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Now Trending: White Whiskey

Hey, have you heard about the white whiskey? Probably!

SF Chronicle: White whiskey drips into the mainstream

Washington Post: Of microdistillers and moonshine

New York Times: White Dog’s Day

Foodista Blog: Knocking Back Moonshine with Max Watman

Here are some brands of white whiskey:

• Corsair Artisan Wry Moon
• Death's Door White Whiskey
• Hudson Valley New York Corn Whiskey
• Wasmund's Single Malt Spirits

I think there are more brands. What am I missing?

Hot: Potato Cocktails

I stumbled across two cocktails made with sweet potatoes in one week.

The first one I actually tried. It was served at Beso, Eva Longoria-Parker's restaurant that recently opened in Las Vegas. It was surprisingly drinkable.

The Jimador Spice contains Chinaco Reposado tequila, Orange Curacao, Sweet Potato Puree, Lime Juice, Maple Syrup, and Angostura Bitters, with a Cinnamon Sugar Rim.

The second was a contest winner for Benedictine, created by Daniel Victory of New Orleans. If you know how to make sweet potato au jus and have unflavored pop rocks sitting around, the rest is a cinch.

Daniel Victory – New Orleans

BÉNÉDICTINE Harvest Sensation
1 1/2 part BÉNÉDICTINE Liqueur

1 part sweet potato au jus
Splash of heavy cream

 

In a mixing glass, stir above ingredients with ice.  Next, pour into a pony glass with a “Rim of Magie”*.  Finally garnish with a sweet potato chip.

*Rim of Magie
Sweet potato hay
Sea salt
Unflavored pop rocks

But it turns out these aren't the only sweet potato cocktails ever invented. I found two others from 2008.

The first is by John Kinder of Chicago, and you'll see it's slightly complicated, involving Homemade Grilled Sweet Potato Spirit, Homemade Demerara-fino Sherry Syrup, Homemade Cinnamon-Pecan Tincture, and Homemade Pumpkins in Demerara Syrup.

The second was printed in the Washington Post, and was created by Tiffany Short at PS 7's in Washington DC. The recipe is here. It involves a sweet potato reduction, rum, and cream.

So when you have leftover sweet potatoes during the harvest this year, you'll know what to do with them.

The Great Debate Continues

You may recall a few weeks ago I wrote a piece for the San Francisco Chronicle about bartenders being less snobby that proved a bit controversial.  Now a few others have taken up the conversation.

My initial story had the following quote from Erick Castro of Rickhouse that touched a few nerves:

"Three years ago it was OK to be rude. It used to be 'I'm not making a cosmo and you're a horrible person.' Now we say, 'I'm not making a cosmo, but I'm making you something better than a cosmo.' And if they like (the drink) they trust you for the whole night."

So then I wrote a blog post called, "Why Can't I Get a McDonald's Hamburger at Chez Panisse?" and that gave birth to more discussion.

The Paul Clarke picked up the topic at Serious Eats in a post called "Serious Cocktails: Is the Customer Always Right?" In it he asks:

Just as it'd be ridiculous to enter a dive bar and ask for a Last Word, isn't there something at least slightly wrong with going to a bar with a spectacular selection of spirits—an ambitious and balanced cocktail menu and a carefully developed mixological aesthetic—and asking for the bibulous equivalent of a baloney sandwich?

This story picked up another 67 comments so far. 

Then Lauren Clark picked up the topic on DrinkBoston.com in a post called "We've Seen This Before" and adds a very good point- that this whole debate is nothing new and has been seen in food, beer, and wine.

I experienced this kind of change first-hand during my brief stint in the craft brewing industry in the late ’90s. Even though craft beer had been proliferating for over a decade at that point, people would still walk into a brewpub and order a Miller Lite. The bartender would explain that there was no Miller Lite on tap, that the establishment sold only beer that was made on the premises, and he would suggest a golden ale — milder than the pub’s other beers but still way more flavorful than mass-produced light lager. The customer would either leave or try the golden ale. If he tried it and liked it enough, he might get adventuresome later on and order an IPA or a porter. It was a process, and it didn’t happen overnight.

This is fun. I hope this discussion continues on and offline.

Bloody Revenge (Tomato Juice Cocktail Recipes)

The Bloody Mary is not just a popular tomato juice drink, it's one of the only tomato juice drinks. Now the Red Gold tomato products company has a few suggestions for some new tomato juice cocktails.

The National Peanut Board got in on the cocktail trend with peanut cocktail recipes to help sell their wares, and now this tomato company is following suit. I think it's a good idea, and am just waiting for the Milk Processing Board to join in.

Anyway, the drinks sound interesting, if in need of improvements for Rose's lime and "sour mix." 

[Link via Jack Robertiello at Nightclub.com.]

Why Can't I Get a McDonald's Hamburger at Chez Panisse?

In response to my recent story in the San Francisco Chronicle on high-end bars becoming more accommodating to patrons' requests, many people wrote into the comments about how snooty bartenders are who won't give you the drinks that you want.

The Chronicle's commenters are a notoriously (and often hilariously) opinionated bunch, so I don't take offense to anything they say. By and large, they were all terribly upset with Erick Castro of Rickhouse's quote:

"Three years ago it was OK to be rude. It used to be 'I'm not making a cosmo and you're a horrible person.' Now we say, 'I'm not making a cosmo, but I'm making you something better than a cosmo.' And if they like (the drink) they trust you for the whole night."

Commenters were offended that a bartender is so arrogant as to think he knows better than the customer, and offended that a bartender wouldn't make the customer what he wants.

I know that in the case of Rickhouse they don't carry cranberry juice, so they actually can't make a Cosmo. I believe all of the other drinks cited by commenters cannot be made at Rickhouse either- drinks with Midori, 7UP, Malibu, etc. They do not carry these products on principle, and thus cannot make drinks with them.

So Rickhouse can't/won't make a Cosmo, and that makes people mad. But does it also infuriate them that Chez Panisse (probably) can't make a McDonald's hamburger?

Would you be surprised at Chez Panisse if you asked your waiter for a McDonald's hamburger and they steered your toward something similar and better, like a grass-fed, free-range beef burger on a fresh-baked bread roll with organic ketchup? Would you consider them arrogant? Call for the waiter to lose their job?

Only if you can't see the difference between McDonald's and Chez Panisse; between fast food and fine dining. And that is the image problem that cocktail bars have. Many people still think every bar is a McDonalds, when most bars that make the news are evolving toward something better. 

The better cocktail bars are not actually suffering from this lack of understanding- there's a huge demand for them, in fact, and in my experience the places selling $10 cocktails are affected less in this recession than places selling $6 ones. So despite complaints, better cocktail bars are safe, for now.

The funny thing is that speakeasy bars were originally a theme concept, but evolved into a practical concept: hiding the bars from people who don't yet know that not every bar serves Bud and has sports on TV.

Some people worry that the perceived arrogance of the bartenders in these places will make this better-drinking era a trend rather than an ongoing movement. I think that's a valid concern, as fine cocktails are very trendy right now. I'd hate to see this movement lose momentum as there is so, so much further to go with it.

As was the point in my original article, bartenders are learning how to talk to patrons in a nicer way to steer them away from lesser-quality or marketing-driven drink choices and into better ones. But is there more that can be done- in the media or by bartenders/bar owners- to make a clearer break between the fast food version of bars and the ones more like fine dining?

User-Generated Cocktails

Here is my latest story in the San Francisco Chronicle, December 27th 2009 edition.

Bartenders shift from lecture to nurture

Camper English, Special to The Chronicle

Friday, December 25, 2009

A common sight in the nation's speakeasy-themed bars is a list of rules about what one can and cannot do - and can and cannot order. But among a newer batch of bars, the trendiest design feature is dialogue.

"Three years ago it was OK to be rude. It used to be 'I'm not making a cosmo and you're a horrible person.' Now we say, 'I'm not making a cosmo, but I'm making you something better than a cosmo.' And if they like (the drink) they trust you for the whole night," says Erick Castro, general manager at Rickhouse in San Francisco's Financial District.

Bartenders at top cocktail spots have shifted from a lecturing mode into more of a nurturing one, and Castro says the strategy has paid off.

"The same people who used to complain that we didn't have Bud Light and Grey Goose are now our biggest customers, coming in three times a week and ordering rye Manhattans," he says.

Photo: Michael Macor / The Chronicle

Read the rest of the story here. The story centers on how bartenders are trusting consumers to trust them more, instead of focusing on lists of rules of behavior. The story namechecks Heaven's Dog, Bourbon & Branch, Rickhouse, The Alembic in San Francisco, Copa d'Oro in Santa Monica, Drink in Boston, Klee in Singapore, and door74 in Amsterdam.

Yeah, I get around.

Vodka, Vodka, Vodka: Flavor Trends, New Distillates, and Muscle-Building Additives

Vodka is getting weirder, which makes it more interesting in my book.

Vodka can be distilled from anything that ferments and is already made from wheat, rye, corn, sugar beets, molasses, potatoes, maple syrup, and other ingredients. Now it's also made from oranges. 4 Orange Vodka is "distilled from 100% orange spirits derived from four unique Florida orange varieties - the Hamlin, Parson Brown, Temple and Valencia."

The website say 4 Orange Vodka it's initially only available in Florida, retailing for $24.99.

360 Vodka, an organic vodka made in the midwest, has launched a new flavor: Cola. The company suggests mixing their cola-flavored (and colored) vodka with lemonade, cucumber slices, and soda water in a cocktail called the Ecolade, or (get this) mixed with Sprite.

A soda-flavored vodka sounds odd to me, but I suppose it shouldn't. The biggest trend across vodka flavors is mocking the flavor of other beverages. Sweet tea vodka was all the rage last year, Three Olives released a root beer flavored vodka, and Burnett's launched a pink lemonade flavor as well.

It seems to me the division between pre-mixed cocktails and flavored vodkas is getting smaller. You can probably just pour most of these over ice or into an up glass and call it a cocktail. 

Lastly, there is a new protein-infused vodka, Devotion Vodka, hitting the market. This solves the problem that so, so many vodka drinkers have: you want to drink your protein powder to gain ultimate muscle power, yet you also want a vodka cocktail. Until recently you'd have to mix them. No longer! According to the website:

The protein used in the Devotion Vodka blend is PeptoPro® and casein, PeptoPro® , which was developed by DSM Food Specialties with the Dutch Olympic Committee is a recovery ingredient for fast muscle refueling. The target was to give the Dutch Olympic athletes a competitive advantage at the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004. PeptoPro® is a casein hydrolysate (a protein cut into fragments), which is the same protein found in dairy products.

So it's also good as a post-workout cocktail ingredient while your muscles are recovering. Sure.

But actually I want to try the product because I wonder what the protein will do to the texture of the vodka. If it makes it thick and silky, that could be interesting in cocktails. And it would be nice to bulk up my drink muscles.

Nuts for Cocktails

I love how cocktails are such a large and increasing part of modern culture that other seemingly unrelated industries are hitching a ride. Airlines advertise their cocktail programs, countries promote their national cocktails as part of their tourism ads, and food groups like the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board are pairing their wares not only with wine, but with cocktails.

The latest press release to give me pause was from the National Peanut Board promoting cocktails made with peanut butter and peanut-infused rum. Awesome.

Smoke Drinks in SF

Is it 2001 all over again? Suddenly I'm contributing to CitySearch on occasion, as I used to do in the last recession.

Here's my latest round-up listing bars serving smoky drinks.

Smoking may be illegal in bars these days, but smoke-flavored drinks are on fire in San Francisco and across the country--easily the hottest trend in the spirits world. Many of the top local cocktail spots now have smoky cocktails on their menus, whether that smoke taste be derived from peaty Islay scotch whisky, fiery and rustic mezcal or actually lighting things on fire. Inhale this trend in any of the following cocktails.

Then I list seven smoky drinks and where to find them: at Nopa, Jardiniere, Dosa, Absinthe, Beretta, Rickhouse, and Foreign Cinema.

Smoke Gets in your Ice

Over the history of cocktails, certain flavors have become trendy during particular years. First the cocktail was invented, then the "fancy" cocktail, then the "improved" cocktail. These variations added liqueurs like curacao, maraschino, and absinthe to the regular formula. In the early 1900's, grenadine was all the rage and suddenly you'd find a splash of it in all the drinks.

A hundred years later, the same thing happens and I run around and try to document it. In 2007 and 2008, what cocktail menu didn't suddenly have three drinks with St. Germain on it?  We're currently seeing a revival in ginger flavored cocktails. And I believe that 2008 and 2009 will be known as the years of smoke.

Bartenders have taken different approaches to putting smoke into drinks. Sometimes, they light stuff on fire to make smoked Coke (Eben Freeman of Tailor), smoked ice (Daniel Shoemaker of Teardrop in Portland), and smoked syrup (Cody Robertson of San Francisco), and in a drink I just learned about, smoked strawberry shrub(!!!) with scotch and bitters at Absinthe. 

Other bartenders add liquid smoke to drinks. An early version of this was in the (awful) Smoky Martini, a Martini with a rinse of scotch, and a (less awful) Martini with a smoke-brined olive inside. In the past couple of years though, it's been all about the rinse. Folks use a rinse of Islay scotch like Laphroaig or Ardbeg, and within the last year they've gone nuts for rinses of mezcal- especially in San Francisco. At Clock Bar they have a drink with Qi black tea liqueur for similar effect. 

As bartenders and consumers get more fetishistic about smoke, it seems they're putting more of it into cocktails. It used to be bartenders would mix half mezcal or Islay scotch in a drink with half tequila or blended scotch so as not to overwhelm the drinker, as in the Carter Beats the Devil cocktail. Now you're more likely to get a full dose of smoke but tempered with robust mixers like pineapple gum syrup in the Single Village Fix. 

Luckily I have a very trendy palate, and have been sucking down smoky cocktails like they're going out of style. And they will, of course, but hopefully not until sometime in mid-2010.

Bartenders Hitting Their Hoes

For some reason, the San Francisco Chronicle didn't choose the above title for my story that comes out Sunday August 30th. I can't think of why.

More bars growing own cocktail ingredients

Camper English, Special to The Chronicle

Friday, August 28, 2009

 Victoria D'Amato-Moran grows tomatoes, Asian pears, Fuji apples, blackberries, roses and many herbs in her South San Francisco garden. Sooner or later, everything in it winds up in her cocktails.

"Except the zucchinis," she says. "I haven't figured out how to use those yet."

The Bay Area has long been home to the farm-forward cocktail movement - initially personified by Scott Beattie, then of Cyrus restaurant, who sourced produce from neighbors' fruit trees for his bar. Lately, more bartenders are doing the gardening work themselves, for the same reason that backyard gardeners seem to have appeared everywhere.

The extra effort may not save money, and the drinks may not taste noticeably fresher to the customer, but you can bet they do to the proud garden tender who grew part of your gimlet from seed.

Read the rest of my story in this Sunday's Chronicle about bartenders who also tend to gardens, including Duggan McDonnell, H. Joseph Ehrmann, Daniel Hyatt, Scott Stewart, Thad Vogler, and Lane Ford, and the bars Fairway Cocktail Lounge, Cyrus, Elixir, Alembic, Cantina, Fifth Floor, Bar Agricole, Starbelly, Sprcue, Brix, and Etoile. Gosh I'm thorough.

Also: there's a recipe for Jacques Bezuidenhout's Sagerac, a version of the Sazerac made with fresh picked sage, and Scott Stewart's Lonsdale No. 3 made with fresh basil.

Parallel Flavors and Formats: Hibiscus and Tea

Tea and Hibiscus flavors have come into vogue and been used in similar formats. Click the images to go to the products' websites.

Tea

Original

Liqueur: Qi Liqueur

Infusion: Beefeater 24 Gin

Sparkling Mixer: Golden Star Tea

Accessory: Tea Forte Cocktail Infusions

Hibiscus

Original

Liqueur: Fruit Lab Crism Organic Liqueur

Infusion: Rosangel Tequila

Sparkling Mixer: Ooba Sparkling Hibiscus

Accessory: Wild Hibiscus Flowers in Syrup

Elderflower Power

While it didn't take long at all for several sweet tea vodka imitators to launch after the initial success of Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka, elderflower liquors have been slower to be created in the wake of the incredibly successful St. Germain elderflower liqueur that launched a couple years ago.

Just recently though, Thatcher's Organic Elderflower liqueur started hitting the market. And now the new Absolut vodka city series has been announced: Absolut Boston will come in black tea and elderflower flavor.

If only that was sweet tea and elderflower, we'd have a megatrend.

Heirloom Tomatoes, Ripe for Drinking

It's tomato season and all the local restaurants are rolling out the tomato carts and tomato specialty dinners. The bartenders are getting in on the action too.

At Range, Carlos Yturria's famous Sungold Zinger is back on the menu, made with Sungold Zinger cherry tomatoes, No. 209 gin, lemon, agave syrup, and salt.

The bartenders at Range restaurant in San Francisco have started two blogs, by the way. Cocktail of the Day lists the daily cocktail served at the restaurant, and Inside the Blood Bank (from which I stole the picture) is a more general bartender and drink blog.

Elsewhere in tomato drink news, Carneros Bistro & Wine Bar in Sonoma is serving a tomato basil martini with your choice of gin or vodka.

And as part of the tomato dinner Sent Sovi in Saratoga greets guests with a Lemon Boy Bellini. Tomato Bellini? That sounds oddly delicious.

Mezcal is the New Punch

Eater LA reports that there will be a new mezcal (and tequila) bar called Las Perlas opening in Los Angeles late 2009/early 2010. With Phil Ward's mezcal mecca Mayahuel in New York already smeared all over the press, we need just one more venue to open to be a certified trend. Where will it be next?