tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47518054520434197232024-03-18T06:24:28.290-04:00Off The PressesRobert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.comBlogger978125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-13095580570026346402012-12-18T06:37:00.000-05:002012-12-18T06:37:25.161-05:00The Hidden History of the Harvey Wallbanger<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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First of all, I should say that I never intended to uncover the history of the Harvey Wallbanger. The journey by which I became obsessed with discovering the origins of the popular 1970s cocktail began when, in last 2010, an editor at The Daily, the now-defunct tablet newspaper, contacted me and asked if I had any "interesting" angles on cocktail stories. I thought for a bit and said I had always been curious about the little-known 1950s-1960s bartender Donato "Duke" Antone. If you believed what you read, he was the author of the Harvey Wallbanger, the Rusty Nail, the White Russian and many more. Yet, no one really knew anything about him. And now (at least at that time, a year and a half ago), the Wallbanger was beginning to enjoy a rebirth. Why not profile Antone? They bit.<br />
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So I started my research and soon learned that—beyond the Harvey Wallbanger's Wikipedia page—there wasn't much out there about Antone. I quizzed several knowledgable bartenders. They said they assumed Antone invented the drink in the 1950s, but admitted they didn't know much beyond that. I then contacted the people at Galliano. They were interested in Antone as well, but, amazingly, had no records regarding the history of their liqueur's greatest claim to fame. I began to suspect that I was on a wild goose chase, that Antone was yet another cocktail myth cooked up a bar somewhere in the misty past and given the weight of truth through constant retelling.<br />
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Then I happened upon an obituary of the man, published in the Hartford Courant. This proved Antone had lived. It led to several other articles in the Courant. Soon the trail grew hot and I began to piece together a history, both of the bartender and the drink. My article was no longer about Antone, however. I was determined to get to the bottom of the Harvey Wallbanger story. And—with a graceful assist late in the game from David Wondrich (who had begun digging into the Wallbanger story in summer 2011)—I think I have.<br />
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There was a problem about getting the story out there, however. By the time I had my copy ready for publication, in late February 2011, The Daily was having problems. My editor hemmed and hawed but finally cut me loose, saying they didn't have the money for the piece. (The Daily ceased publication on Dec. 15.) I turned to a well-respected, historic food magazine, whose print version ended a few years ago but which lives on as an on-line presence. I had enjoyed the depth and breadth of its articles in the past. They happily seized on the article and sent me a contract—and then sat of the piece for ten months. My original editor left. Another one came in, edited the story with me, and then left as well. Finally, a third editor casually informed me that the article would not run due to "space limitations." (On-line publications <i>do</i> realizes they are afforded infinite space, don't they?)<br />
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Again, I scramble to find Harvey a home. To my lasting gratitude, the fine folks as Saveur gladly took it on and published it Dec. 14. You can read the article <a href="http://www.saveur.com/article/Wine-and-Drink/Harvey-Wallbanger">here</a>. However, it is in a slight truncated form. If you want to get the whole story, here is the copy in its unabridged form:<br />
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Searching for Harvey Wallbanger </blockquote>
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By Robert Simonson </blockquote>
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The Harvey Wallbanger has one of the most memorable names in cocktail history. And one of the worst reputations. </blockquote>
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A mix of vodka, orange juice and Galliano, it was one of the preeminent drinks of the 1970s, a decade recognized by drink historians as the Death Valley of cocktail eras—a time of sloppy, foolish drinks made with sour mix and other risible shortcuts to flavor, and christened with foolish monikers like Mudslide and Freddie Fudpucker. </blockquote>
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Not that Harvey Wallbanger is one of those. It's actually got one of the best—and most unforgettable—handles in the annals of mixed drinks. This may be why it's survived long enough to be reappraised. Shortly after Galliano reconfigured its recipe a couple years ago, returning the Italian liqueur to its original formula, mixologists began to sneak the drink back on respectable lists. </blockquote>
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This is all good news for Donato "Duke" Antone, the largely forgotten bartender who, according to longstanding legend, is the creator of the Wallbanger, as well as a number other two-ingredient wonders of the time, like the Rusty Nail and White Russian. Antone, the oft-repeated story goes, ran Duke's "Blackwatch" Bar on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood in the 1950s. The few biographical facts that pop up again and again tell us that he was the brother-in-law of one-term New York State Senator Carlo Lanzillotti, and that he managed featherweight boxer Willie Pep, a childhood friend. He died In 1992 at the age of 75, according to an obit in the Hartford Courant. At the time he was the retired headmaster of the Bartending School of Mixology in Hartford. The Courant notice repeated the claims that he invented the Wallbanger, Rusty Nail, as well as the Flaming Caesar and many other drinks. </blockquote>
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So, did he? As much as we hate to doubt a WWII vet and "the recipient of two silver stars, two bronze stars, two Purple Hearts and a Croix de Guerre" (the Courant), the bartending profession has a long history of credit-grabbing. The provenance of almost every famous cocktail is clouded by the claims and counterclaims of various barmen. Even Jerry Thomas, the father of modern mixology, wasn't above a fib or two. </blockquote>
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Certainly, all the drinks associated with Donato display the same, ham-fisted modus operandi. Take a potent, straightforward base spirit (vodka, whiskey), throw in a taste-profile-dominating liqueur (Galliano, Drambuie, Amaretto, Kalua), maybe some juice or cream, and presto: new drink! But few figures in bartending history can lay their hand to so many famous drinks, so one doubts Donato invented all of them. So this article will concentrate on clearing away as much fog as possible from the most frequent cited of his children. </blockquote>
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According to folklore, Donato invented the Harvey Wallbanger in 1952. It is said he named it after a Manhattan Beach surfer and regular named Tom Harvey—a man about whom we can find nothing. But the cocktail didn't become popular until the early 1970s. This sudden reversal of fortunes coincides with the arrival of George Bednar, who in 1966 became marketing director of McKesson Imports Co., an importing company that handled Galliano. Previously, the liqueur had a staid ad campaign that featured the line "Fond of things Italiano? Try a sip of Galliano." Bednar somehow found the Wallbanger and hoisted it up the barroom flagpole. The original ads pushed the drink as a replacement at brunch for the Bloody Mary. Round about late 1969, a rather pained-looking, sandal-wearing mascot named Harvey Wallbanger appeared. His line: "Harvey Wallbanger is the name and I can be made!" </blockquote>
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And, boy, did the world make him! Soon, reports were cropping up of bowls of Wallbangers being consumed at Hamptons parties and on Amtrak trains. Harvey Wallbanger cakes were sold. A Puli named after the drink won dog shows. By 1976, Holland House was putting out a Wallbanger dry mix and pre-blended bottles of the cocktail were sold. Riding this wave, Galliano became the number one most imported liqueur during Me Decade, exporting 500,000 cases a year to the U.S. (You'd think the Galliano people—the liqueur is now owned by Lucas Bols—would be interested in the origins of their most famous drink. But the company, while curious, had little or no information to offer about the Wallbanger or Donato.) </blockquote>
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Antone, however, is difficult to fine during this heyday. He's not quoted or mentioned in articles or advertisements. The California ABC office can find no listing for a bar called Duke's "Blackwatch" Bar on Sunset. (To be fair, their computer records are not complete.) Neither do L.A. guides or newspapers from the time mention it. Given that the drink rose to fame with the arrival of Bednar, one can't help but suspect that good old Harvey was the invention of the Galliano marketing department, and that Antone had nothing to do with it. </blockquote>
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The flaw in that theory lies in the Courant obit, which indicates that Antone himself never denied creating the drink. So what came first, the Blackwatch or the Bednar? </blockquote>
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I dug up a number of answers in the back pages of the Hartford Courant, which printed a few stories on Antone over the years. It even ran a photo or two, provided pictorial evidence that a short, balding man with thick, black-framed glasses named Donato "Duke" Antone did indeed breathe air. A 1966 Courant article about Antone's bartending school, located on Farmington Avenue, tells us that he was born in Brooklyn in a Italian-Jewish neighborhood, ran liquor for bootleggers as a youngster, had his first legal bartending job at a place called Diamond Jim Brady's, and was he was "a likable, fast-talking Runyoneseque character." </blockquote>
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Turns out, there's a good reason you can't find evidence of Antone and the Blackwatch Bar in Los Angeles during the 1950s and '60s. It's because the man was living in Hartford that entire time. The 1966 Courant piece says he founded his school in 1949 "after he found, when working in Las Vegas, that it was difficult to find good bartenders," and that it "took him 14 years to perfect the school's curriculum." Those would be the years when he was supposed mixing up Harvey Wallbangers for beach bums. </blockquote>
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The 1966 story identifies Antone as the author of some new drinks—including the Italian Fascination, which "has won prizes" and "contains Galliano, Kahlua, triple sec and sweet cream"—but the Wallbanger is not mentioned as one of them. However, in a subsequent 1970 Courant story (about how Antone taught his trade to his 12-year-old son!), Antone gets full credit for the Wallbanger. Of course, by that time, the drink was gaining fame and popularity. So what happened between those two datelines? </blockquote>
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This sentence in a 1977 Courant piece, in which Antone is "retired," might hold the key: "Antone…has not limited himself to mixing drinks. Rather, he has been active in all aspects of the liquor industry ranging from restaurant design to marketing." </blockquote>
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"Marketing"! OK, theory time. Could it be that George Bednar, newly hired at McKesson in 1966 and looking for a way to boost Galliano sales, read about Antone's Galliano-heavy Italian Fascination cocktail, and then traveled up to Hartford to see if the bartender, for a fee, could come up a few more cocktails featuring the liqueur? (Around this time, Antone also invented Freddie Fudpucker, basically a Harvey Wallbanger with tequila.) The tale of the Blackwatch Bar, phantom surfer Tom Harvey, and the sudden appearance of the Wallbanger cartoon figure—that could all well be examples of Bednar and Antone's marketing acumen. One can see how the two men might have bonded. Antone was a boxing man, and Bednar played football for Notre Dame and the St. Louis Cardinals in the mid-'60s. Booze and sports. They were made for each other. </blockquote>
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Noted cocktail historian David Wondrich—who, as it turns out, has been doing his own digging in the Wallbanger—pointed out the the Harvey surfer character had been designed by commercial artist name Bill Young, at Galliano and McKesson's behest. The cartoon figure hit the U.S. like a lava flow in late 1969, "pop art posters, bumper stickers, buttons, crew shirts, mugs and the whole bit," according to an Oct. 30, 1969, San Antonio Light article uncovered by Wondrich. </blockquote>
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"I wonder what the execs at McKesson thought in 1969," mused Wondrich, "when Bill Young showed them the dopey little cartoon surfer he had come up with, complete with a dopey name, 'Harvey Wallbanger,' and an equally dopey slogan, 'I can be made.' I doubt they realized what they were in for. With Young's Harvey to blaze the way, Antone's simple—even dopey—drink would go on to be the first drink created by a consultant to actually take the nation by storm." </blockquote>
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By 1981, Duke had opened a new academy, Antone's School of Mixology, and was full-on boasting that he was the genesis of "the Harvey Wallbanger, the Rusty Nail, the White Russian and the Kamakazi, as well as the Freddie Fudpucker." The reporter of that account, sticking in the word "claims" a couple times, seemed disinclined to believe him. </blockquote>
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Do I believe him? Well, I never had much faith in the story of the Harvey Wallbanger's creation. (A surfer at Manhattan beach going all the way to Sunset Boulevard for a drink? A Italian-American who gives his bar a Scottish name?) But I do believe Antone had something to do with creating the cocktail. To paraphrase the cartoon Harvey, "cocktail history is the game, and I can be made up." </blockquote>
Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-69431686268006915342012-11-23T13:46:00.000-05:002012-11-23T13:46:00.142-05:00Mixologist of the Month: Mike Lay<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The "Mixologist of the Month" columns in Wine Enthusiast often cause me to chat with bartenders I wouldn't otherwise. Which is a good thing. For this <a href="http://www.winemag.com/Wine-Enthusiast-Magazine/December-01-2012/Mixologist-of-the-Month-Michael-Lay/">edition</a>, I found out a thing or two about the way Mike Lay does business at Restaurant 1833 out in Monterey. </div>
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Mixologist of the Month: Michael Lay</blockquote>
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BY ROBERT SIMONSON</blockquote>
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Michael Lay, mixologist at Restaurant 1833 in Monterey, California, likes to utilize his surroundings, especially the seasons’ bounty.</blockquote>
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A farmer’s market is held on Tuesdays year round a few blocks from the eatery. Inspired by the offerings, Lay decided to make the bar’s Tuesday happy hour “Market Day.”</blockquote>
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“I’ll base the cocktail menu on what I’ve found at the market,” says Lay. “The local produce here is amazing.”</blockquote>
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He selects ingredients that are well-suited for a cocktail menu that has groupings like Pain Killers, Stress Relievers and Elixirs, which all fall under the umbrella of House Remedies.</blockquote>
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“The idea was the restaurant was a pharmacy years ago, and we’re playing with that 1800s, Old West apothecary thing,” says Lay. “In those days, the medicine that was prescribed to you often contained booze. It wouldn’t do anything, but it would intoxicate you and you’d walk away feeling better.”</blockquote>
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Lay, 27, has been working in restaurants and bars since he was 16, when he was a dishwasher at a small barbecue joint. He moved from Seattle to San Diego in 2007, taking a job at the now-shuttered Modus Supper Club.</blockquote>
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Today, Lay’s formative days at the barbecue eatery still creep into his creations. His So Apropo cocktail is a case in point: a Bourbon-based drink in which the liquor is smoked with blackberry tea and hickory vapors. Prepared tableside, the cocktail is assembled within a smoke-filled bowl.</blockquote>
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His Hot-Buttered Rum is another tableside act in which Lemon Hart 151 Rum is ignited to warm the butter. With Lay’s preference for playing off his surroundings, it’s no wonder the drink, which is associated with winter, is on the menu year-round. “Monterey is pretty cold all the time,” says Lay.</blockquote>
Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-47654302824527902922012-11-21T13:34:00.000-05:002012-11-21T13:34:00.272-05:00Bill's Reborn as...Bill's <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I was among those who were not thrilled when the landlord of the midtown Manhattan building that held the old bar Bill's Gay Nineties decided to end the owner's lease, cutting down the former speakeasy's 88-year life at a New York watering hole. Bill's Food and Drink, the much tonier replacement, opened for business this week, following an extensive renovation of the old townhouse. It's not Bill's Gay Nineties, but is does retain some aspects of the old joint, as I found in this New York Times "<a href="http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/starter-bills-food-drink-channels-the-old-place/">Starter</a>" column:<br />
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Starter: Bill’s Food & Drink Channels the Old Place</blockquote>
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By ROBERT SIMONSON</blockquote>
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It’s a testimony to the rock-hard architectural integrity of the 19th-century Midtown town house that used to hold Bill’s Gay Nineties that — even though the decades-old former speakeasy decamped last spring, taking with it all of the storied bric-a-brac from the tavern’s walls — the address’ successor restaurant, Bill’s Food & Drink, retains a certain amount of the old atmosphere.</blockquote>
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One still traces a circuitous path, past some glass doors and an old inset phone booth, to get to the downstairs bar. And that room remains as cramped, cozy and midnight-dark as it ever was. Yes, the new bar is set further back, and the ceiling has been stripped to expose the building’s original beams. But this narrow watering hole will always be a place where, from 7 p.m. on, barflies, diners and waiters jockey for space. Taking up some of the precious square-footage is a piano; Bill’s will keep up its predecessor’s tradition of live entertainment.</blockquote>
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The clientele on Monday, the new Bill’s first official night, didn’t seem so different from the businessmen who patronized Bill’s Gay Nineties. Dark blue suits with pints in hand toasted the end of the workday next to gray suits hoisting martinis. Not a pair of jeans in sight.</blockquote>
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These patrons perhaps have thicker wallets that did the space’s previous regulars — all the better to cover the tabs at this new venture from Crown Group Hospitality, the same outfit that operates the well-heeled enclaves The Lion and Crown. Cocktails, patterned after classics by pre-Prohibition bartenders like Jerry Thomas and Harry Johnson, are competitively priced at $14. So are the $8 drafts. (The bar now has beer lines for the first time in its history.)</blockquote>
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But wines by the glass, though starting at $12, leave that neighborhood good and fast for fancier environs. As for the food (by the chef Jason Hall), the fish, meat & poultry, and beef columns all include entrees that would give a 50 a good shake. In that way, the new Bill’s is a tonal bookend to its equally high-priced neighbor across the street, the Monkey Bar.</blockquote>
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All three floors of the redesigned restaurant would lend comfort and succor to any chesterfield-loving club man. At every turn, there’s something redolent of a more masculine, older New York. Old photos of sporting types (tennis pros, footballers, swimmers, boxers) crowd the walls; fireplaces abound; the soundtrack varies from Sinatra to Armstrong to Nat King Cole. The second-floor dining hall, all white tablecloths, dark wood chairs and waiters at the ready, is polished and posh. The third floor contains a private dining room of baronial splendor.</blockquote>
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Visible outside the the third-floor windows is the old “Bill’s Gay ’90s” sign, missing a few letters but still in place. “We took it down,” said Ben Scorah, Crown Group’s head mixologist. “It was in really bad condition. It was in danger of falling down. So we took it down and fixed it, and put it back up last week.”</blockquote>
Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-40582477237403981522012-11-20T13:27:00.002-05:002012-11-20T13:27:49.669-05:00Boite: Dear Bushwick<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: auto;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cEsAuCfs6CI/UKvKb3D1zCI/AAAAAAAACHk/3t1UNQFnWSA/s1600/15BOITE_SPAN-articleLarge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="384" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cEsAuCfs6CI/UKvKb3D1zCI/AAAAAAAACHk/3t1UNQFnWSA/s640/15BOITE_SPAN-articleLarge.jpg" width="640" /></a>The Thursday Style section of the New York Times has a lovely running column called "Boite," in which a new bar is profiled in a series of piquant bullet points. I've always admired it. Recently, I got to write <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/15/fashion/a-brooklyn-bar-with-a-british-accent-boite.html">one</a>. Here it is:</div>
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BOITE: Dear Bushwick</blockquote>
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By ROBERT SIMONSON</blockquote>
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THOUGH its name reads like a mash note to another up-and-coming Brooklyn neighborhood, Dear Bushwick pays homage to Britain, where Julian Mohamed, one of its owners, grew up. Pictures of kings, churches and somebody’s ancestors hang on the walls. And the menu offers Anglocentric spirits along with English favorites like pasty and chocolate stout pudding.</blockquote>
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On Nov. 5, it was perhaps the only bar in New York to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day, bonfire and all. If the twee Greenwich Village mainstay Tea & Sympathy were given a transfusion of hot Brooklyn blood (and a mixologist), it might end up looking like this.</blockquote>
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THE PLACE While not far from Tandem and the Narrows, two other pioneering Bushwick bars, Dear Bushwick feels like an outpost, a warm, inviting stab of light on an otherwise dark, desolate block. The shotgun space has a few tables in front and a few in the back, with a long bar down the middle. The ceiling is pressed tin, the chair rails are made of old wooden shutters and the lighting fixtures are old milk bottles. English-tearoom touches notwithstanding, the décor is unmistakably Brooklyn: casual, cool and knowing. A largish yard out back will be used in warmer weather.</blockquote>
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THE CROWD The clientele is young, slim and good-looking. If you’re in your mid-30s, you’ll rank as an elder statesman. Tattoos and beards abound. One man sports a porkpie hat, another the requisite knit cap. A recent female patron was self-crowned with a tiara. All are friendly and laid back, mingling and chatting easily with the staff.</blockquote>
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THE PLAYLIST You’ve got to hand it to a bar secure enough to not only play Bing Crosby, but Crosby’s duets with the Andrews Sisters. The owners wanted a soundtrack that took a back seat to the drinking and dining, making this a rare Brooklyn bar where you can hear yourself think.</blockquote>
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GETTING IN A bouncer would be counterproductive. On most weeknights, you can walk right in and get a seat. On weekends, there might be a wait for a table, but a short one.</blockquote>
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DRINKS The cocktail list puts the traditional English favorites of gin, sherry and rum to good use. The bracing Campari and lime-laced Brave Benbow ($10) employs not only navy-strength gin but its sweeter cousin, Old Tom Gin. The deceptively strong Clutch Powers ($10) is a mix of apple brandy, Irish whiskey, bitter Cocchi Americano and sweet apricot liqueur. It comes on like a smooth punch to the brain. And, of course, there’s a house spin on the Pimm’s Cup. </blockquote>
Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-66021131240140778292012-11-14T10:22:00.001-05:002012-11-14T10:22:17.945-05:00Thanksgiving Cocktails—Not So New an Idea<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I used to think that the notion of a pre-feast Thanksgiving cocktail was a relatively recent notion, the product of our cocktail-crazy times. Not so. Doing some research for this article turned up a number of old articles that proved that the question "What to drink before Thanksgiving?" was a question mulled by Americans as far back as the late 1800s. One pre-Prohibition article from the Cleveland Plain Dealer stated "Of course you're going to have a cocktail at Thanksgiving!" Such confidence. Here's my <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/dining/falls-flavors-in-a-new-glass.html?ref=dining&_r=0">article</a> in the New York Times.<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Fall's Flavors Come in a New Glass</blockquote>
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By ROBERT SIMONSON</blockquote>
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THANKSGIVING and cocktails are not as odd a match as you might think. Both are distinctly American, and have been long thought so.</blockquote>
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Back in 1929, a reporter for The Chicago Tribune, waxing indignant at the notion that the French had invented the cocktail, wrote, “Every one knows that it is as authentically American as griddle cakes and sweet ‘salads’ and pumpkin pie.”</blockquote>
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Still, downing a bluntly spiritous drink just before you sit down to that pumpkin pie or other heavy holiday fare is not a smart move. Bright and balanced is the order of the day.</blockquote>
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And it is one easily filled by today’s generation of mixologists, who regularly compound ingredients to harmonize with a specific occasion and season.</blockquote>
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Seasonal is an important idea. A pre-turkey tipple ideally performs a secondary function as an aesthetic, sensory signpost, instilling all the flavors associated with fall and harvest into a single cup.</blockquote>
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That symbolic function was partly on the mind of Julie Reiner, the owner of Clover Club on Smith Street in Brooklyn, when she recently created the Crystal Fall for the bar’s autumn menu.</blockquote>
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“I wanted it to be the quintessential fall cocktail, the kind of thing with all the flavors that you just expect this time of year,” Ms. Reiner said. “Apple, spice, ginger.”</blockquote>
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To portions of toasty Cognac, rich Demerara rum and nutty sherry, she added fresh apple cider, lemon juice, ginger syrup, sugar and bitters. Served over a tumbler of crushed ice, the drink is simultaneously warming and cooling, and, despite the fairly heavy liquor payload, surprisingly light.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
At Clover Club’s neighbor, the JakeWalk, the bar manager Timothy Miner achieved his particular liquid orchard by using as a base Laird’s bonded apple brandy (perhaps one of the most American of spirits, if using domestic produce on the fourth Thursday of November is important to you). He added cinnamon syrup, lemon juice, Galliano liqueur and a couple of dashes of allspice liqueur. The drink is topped with freshly ground nutmeg.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
“I grew up in New England,” Mr. Miner said. “I have a strong affinity to apple-picking and all that. I thought, ‘I wonder if I can make apple pie in a glass.’ ”</blockquote>
<blockquote>
The drink, called Mr. October, tastes not only like apple pie, but apple pie à la mode, thanks to Galliano’s vanilla notes.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
If these drinks seem a bit too complex, or modern, you can go Colonial and surpassingly simple in one stroke by pouring a Stone Fence. This centuries-old concoction is nothing more than two ounces of whatever dark liquor you choose (rye, bourbon, Scotch, applejack, rum) filled out with hard cider and served over ice. Easier than gravy.</blockquote>
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Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-8807529250691870512012-11-09T10:29:00.000-05:002012-11-14T10:31:16.835-05:00Genever by the Barrel<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Cocktail bars that have their own private barrel of whiskey, personally selected by the owners from a distillery in Kentucky, have become a dime a dozen. But if you suddenly start seeing bars with their own barrel of genever, you can blame Boston-based mixologist Jackson Cannon. Cannon is a persistent fellow. After years of nudging the uncomprehending Lucas Bols, he got them to part with one of their casks. He know uses the juice to make drinks in his three Boston bars. As a result of determination, Bols has seen the light. They company is now open to rolling out personal barrels for other receptive taverns. Here's the <a href="http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/09/ordering-a-genever-by-the-barrel/">story</a>:<br />
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Ordering a Genever, by the Barrel</blockquote>
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By ROBERT SIMONSON</blockquote>
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Cocktail bars have become so focused on authenticity of ingredients that it has become fairly commonplace for owners or bartenders to travel to American whiskey distilleries to buy their own private barrel. Jackson Cannon, bar director of three Boston boîtes — Eastern Standard, The Hawthorne (where he is also co-owner), and Island Creek Oyster Bar — has done so for years. But no tavern, to Mr. Cannon’s knowledge, has anything like his latest acquisition: a full cask of genever, straight from Holland.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Mr. Cannon went to Lucas Bols, the Dutch liquor company, to hand-pick his barrel. It was not easy to persuade the centuries-old liquor company to agree to the arrangement. “It took years of talking to them about it,” he recalled. When he first brought up the idea, “my friends at Bols were giving me back a blank stare. They said: ‘We don’t know what you’re talking about. We’ve never done that.’”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The liquor he chose is far older than the bottled Bols genever available in the United States today. It was aged for six months in new French oak, then four more years in used French oak. “It ended up being pretty distinctive from what we have over here,” Mr. Cannon said. “It has a little more spice more it. It’s got a more intensity, great acidity and tannins and it’s well integrated.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Mr. Cannon has roughly 183 liters of the stuff. He is using it in cocktails at all three bars, including the Dutch Oven, a variation on the Old Fashioned, and The Nook, in which the genever is mixed with lager, agave nectar, lime juice, tabasco and Worcestershire sauce. He believes the genever is closer in spirit to the kind that was used in the 19th century, when so-called Holland gin was a common sight in American bars, and genever was shipped overseas in barrels, not bottles.</blockquote>
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“Using Old Tom gin or London Dry gin in old cocktail recipes, something was wrong,” he said. “A lot of bartenders knew that.”</blockquote>
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Mr. Cannon isn’t through searching for liquors at their source. Later this year, he’s traveling to Mexico. He hopes to return with a private stock of mezcal.</blockquote>
Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-13761912819558848272012-11-08T11:17:00.000-05:002012-11-14T11:24:44.341-05:00Drinking History<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I am a considerably more educated man today than I was a month ago, when I started doing research for this <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/07/dining/bartenders-slake-an-interest-in-vintage-spirits.html">article</a>. Since that time, I've sampled a 1950s Chartreuse, a few blended Scotches from the 1960s, a few gins from the 1940s and '50s, a Cognac from the '60s, a Creme de Menthe from the 1940s, Bourbons from the '60s, '70s and '80s and even an aged vermouth.<br />
<br />
Conclusion of all this learning: the old saw that spirits don't change once bottled is nonsense. They grow softer, more rounded, more integrated. Even more untrue is the notion—put forth by nearly every liquor company on earth—that they have made the same product year in and year out. The assertion is not only improbable, but impossible. Improbable, because recipes alter with changing times and changing tastes, not to mention adjusted quality standards. Impossible because no company has consistent access to the exact same grains and botanicals.<br />
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We live in a time of great, across-the-board quality in spirits. Still, based on what I sipped, it does seem that some things were done better in the past. The creme de menthe did not taste chemical, as its counterparts of today do. It was fresh and clean. It tasted like something, well, you'd want to drink. I like Gordon's Gin. It's a fine workhorse London Dry gin. But the specimen from the '50s I had was fuller and much more interesting. And the '60s Hennessy I savored had a restraint and dignity that one no longer finds in the sugar-bomb, major-label Cognacs of today. I wish I could drink more of this stuff. But, at $150 a drink, it's a pricey habit.<br />
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Here's my article from the New York Times:<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
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Some Bars Offer a Taste of Papa’s Gin</blockquote>
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By ROBERT SIMONSON</blockquote>
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AH, 1950: a very good year for Gordon’s gin.</blockquote>
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What’s that? Gordon’s gin is Gordon’s gin, you say, whether from 1950 or 2012. Spirits aren’t like wines, which vary from vintage to vintage and evolve over time. Distilled liquor is made from the same formula year after year, and once put in the bottle, it’s done — preserved in amber.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
That, at any rate, has been the conventional wisdom. And until recently, it didn’t matter much if it was true or not, because few people wanted to hunt down a 1950s bottle of Gordon’s and find out. Today, many do. Mixologists, and the liquor enthusiasts they enable, are curious how the spirits they love were made in the past, and whether they differ from those on shelves now. They would also like to know how those differences express themselves in classic cocktails.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
To slake their interest, such questing souls have had to resort to eBay or raid their great-uncle’s liquor cabinet. But now there are a few select bars in New York and London where they can order up old elixirs, by the dram and in cocktails.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
At Pouring Ribbons, in the East Village, it is possible to taste a 1950sChartreuse and compare it with the current version. Vintry Wine & Whiskey, in the financial district, can help customers understand what attracted Depression-era drinkers to Grant’s blended Scotch. At theExperimental Cocktail Club, on the Lower East Side, you can have that 1950s Gordon’s gin mixed into a martini and get a notion of how it might have tasted to Ernest Hemingway, a devoted Gordon’s man.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And at Salvatore at Playboy, in the Playboy Club London, the owner, Salvatore Calabrese, uses his own collection of antique liquors to make old-fashioneds with pre-Prohibition American whiskey and 1915 Angostura bitters.</blockquote>
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“People from around the world come to my bar to taste history,” he said. “You can see history, read about it, touch it, so why not taste it?”</blockquote>
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So, are they, in fact, tasting history? Does liquor (the juice or its formulas) change over time, or is it the same as it ever was?</blockquote>
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The standard line at most spirits companies is that they have made an immutable product throughout the decades, if not centuries. (One even turned it into a slogan: “Dewar’s never varies.”)</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Certainly, an effort to be consistent may be there. But the quality of grains used varies over time, as does the access that Scotch blenders have to particular single malts. If botanicals are in play, they may not be identical from season to season. Other changes are more deliberate. Certain liquors, it has widely been acknowledged, have altered their recipes in response to shifting consumer tastes. Perhaps most significant, alcohol levels fluctuate.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
All this makes attempts to create cocktails using old recipes and new liquors a crapshoot at best. When Nicolas de Soto, the head bartender at the Experimental Cocktail Club, sees bartenders pore over the 1930 “Savoy Cocktail Book” as if it were the Bible, he shakes his head. “The ingredients aren’t the same anymore,” he said. “You can’t use the same recipe.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The vintage stinger made at the club, however, may come closer to the target. It combines a 1960s-era Hennessy Cognac and a crème de menthe from the 1940s. Both are noticeably less sweet that their contemporary counterparts. The resulting drink is restrained and elegant. As for the Gordon’s gin, the club’s 1950s specimen is rounder and maltier than the product sold today. (Though only vintage cocktails are listed on the menu, individual spirits can be ordered on their own.)</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
All the same, making cocktails with older ingredients doesn’t necessarily mean getting exactly what your forebears drank. There’s the matter of what happens when that old spirit sits in a bottle for a generation or two.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“If there’s a primary thread to these old spirits and cocktails,” said Jacob Briars, director of trade advocacy for Bacardi, who has sampled his share of aged libations, “it’s that each of them has become more round. There is a softness. The sharp, bright notes have faded over time, and instead you have this wonderful integration of all the flavors.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Troy Sidle, the partner at Pouring Ribbons who oversees the Chartreuse collection, has grown philosophical about the differing flavor profiles he finds in various bottles of the classic liqueur. “Chartreuse is always the same,” he said. “What changes is the expression of it. Chartreuse is really the collection of 130 herbs and spices, not so much the product sold that is the combination of all those flavors.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
These bars acquire their bottles, for the most part, through private collectors. The Experimental Cocktail Club drew its stock from two or three collections. Vintry’s whiskered whiskeys come from Harry Poulakakos, who used to own Harry’s at Hanover Square and began buying old whiskeys and brandies in the 1960s. “Once in a while Harry invites me to his cellar and says, ‘Maybe you see something else you like,’ ” said Ivan Mitankin, a partner at Vintry.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The private collector Pouring Ribbons tapped was Mr. Sidle himself, who has an abiding interest in Chartreuse. He came upon a few of his acquisitions in curious ways. He spotted bottles of 1980s yellow and green Chartreuse in a liquor store on Avenue C, where they had been gathering dust. “They clearly didn’t know what they had,” Mr. Sidle said.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
These liquid history lessons cost. The most expensive Chartreuse at Pouring Ribbons, from the 1940s, is $125 an ounce. The vintage cocktails at the Experimental Cocktail Club run from $150 to $200. Most of Mr. Calabrese’s vintage cocktails go for a few hundred pounds.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The demand is not super high,” Mr. de Soto said. “There are people who are very interested in spirits and want to try it. And then there are people who see it’s expensive and say, ‘I’ll take it.’ ”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
But to him, sales are not the whole point. “It’s more like an experience,” he said. “If you can give something different to people, it makes me happy.”</blockquote>
Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-90844147622640001242012-11-07T10:39:00.000-05:002012-11-14T10:40:18.625-05:00A Cocktail Fundraiser for Murray and Sandy<div>
The cocktail community is a generous and industrious one.</div>
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When it became known that esteemed Seattle barman Murray Stenson was ill and needed surgery, bars instantly began organizing fundraising events. Among these was Audrey Saunders' Pegu Club. Then, when Hurricane Sandy laid waste to the east coast, bartenders and bar owners went at it again, putting together a new slew of money-making events. </div>
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Saunders had scheduled her Murray fundraiser prior to the arrival of Sandy, choosing Nov. 11 as the date. Post-Sandy, she reconsidered, and decided that half of the money raised would go to Stenson, and half to Sandy relief. Here's the <a href="http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/07/bartenders-pitch-in-for-pegu-clubs-storm-benefit/">announcement</a> I wrote in the Times:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Bartenders Pitch In for Pegu Club’s Storm Benefit</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
By ROBERT SIMONSON</blockquote>
<div>
<blockquote>
Pegu Club, the SoHo cocktail bar, will hold a “50/50″ fund-raiser on Nov. 11 to benefit two causes. Half the money raised will go toward Hurricane Sandy relief. The rest will aid Murray Stenson, a veteran Seattle-based bartender who has a heart ailment that requires medical attention. Mr. Stenson’s plight has inspired a Web-site and fund-raisers across the country, with more to come.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
To work the bar during the benefit, Pegu Club’s Audrey Saunders has drawn from the cream of the New York bartending world. Among the mixologists expected to put in shifts are Richard Boccato of Dutch Kills; Meaghan Dorman of Raines Law Room; Brian Miller, formerly of Death & Co. and Lani Kai; Ivy Mix of Clover Club; Toby Maloney of Pouring Ribbons; Del Pedro of Tooker Alley; Julie Reiner of Clover Club and Flatiron Lounge; Dushan Zaric and Steven Schneider of Employees Only; Giuseppe Gonzalez of Mother’s Ruin; the bartending legend Dale DeGroff; and Pegu Club’s own Kenta Goto, Raul Flores and Timon Kaufmann.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Each bartender is expected to offer a specialty drink. Drinks will be full price. Doors open at 5 p.m. The event runs through 1 a.m.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Ms. Saunders is also adding a new drink to the cocktail list called the Sandy Relief Cocktail. It will be priced to move ($10), and all the money it brings in will go to the Red Cross and other charitable organizations.</blockquote>
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Post script: The event ended up raising more that $17,000, meaning more than 1,300 drinks were consumed over the evening's eight hours. That's not counting tips, of which I'm sure there were many. </div>
Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-23034916761964785042012-11-01T10:56:00.000-04:002012-11-14T10:58:09.397-05:00Hemingway, the Drinkingest of All Writers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last May, I attended a <a href="http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/14/cocktails-for-the-history-books-not-the-bar/">seminar</a> called "Do Not Resuscitate." The subject was classic cocktails that did NOT deserve to be revived. Among those that took a beating at the hands of the historians on the panel was the Papa Doble, better known at the Hemingway Daiquiri, a drink of great strength and little compensating sweetness. According to a couple of the speakers, when it came to mixing drinks, the sugar-averse Hemingway "always got it wrong."<br />
<br />
Well, maybe those panelists didn't try <i>every</i> drink Hemingway advocated. For he liked a lot of different liquids. In his breezy new book, "To Have and Have Another" (great title!), Philip Greene takes a look at every one of them. The ones Papa drank, and the ones his characters drank (which were almost always also one that Papa drank). That's more than fifty separate libations. Take a <a href="http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/29/how-to-drink-like-hemingway/">look</a>:<br />
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How to Drink Like Hemingway</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
By ROBERT SIMONSON</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Even a casual student of the novelist Ernest Hemingway knows the man liked to drink. But a quick skimming of Philip Greene’s new book, “To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion,” reveals exactly how much the man enjoyed his cups.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Each chapter of the book, due out in November, is dedicated to a libation that either Hemingway or one of his characters (or both) tipped back. There are more than 50 chapters, and the drinks are listed alphabetically; you reach Page 70 before you get past A, B and C.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“I don’t know if there’s enough critical mass for a Faulkner or Fitzgerald book,” Mr. Greene said. “I think I could put together an anthology of other authors combined. But I don’t know if there’s another writer with that wide a palate.”</blockquote>
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Mr. Greene’s interest in the Hemingway began as a teenager, when he read the short story “Big Two-Hearted River.” It first occurred to him to make a drink from one of the author’s books in 1989, when he was visiting in-laws in Florida who had a lime tree and a coconut palm tree in their yard. He took the ingredients on hand and made a Papa invention called a Green Isaac’s Special, which appears in the pages of “Islands in the Stream.” (The recipe is below.)</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“I think my in-laws thought I was a little crazy,” Mr. Greene said.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If you’d rather make like the characters in “The Sun Also Rises,” the applejack-based Jack Rose is recommended. “A Farewell to Arms”? Champagne cocktails. “To Have and Have Not”? An Ojen Special (that is, if you can findojen, a sort of Spanish absinthe that is no longer made).</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If you want to approach the thing from the opposite direction, just have a whiskey and soda. Someone drinks one in almost every book Hemingway ever wrote.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Certainly, the protagonists drink drinks that he liked,” said Mr. Greene, whose day job is as trademark counsel to the Marine Corps. It follows that the chapters on the daiquiri and martini — Hemingway favorites — are considerably longer. (Mr. Greene also dispels the widely held belief that the sugary mojito was the author’s favorite.)</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Incidentally, Hemingway would have known how to ride out a tussle like Hurricane Sandy. In the book, Mr. Greene, quoting the Hemingway biographer Carlos Baker, describes a sailing trip in Key West, Fla., that Hemingway went on with his editor, Maxwell Perkins. They were caught in a storm and had to spend several days marooned at Fort Jefferson, in the lower Keys: “First they ran out of ice, then beer, then canned goods, then coffee, then liquor, then Bermuda onions, and at last everything but fish. Ernest did not care. He said he never ate or drank better in his life.”</blockquote>
Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-45623459519942692962012-10-15T13:03:00.000-04:002012-11-21T13:05:54.063-05:00A New Malört for Chicago<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've tried for years to write about Malört, the bitter Chicago curiosity, pitching the story to various publications. But none bit. Not even Edible Chicago, for God's sake! (If any food/drink magazine needs to weigh in on Malört, it's that one, but the editors didn't seem to get it.)<br /><br />Perhaps part of the problem was that the niche market for the oddball liqueur was a static one. For decades, there was but one brand of the stuff: Jeppson's Malört. But now, suddenly, there has been a 100% increase in selection. That's right: there are now <i>two</i> Malörts on the Chicago market. The second is being made and sold by a bartender at The Violet Hour cocktail bar, in collaboration with a local distiller. It is called R. Franklin’s Original Recipe.<div>
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Then again, maybe there is still only one Malört. When writing this piece for the New York Times, I tried to contact the Jeppson's people. They did not get back to me until after the item had ran. Patricia D. Gabelick, president of Jeppson's, had this to say: "what Leatherbee is planning on producing is not a Malört. A true Swedish Malort cannot be over 80 proof. With all the additives and the high proof it certainly sounds like an Absinthe." <div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />Here's the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/another-taste-of-malort-is-arriving-to-chicago/">article</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: </span></span></div>
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<a name='more'></a><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Another Taste of Malört Is Arriving in ChicagoBy ROBERT SIMONSON</span></blockquote>
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If you’ve ever downed a dram of Malört, there’s little chance you’ve forgotten the experience. The wormwood liqueur’s flavor is so intensely bitter and sharp, you probably thought you had somehow offended the bartender, and he or she was now exacting revenge. The taste has been compared — by advocates and detractors alike — to rubbing alcohol, bile, gasoline, car wax, tires and paint thinner.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Probably because of its limited appeal, Malört has remained a regional phenomenon for decades. It is consumed almost exclusively in Chicago and rarely seen outside city limits. And even the mixologist community there is split in its attitude toward the stuff. Some consider it the devil’s distillate, unfit for consumption by man or beast. Others embrace it as a cherished local tradition and feature it in swanky bespoke cocktails.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Both views are based on one product: Jeppson’s Malört. Produced by the Carl Jeppson Company, which was founded in 1930s Chicago by an immigrant from Sweden — the spirit’s ancestral home — it is the only Malört made in the United States.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Soon, however, Jeppson will have some competition. Violet Hour, a leading cocktail bar in Chicago, is collaborating with Letherbee Distillers, based in the city’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, to create an in-house expression of Malört.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
“The first time I tasted Malört five years ago,” said Robby Haynes, the bar manager at Violet Hour, “I didn’t find it unpleasant, but I thought ‘Wow, what was that?’ It was intense and bitter and floral and all these things. Now, when I take a sip, I find it to be less remarkable. I don’t know if my palate changed or what happened. I wanted to make something that lived up to what Malört was like in my head.”</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Mr. Haynes began constructing his own recipe, occasionally incorporating it into cocktails served at the bar. When he wanted to produce the liquor in greater quantities, he brought his idea to Letherbee, whose gin he admired. The new brand — which will be poured only at Violet Hour and not be available for sale to consumers — will go by the name R. Franklin’s Original Recipe. (Franklin is Mr. Haynes’s middle name.) The concoction is infused not only with the requisite wormwood, but also with grapefruit peel, juniper, elderflower, star anise and other botanicals.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
“I think what we’re doing is significantly more nuanced and layered,” he said of the new interpretation, which is bottled at 100 proof. (Jeppson’s is a mere 70 proof.) “It has a beginning, a middle and an end. It’s not just flat — ‘Here’s something that’s bitter, but tapers off.’”</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Even in its new iteration, Malört is not likely to inspire a majority following, even among stout-hearted mixologists. “When I first tasted Malört, I think my first reaction was to spit it out,” said Lynn House, mixologist at the restaurant Blackbird, and a prominent figure in the Chicago bartending community. “I likened it to distilled dirt. I appreciate that the Chicago bar community has claimed it as it’s own. It is like that weird uncle everyone had; not sure what it’s about, but many love it.”</blockquote>
<blockquote>
But dissent is O.K. by Mr. Haynes. “There’s a small contingency of people that are into it,” he said. “It’s not intended to be for the masses.”</blockquote>
</span></span></span></div>
</div>
Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-16195579084303382722012-10-11T12:48:00.000-04:002012-11-21T12:50:40.591-05:00Vintage Vodka<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"Vintage Vodka" is one of those word combinations you can't help but laugh at the moment you hear it. An oxymoron, no? What spirit is further from expressive whims of the seasons than the hyper-processed vodka? <div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Karlsson's, the very serious Swedish vodka producer, however, is not laughing. They consider their experiment in vintage vodkas to be a worthy one. I will admit that there are differences between the 2008 and the 2009, the two vintages that have been released. But you have to pay close attention to notice them, and paying close attention to what they're quaffing is not a quality associated with vodka drinkers. Furthermore, if you chill your vodka, as most do, the differences diminish. And if you mix, as many more do, they are hardly discernible. But, what the hell? Vintage vodka. Why not, if the people want it? (And they seem to. The first vintage is all but sold out.) Particularly if the vodka is of as high a quality at Karlsson's. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Vintage <i>flavored</i> vodkas, however, is where I am going to draw the line!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Here's my article: </div>
<div>
<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
Vodka That’s No Small Potatoes</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
By ROBERT SIMONSON</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Vintages and vodka would seem to be mutually exclusive drinking concepts. Vintages belong to the world of wine, where weather and growing conditions can alter what ends up in the bottle from year to year. Vodka, meanwhile, can be distilled from any number of source materials, anywhere at anytime, and sold almost immediately. Nature’s many variables are not a big factor.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Karlsson’s, a boutique vodka company in Sweden, intends to give these preconceptions a good shake. The company has already earned a reputation for putting out an unusually distinctive vodka, one that tastes markedly of the potatoes from which it’s distilled. Now it has begun releasing “vintage” vodkas, each one distilled from a single potato variety, grown on a particular farm during a single season. No one, to the company’s knowledge, has done this before.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The idea behind the company from the very beginning was to see if we can say something about what’s inside the bottle rather than what’s outside the bottle,” said Peter Ekelund, who founded Karlsson’s in 2007. “Will a vodka taste different if you pick different types of potatoes in different places?”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The company has built up a “library” of distillates, Mr. Ekelund said, each derived from different potatoes reaped from individual harvests. “We started with 30 different potatoes,” he said. “We found 15 were useless for making vodka.” The others were tested, experimented upon and cataloged. Just as with grapes, the company found that hot or wet weather can create distinct taste characteristics in potatoes.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The 2008 vintage, which sold briskly when it was released this year, used a hearty russet-skinned tuber known as Old Swedish Red, which, Mr. Ekelund said, was popular in Sweden a century ago. The 2009 vintage, to be released in November, was made with the Solist potato, a small, round, yellow specimen. (Both types are used in the seven-potato blend that constitutes the company’s standard vodka, Karlsson’s Gold.)</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Jim Meehan, the cocktail authority who owns the East Village bar PDT, had a chance to taste the entire range of Karlsson’s vintage vodkas. “They’ve captured the nuances of each vodka’s terroir and typicity like a great winemaker does,” he said.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Though the variations in taste between the two vintages would probably vanish if either were mixed with tonic or soda, sipped neat they are apparent. The 2008 is earthy and robust, while the 2009 has a softer, more mellow flavor. (The company is rolling out the 2009 only now for reasons unrelated to aging, which has no effect on vodka unless it is barreled.)</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Because of limited quantities — the 2009 will be released in an edition of about 1,980 bottles — the vodka does not come cheaply. The 2009 is priced at $80, which is $45 more than Karlsson’s Gold.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Mr. Ekelund hopes the vintage products will convince his countrymen to think more favorably of the lowly spud. “In my country, we have kind of looked down on potatoes as a source of food,” he said. “But it’s in the eye of the beholder.”</blockquote>
</div>
Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-87824162284688059862012-10-04T12:37:00.000-04:002012-11-21T12:38:58.629-05:00What Would Keats Drink? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Probably nothing, he was sick so much of his short life.<br />
<br />
But that sad fact is no reason to get in the way of so silly an idea as a commemorative cocktail to mark the centenary of Poetry Magazine. (These days, it seems every event, no matter in what field, has to have a signature cocktail.)<br />
<br />
Here's my account of the oddball libation:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Ode to a Cocktail</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
By ROBERT SIMONSON</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
What would Keats drink?</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
On Thursday, at a celebration in Chicago honoring the centenary of Poetry magazine, guests will raise a cocktail created especially for the occasion. Named the Hippocrene — the mythological source of poetic inspiration — it is the work of Brian West, a web developer at Columbia College Chicago and cocktail enthusiast, and is primarily inspired by John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Mr. West became interested in mixology during the three and a half years he worked as Web producer for the Poetry Foundation, which publishes the magazine. When he was asked to create the drink, he said in an e-mail, he looked at the myth around the Hippocrene spring and the Pegasus, but also at a few lines from “Ode to a Nightingale.” As the tale goes, Pegasus — the winged horse that has long been the symbol of Poetry magazine — struck the mythical Mount Helicon, a peak sacred to the muses, and out gushed the Hippocrene.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The fountain is invoked in many poems, including “Ode to a Nightingale.” The lines Mr. West focused on came from the second stanza:</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Tasting of Flora and the country green,</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
O for a beaker full of the warm South,</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And purple-stained mouth;</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“It was obvious that we needed a sparkling wine,” said Mr. West, pointing to those “beaded bubbles winking” in the stanza’s seventh line. “I was also inspired by the line, ‘Tasting of Flora and the country green,’ to add some herbal notes with gin, mint, ginger and basil,” he said.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
He found both Prosecco and Korbel Extra Dry performed nicely as the sparkling wine in his concoction, and for the gin — given Keats’s British heritage, what other base spirit would have been appropriate? — Mr. West thinks Ransom Old Tom Gin, Farmer’s Gin and Small’s Gin work best. The ginger in the drink comes in the form of ginger liqueur, and the mint arrives as mint tea. The drink also includes lemon juice, grapefruit juice and grapefruit bitters. (With so many glories of the garden in this concoction, surely Wordsworth would have joined Keats in a glassful.)</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The event, where the cocktail will be unveiled, will also commemorate the publication of “The Open Door,” an anthology of 100 poems collected from Poetry’s archives, published by the University of Chicago Press. The magazine was founded in Chicago in 1912 by Harriet Monroe.</blockquote>
Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-14574575800789691732012-09-12T12:28:00.000-04:002012-11-21T12:30:40.814-05:00Japanese Whiskeys on the Rise<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
It was my first sip of Hibiki, the blended whiskey from the powerhouse distiller Suntory, that first opened my eyes to the possibilities of Japanese whiskey. That was back in 2010. I had tasted few whiskey blends that had as much flavor, depth and appeal. It remains my favorite of the Suntory products on the American market, but I've come to appreciate all four, as well as the two Nikka whiskeys that arrived late this year.<br />
<br />
I realize that this half dozen is just the tip of the iceberg. While researching this article for the New York Times, I tasted samples of many more. (A favorite: Chita, Suntory's grain whiskey, which serves as the base of Hibiki. Unfortunately, it's not sold commercially.) I've rarely seen such consistency of quality in any liquor category the world over, not to mention elegance. Brandy Library's Flaven Desoblin was right on target when he said "Japanese whiskeys are very much the fine-wine-drinker’s take on whiskey."<br />
<br />
Here's the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/12/dining/japanese-whiskeys-gain-ground-in-america.html">article</a>:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Japanese Whiskeys, Translated From the Scottish</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
By ROBERT SIMONSON</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
ONE of the most expensive cocktails in New York can be found at Ryu, the Japanese-inspired restaurant that opened last spring in the meatpacking district. It’s a Sazerac variation called Shogun’s Grip and it’s ticketed like a four-star entree: $35. Adam Schuman, then the beverage director, had a good excuse for the stiff tariff. Its base is 18-year-old Yamazaki, the Japanese single malt made by Suntorythat can cost $140 a bottle.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Shogun’s Grip’s price means Ryu doesn’t sell more than one or two a night. But it doesn’t keep bottles of the Yamazaki from disappearing off liquor-store shelves. Quite the contrary.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
After decades as an also-ran in the American whiskey market, Japanese whiskey is on the ascent. Last year, Suntory’s sales in the United States rose 44 percent, according to the company, which found it difficult to keep up with demand. So it increased prices of the Yamazaki 12- and 18-year-olds by 10 percent last year and this year. “We like the consumer to recognize Japanese whiskey as very high end,” said Yoshihiro Morita, Suntory’s executive manager for American sales and marketing.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Japanese whiskey has been produced commercially since the 1920s, when the Yamazaki distillery was built. Compared with Scotch, Irish whiskey and bourbon, it is still the new kid on the block.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
But now that those other categories have been thoroughly rediscovered by Americans over the last 30 years, it’s Japan’s turn. The embrace has been nudged along by the fact that you can finally buy Japanese whiskey here.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Suntory quietly introduced the Yamazaki 12-year-old in 1990, and that was the only option until 2005, when the 18-year-old arrived. By 2010, the United States had its first Japanese blended whiskey, Suntory’s Hibiki. And last year, the Hakushu 12-year-old made its debut. The company’s domination of the American market will be challenged later this year when its archrival, Nikka, sends in the Single Malt Yoichi 15-year-old and Taketsuru Pure Malt 12-year-old.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Up until two years ago, if one in 20 customers had tasted Japanese whiskey, we were lucky,” said Flavien Desoblin, owner of Brandy Library, the TriBeCa spirits emporium. “Now, out of 20, a good 5 know that it exists and they’ve had it. That’s quite a lot for the land of bourbon.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Sales have grown enough that Suntory has seen fit to draft two brand ambassadors in the United States, first the New York mixologist Gardner Dunn and then the San Francisco bartender Neyah White. At the time of his hiring two years ago, Mr. White was no great devotee of Japanese whiskey. “I respected it, but I wasn’t swinging that flag around too heavily,” he said. “I was a little dismissive of it, to be honest. The world of whiskey was so big.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
For much of the 20th century, Japanese distillers were perceived as little more than Scotch makers manqué. Masataka Taketsuru, Suntory’s first master distiller and Nikka’s founder, studied his art in Scotland and chose distillery sites that resembled its terrain and climate. Producers even spelled whiskey the Scottish way, without the “e.” While there’s no denying that Japanese whiskeys taste more like Scotch than, say, bourbon, connoisseurs now focus more on what sets them apart.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The founder of Suntory wanted to create an authentic Japanese whiskey that appealed to the delicate palate of the Japanese: subtle, refined, yet complex,” said Mike Miyamoto, who was Suntory’s master distiller for 10 years. “To make such a subtle taste, you need a lot of whiskeys to blend. If you have one or two colors, how good a picture are you going to make?”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
But finding all those blending elements is not easy. Unlike Scotch makers, who swap liquid back and forth to build their blended whiskeys, the Japanese distillers do not trade. Instead, they create countless in-house variations, using various yeasts, species of barley and peat levels.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
They send the distillates through an array of stills of different shapes and sizes, then age them in a wide variety of barrels: virgin American oak, used American barrels from various suppliers, former sherry butts and wine barrels. Adding a distinctive native flavor to some of the whiskeys are barrels of expensive Japanese oak (called mizunara), which is thought to lend aromas of incense, and used plum-liqueur barrels.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
With all those treatments on hand, distillers can let their passion for blending run wild. And there lies another difference. In Scotland, the single malts are the fair-haired tots, while the blends are the moneymaking, sometimes uninspired workhorses. The Japanese take their single malts seriously, too, but their blends never take a back seat.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The Japanese blend for completely different reasons,” Mr. White said. “Blending for them is not an efficiency thing. They make all these different whiskeys so they can pull them all in, in a way that will perform well in a Japanese drink, which is almost always a sort of highball.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Hibiki, which is composed of more than 20 different whiskeys, “shows best when you water it down,” Mr. White said. “It’s subtle and complex at the same time. It’s hard to define.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Mr. Desoblin had no trouble defining the appeal. “Japanese whiskeys are very much the fine-wine-drinker’s take on whiskey,” he said. “There is more attention paid to the body and the texture in Japan than in many other countries. They are looking for that delicate, suave, mouth-coating feel, but never really aggressive. They seem to be powerful, but it’s all silky.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Because of the high price points, aside from the Yamazaki 12-year-old, the Suntory products are not often used in cocktails. In fact, when Suntory’s chief blender, Shinji Fukuyo, first heard about Mr. Schuman’s Shogun’s Grip, he was not happy. He thought it a desecration of his masterpiece. So Mr. Dunn took him to Ryu to sample the offending drink. “After a moment,” Mr. Schuman said, “he gave a nod of approval.”</blockquote>
Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-88807112330509383302012-09-06T12:18:00.000-04:002012-09-06T12:33:41.348-04:00It's Fall in New York; There's Drinking to Do<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
The New York Times has done a fall restaurant preview for eons. This year, they decided the bar scene deserved its own <a href="http://www.blogger.com/Fall%20Restaurant%20Preview%20%20Diner%E2%80%99s%20Journal:%20The%20New%20York%20Restaurant%20Wish%20List%20(September%205,%202012)%20%20Restaurants%20Opening%20in%20Early%20September%20(September%205,%202012)%20%20Chefs%20Try%20New%20Terrain,%20Like%20the%20Upper%20East%20Side%20(September%205,%202012)%20%20How%20to%20Cook%20Everything:%20Sometimes%20Formica%20Beats%20White%20Tablecloths%20(September%205,%202012)%20%20What%20Restaurants%20Know%20(About%20You)%20(September%205,%202012)%20%20Reinvention,%20With%20Card%20Tricks%20and%20a%20Drink%20Cart%20(September%205,%202012)%20%20When%20It%20Comes%20to%20Reservations,%20Time%20Is%20Money%20(September%205,%202012)%20Enlarge%20This%20Image%20Christopher%20Gregory/The%20New%20York%20Times%20%20MIXING%20IT%20UP%20Del%20Pedro,%20who%20is%20opening%20Tooker%20Alley%20in%20Brooklyn.">article</a>. It was my privilege and happiness to construct the inaugural specimen. Here it is:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
New Bars for the Clinking of Glasses</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
By ROBERT SIMONSON</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
IN New York’s bar scene this fall, beer mugs and wineglasses will take a back seat to cocktail coupes. The recent deluge of wine bars and beer gardens seems to have abated a bit, but the mixology craze rages on.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The iconic Lower East Side speakeasy Milk & Honey will move uptown and become less of a secret, while its old digs will don a new name, Attaboy, and a more democratic mien to match. Veterans of the drinking scene in Belfast, Northern Ireland, will open Dead Rabbit, a multilevel bar in the financial district, with an eye toward embracing the area’s rich drinking past. A quartet of the city’s most talented bartenders will ply their talents at Pouring Ribbons, a second-floor space on Avenue B. And the influential mixologist Eben Freeman will return to the spotlight with an ambitious bar program for Michael White’s new restaurant Butterfly.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
As the competition grows thicker, bar owners are stretching in interesting directions in pursuit of novel touches to distinguish their projects. This year’s models will offer liquor smoothies, garnishes that morph into small plates and re-creations of the hottest drinks of 1871. There will be cocktails with a British lilt, an Austrian slant and an Italian twist. And if you enjoy bar names that hark back to New York’s past, you will find a lot to like. (New York is quickly turning into a one-stop, living cocktail museum, with no historical or cultural drinking style unrepresented.)</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Noting the restless innovation of the city’s bartenders, some restaurants are raising their liquor game, adopting vacant spaces next door or in the basement and outfitting them as bars.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and the East Village (arguably the city’s two best neighborhoods for drinking) will become even richer in saloon life, welcoming new places run by some of the best bartenders in the business. But the scene in another Brooklyn neighborhood, Bushwick, is picking up steam as well, with two watering holes, the Well and the Wick, taking up residence in a former brewery on Meserole Street, the area’s onetime “Brewers’ Row.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
BELOW 14TH STREET</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
APERITIVO DI PALMA The small Italian restaurant Palma will open a 30-seat bar proffering mostly Italian wines, aperitivo-style cocktails using Italian spirits and small plates of rustic food. There will also be a retail component. (December): 30 Cornelia Street (Bleecker Street), (212) 691-2223.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
ATTABOY The longtime Milk & Honey bartenders Michael McIlroy and Sam Ross take control of that speakeasy’s well-disguised Lower East Side space, as their partner Sasha Petraske moves Milk & Honey to a larger place uptown. The saloon’s four-stool bar will be lengthened, and a meat-and-cheese bill of fare added. But beyond an occasional special or two, there will be no drinks menu. (Late November): 134 Eldridge Street (Delancey Street).</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
BAR UNDER ATERA The tiny restaurant Atera, in TriBeCa, will open an even smaller, as-yet-unnamed subterranean bar. Wines will match those found upstairs, while cocktails will be seasonal, reflecting the food and philosophy of the restaurant. Reservation only. (October): 77 Worth Street (Church Street), (212) 226-1444.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
COCKTAIL BODEGA, CBU From the Sons of Essex team, Cocktail Bodega will offer liquor smoothies (Jameson and banana, for instance), spiked fresh juices (strawberry gin lemonade) and creative takes on street food. One level below in this Lower East Side space, CBU (Cocktail Bodega Underground) will be decorated in subway chic, with graffitied walls and seats and poles bought from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. (September): Cocktail Bodega, 205 Chrystie Street (Stanton Street); CBU, 19 Stanton Street (Chrystie Street), (212) 673-2400.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
DEAD RABBIT Sean Muldoon and Jack McGarry, veterans of the Merchant Hotel bar in Belfast, and Danny McDonald, who owns the Manhattan bars Puck Fair and Swift, collaborate on this historically minded three-story cocktail bar just around the corner from Fraunces Tavern in the financial district. The ambitious spot (named after a notorious 19th-century street gang) intends to combine two of the area’s bygone drinking destinations: the sort of taproom patronized by immigrants and a sporting man’s cocktail lounge. Expect punch, bishops, flips, cups and cobblers, and food. (Late November): 30 Water Street (Broad Street).</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
LIL CHARLIE’S Artan Gjoni will open this bar directly below the restaurant Ken & Cook, in NoLIta; Richard Diamonte is the chef at both. The space, with its large black banquettes and brass ball chain ceiling, pays homage to 1970s rock ’n’ roll glam. Libations include beer, cocktails, wine by the glass and Champagne. The name honors a lost neighborhood institution, Little Charlie’s Clam Bar. (September): 19 Kenmare Street (Elizabeth Street), (212) 966-3058.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
PORSENA EXTRA BAR The chef Sara Jenkins plans a new 18-seat wine bar next to her pocket-size Italian restaurant in the East Village. A rotating selection of raw-milk cheeses, handmade cured meats, a daily oyster selection, seasonal vegetables and Mediterranean plates will accompany Old World “picnic table wines” that emphasize terroir (20 by the glass). There will also be lunch service. (Thursday): 21 East Seventh Street (Second Avenue), (212) 228-4923.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
POURING RIBBONS The men of Alchemy Consulting — Toby Maloney, Jason Cott, Troy Sidle and the former Death & Co. bartender Joaquín Simó — are creating an 88-seat second-floor cocktail den in the East Village (above a liquor store, appropriately). The menu will stay brief, at 15 drinks or so, but change every four to six weeks, reflecting the time of year and whatever the bartenders happen to be working on. The team aims to create an airy, convivial local place with intimate banquettes at the front and bar seating at the back. (September): 225 Avenue B, second floor (East 14th Street), (917) 656-6788.</blockquote>
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THE THIRD MAN This East Village bar, run by the chefs Eduard Frauneder and Wolfgang Ban of Edi & the Wolf, is inspired by the noir film of the same name, with décor reminiscent of the Loos Bar in Vienna, including a floating steel bar suspended from the ceiling. There will be Austrian-influenced small plates, wine, beer, Champagne and cocktails created with house-made ingredients. A Harry Lime Rickey? We can only hope. (October): 116 Avenue C (East Eighth Street).</blockquote>
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UP TO 60TH STREET</blockquote>
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MILK AND HONEY Sasha Petraske will move his cocktail den a few neighborhoods to the north, to the Flatiron district, losing its reservations-only policy along the way. The bar will have two rooms, three times as many seats and a menu of light dishes. (December): 30 East 23rd Street (Madison Avenue).</blockquote>
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BROOKLYN</blockquote>
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DEAR BUSHWICK Julian Mohamed, Emily Sinnott and Darren Grenia are opening a restaurant and bar inspired by Mr. Mohamed’s British upbringing. The mixologist Natasha David (Maison Premiere, Prime Meats) has assembled a cocktail list heavy on gin, rum and sherry. Wines and beers will hail primarily from the British Commonwealth, including Australian and New Zealand wines and British and Indian brews. Jessica Wilson (Donna, Prune) is the consulting chef. (September): 41 Wilson Avenue (Melrose Street), Bushwick.</blockquote>
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DESNUDA CEVICHERIA Peter Gevrekis and Ravi DeRossi jump the East River to create a roomy Williamsburg offshoot of their East Village bar. The South American-inspired cocktail program will be complemented by Dominic Martinez’s expanded ceviche menu. (October): 221 South First Street (Roebling Street), Williamsburg.</blockquote>
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HEAVY WOODS Gina Leone and Ben Warren, the couple behind the Bodega wine bar in Bushwick, have opened Heavy Woods nearby — a coffee shop by day and a bar by night, with what Mr. Warren calls “a major in whiskey, a minor in tequila and mezcal” and 14 beers on draft. “New pub food with a twist,” he said, will arrive in September. The bar’s moniker is a translation of the neighborhood’s original Dutch name: 50 Wyckoff Avenue (Willoughby Avenue), Bushwick, (929) 234-3500.</blockquote>
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TOOKER ALLEY With this bar, Del Pedro, formerly of Pegu Club, pays homage to the Dil Pickle Club (only one "l" please), a largely forgotten bohemian haunt of the early 20th century on Tooker Alley in Chicago. Though the original Pickle lacked liquor, Tooker Alley will not. Mr. Pedro calls it a “brown liquor house,” offering an array of whiskey-shot-and-beer combinations, and “extended garnishes” — side dishes that complement the drinks. Select evenings will be devoted to “the regional, musical, literary or artistic roots of a specific cocktail.” (Early October): 793 Washington Avenue (Lincoln Place), Prospect Heights, (347) 955-4743.</blockquote>
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THE WELL, THE WICK The Well, a 16,000-square-foot public house (with occasional music shows) from the partners Joshua Richholt and Shay Vishawadia, is inside the former Hittleman Brewery, and includes a huge backyard. A lot of space means a lot of brews: 300 in all (60 on tap), 30 sparkling wines (20 by the glass) and a food cart run by Urban Rustic. From the same team comes the smaller Wick, a 9,000-square-foot music venue with a bar up front. Food will skew toward Central Europe: bratwurst and pretzels. (September): The Well, 272 Meserole Street (Waterbury Street), Bushwick, (347) 338-3612; The Wick, 260 Meserole Street (Waterbury Street), Bushwick, (347) 338-3612.</blockquote>
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QUEENS</blockquote>
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WINDMILL TAP & GRILL A long-boarded-up corner building that was a tavern for decades will be restored to its former use by the partners Dominic Stiller and Paul Cohen. Open for coffee in the mornings, it will emphasize cocktails and New York beers at night. The menu mixes American comfort food and dishes Mr. Cohen has encountered on his world travels. (November): 38-40 29th Street (39th Avenue), Long Island City.</blockquote>
Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-31366278673315249502012-08-31T15:33:00.003-04:002012-08-31T15:33:44.491-04:00Old Tom—New Again<br />
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I confess that I didn't drink a lot of Old Tom gin before researching this article for <a href="http://www.imbibemagazine.com/Old-Tom-Gin">Imbibe</a> magazine. I vaguely considered the resurgence of this forgotten, 19th-century liquor category of gin the twee offspring of niche-obsessed cocktail geekery, and a product of limited application. I was quite wrong. Every Old Tom recipe suggested to me produced delicious results. But if I only ever use the stuff to make Tom Collins in the future, that alone will justify its place in my bar.<br />
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Here's the piece: <br />
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The Cat's Meow </blockquote>
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By Robert Simonson</blockquote>
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What, exactly, is Old Tom gin? That was Oregon winemaker and distiller Tad Seestedt’s first question, when a friend suggested he try making a gin in the “Old Tom” style.</blockquote>
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It was a question most anyone would have asked, and in 2006, when the conversation transpired, there was no hard-and-fast answer. Gin’s missing link is the easiest way to describe it. Old Tom is the long-lost cousin that helps make sense of the idea that malty Dutch genever and sharp-edged London dry gin are members of the same family. Old Tom is lighter and less intense than the former, more viscous and fuller-bodied than the latter, with a sweetness derived from naturally sweet botanicals, malts or added sugar. And once upon a time, it was a common sight behind the bar.</blockquote>
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In the mid- to late-19th century, sports and sots who entered a saloon and called out “Gin!” would be handed either genever or Old Tom. Page through any cocktail book from the late 1800s and you’ll find dozens of recipes calling for it. Harry Johnson’s famous Bartender’s Manual of 1882 listed the spirit as an essential liquor “required in the bar room.” By the next century, though, it had been surpassed and supplanted by the London dry style of gin typified by Beefeater, Tanqueray and the like. The dawn of the current millennium, meanwhile, left Old Tom as unremembered as last night’s bender.</blockquote>
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Modern bartenders, however, lust after what they can’t get, particularly if it gets in the way of their building a pre-Prohibition cocktail. Soon enough, calls for the resurrection of Old Tom mounted. “We were asked by many people if we had considered producing an Old Tom gin,” says James Hayman, the maker of Hayman’s Old Tom Gin, which was launched in 2007 and is arguably the most widely known of the new Old Toms. “The cocktail community was becoming increasingly interested in being able to make classic cocktails with the correct ingredients.”</blockquote>
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Unlike Seestedt, who collaborated with cocktail historian David Wondrich—the friend who’d suggested he make an Old Tom—until they hit upon a formula that seemed to echo past descriptions of the vanished elixir, Hayman didn’t need to create a recipe from scratch. A descendent of the Burroughs clan, which founded Beefeater, he was in possession of an old family blueprint, dating from the 1860s. The recipe produced a spirit that had gin’s distinctive juniper snap but was softer, smoother and more approachable. “The company stopped production of Old Tom gin in the 1950s,” tells Hayman, who’s based outside London. “After the Second World War, trading conditions were difficult for any company, including ours. My grandfather, Neville Hayman, was an accountant, but he represented the interests of my grandmother—who was a Burrough—on the board. He helped shape the company to ensure it survived. Therefore, ironically, my grandfather would have been involved in our stopping production of Old Tom.”</blockquote>
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If the arrival of Hayman’s unfamiliar new/old product confused consumers, the appearance of Seestedt’s Ransom Old Tom Ginin early 2009 befuddled them further. Both bottlings were called Old Tom, but otherwise they seemed nothing alike. For one thing, Hayman’s was clear, while Ransom was light brown, the hue of young whiskey. Their taste profiles varied widely as well.</blockquote>
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Ransom is the marriage of a base wort of malted barley and a high-proof corn spirit infused with a fairly simple potpourri of botanicals (juniper, coriander, orange, lemon, angelica root and cardamom). The final distillation is run through an alembic pot still and then aged in wine barrels. The wood lends the gin its color and gives the gin a drier, more tannic bite than is the case with Hayman’s. “The idea behind doing a relatively short aging in barrels was to try to duplicate what would have happened years ago,” says Seestedt. “The gin would have been put in barrels and then shipped to its designation.”</blockquote>
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“I helped Tad identify a list of the most interesting characteristics the Old Toms had and he combined them all in one,” says Wondrich. “In other words, the idea wasn’t to make an average Old Tom, but rather one that most differentiated from London dry.”</blockquote>
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Of the two, Hayman’s is notably sweeter. This can largely be chalked up to the fact that Hayman adds sugar, whereas Seestedt does not. Seestedt contends that “the combination of pot distillation, malted barley and barrel-aging gives the impression of a slight sweetness, more body and greater viscosity.” But there’s a bit of historical controversy on this point. “Some state that some Old Tom gin was sweetened with botanicals,” said Hayman. “I personally don’t believe that. We have found nothing to confirm that.”</blockquote>
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The personality gap between Hayman’s and Ransom would, at first blush, cause one to assume that one or the other distiller had taken a wrong turn on the way to re-creating Old Tom. But Old Tom was once a broad style, with as many exemplars as London dry has today. There was no uniform standard. “When Ransom came out, you started to realize that within the category of Old Tom—just like the category of London dry—there was a lot of [variation],” says Derek Brown, owner of the Washington D.C. bars The Passenger and Columbia Room.</blockquote>
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Brown began pouring Old Tom the moment Hayman’s hit the market. “It’s a little maddening. You look back on these old cocktail recipes and think, ‘Dammit, Jerry Thomas, why didn’t you tell us WHICH Old Tom you used?’ It’s one of the great mysteries of cocktail history.”</blockquote>
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If the first question people ask about Old Tom is “What is it?,” the second is usually about how it got its peculiar name. Again, there’s no simple answer.</blockquote>
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As with many lost liquors, the history behind Old Tom is a patchwork of partial facts, incomplete information, and the kind of yarns that provoke cocked eyebrows. Most of the tales involve a black cat—the tom in question. Hayman’s reports that back in 1736, one Captain Dudley Bradstreet lucked into both a piece of London property and a stock of gin. Bradstreet hung a sign depicting a painted cat in the window and let it be known that doses of sweet mother’s ruin could be had at the address. “Under the cat’s paw sign was a slot and a lead pipe, which was attached to a funnel inside the house,” reads a history put together by Hayman’s. “Customers placed their money in the slot and duly received their gin. Bradstreet’s idea was soon copied all over London. People would stand outside houses, call ‘puss’ and when the voice within said ‘mew’ know that they could buy bootleg gin inside. Very soon Old Tom became an affectionate nickname for gin.”</blockquote>
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Another explanation proffered by Joseph Boord, the man behind the company believed to be the first to bottle Old Tom gin in the mid-1800s, said the name referred to an old guy named Tom who worked at his distillery. However, Boord’s label prominently featured a black cat perched atop a barrel.</blockquote>
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One thing is for sure. At some point in the mid-1800s, the image of a dark feline became fixedly associated with Old Tom. An 1858 article in The New York Times mentioned that a brand called Old Tom London Dock Gin bore the image of a big Maltese cat on the label. And an 1892 report in the paper, an attempt to get to the bottom of the name’s origin, stated, “It is related that [Old Tom gin] was sold in a surreptitious way in 1733 by a man who had for a sign a black cat, but ‘Notes and Queries’ doubts this.”</blockquote>
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Regardless of its origin, Brown says Old Tom is the perfect antidote for his gin-phobic customers: “They’ll say, ‘I don’t like gin.’ You say, ‘OK, but try this.’ And they say, ‘Oh, I like THIS.’ Well, that’s gin. Old Tom gin.”</blockquote>
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Austin, Texas, bartender and beverage director Bill Norris agrees. “For me, it can be more versatile than London dry,” he says. “It’s not as aggressively flavored. So some of the more subtle nuances don’t get overwhelmed by the juniper influence. The alcohol is a bit lower, it’s a little sweeter and doesn’t have that botanical bite.”</blockquote>
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Norris has two Old Tom cocktails on the list at Midnight Cowboy, one of the bars he oversees, including the Hauptmann Cocktail, a mix of Ransom, orgeat, orange and lemon juices, shaken with an egg white and topped with a few dashes of orange bitters. He’s also a fan of a Martini composed of equal parts Hayman’s and Dolin dry vermouth. “Before dinner, if you don’t want to blow your palate out, it’s a great option.”</blockquote>
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Bartenders are particularly fond of using Old Tom gin to build a Martinez or a Tom Collins, two cocktails that historically called for the spirit, as well as more recent creations like the Casino, a 19th-century formula that mixed Old Tom with lemon juice and maraschino liqueur. “You read so much about Old Tom in the history of cocktails,” says Brown. “Save from finding an ancient bottle on eBay, which I was never able to do, I was never able to make those drinks.” Prior to the dawning of Hayman’s, Brown tried to make homemade Old Tom, basically by adding sugar to a London Dry. The results were less than satisfactory. Now, armed with two Old Tom gins, and his standby London Drys, Brown likes to experiment. “When you make a Martinez with Beefeater, then Plymouth, Hayman’s, Ransom and Bols, and try them all, you have five different cocktails.”</blockquote>
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Sales of both Hayman’s and Ransom have grown steadily over the last few years, according to its makers, and now a few other brands have followed in their footsteps, including Jensen in the UK and Sound Spirits in Seattle, which rolled out its Old Tom this summer, with distribution in Washington state. Sound Spirits follows Ransom’s example by giving the gin some age and color—though, in this case, with oak chips.</blockquote>
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But don’t expect Old Tom to reclaim the towering place it once held in the gin world. “Old Tom gin is a niche category,” admits Hayman, “but it is respected by those who understand its role in the history of gin.”</blockquote>
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Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-64887277391820140382012-08-04T16:57:00.001-04:002012-08-04T17:14:18.789-04:00New Orleans Already Bountiful Bar Scene Expands Further<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Bartenders from around the U.S. have been making an annual summer journey to New Orleans for ten years now—ever since the liquor convention Tales of the Cocktail began in 2003. So it's only natural that some of them would get stuck on the place. With it's rich history of creating classic cocktails and plethora of beautiful old bars—not to mention the general <i>joie de vivre</i> of the place, New Orleans is made for the mixologist's temperament. The past years have seen the emigration of several notable mixers and shakers to the Crescent City—from New York, Minneapolis, Asheville and elsewhere. The direct and/or indirect result of this influx is a batch of new and worthy cocktail bars. In 2012, choosing where to drink in NOLA just got that much harder.<br />
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I wrote a roundup of a few (but not all) of the new places for The New York Times, visiting them all during the course of this years TOTC. I recommend them all. Here's the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/dining/new-orleanss-lively-new-cocktail-scene.html">article</a>:<br />
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New Orleans Polishes Its Bars</blockquote>
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By Robert Simonson</blockquote>
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STAND in front of the Hotel Modern, on the dusty New Orleans roundabout known as Lee Circle, and your thirst has a choice. Walk into Tamarind, to the right, and you’ll find a selection of contemporary cocktails laced with Asian flavors to complement the restaurant’s French-Vietnamese cuisine. Take a left into Bellocq and you’ll have your pick of cobblers, an ice-laden, fruit-crested breed of cocktail that was all the rage back in the mid-1800s and is this inventive new bar’s calling card.</blockquote>
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The Modern, which reopened last fall after a renovation, captures a sudden advancement in New Orleans’s cocktail culture in which this always happily bibulous city has added newer, fresher ways to drink, while still holding on to tradition. In the process, the city has become a magnet for bartenders and their fans from around the country, particularly New York.</blockquote>
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During the cocktail doldrums of the 1970s and ’80s, when vodka swamped the American bar scene and sloppy disco drinks all but obliterated sophisticated tippling, New Orleans held down the fort. The city’s tavernkeepers made certain that a place where one could order classics like the Sazerac and the Ramos gin fizz would not perish from the contiguous 48.</blockquote>
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But as the craft cocktail movement began to shake up urban centers from New York to San Francisco, the Crescent City seemed mired in the past, its liquid culture still led, on the one hand, by standard-bearing saloons like the Napoleon House and Tujague’s, and, on the other (seriously shaky) hand, the boozy debauchery of Bourbon Street.</blockquote>
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Then, in 2003, came the Swizzle Stick Bar, a modern bastion of mixology attached to Café Adelaide. Cure, which opened in 2009, raised the bar further, giving residents of the Freret neighborhood creative potions employing salt, Italian bitters and other unlikely ingredients. Today, the city is experiencing a boomlet of cocktail spots, including Bellocq, the second effort from the Cure team, and SoBou; and Maurepas Foods, two restaurants where the bar programs stand equal to the kitchen’s.</blockquote>
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A number of these programs are headed up or assisted by bartenders who have moved here after successful careers in New York, attracted by the easygoing atmosphere, the rich drinking history and a cocktail scene that affords more opportunities to stand out.</blockquote>
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Abigail Gullo, who left Fort Defiance in Brooklyn to collaborate with Lu Brow of Swizzle Stick on SoBou’s cocktail program (both places are owned by the same people who own the Commander’s Palace Restaurant), thinks the trend “says as much about New Orleans as it does about New York.”</blockquote>
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“New Orleans is a very exciting place right now,” she said last week while catering to attendees of Tales of the Cocktail, the city’s annual convention of drinks enthusiasts and professionals. “I see it as going back to the roots, finding another city like New York that loves to eat, loves to drink and never lost that idea of that magical place between home and work where people socialize.”</blockquote>
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Other recent New York expatriates include Ryan Gannon, a veteran of the Spotted Pig, in Manhattan, who now tends bar at Bellocq and Cure; Nick Jarrett, who bartended at Dramand Clover Club, in Brooklyn, and currently pulls down shifts at Cure and the Saint, a popular Lower Garden District dive bar; and Kimberly Patton-Bragg, who put in years behind the bar at Danny Meyer’s Blue Smoke, before moving to New Orleans in 2008 and eventually devising the drinks list at Tamarind. Jeff Berry, arguably the country’s leading authority on tiki drinks, this spring realized a longstanding dream to move here from Asheville, N.C. He plans to open a tiki bar in a year’s time.</blockquote>
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“The scene is growing immensely,” said Ms. Patton-Bragg, who says she appreciates this city’s lack of pretense.</blockquote>
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New York mixologists have been known to misplace their sense of humor regarding their craft. That is not a problem here. At Maurepas Foods — the hot Bywater restaurant where the Minneapolis refugee Brad Smith has created a cocktail program that makes abundant use of seasonal produce — there is a drink whose semi-profane name would seem to indicate it’s a variation on the Cosmopolitan. It is, in fact, a shot of Old Grand-Dadbourbon.</blockquote>
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At Twelve-Mile Limit — a dive bar in the Mid-City neighborhood that was taken over by the bartender T. Cole Newton in 2010 and given a stealth quality cocktail program and impressive back bar — customers are regularly invited to “Name This Cocktail.” The ingredients of a new creation are written on a chalkboard and stay there until someone creates an appropriate label.</blockquote>
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Sometimes the christened drink earns a permanent spot on the menu, as with the Mantis: rum, the Italian bitter Branca Menta, almond syrup and lime juice that tastes like a delicious alcoholic mouthwash. (Twelve-Mile Limit cocktails are not just good, they are dive-bar cheap, from $6 to $8.)</blockquote>
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Both SoBou and Bellocq, which opened in July and December respectively, take care to honor New Orleans’s drinking past. “We’re a modern Creole saloon,” Ms. Gullo said. “We wanted fun, approachable drinks and classics with a little historical bent.” Hence the Taylor Bird Sazerac, which uses two of New Orleans longtime alcohol passions — rye and Cognac — along with Steen’s, a local cane syrup.</blockquote>
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The long list of cobblers at Bellocq (the drinks were created by Kirk Estopinal and Neal Bodenheimer) is topped by the sherry cobbler, the classic version of the drink. But also available are cobblers anchored by yellow Chartreuse (spiced up with raw jalapeño), Madeira, the French aperitif Bonal (brightened by a twist of grapefruit) or Sauternes, nearly all of them served in frosty silver Indian water cups. In fact, the bartenders will draft any liquor in the back bar into cobblerdom.</blockquote>
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“Now when I look at everything,” said Nick Detrich, the bar manager, “I think of making it a cobbler.”</blockquote>
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A Jägermeister cobbler? It could happen. In New Orleans drinking culture, everything is sacred, and nothing is.</blockquote>Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-91888018489803175592012-07-31T01:00:00.000-04:002012-07-31T01:00:00.504-04:00Dale DeGroff Release Own Brand of Bitters<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Branding bitters is not new. Writer Gary Regan started off the trend with his ground-breaking orange bitters several years ago. Now, legendary barman has followed his lead. Following a two-year effort, he has produced his own brand of cocktail bitters. I don't expect he is the last contemporary figure in the cocktail world who will slap his name on a bottle. Simon Ford, who recently left the employ of liquor giant Pernod-Ricard USA, will soon release a gin bearing his name. And I know of one bartender is in talks to lend his name to a new amaro. </div>
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Here's the story I wrote on the new product for the Times: </div>
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Bringing Back a Bitters With a Twist</blockquote>
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By ROBERT SIMONSON</blockquote>
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When Dale DeGroff, the pater familias of the craft cocktail movement, was working regularly behind a bar decades ago, he liked to use a strong, spicy liqueur called Pimento Dram to accent his drinks. But in the 1980s, the liqueur, made by the Jamaican rum distiller J. Wray & Nephew, disappeared from shelves in the United States.</blockquote>
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“When they pulled it off the American market, I just couldn’t find anything like it,” Mr. DeGroff said. “I had to leave that flavor out of drinks.”</blockquote>
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Now he has brought it (or something like it) back, but in the form of a bitters. After two years of work with the American-born, French-based distiller and chemist Ted Breaux — the man largely behind the absinthe revival of the past five years — Dale DeGroff’s Pimento Aromatic Bitters is finallyon sale online.</blockquote>
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The past few years have seen a bitters boom. Where there were once two reigning products, Peychaud’s (needed for a sazerac) and Angostura (needed for almost everything else), there are now dozens, with a dizzying variety of flavors that lend themselves to very specific applications. That sort of narrow profile wasn’t what Mr. DeGroff was after.</blockquote>
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“What I was looking for was a real versatile bitters,” Mr. DeGroff said. “It’s a combination of all those baking spices that you find in Angostura Bitters — which is to say ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove — along with just a touch of anise. And there’s a touch of dried orange peel.”</blockquote>
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On his Web site, he suggests several cocktails, original and classic, into which a dash or two of Pimento Aromatic Bitters might be dropped. He even boldly suggests that it could supplant Peychaud’s in a sazerac. (“I offer this variation with humility and reverence for the original drink,” he writes.)</blockquote>
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For now, curious drinkers can order only a 250-milliliter collector’s edition bottle, priced around $19. Standard 150-milliliter bottles will be available for sale online in September for $10. The bitters are currently made by Mr. Breaux at the Combier distillery in Saumur, France, but production may be moved to the United States in time, Mr. DeGroff said.</blockquote>
</div>Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-82864671645774748842012-07-30T13:35:00.000-04:002012-07-30T13:35:00.356-04:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The feeling of punch-drunk absurdity that sometimes overwhelms my senses at the Tales of the Cocktail convention came on most strongly this year when I interviewed the dignified Count Branca, owner of Fernet Branca, and actor Ted Lange, the "Love Boat" star and author of one of television's most famous depictions of a bartender, on the same morning. It was a dizzying trip from high to low culture. Both men couldn't have been nicer, and Lange, to my surprise, knew a fair share about the bartending art. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find out what the man who was Isaac liked to drinks. Having been flown in by Disaronno, he was duty bound to declare the liquor he favorite tipple.<br />
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Here is my <a href="http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/cocktail-convention-cruises-into-extreme-waters/#more-91027">account</a> of the two meetings in the Times:<br />
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Cocktail Convention Cruises Into Extreme Waters</blockquote>
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By Robert Simonson</blockquote>
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NEW ORLEANS — Tales of the Cocktail, the annual New Orleans convention where serious drinkers talk seriously about drinking for five continuous days, is an event of extremes. The stern-browed people you see holding forth about the many expressions and applications of anise-flavors liquors in the morning may be the same ones you see sipping whiskey-flavors sno-cones by theHotel Monteleone rooftop pool in the afternoon, and then behaving spectacularly badly at the Olde Absinthe House on Bourbon Street at 1 a.m.</blockquote>
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Tales, which concluded on Sunday night, is an event where both Count Edoardo Branca, a six-generation member of the the Italian family that owns the cultish digestif Fernet Branca, and Ted Lange (above, far right), who played Isaac the Bartender on “The Love Boat,” are both welcome, and both accorded a certain kind of respect as figures of some distinction. The adulation of the count, however, comes from mixologists, who admire the family’s dram to the point of fetishization. (The Branca camp estimated that 10 bartenders had shown them their Fernet tattoos.)<br /><br />“The bartenders here teach me other ways to drink Fernet Branca,” said the count, who is as handsome and dapper as you expect a young Italian count to be. “I drink it neat. But the bartenders say, ‘O.K., now drink this.’ I have a cocktail and think, ‘Oh, my gosh. This is amazing.’ ” The formula, which has remained the same since 1845, is a well-protected secret, known to only a few. So, is the count one of them? “Actually, not yet,” he said. “I have to grow up a little.”<br /><br />There were few bartenders at the Disaronno tasting event that featured Mr. Lange, but there were plenty of excited civilians, many lined up to take a photo with the actor, who was wearing a “Love Boat” T-shirt bearing the likeness of his younger self. Since that show ended, Mr. Lange has kept up with both the cruise and cocktail businesses, while pursuing a career as a playwright on the side. (His latest, “Lady Patriot,” opens at Hudson Backstage Theatre in Los Angeles in September.)</blockquote>
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He knows a little bit about serving a drink, too. “If you watch the first season of ‘Love Boat,’ you can tell I know very little about drinks,” he said. “Then I went to bartending school before the start of the second season, so I could have some authenticity. So I learned how to peel a lemon and free pour and about napkins going in front of the customer.”</blockquote>
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Isaac was way ahead of the mixology curve in one particular way. The creators of the show suggested that Mr. Lange shave his signature mustache, reasoning that someone in the food services industry would not have facial hair, but Mr. Lange held firm. Today, a mixologist without a beard or muttonchops is the exception.</blockquote>
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The bartenders at Employees Only certainly use up their share of mustache wax. The Greenwich Village bar, which last year won a Spirited Award (Tales’s annual industry awards) as World’s Best Cocktail Bar, did a pop-up version of itself in the French Quarter bar One Eyed Jacks. There were music, dancing and about a million people. In one corner was a tattoo artist. If you were willing, he would give you an impromptu tattoo in the shape of the Employees Only logo. At least one person took him up on it.<br /><br />In this crowd, taking on another tattoo isn’t asking much. It’s like slapping another bumper sticker on your car’s rear fender.</blockquote>
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</div>Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-7261220945540090892012-07-30T13:19:00.001-04:002012-07-30T13:19:59.541-04:00Peru and Chile, At It Again<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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If you ever thought the rivalry between the Pisco-producing nations was a lot of hype, attending the Tales of the Cocktail seminar "Pisco Wars: Peru vs. Chile Since 1633," disabused you of that notion. Unlike many Tales panels, the event featured a minimum of brand tub-thumping, and actually featured some healthy debate, and not a little veiled animosity. Of the two parties, Charles de Bournet, representing Chile, was the more conciliatory. By the end of the talk, he was extending an olive branch to Peru, saying history was not as important as agreeing that both countries made fine Piscos, but of a different sort. Historian Guillermo Toro-Lira, arguing Peru's side, was having not of it. "Our stance is that there is only one Pisco," he said. When moderator Steve Olson challenged anyone to tell the different between Chilean Pisco (in which water can be added) and Peruvian Pisco (where water is forbidden) in a blind taste test, Toro-Lira said, "I'll take that challenge."<div>
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Here's my <a href="http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/the-pisco-wars/">write-up</a> for the New York Times:</div>
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The Pisco Wars</blockquote>
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By Robert Simonson</blockquote>
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In the spirits world, some disputes are eternal. Who started making whiskey first, the Irish or the Scots? Where did rum originate, Barbados or some other nation?</blockquote>
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One of the fiercest surrounds pisco, the South American grape brandy. For years, Chile and Peru have fought tooth and nail over bragging rights as the true birthplace of the liquor.</blockquote>
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“Pisco Wars: Peru vs. Chile Since 1633,” a seminar held Thursday at Tales of the Cocktail, the New Orleans liquor convention, did not pretend to settle the matter. “I am the impartial one. I am Switzerland between Chile and Peru,” said Steve Olson, the noted liquor educator who moderated that panel, which included representatives of both nations’ pisco industries. “These countries have been at each other’s throats for 400 years. We’re not going to solve your problem today.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The seminar did, however, continue the argument. After a comparatively docile half hour in which audience members sipped and analyzed a quartet of pisco brands, the Lima-born and San Francisco-based pisco historianGuillermo Toro-Lira took the stage. He then presented, with dignified belligerence, a slide show of historical documents that backed his claim that pisco rightly belongs to Peru.</blockquote>
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Peru’s claims to the spirit have long been rooted in the fact that it has a port town named Pisco. Mr. Toro-Lira displayed a 1788 history book entry that connected the spirit to the town, as well as English and American documents from the 1800s that identified pisco as a Peruvian product. He pointed out that mentions of Chilean pisco began to crop up only after the War of the Pacific in the late 19th century, which Chile won, sending Peru into decline. Suddenly, there were a great many piscos from Chile at the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition of 1901. (That exposition is chiefly remembered today for being the place where an assassin shot President McKinley.)</blockquote>
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Charles de Bournet, the creator of the new Chilean pisco Kappa and a scion of the family that created Grand Marnier, rose to argue Chile’s side. He pointed out that the Viceroyalty of Peru, as defined by a 1542 map, encompassed both modern Chile and Peru, and much more territory besides, thus clouding the matter of where the liquor might have technically originated. “Everyone was sending their alcohol and wine to the international port of Pisco,” he said.</blockquote>
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Mr. Toro-Lira did not leave this uncontested. “But the trade wasn’t to Pisco, it was from Pisco,” he said.</blockquote>
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“You had your turn,” admonished Mr. Olson.</blockquote>
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The audience included many Peruvians, who were demonstrably with Mr. Toro-Lira. At one point, a young man unfurled a large Peruvian flag and walked it through the audience.</blockquote>
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A second unresolved question arose later in the session, regarding Pisco Punch, the storied cocktail that became internationally known as San Francisco’s refreshment of choice in the late 1800s, and then fell into obscurity after Prohibition. The true recipe is thought to have died with its inventor, Duncan Nicol. An audience member asked the panelists for their favored recipes for the punch.</blockquote>
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“There’s no way I’m going to give you my recipe,” said Duggan McDonnell, owner of the San Francisco bar Cantina, which carries a great number of pisco brands.</blockquote>
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Pressed on the point, he said, “You know what’s in Pisco Punch. Pineapple, lime, pisco … secrets.”</blockquote>Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-17854540918210245112012-07-16T01:00:00.000-04:002012-07-16T01:00:08.029-04:00Cachaça Looks to Its Future<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Like a lot of people in the liquor world, I haven't spent a lot of time lately troubling my mind about the fate of Cachaça. Sure, it was fun falling in love with the Caipirinha several years ago. It was delicious and easy to make, and vaguely exotic. But the Cachaça folks haven't given us much of a follow-up thrill since then, and the industry battle to have the liquor recognized as a separate category by the American government (and not as "Brazilian rum") grew rather tedious after a while.<br />
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However, that campaign eventually succeeded. By summer's end, Cachaça will have gotten the respect from Washington D.C. that it so long desired. In other news, Diageo got into the Cachaça game, buying the huge Ypióca brand for $470 million. Clearly, Diageo things the sugar-cane booze has a future. Given those events, I felt it was time to reappraise the status of Cachaça in the United States.<br />
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Here's the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/11/dining/cachaca-and-caipirinha-from-the-drink-lexicon-of-brazil.html?_r=1">story</a> I wrote for the New York Times:<br />
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Cachaça: Beyond a One-Note Samba</blockquote>
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By Robert Simonson</blockquote>
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THE short history of cachaça consciousness in the United States goes something like this: The new millennium strikes. Americans discover the caipirinha and like it. (Easy.) Americans learn how to pronounce caipirinha. (A little harder.) Americans learn how to pronounce cachaça, the Brazilian spirit you need to make a caipirinha. (Harder still: it’s kah-SHAH-sah. That cedilla is a toughie.)</blockquote>
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And that’s about where things stand. Despite a steady climb in sales over the last five years and an expanding number of available brands, cachaça has a narrow user profile. Few liquors are so tied in consumers’ mind to a single cocktail (and in this case, one that may well be past its zenith).</blockquote>
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But cachaça may be ready for its second act.</blockquote>
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After a long campaign on the part of some of the spirit’s producers and the Brazilian government, the United States decided in April to start the process that will recognize the centuries-old South American distillate of sugar cane juice as a distinctive liquor. No longer will makers be forced to label their wares as “Brazilian rum.” (In return, Brazil will extend similar recognition to America’s bourbon and Tennessee whiskey.)</blockquote>
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And in May, Diageo, the giant liquor conglomerate, put its international muscle behind Ypióca, Brazil’s third-largest cachaça brand, buying the company for roughly $470 million. These votes of confidence in Brazil’s national elixir come as the country prepares for its double close-up: the World Cup in 2014 and the Summer Olympics in 2016.</blockquote>
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“I think it will be a big boon for cachaça,” Martin Cate, owner of the San Francisco tiki barSmuggler’s Cove, said of the dual international events.</blockquote>
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But to take full advantage of the moment, the spirit will have to first shake off its one-trick-pony image. “It’s analogous to what rhum agricole has gone through here,” said Mr. Cate, mentioning cachaça’s French-Caribbean cousin, which is also distilled from sugar cane juice. “They have their signature drink, ’ti punch,” he said, referring to the drink made of rhum agricole, lime and simple syrup. “It’s a great lead-in.”</blockquote>
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But that isolates the spirit, he said. “I think cachaça producers are now saying, ‘We can lead with the caipirinha, but we’ve got to go somewhere from there,’ ” Mr. Cate said.</blockquote>
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One place they’re going is bars like Mr. Cate’s. The tiki-bar boom of the last few years has handed cachaça a new opportunity. The spirit’s makers hate being bundled up with the rum world. “They always joke that rum should be called Caribbean cachaça, not the other way around,” said Steve Luttmann, founder of the Leblon brand.</blockquote>
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But there’s no denying that cachaça slips easily into the exotic rum-soaked world of tiki. AtLani Kai, in SoHo, Julie Reiner blends it with lime juice, calamansi (a tiny citrus fruit native to the Philippines), cream of coconut and litchi juice to make a Bermuda Triangle. PKNY, the Lower East Side tiki bar, sells the Don Gorgon, pairing the spirit with Aperol, lemon juice and simple syrup, and crowning the mix with soda water and grated cinnamon. The menu at Smuggler’s Cove includes a batida, a luscious drink brimming with coconut cream and crushed ice that has a Brazilian pedigree that goes back further than the caipirinha’s.</blockquote>
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“Most cocktail bars these days have a cachaça cocktail on the menu that isn’t a caipirinha,” said the mixologist Aisha Sharpe. One of her contributions — a mix of lemon-grass-ginger syrup, lemon juice and watermelon juice called Ooh Yeah — was recently added to the cocktail menu at the Breslin on West 29th Street.</blockquote>
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Also raising the spirit’s reputation a bit is the improved quality now reaching American shores. “There’s this perception that cachaça is like rocket fuel,” Mr. Luttmann said. “It’s somewhat deserved, because the ones we were seeing at first were more industrial.”</blockquote>
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These workhorses performed fine in caipirinhas, where the rule of thumb is “the worse the cachaça, the better the caipirinha,” according to Dushan Zaric, an owner of the West Village bar Employees Only. The lime and sugar effectively smothered the imperfections in the spirit. But raw power won’t work in drinks like Lazy Lover, a popular Employees Only creation made of cachaça, lime juice, jalapeño-infused green Chartreuse, Benedictine and agave nectar.</blockquote>
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“The fine cachaças now available on the market are reminiscent of a rhum agricole,” Mr. Zaric said. “They have a strong grassy note, plus they’re clean. When we want to mix and create a 3-D cocktail, the newer brands work.”</blockquote>
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Smuggler’s Cove sells another drink, El Draque, that uses a spirit many Americans don’t even know exists: aged cachaça. “Because most bartenders haven’t been to Brazil, they don’t know the big role aged cachaças play in the culture,” said Dragos Axinte, whose aged Novo Fogo cachaça is kept two years in repurposed bourbon casks.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
That may change soon. Matti Anttila, president of Cabana Cachaça, is considering rolling out a line of aged cachaças using different Brazilian woods, the first arriving in 2013. Sao, an organic brand introduced in 2011, will bring out an aged product in a year or so. And Leblon, a leading brand in the United States, will introduce one in August.</blockquote>
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Mr. Luttmann views the aged version, which in Brazil is sipped neat, as the solution to cachaça’s limited hot-weather image. “It is still seasonal,” he said. “It’s like the margarita and mojito: when it’s summer, sales go up.”</blockquote>
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To further assist the cause of cachaça mixology, Leblon recently introduced a liqueur with a cachaça base, flavored with açai berries. It’s called, appropriately, Cedilla.</blockquote>
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Great. One more thing to learn how to pronounce.</blockquote>Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-31775523815053961642012-07-13T12:54:00.003-04:002012-07-13T12:54:55.969-04:00Bar Innovations Continue to Confuse Regulators<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The nation's government liquor authorities, still mired in a swamp of obsolete, Prohibition-era regulations, continue to bedevil, and be bedeviled by, the lightning pace of the innovations in the cocktail community. Seems every six months or so you read about some benighted health inspector wandering into a high end cocktail lounge and being shocked that drinks are being made with egg whites, or that bartenders are infusing spirits with various herbs and spices and fruits. They shut the programs down, forcing the bar owners to wage expensive and time-consuming campaigns to reinstate what are essentially safe and sensible practices.<br /><br />
Last week, it happened again, and the new East Village bar Gin Palace was the victim. The bar, which focuses on gin drinks, trumpeted its draft cocktail program in the press. It would serve Gin & Tonics and Ramos Gin Fizzes on tap. To the drink world, this was not new news. Draft cocktails have been on offer at saloons on both coasts for more than a year now, following in the footsteps of the draft wine trend. In fact, Gin Palace owner Ravi DeRossi has actually featured draft drinks at two of his previous bars. But it was Gin Palace that set the authorities off, mainly because it received so much pre-opening ink.<br />
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So now Gin Palace has to argue its case before a hearing. If the bar succeeds, as it should, a lot of other bars with draft programs should be grateful. Here's the <a href="http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/gin-palace-says-state-turned-off-the-tap-on-its-cocktails/">item</a> I wrote for the Times' Diner's Journal:<br />
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Gin Palace Says State Turned Off the Tap on Its Cocktails </blockquote>
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By ROBERT SIMONSON</blockquote>
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When the cocktail bar Gin Palace opened recently in the East Village, the headline-grabber of its juniper-heavy drinks agenda was the cocktails-on-tap program. The bar promised draft specimens of classics like gin and tonic and the Ramos gin fizz.</blockquote>
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On Monday night, though, the New York State Liquor Authority turned off those taps, declaring the free-flowing refreshments illegal, according to the bar’s owner, Ravi DeRossi.</blockquote>
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Asked about the action, a liquor authority spokesman, Bill Crowley, said only this in an e-mail: “No charges were brought against the place you asked me about. If we are investigating a matter, we cannot comment.”</blockquote>
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Mr. DeRossi, who also a co-owner of such well-known watering holes as Death & Co. and Mayahuel, said, “I think what we’re doing is not illegal.”</blockquote>
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He said he believed that the liquor authority’s action was rooted in a Prohibition-era law that forbids a bar from taking alcohol from a bottle, pouring it into another and serving it. The rule was created to protect consumers against unscrupulous tavern keepers who might be adulterating their liquor. “But in 1989, they changed the law,” Mr. DeRossi said. “People wanted to serve frozen margaritas.” The rule was amended to allow for the use of a “machine” that holds an alcoholic mix of more than one gallon, and is in “continuous motion.”</blockquote>
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Mr. DeRossi plans to fight the ruling at a July 20 hearing, contending that Gin Palace’s cocktails on tap fall under the same legal definition that protects those frosty margaritas. (Only the tapped gin and tonics have been on offer since the bar opened up.)</blockquote>
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“The law does not stipulate that the motion is provided by any sort of blade or mechanical means,” Gin Palace’s beverage director, Frank Cisneros, wrote in an e-mail, “nor does it qualify what a ‘machine’ even is.” He added that “if we can prove that there is ‘continuous motion’ through Brownian motion (gas within liquid) and that a tap system qualifies as a machine, we’re in the clear.”</blockquote>
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If Mr. DeRossi prevails, his efforts will extend protection to the many other bars in New York City that offer draft cocktails — none of whom have been stopped by state officials. “They told us they were choosing us because we got the most press,” Mr. DeRossi said. “There are 30 other bars that are doing cocktails on tap. But no one’s getting as much attention for it.”</blockquote>
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Gin Palace remains open in the meantime, serving all the other nondraft, gin-based cocktails on their menu.</blockquote>Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-13357703049113323312012-07-09T02:30:00.000-04:002012-07-09T02:30:01.088-04:00Sloe Gin's New American Cousin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Beach Plum Gin.</div>
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An American cousin to sloe gin, using the beach plums that grow along the eastern seaboard. Why didn't someone think of that before?</div>
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Well, they did, actually. Bartender Toby Cecchini vacations every summer in Cape Cod and, for the last few summers, has brought back a bunch of beach plums with him and converted them into homemade beach plum gin. But Steven DeAngelo of Brooklyn's Greenhook Ginsmiths is the first person to commercially market such a liqueur. (Apparently, he got the initial idea from reading about Cecchini's experiments.)</div>
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The stuff is delicious, particularly with tonic. I'll be drinking it often this summer.</div>
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Here's the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/04/dining/a-plummy-gin-from-brooklyn.html">article</a> I wrote for the Times:</div>
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Plummy Gin, Close To Home</blockquote>
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By ROBERT SIMONSON</blockquote>
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<blockquote>
THE beach plum is a delicacy for the vacationing New Yorker. The scraggly bushes that bear the small, tart fruits love sandy soil and are familiar to anyone who frequents the dunes and beaches of the Northeast during July and August. Spot a jar of beach-plum jam in a kitchen pantry and you know its owner has recently returned from Cape Cod or eastern Long Island.</blockquote>
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For those stuck in the city all summer, such preserves are hard to come by. Those folks will have to be content drinking their beach plums.</blockquote>
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Greenhook Ginsmiths in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, has introduced what the company believes is the only beach plum gin on the market. Like its predecessor, the distillery’s American Dry gin, which came out last February, the beach plum gin puts a Yankee spin on a traditionally English spirit.</blockquote>
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“I wanted to do a traditional sloe gin,” said Steven DeAngelo, the founder of the small Greenhook Ginsmiths. Sloe gin, a liqueur associated with England, is flavored with astringent sloe berries, common in Europe.</blockquote>
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But Mr. DeAngelo soon learned that sloe berries are hard to come by in the United States. He abandoned a plan to contract an English farmer to ship berries, fearing they would spoil even if frozen. So he cast his sights on indigenous fruit.</blockquote>
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“I knew about damson plums, but there’s a damson plum gin on the market, so I didn’t want to do that,” he said. “I learned that beach plums were close relations to damsons and sloes, but they’re native to the U.S.”</blockquote>
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Fruit-wise, Mr. DeAngelo, who grew up in Brooklyn and has the accent to prove it, could hardly have gotten more local. Early explorers of the New York area, including Giovanni da Verrazano and Henry Hudson, mentioned beach plums in their writings. Plum Island, off the North Fork of Long Island, is named after the fruit.</blockquote>
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But the bushes, which seem to thrive in harsh conditions, are difficult to cultivate. In time, the distiller found a crop at Briermere Farms in Riverhead, N.Y., and bought all it had: 800 pounds of plums.</blockquote>
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The idea for the liqueur wasn’t entirely new: the New York bartender Toby Cecchini has concocted a homemade beach plum gin for years.</blockquote>
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To make Greenhook’s version, Mr. DeAngelo macerated the fruit in its signature gin, a process that took seven months, far longer than he expected. He then removed the plums, sweetened the brew with turbinado sugar and filtered the result.</blockquote>
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The vibrant red liquid is less viscous and earthy than sloe gin and slightly more fruit-forward than damson gin. Only 1,800 bottles were produced, to be sold in New York State alone. The gin, about $49.99, is carried by Astor Wine and Spirits, Park Avenue Liquor Shop and the Brooklyn Wine Exchange, among others.</blockquote>
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A few Brooklyn cocktail bars and restaurants (Maison Premiere, Hotel Delmano and Marlow & Sons) were given bottles for building cocktail creations.</blockquote>
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If you’d rather take the mixing into your own hands, you could do worse than topping a measure of the liqueur with twice as much tonic water. Mr. DeAngelo, who professes to be a man of simple tastes, likes his with Champagne. The fruit is seasonal, so the liquor will likely be a once-a-year thing. “Once we run out of this,” he said, “we probably won’t have any more till next April.”</blockquote>
</div>Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-80394753504251382292012-07-06T16:14:00.000-04:002012-07-06T16:14:42.986-04:00P.J. Clarke's Owners Make a Misstep<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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You have to wonder about the sanity of the custodians of New York's great saloons these days. The Irish owner of the building the housed the Prohibition-era Bill Gay 90s declined to renew the lease of that beloved bar earlier this year, resulting in the longtime owner packing up, and taking all the priceless interior antiques with her. The space will soon be occupied by another faceless, trendy, upscale restaurant.<br />
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Now, the parvenu owners of P.J. Clarke's, who bought the timeless Third Avenue saloon in 2002, have seen fit to kick the joint's second-greatest asset (after the timeless bar itself)—bartender's bartender Doug Quinn—to the curb. Quinn's offense was defending some women from a groping drunk. The managing partner side with the drunk and fired Quinn and another bartender—an astounding move, given that the New York Times had called Quinn one of the best bartenders in New York City in a flattering 2010 profile.<br />
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I spoke to Quinn the day after the kerfuffle, and wrote up the incident in the New York Times. Some of his saltier comments I left out of the family-friendly pages of the Gray Lady. Let's just say he didn't hold back, and doesn't think much of Clarke's owners or the Third Avenue bar's new managers. (The Clarke's people dodged my phone calls.)<br />
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Since buying Clarke's, the new owners (who include actor Timothy Hutton) have seemed intent on branding the bar, opening branches across Manhattan and in other cities. No doubt, they didn't see the value of a single employee, or care for Quinn getting attention that they felt should have been going to themselves. True, Quinn can be a bit grandiose. He's referred to himself as the Babe Ruth of bartenders, and declares he's going to open the greatest saloon in New York. But he's popular, and good to the customers. And if the comments in response to my article, and others, are to be believed, the Clarke's reputation has been seriously dented.<br />
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Stay tuned for the imminent opening of Quinn's.<br />
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Here's the <a href="http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/p-j-clarkes-is-said-to-drop-a-top-bartender/">article</a>:<br />
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P.J. Clarke’s Drops a Top Bartender</blockquote>
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By ROBERT SIMONSON</blockquote>
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8:44 a.m. | Updated </blockquote>
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We reached the bartender Doug Quinn late Thursday evening. “The phone has been…,” he said in a hoarse voice, trailing off. “You can’t even imagine. People calling me, e-mailing me, texting me.”</blockquote>
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Mr. Quinn said that since word got out early Thursday that he had been fired from P.J. Clarke’s, he has been inundated with offers. Taverns have offered bartending jobs, and some frequent Clarke’s patrons had volunteered to bankroll him in opening his own bar. “Some of these guys, they have a few bucks,” he said.</blockquote>
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Mr. Quinn contended that management had been intending to dismiss him for some time. “These managers, they wanted to get rid of me.” Matters came to a head, Mr. Quinn said, when he advised that a drunken customer, who had been harassing women, be ejected from the bar.</blockquote>
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“I’d never seen him before,” he said of the patron. “At some point he said he’s been coming there for 30 years. But I didn’t know him.” Mr. Quinn said one manager told him, ” ‘This guy just ordered a bunch of raw bar.’ I said, ‘I’ll take out my wallet and I’ll pay for it all.’ ”</blockquote>
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*********</blockquote>
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According to Mr. Quinn, it was the co-owner Philip Scotti who fired him and his fellow bartender Justin Marvin. “Phil said he’s had complaints from customers,” he said. “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”</blockquote>
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Mr. Quinn plans to take his family to Cape Cod for two weeks and recuperate. After that, he will consider his options. “I want to open a real New York saloon,” he said. “Maybe the best New York saloon of them all.”</blockquote>
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Doug Quinn (above), a familiar bow-tied presence behind the bar at the landmark Manhattan tavern P.J. Clarke’s and a semilegendary figure in New York bartending circles, was sent packing by the management on Wednesday night, according to the Web site Business Insider.</blockquote>
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The site reports that when Mr. Quinn admonished a male patron who was groping women to behave, the customer became verbally abusive. Mr. Quinn told Business Insider that he took the matter up with the general manager who, instead of asking the customer to leave, took the man to the dining room and bought him dinner.</blockquote>
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Mr. Quinn said the bar’s managing partner later fired him and another bartender. According to Business Insider, a large number of patrons responded to news of the barman’s ouster by walking out.</blockquote>
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P.J. Clarke’s management did not return phone messages seeking comment. Mr. Quinn didn’t respond to e-mails.</blockquote>
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Mr. Quinn began working at P.J. Clarke’s in 2003, and was admired for his ability to capably handle the noisy throngs that nightly crowd the corner bar, and for his ability to remember customers’ names and favored drinks. His departure of Mr. Quinn resulted in an eruption of angry and stunned messages on Twitter.</blockquote>
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A squat, two-story corner building, P.J. Clarke’s stands out as a holdout from old New York among the towers of Third Avenue in the East 50s. (It is named for one-time owner Patrick Joseph Clarke.) Founded in 1884, it was purchased in 2002 by a group that included Philip Scotti, a proprietor of Dock’s Oyster Bar and Sarabeth’s, and the actor Timothy Hutton. Since then, branches bearing the name of the saloon have opened in Lincoln Square and the Financial District, as well as in other cities. (On the official P.J. Clarke’s Web site, under “News,” the only story is a 2010 profile from The New York Timesof Mr. Quinn.)</blockquote>
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Mr. Quinn told Business Insider he planned to open a new place.</blockquote>Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-64484745958204344362012-06-22T03:00:00.000-04:002012-06-22T03:00:07.372-04:00Another Brooklyn Distillery, But With a Difference (Well, Several)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />The founders of Industry City Distillers are five young guys with beards and a lot of toys, but no background in liquor. Yet they have created what is without a doubt the most unique distillery in Brooklyn, a borough that is collected a new liquor-maker every few months.<br /><br />Like the specialists gathered together in a glossy heist films, the quintet partition themselves into areas of expertise. Peter Simon, a former yoga instructor, handles the marketing and administration. Rich Watts is in charge of design, copywriting and printing. Watts' corner of Sunset Park industrial building ICD calls home is dominated by a printing press. Zac Bruner is the resident machinist. His area resembles the room where you reported for shop class in high school. Zac designs anything made of glass or metal that the other guys ask for. If you need a custom gizmo for the still, or a special gimcrack for the fermentation tank, he's your man. Dave Kyrejko is what any conventional distillery would call the master distiller. He devised the company's original fermentation and distillation processes. Max Haimes, assistant distiller and jack of all trades, helps Dave turn out the distillery's initial product.<br /><br />That product is vodka. ICD began distributing its spirit to New York liquor stores in April. That would seem like an end game to most businessmen. Not these guys. As I write these words, the bottle was called "No. 2." But by the time this article hits the street, however, it's probably sailing under the name of "No. 3" or "No. 4." You see, Industry City vodka—like everything at Industry City—is a work in progress.<br /><a name='more'></a><br />"None of us are authorities on vodka," said Watts. "It was just a logical extension of the process here, which is just continual experimentation and refinement. We didn't want to have an inconsistent product. But we wanted to try new things with the product as we went along." The public has a say in this. On the back label, there's information on how customers can contract ICD. You see such invites on many products. ("Questions? Call us!") But Industry City means it. "We're trying to figure out what people respond well to. The whole point is the feedback."<br /><br />Once a formula that both the team and the public enjoy is settled on, the bottle numbers will stop, and the distillery will have its vodka.<br /><br />If there's a Danny Ocean in this group, it's Kyrejko. He brought everyone else together. He went to school at Cooper Union with Watts, who had a design studio and small fabrication shop in Gowanus. He met Zach Bruner, who had a machine shop in Providence, at summer camp in 2002. Max Hames came to the project fresh from salmon fishing in Alaska.<br /><br />"The idea for an research and development shop came first; a combination of laboratory, workshop and production space where ideas and products could be conceived, prototyped, tested, developed, refined, and manufactured," told Simon. "The only way to bring together a critical mass of people and resources to achieve that, though, was with a massive, unifying project."<br /><br />But it wasn't a matter of "Eureka! Vodka!" The boys weren't after alcohol. They were after CO2, to better feed their fish. Seriously. Kyrejko was experimenting with biotopic ecosystems (self-contained and largely self-sustaining fish tanks with more plants than fish), and was searching for a way of producing carbon dioxide to supplement these habitats. Fermentation provided an answer, as it naturally produces CO2. But it also has an interesting byproduct: alcohol.<br /><br />For their raw material, the team went with sugar beets grown in upstate New York and processed in Pennsylvania. "Trucking in grain has way more of an impact on the environment and is more expensive than working with something more refined," said Watts. "It keeps our process cleaner and more efficient."<br /><br />Aside from the beets, Industry City produces almost everything in-house, including the still. They could have bought a still from Portugal or German, as most craft distillers do, but, said Peter Simon, "That would have taken our entire budget."<br /><br />Instead, the created two tiny custom stills which, between then, comprise a single distillation. The first is a steam-powered continuous stripping still, which operates using about as much power as a coffee maker. The juice dripping out of that is then loaded into a high-separation fractional distillation column, which allows the team to separate all the chemical components of their liquor and selectively remove or include them one by one. Together, the two contraptions look like something MacGyver might have assembled out of spare parts.<br /><br />As for the fermentation process, it's right out of a James Whale film.<br /><br />Most distilleries ferment their wash in large wooden or metal tanks, where the mixture roils and burbles like molten oatmeal. The tanks take up a lot of space. ICD's are housed in a long, thin, elevated wooden room about the size of a small trailer home. Or course, they not really fermentation tanks. They're bio-reactors—tall, glass and rounded at each end, like huge test tubes. Inside tumble thousands of little tan beads. The balls are made out of algae. Inside each is embedded a grain of yeast. Splashing all around them is a sugar solution derived from the beets.<br /><br />"Our yeasts don't get into our boiler," explained Dave. "When you put yeast into a boiler and heat them up, they actually explode. They release compounds that are insidious and hard to remove from flavor of alcohol. That's why you have to distill is three, five, six times." These yeasts, trapped as they are in algae balls, don't get into the liquid. "The algae is permeable, like a sponge. The liquid is able to go in, the yeast is able to eat it [and thus convert the sugar into alcohol], and the alcohol able to leave. It's almost like breathing."<br /><br />Where do these guys get these ideas? "I read a lot of scientific papers," said Dave. "And we have a machine shop and a lab. Between coming up with an idea and being able to execute the idea, not a lot of time goes by."<br /><br />The way Industry City does business changes every day. Dave will hatch a new notion; Zac will fashion a new part; Rich will change the label design. "Prototype" is a word that's thrown around a lot, because no piece of equipment stays the same for long.<br /><br />The vodka, meanwhile, will soon have company on the shelf. ICD plans to release a high-proof vodka. It will be geared toward bartenders and home enthusiasts keen on making tinters and infusions. And they'll be other products.<br /><br />"We'll make anything," said Dave. "The idea of making a fractionally distilled whiskey is blasphemous. But I've done it. I've made a very nice rye whiskey with this machine." No doubt it was late at night, with lightening cracking just outside the windows.<br />Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751805452043419723.post-2259507801732536992012-06-20T02:21:00.000-04:002012-06-20T02:21:00.149-04:00Napoleon House Gets a Second Pimm's Drink<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The Napoleon House's house drink has been the Pimm's Cup since the 1950s. Owner Sal Impastato favored the light-bodied cocktail because it suited the hot New Orleans climate and did not send his patrons under the table with undue speed. (Perversely, for a saloon owner, he did not want his customers to get drunk.)<br />
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Today, Napoleon House sells two cases of Pimm's No 1 a day. The bar is Pimm's' largest account in the U.S. Almost all of that goes into the making of Pimm's Cups. But this July that will change.<br />
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Impastato is using this year's Tales of the Cocktail convention to launch a new Pimm's-based libation. It will be called the Pimm's Ginger Julep. It will basically be a Julep made with Pimm's and ginger beer and, presumedly, mint. Another cooling drink well-suited to the climate. But one, I'm thinking, that will get customers drunk, and pretty fast. Also one that will take bartenders considerably longer to make. (I've watched them makes Pimm's Cups. They can whip out out in roughly five seconds.)<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></span>Robert Simonson, "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches"-New York Times.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14428424677554600158noreply@blogger.com0