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2011: A Year of Spirituous Travel

In 2011, I traveled to 12 foreign countries not counting repeats on 22 different trips, flying 156,000 miles to do so. I had a mere 80 nights in hotel rooms and one or two hangovers.

My trips this year were: 

• Vino 2011 in NYC
• Jameson Irish Whiskey in Ireland
• Casa Noble Tequila in Mexico
• Angostura Bitters/Rum in Trinidad
• Pioneers of Mixology in Los Angeles
• Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America in Orlando
• Bacardi Global Legacy Cocktail Competition in London and Spain
• Bombay Sapphire Botanicals in London and Italy
• Karlsson's Vodka in Sweden
• G'Vine Gin Connoisseur Competition in France
• Diageo World Class Competition in India
• Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans
• ZU Vodka in Poland
• Purity Vodka in Sweden
• Cherry Heering in Copenhagen
• Bombay Sapphire/GQ Most Inspired Bartender Competition in Las Vegas
• DonQ Rum in Puerto Rico
• Pallini Limoncello in Italy
• Cointreau in France
• Auchentoshan Switch Competition in Las Vegas
• Yamazaki Whisky in Japan
• Taste of the Times Event in Los Angeles

I am hoping for a more localized but equally awesome 2012. 

Bars in Japan: Miscellany

 On my five-day visit to Japan with Suntory whiskies I hit 21 bars by my count. I am talking about them in groups. Next up: The Rest of Them.

The difference between the various styles of bars is subtle and I'm defining them as I see them. I'll be describing whisky bars, cocktail bars, highball and standing bars, and pubs/clubs/dives. This is that last section.

Rippongi Nouen is actually a restaurant but it's notable because they serve highballs with flavors like ginger and rosemary.

The restaurant has big glass cubes in the back that have (or used to have, can't tell) herbs and vegetables growing in them. 

The tasting menu had some great food. I think they picked this place not just for the drinks but for its vegetarian tasting menu.

(Everyone gets their personal smoking grill in one dish.)

One Shot Bar The Door (I'm not sure if it's called The Door or One Shot Bar) is located in Kyoto. I didn't see much of the bar downstairs as we were in a private room upstairs with our shoes off on with tatami mats having a great conversation. It has a short cocktail menu, mostly of classics. I ordered a Martini. 

Three Martini Bar in Yokohama is full of good. The walls are lined with vintage whisky decanters and ice buckets and they were playing a soundtrack of yacht rock. Good vibes all around.

(Mmm, tequira.)

Our hosts gave us a few reasons why it's called Three Martini, but I only remember one of them. "Three" in German is spelled "dreit" as in "dry." In exchange, I told them that in America it might refer to the three-martini lunch or Dorothy Parker's "two at the most" rhyme.

Anyway, we ordered Moscow Mules and the three Martinis.

For bar snacks they had several options including fried sugar(!*!*!*!).

Eagle Bar in Shinjuku area of Tokyo looks like a speakeasy gentleman's club with patterned wallpaper, wooden walls, and carpeting. To enter you walk down a flight of stairs to find a room with the main bar. Walk down another flight of stairs (two storeys below the street) and there is another small bar room where we sat. 

We sat at the bar. It has low barstools so your feet are touching the floor. While a couple to our right were working their way through the cocktail list, we stuck to highballs. 

Bigri Bar is located in Golden Gai, the neighborhood of tiny bars I mentioned previously. 

You enter in a set of incredibly steep stairs into a room that looks like a kitchen in a studio apartment.

I think this is what is called a "mama-san bar" as the owner is an older lady who serves drinks and also cooks you (not exactly good-looking) food from behind the same bar counter. 

(Hand-knit cocktail coasters. Adorable.)

Track Bar is an uber-hipster bar that wasn't filled with hipsters at the time we visited. They have a wall of 33" records and a DJ spinning them. There were mason jars full of help-yourself snacks. But it still operated like a cocktail bar - you ask when you walk in the door if there is enough seating before entering. 

It seems like a whisky bar but I saw cocktails being made as well. I ordered a highball, and their house style at this bar is to serve it in a frosted glass without ice. 

Bars in Japan: Whisky Bars

On my five-day visit to Japan with Suntory whiskies I hit over 20 bars. I think the best way to talk about them will be in groups. First up: Whisky Bars.

The difference between the various styles of bars is subtle and I'm defining them as I see them. I'll be describing whisky bars, cocktail bars, highball and standing bars, and pubs/clubs/dives. I only hit one or two izakaya places. 

Whisky bars specialize in whisky, of course. Most of them have a huge range of single-malt scotch whisky (100 different bottles is a start) and also serve whisky highballs. Many have a cocktail list too, but typically these list just a few classic drinks like Martinis, Manhattans, and Gimlets. The focus is on whisky rocks and whisky highballs. 

Whisky bars I didn't visit include ones with names like Bar Argyll, Bar Caol Ila, Bar Main Malt, Cask, Kask, and Malt House Islay. Many are associated with either Yamazaki or Nikka whisky and will serve a better selection of those whiskies than of the other brand. It's sort of like how fast food restaurants usually serve either Coke or Pepsi but not both. 

Highlander, one of the bars in the fabulous Hotel Okura Tokyo, has red plaid carpet and a clubby, old-world look. I tried a few interesting whiskies there, including the stunning Hibiki 21 year old blended Japanese whisky. 

(Image from the hotel's website.)

K6, in Kyoto near the Yamazaki whisky, is an upstairs bar with shelves around three sides that stocks 600 single malts! We had a nice chat with the bartender and a few unusual drams. And then we ordered haggis pizza, because if offered Scottish food in Italian format in a bar in Japan you just say yes. 

Oil is in a special place in Tokyo called Shinjuku Golden Gai. It is full of tiny bars stacked on top of each other, many the size of a bedroom. Some welcome regulars only; others are open to tourists. Some of them you're practically climbing a latter to get into.

(Bar directory of Golden Gai.)

I got a feeling my hosts were not all that interested in taking me there, but there I went. We went to two bars, Oil and Bigri Bar (that I'll talk about later).

Oil serves two things for the most part: Jack Daniels and Triangle Shochu. You can buy a bottle and have it there waiting for you on your next visit. The bartender, who appears to be the main owner as his picture is all over the place, is a heavily-tattooed, long haired rock and roll type. The rest of the decor is dedicated to actor Yusaku Matsuda, who was in the 1989 movie Black Rain. 

(Cartoon of the bartender.)

When I ordered a whisky on the rocks expecting scorn and derision from too-cool-for-school guy, he took a large, perfectly clear piece of ice, put it into a tumbler glass, carefully stirred it with a barspoon a full minute or so to cool the glass, and poured the whisky. Nicely done. 

There are several bars called Yamazaki Bar so I'm not sure how to identify this one by address, but it was staffed with all women bartenders wearing suits. So it's not really a "hostess bar" where you are paying for female company.

Anyway, they do a very nice presentation for whisky on the rocks. They call it "tornado" style when they serve it with a few big pieces of ice in an oversized Bordeaux wine glass. Then you can have it "pierced"- they bring out a box of garnishes and you can choose from them. They include simple miniature roses,  raspberries, lime/orange slices, mint, and you can dip any of the above in a little caramel or honey. 

It was a classy, easy, and affordable way to make a drink on the rocks a little more special. 

Next post: Cocktail bars!

A Visit to the Yamazaki Distillery in Japan

Yesterday I wrote about visiting the Hakushu distillery in Japan. Today I'll write about Suntory's other single-malt distillery, Yamazaki. It is located between Kyoto and Osaka, at the convergence of several rivers. I believe they said the distillery welcomes 100,000 visitors each year. 

(Mount Fuji as seen from the train to Kyoto.)

The Yamazaki distillery was built in 1923 and launched its first whisky, the White Label, in 1929. That whisky is still made today.

The distillery location was chosen because of its water (as are most distilleries), also sought out by Sen no Rikyo, the inventor of the Japanese tea ceremony. One of his tea houses from the 1500s still stands nearby.

 

Like at Hakushu they import malted barley from Scotland, then grind it, mash it, ferment it, distill it, and age it on site. At Yamazaki they use a combination of wooden and stainless steel washbacks (fermentation vessels). They use the same yeasts as at Hakushu, but sometimes in different proportions. 

They have six differently-shaped pairs of stills to make whiskies with many different flavor characteristics, further enhanced by aging in five different types of barrels. 

Hogsheads (reassembled ex-bourbon barrels at a larger size), puncheons (large barrels made of new American oak), and Mizunara (Japanese oak) barrels are made at the cooperage in Japan at their grain distillery.

Spanish oak sherry butts are made for them in Spain, and ex-bourbon barrels are what they are. 

Mizunara oak grows in the north of Japan, and sometimes in Hokkaido. I used to describe its flavor as similar to sandalwood incense, but on this visit I was tasting it more as a combination of sticky pine tree and cedar. Either way, it's got spice. 

They still have a cask from 1924 in the warehouse (though they've swapped out the whisky) and you can see the Cadiz sherry stamp beneath the Yamazaki one. 

We tasted whiskies aged in three types of oak: Mizunara, Spanish ex-sherry, and new American oak puncheons. 

From the Yamazaki website, "White oak adds vanilla and coconut flavours during the aging process. Tannins and other polyphenols contained in Spanish oak casks leach into the whisky, imbuing it with a deeper reddish hue compared with white oak casks. Whiskies aged in Spanish oak casks typically have fruity, chocolate notes. Over long periods of aging the Japanese oak casks add a distinctively Eastern touch to the whisky, endowing it with sweet fragrances reminiscent of incense with a hint of citrus. This unique flavour has been gaining the Yamazaki brand new adherents around the world." 

At Yamazaki they have six different still shapes, use five types of barrels, and barley at two peating levels. This adds up to 6x5x2 = 60 different whiskies produced at this distillery to be used in single malt and in blends.

Speaking of blends, the Hibiki blend is assembled at this distillery as well. (I think the lower-end blended whiskies that we don't get in the States are put together here too.) The blends have aged grain, column-distilled whiskies along with the single malts from the Hakushu and Yamazaki distilleries. 

At the distillery, there is a tasting room where you can try a variety of distillery-only products like 100% sherry cask Yamazaki the 1980s and white dog.

They also have a library of their whisky experiments.

And an advertising museum. I wish they'd bring back Uncle Torys.

 

Now that we've talking about how they make Hakushu, Yamazaki, and Hibiki, I'll get into where and how to drink them in Japan over the next few posts.

 

A Visit to the Hakushu Distillery in Japan

I visited the Hakushu distillery owned by Suntory, located in the Yamanashi prefecture, about two hours by train from Tokyo in Japan. There is a new Hakushu single malt whisky on the US market. 

As I mentioned in a previous post, Hakushu was built in 1973 and is located at a high elevation - 700 meters above sea level. (Scotland's highest distilleries are Dalwhinnie and Braeval, both about 355 meters.) On the train ride there, your ears are continually clogging as you change elevation. The distillery is on a large site to protect its water source, and doubles as a bird sanctuary. 

The Yamazaki  distillery used to grow at least some of its own grain up until around 1970, but now they import all their barley. It is grown and malted in Scotland and shipped to Japan. Suntory buys malted barley at two different peating levels; basically unpeated and at highly peated at at 25 ppm phenol content. 

They grind the malted barley on site, then put it in the mash tun with hot water to expose the fermentable sugars and transfer it to the wooden washbacks for fermentation.  They ferment it using both brewers' and distillers' yeast.

They have six pairs of stills at Hakushu;  two of them the same shape and one not currently used. Thus they have four active still shapes producing different whiskies. As there is another whisky boom, they're currently distilling 24/7. 

As Hakushu is at a very high elevation, the whisky ages more slowly with less wood influence on the spirit. Though they use five types of barrels at the other single malt distillery Yamakazi, at Hakushu they focus on two: ex-bourbon and hogshead. (Hogshead barrels are reconstructed bourbon barrels made a little larger, holding 230 liters rather than 180.) They do, however, age ex-sherry butts (Spanish oak, 480 liters), and puncheons (new American white oak, 480 liter). 

They rechar some barrels after using them to age whisky about four times, but after they rechar they only use them one more time. Distillery General Manager Mike Miyamoto says that the whisky aged in rechar barrels is more astringent than with regular ex-bourbon barrels. 

The smell of a recharred barrel is amazing! It's like campfire wood and sugars, even marshmallowish. 

At Hakushu they use only racked warehouses, in earthquake-safe metal racks that go about 13 levels high. 

Here they use peated and unpeated barley, four still shapes, and five types of casks (though they focus on two.) They say that between them (2x4x5) they make 40 different types of whisky at Hakushu. 

Regardless, to make up the Hakushu single malt they primarily include three whiskies distilled on-site:  unpeated malt distillate aged in hogshead barrels, unpeated malt distillate aged in  sherry butts, and peated malt distillate aged in  ex-bourbon barrels. 

We sampled each component separately and then the Hakushu 12 and 18 year old blends. With three widely different distillates, Hakushu is almost more of a blended malt (vatted malt) than a single malt.  

Airline Drink Menus Updated: All Nippon Airlines

I updated the Airline Drink Menus page with ANA's drink menu. They are one of the few airlines to put their drink menu online as well.

Read about it here. 

A Visit to the Cointreau Distillery in Angers, France

This October I visited the Cointreau distillery in Angers, France. Angers is located southwest of Paris, about equidistant from Paris and Bordeaux. 

I hadn't realized, but Cointreau was not originally famous for orange liqueur, but for Guignolet, a cherry liqueur. Cherries were brought the region by King Rene', who lived at the Chateau D'Angers.

We visited this castle and its tapestry called The Apocalypse; the world's longest. 

(This way to the Apocalypse!)

The original Cointreau distillery was located in downtown Angers, but has since relocated. We drove to the distillery. 

There, Alfred Cointreau explained the process.

The Distillation of Cointreau

Bitter and sweet orange peels are purchased from Brazil, Africa, and Spain. The dried peels at a certain ratio, along with some fresh peels, 96 percent neutral sugar beet alcohol, and water, are placed into the stills. The peels sit on a plate in the stills to make them easier to remove after distillation. They macerate this mixture overnight before distilling.

The stills for the first distillation are shaped like water tanks, made of copper.

After the first distillation, the alcohol passes up and over the tall, curved lyne arm to the second still. 

The second still is a column. 

(The straight pipes going back to the first stills are a type of reflux.)

In this one room they make the world's supply of Cointreau- 15 million bottles annually. 

Due to local restrictions, the Cointreau for Brazil and Argentina is distilled with sugar cane alcohol (and I assume sweetened with sugar cane sugar) while the rest of the world gets beet alcohol/sugar. It would be fun to compare the two to see if one could detect any differences. 

Production Parameters

We were then given a talk by Cointreau's Master Distiller Bernadette Langlais. Some information learned:

• The sweet oranges lend the orangey taste; the bitter peels bring a fresh, zesty lemon/lime notes
• Bitter oranges are harvested when still green
• The peels are either dried in the sun or in ovens 
• There are 220 different essential oils in orange peels
• The bitter molecules from orange pith don't carry over during distillation. Thus they don't worry about the thickness of the peels. However, when something is just macerated (for example, limoncello) and not distilled then it is important to not get pith on the peels.
• When they add water to reduce Cointreau to proof, the essential oils in the peels cause the liqueur to louche; to get cloudy like when you add water to absinthe. They centrifuge the Cointreau to make it clear again. 
• Of competing brands, they say that Cointreau has the highest amount of essential oils and the lowest amount of added sugar.
• The used orange peels go for cattle feed after distillation.
• Because of the volatility of the essential oils in Cointreau, bartenders should not leave a pour spout on the bottle overnight- some of the flavor will evaporate.

 History

As mentioned previously, Cointreau originally produced cherry and many other liqueurs. (Today they still produce other products at the distillery but not under their name.) 

As mentioned in this post, the Dutch were the first to make Curacao using bitter oranges from that island. When the French became famous for their liqueurs, curacao evolved into triple sec. 

Cointreau initially produced a product called curacao, and then a 'curacao triple sec' and then a 'triple sec."

Eventually many brands of triple sec came on the market. Cointreau's label used to have a big "Triple Sec" and a small "Cointreau" but later reversed their relative size. Today Cointreau doesn't even use 'triple sec' in its descriptor. 

As we know, the 'sec' refers to the dry, or less sweetened style of liqueur. Their opinion about the word 'triple' (the two arguments being either triple distillation/triple refined, or three times as orangey) is three times as concentrated orange flavor. The company had also produced a 'triple creme de menthe' and other 'triple' products, which I think backs up this argument. 

An Unexpected Flavor Trend in Copenhagen

When I visited Copenhagen twice this summer, I was surprised to find one flavor all over the drink menus: eucalyptus. 

At 1105, they serve a drink called the Lady Eucalyptus, made with eucalyptus syrup, gin, lemon, Cointreau, and egg whites. 

At Salon 39, a very creative neighborhood bar/restaurant, they make their own line of bitters. Their eucalyptus bitters I saw all over town, helping drive this trend. 

They use them in their Gin & It, as well as in their version of Sam Ross' Penicillin. 

At the bar Rouge at the Skt. Petri Hotel, the bar program changed literally between me visiting it in the afternoon and the same evening. (Rumor has it they've changed over and over in the past few years.) But the menu that they showed me during the day also had the Penicillin with eucalytpus bitters. By nighttime, it was a short menu of about eight classic cocktails.

At Umami, they also have a eucalyptus drink on the menu. I thought I stole a copy of the menu but I can't seem to find it now. 

At MASH, they use eucalyptus syrup in their Signature Margarita.  

Now I'm wishing I brought some eucalyptus bitters as a souvenir; and odd taste that unites the great bars of Copenhagen.