alex Day, Zahra Bates, Kenta Goto and Audrey Saunders, Brian Miller, Neyah White, and Kevin Deidrich.

Go read the story, and then go make the drinks!

(photographs by Nigel Cox)

Sherry Region Food Pictures

In September 2010 I visited several sherry bodegas. Here are food pictures from the area.

Food in the sherry region is all about seafood and Iberian ham, all served tapas-style. I think the meat eaters on my trip must have had ham ten different ways. 

(Langostinos.) 

(Mmm, gazpacho. I had tomatoes about 15 different ways.)

(Two of the writers on our trip, sweaty and crazed, post-hamgasm.)

(Eating outdoors in Jerez. This was before the 40 or so plates of tapas arrived. I focussed primarily on the sherry.)

(Bull meat in the market.)

(A nightclub near our hotel serves a San Francisco cocktail. It shows how much they know about San Francisco: It's non-alcoholic.)

(And one more sherry picture to wash it all down.) 

Sherry Bodega Visit: Bodegas Hidalgo La Gitana

In September 2010 I visited several sherry bodegas. Here are pictures and a few notes from Bodegas Hidalgo La Gitana, which is located in Sanlucar de Barrameda. 

(La Gitana is their most famous brand. It's a manzanilla; similar to fino but aged in Sanlucar.)

(The bodegas were wonderfully old, moldy, and dusty.)

(One of the old bullfight posters taped to the wall in the bodega.)

(Our host, a curmudgeonly sort who basically disagreed with everything we learned all week. We liked him anyway.)

(A view of the bodega.)

 

• More humidity and less exreme temperature swings in Sanlucar
• Flor is thicker and remains year round
• Make a single-vineyard manzanilla. It may be the only single vineyard sherry
• The vineyards and grapes not nearly as important as the place where the solera is
• Sanlucar is the oldest part of the sherry region- producing wines there the longest
• Most of the casks in these bodegas over 200 years old. They hate new casks. 
• Replace staves with staves from old casks bought on market
• La Gitana has 14 level solera. 
• Manzanilla typically has more ciraderas (levels to the solera) than fino. Have to move it faster between levels.  
• Tastes like salt spilled in the relish. Yum.
• Manzanilla can pair with asparagus- is most versatile with food
• Says you can leave an open bottle in the refrigerator 4-5 years and it will still be good 
• During the peninsular war, they supplied both Napoleon and the Allies. Now have both Napoleon and Wellington brands.