Off The Presses

The View From Houston

2012-01-24T09:37:00.000-05:00

It hadn't occurred to me that Houston's cocktail scene might be worth checking out until I interviewed bartender Sean Beck for Wine Enthusiast. Now I think a side trip is in order next time I'm in New Orleans. Here's the interview:

Mixologist of the Month: Sean Beck

Sean Beck keeps his eye on the flat Texas horizon when exploring ideas for the wine, spirits and cocktail lists at the three Houston restaurants where he serves as beverage director. And there’s little that escapes his notice.

While every mixologist knows of Tito’s Handmade Vodka, a Lone Star product that now has a national profile, Beck favors the smaller Dripping Springs Texas Vodka, made outside Austin. He also utilizes Texas whiskey, made by Balcones Distilling in Waco, in some of his cocktails, including the blue corn-based Baby Blue Whiskey and Rumble, a liqueur made from Mission figs, sugar and wildflower honey. But just being from Texas isn’t necessarily enough for a spirit to meet Beck’s approval.

“I love local, but it can’t be local for local’s sake,” he says. “That’s not good enough and that’s always been the problem with Texas wines. They’ve sold out ferociously, so they haven’t had the pressure to ramp up the quality to where it should be.”

A native of Rochester, New York, Beck has lived in Texas for 22 years. He worked as a waiter at the Backstreet Cafe while in college; by graduation, he’d been promoted to sommelier. Today, he’s responsible for a restaurant group that includes Hugo’s and Trevisio.

Beck thinks Houston’s greatest strength as a cocktail town lies in what it’s not. “It doesn’t follow rules,” he says. “Once someone does something in New York, everyone knows about it. That’s one of the reasons New York goes through beverage trends and wine trends so quickly. Houston is so spread out that people aren’t cognizant of what other people are doing. So people march to their own drummer.”

Pierre Ferrand Gets Into the Curacao Game

2012-01-20T04:14:00.002-05:00

Triple sec is an ingredient that will set bartenders arguing. One of the oldest liqueurs associated with the American cocktail scene, and a critical ingredient in many classic drinks, every barkeep has an opinion which, among the many orange liqueurs available, are the best (Combier, Cointreau, Grand Marnier, Curaçao de Curaçao), and which are trash. And there is little agreement.

Into this fractious market niche come a new curacao by a Cognac producer, Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao Ancienne Methode. (As terms, Curacao and Triple Sec are often used interchangeably, though the former should indicate that the oranges used are from the island of that name.) As with Ferrand Cognac 1840—the brandy introduced in 2011 that was purportedly patterned after 19th-century styles of Cognac and geared toward the cocktail crowd as a mixing Cognac—the new Curaçao was produced with a consulting assist from historian David Wondrich. Again, the hope is the bottling will become a mainstay in backbars.

The new liqueur is "based on a 19th-century recipe," chosen from among 50 that were tested. Some came from cellar master hand notes, some from published books of the time (one provided by Wondrich). The winning recipe is actually "a combination of the best each recipe had to offer."

The Ferrand formula takes dried Curaçao orange peels from the actual island, as well as a bit of lemon and sweet oranges, and steeps them in un-aged brandy. It then redistills the brandy, blends the result with brandy and Ferrand Cognac, then aged it in oak casks. That's not the end. While aging, the elixir is infused with more Curaçao orange peels.

According to Ferrand, the mix of brandy and Cognac is critical, because the brandy allows what they call the "vegetal infusions"—that is, the brandy is infused with some botanicals to create complexity—that were an important part of 19th century technique.

And Cocktails Get Even More Complicated

2012-01-19T14:41:00.000-05:00

There seem to be two divergent trends going among in the cocktail bars opening recently. One set (Mother's Ruin, Basik) is trying to simplify and render more humble the consumer's craft cocktail experience, while the other (Aviary, Rogue 24) is ramping up the level of ornate experimentation and invention exponentially.

Squarely falling in the second category is Booker and Dax, the new collaboration between superstar chef David Chang and cocktaildom's benevolent mad scientist Dave Arnold, the French Culinary Institute‘s director of culinary technology who has more technology toys that did Fred McMurray in his Disney years. Arnold preaches the simplicity of complication. For him, the old cocktail methods are inefficient and can be solved with a bunch of tubing, gases and open flames. It sounds terribly geeky (and it is), but in Arnold's hand is often infectiously endearing.

Liquid nitrogen, a Red Hot Poker, a centrifuge and a rotory evaporator are Arnold's bar tools of choice. I wrote an article in the New York Times about the bar's imminent opening (see below), but there are a few featured drinks that I couldn't fit into the text. There will be a carbonated Gin & Tonic; and a carbonated drink called Chartruth, a mix of green Chartreuse and lime. Maria de la Noche will be a clear riff on the Bloody Mary, a blend of clarified cherry tomatoes, clarified Worchester sauce, clarified Siricha sauce (all rendered so in the centrigue); a horseradish liquid produced by the rotovap; and tequila. It's light and elegant, an evening version of the classic brunch drink.

There will also be a drink made of rum and actual banana juice ("Nobody's got banana juice!" cried Arnold with glee), topped with salt, candied ginger and coconut ice cubes. It's a clear drink—perhaps a first for any cocktail involving bananas. To make this, Arnold blends in three ripe bananas into a bottle of Zacapa 23 rum, adds an enzyme, passes the potion through the centrifuge and rebottles it.

The simplest drink on the menu by far will be something called the Nederlander—nothing more than Bols genever, a quarter ounce of Angostura and a little simple syrup. It's fantastic.

Here's the article:

High-Tech Cocktail Lounge Is Opening at Momofuku Ssam Bar

By ROBERT SIMONSON

A little liquid nitrogen with your manhattan? Warm up that drink with a foot-tall flame?

Booker & Dax, a new bar that places technology squarely in the service of mixology, has you covered.

Situated in the back of David Chang’s Momofuku Ssam Bar in the East Village, where the original Milk Bar once was, the new bar is a collaboration between Mr. Chang and French Culinary Institute‘s director of culinary technology, Dave Arnold. It is set to open Friday.

Over the last few years, Mr. Arnold has won a reputation as the cocktail demimonde’s own Mr. Wizard, passing alcohol through a variety of elaborate gizmos and coming out with something purer, more potent, and arguably better on the other end. His experiments have influenced many modern bartenders, but Booker & Dax will be the first tavern where he’ll have direct control over the drinks program. The bar also shares a name with a new company run by Mr. Arnold and Mr. Chang that will build cooking equipment. (The names Booker and Dax themselves refer to Mr. Arnold’s two sons.)

“For the last seven years at the French Culinary Institute, I’ve been trying to show you can use new technologies without being terribly wacky,” Mr. Arnold said. “I don’t think we should be in a business of pushing outside people’s comfort zones here. I’m more interested in slam-dunk delicious.” He added, “I want you to feel happy to be here. I don’t want you to feel like a lab rat we’re testing on.”

You may, however, want to put on a lab coat, and perhaps some goggles, when the bartender sticks a device called a Red Hot Poker, heated up to 1,500 degrees, into a mixing glass of Pernod, lime juice, sugar and water. This results in a libation called the French Colombian. “The burning takes the ingredients to a new place,” Mr. Arnold said. The poker, which he custom-made, is modeled after the hot irons early American innkeepers would stick into customers’ cups to heat up their drinks.

Mr. Arnold finds the way most bars chill their glassware inconsistent and a waste of space. So the vessels at Booker & Dax will be cooled on the spot by a shot of liquid nitrogen, a wisp of frozen mist sent chasing around the rim.

“The glass just sits there becoming awesome while we make the drink,” he said. Into it may go Mr. Arnold’s vision of a manhattan, which he admits may be controversial. “Stirring a drink is just chilling and diluting, without adding texture. It is prone to error and takes a long time if you’re stirring a lot of drinks. Why wouldn’t I dilute that thing beforehand, chill it to the perfect temperature in a bottle, bring you a coupe chilled with liquid nitrogen, and crack the bottle and pour it in?” he asked. “I can serve you that drink in under 30 seconds and it’s going to be perfect every time without variance.” (The bar will make you a stirred manhattan if you want it.)

Other techniques to be regularly used include cocktail carbonation, and drinks made with the help of a rotary evaporator and centrifuge. Just don’t call it molecular gastronomy. “It makes me violently ill to think someone would call this that,” Mr. Arnold said. “It doesn’t sound delicious. And it’s inaccurate.”

The debut menu will feature 16 cocktails, each at $14. “Whether it works or doesn’t work,” Mr. Chang said, “that’s what this restaurant has always been — taking a chance on something new.”

Three Gins, Three Martinis

2012-01-16T02:58:00.002-05:00

How much progress the gin revolution has made with the public is arguable (outside of the usual cocktail dens, I haven't seen an uptick in the number of people ordering gin Martinis), but it has certainly changed the way American micro-distillers do business. In the past, to release one gin was something unusual. Today, young distilleries release two or three at a time. In late 2010, New York Distilling Company made its debut on the liquor store shelves with two new gins. A few months early, St. George Spirits of California bested them by simultaneously introducing three new gins.

All three look the same until you notice the small, lightly tinted, defining adjective that rests about the word Gin on each bottle. One says "Botanivore," another "Dry Rye" and the last "Terrior." With each, we are dealing with a different mix of botanicals and, in one case, a different grain. The Dry Rye is easiest to get a handle on. It is pot-distilled with a rye base, and what you expect from rye whiskey you get a bit of in this rye gin.

The Botanicore Gin is infused with a whopping 18 botanicals, including caraway, ginger, California bay laurel, wild fennel, dill, celery seed, coriander. None of the gins shy away from the traditional juniper-heavy profile of the spirit, but this one has the heaviest juniper note. Finally, the Terroir Gin, as you might guess from the name, draws all its botanicals from the immediate, northern California area, including hand-harvested juniper berries, Douglas fir (from Mt. Tam), coastal sage, fennel, California bay laurel, cinnamon, cardamom and lemon. The inclusion of the bay laurel reminded me of the state's No. 209 gin, which has experimented with this herb in the past.

I am, by now, fairly skeptical of so-called New Western Gins. Too many of them adopt flavor distinctions that make no sense, playing with unusual botanicals, and eschewing the traditional juniper, seemingly just for the sake of standing out. You end up with an unbalanced gin that does not serve a Martini or Gin & Tonic well, and thus renders itself a useless oddity. (No, I do not endorse the notion of a "sipping gin.")

Still, I have found a few likable North American gins over the years. I inaugurated the three new St. George gins by making Martinis with them on successive nights. I found each made a sufficiently pleasing drink. The Botanicore came closest to a classic Martini profile. The Dry Rye, unsurprisingly, instilled the cocktail with a hotter, spicier flavor.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I preferred the Terroir Gin Martini, which I expected to be the most peculiar, the best. It's not a typical Martini by any means; those pine notes come through strongly. But its unique personality comes out in attractive ways. It made for a perfect Winter Martini, if such a thing can be said to exist.

A Beer at...Lucy's

2012-01-15T14:58:00.000-05:00

My latest column at Eater, a classic dive in the East Village with a classic East Village hostess:

A Beer At...Lucy's

The heart of Lucy's, an Avenue A dive that has somehow held back the tide of East Village trendiness, is Lucy. She's a small woman about three times the age of the kids she serves. She had a puffy, light-brown coiffure that sits awkwardly on top of her head, and talks in a high, piping voice of an Eastern European songbird. She cheerfully takes orders, none of which are particularly difficult (beer, shot), and doesn't seem to have a mean bone in her body, probably because she doesn't pay much mind to the antics of her patrons.

The hipster-doofuses who populate the bar seem to get a kick out of Lucy. "Hey, Lucy! You like this song," said a young barfly, a juvenile delinquent smile on his lips, a PBR in his hand. It was "Cocaine" by Eric Clapton. He may as well have been asking Lucy if she had Prince Albert in a can. "What?" tweeted Lucy, distracted, smoothing out dollar bills plucked from the old cash register. The man asked twice more, intent on his joke. Finally Lucy paused and took a listen. "Yes. Yes. I like this song," she piped. She then took the TV remote and turned up the volume on the AMC presentation of "Young Guns."

The bar's facade is so warped with age, it looks like it might fall flat to the sidewalk at any moment. I believe it's held in place by the recently installed ATM machine. Getting past the often-locked metal gate is harder than at most dives. Lucy opens when she opens. It varies from night to night, but don't try coming before 7 PM. She also takes a ton of vacations, seemingly whenever she feels like it. Aside from her annual visit to her native Poland every August, don't be surprised to find the bar closed for a weeks at a time, without warning, any given month of the year.

Inside, there are two pool tables, a long old vaguely Art Deco bar, and an unintentional circle theme made up of round mirrors and round spaces where mirrors used to be. I've never seen so many bottom-shelf bottles prominently featured on the top-shelf shelf as I did at Lucy's. But the beer selection, in bottles and on draft, is surprisingly large and decent. A couple newer draft lines, hiding over near the window, draw on hipper craft brews like Goose Island. Their location seems to silently ask the question: "Who would drink this stuff when you can get a Bud?" Behind the bar, near the door, there's a glass-doored cabinet of tchotchkes. China cups and such. It's the kind of thing you'd see at your grandma's place.

—Robert Simonson

Plymouth Gin Get New/Old Look

2012-01-12T09:23:00.000-05:00

In recent years, I grew to love a Plymouth gin that looked like this, all tall, sleek and Art Deco.

But come this spring, the Plymouth found on your liquor store shelves will look like the bottles below. The redesign is really a return to the centuries-old brand's roots. The Are Deco look was introduced only five years ago, in 2006. The original Plymouth bottles and labels once looked very much as the new specimens do.

Rest assured, the stuff inside will remain the same.

Bemelmans, the Bar That Daren't Speak Its Patrons Names

2012-01-09T17:46:00.000-05:00

I suggested a feature story on Bemelmans Bar to Edible Manhattan before doing any research into how much access I would be granted at the swanky, timeless Hotel Carlyle watering hole. I won't make that mistake again. The Great and Powerful Oz didn't have better press security than do the well-heeled patrons of the Carlyle. Not only was I instructed that I could not talk to any of the customers at the bar, I was told to not even approach them and ask if they'd mind being talked to. (That would be an imposition.) Nor could they be photographed. So all the shots for the usually photo-heavy Edible feature "Back of the House" are devoid of people, as if a Neutron bomb had been dropped on the hotel. In the end, among the Bemelmans staff I only spoke to managing director Erich Steinbock and veteran barman Tommy Rowles, who functions as Bemelmans human mascot, as well as former employees Dale DeGroff and Audrey Saunders. Despite the paucity of sources, I managed to put together a piece that I think pretty well captures the saloon. Just imagine, as you read it, lots of people milling about.

Back of the House: Bemelmans

By Robert Simonson

In the last few years, a few of the paragons of the modern mixology movement have tried to recapture the lost art of the Manhattan hotel bar. They’ve romantically revamped the drinking dens of fusty old Midtown hotels like the Edison and Iroquois, bringing in sophisticated decor, soft lighting, cool music, jacketed barmen and old-fashioned service.

Thirty blocks to the north, Bemelmans Bar has observed this phenomenon with blasé bemusement. The Upper East Side landmark has been quietly keeping the hotel-bar torch burning for nearly three-quarters of a century inside the upper-class residential fortress known at the Carlyle. Its stature is shared by only a couple other surviving standard bearers: the Old King Cole Bar in the St. Regis and (until it recently closed—again!) the Oak Room at the Plaza.

Managing director Erich Steinbock isn’t shy about stating why he thinks Bemelmans has retained its prestigious standing over the years. “I call it a real bar,” he says. “First of all, there are no TVs. It’s conducive for people to talk to each other. It’s a little more formal. There aren’t so many great freestanding bars anymore. There are sports bars and Irish pubs, but you don’t find many bars like this.”

Bemelmans already has all the things that the taverns mentioned above are after. The banquettes are plush, the music is oldstyle sophisticated and plays nightly, and the light from the tiny lamps on the tiny tables bathes everyone and everything in a cinematic amber glow. But it also possesses a couple things the parvenus downtown will never have. The namesake murals, first and foremost. Executed by illustrator Ludwig Bemelmans, creator of the Madeline series of children’s books, they depict the four seasons in Central Park, a whimsical world of frolicking bunnies, snakes in hats, a sheep-filled Sheep Meadow and monkeys who peer in at caged bankers.The artworks’ enveloping presence makes certain that wit, art and New York café society history will never quit the room.

Running a close second in exclusivity is Tommy Rowles, a small Irish bartender who was hired in 1958. A local legend, he has wiped down the same bar for 53 years and has never had another job. Any reporter who walks into Bemelmans wants to bend Rowles’s ear, and you get the feeling that the man’s developed an earache. “The stories I have you can’t print,” he says offhandedly, in an accent whose Gaelic lilt has been sandpapered down over the years. The stories that can be printed have been printed, again and again. They involve dead people, mainly. There’s the one about Harry Truman ducking in for an Old Grand-Dad Bourbon on the rocks in order to escape an army of reporters camped out on Madison Avenue. And the ones about serving Jackie Kennedy, but not having served Jack. (He did wait on Bobby and Teddy; the Kennedys have made the Carlyle their Manhattan compound for more than a half a century.)

Rowles certainly has other tales locked in his memory bank, but under lock and key they will stay. For this is the Carlyle, where the obsession with guest privacy can be, well, obsessive. “People come here from good homes,” says Rowles, “and one thing you don’t do is screw them up with what you talk about. That goes for any good home, but the rich especially.”

Rich, indeed. By management’s guess, 25 percent of Bemelmans patrons are hotel guests (rates begin at $800 a night); the other 75 percent come from hotels and homes in the immediate area. These folks have no difficultly complying with the formal, if unofficial, dress code, or affording a $285 ounce of Beluga caviar with their $21 cocktail. Or relating to the 14K-gold-covered ceiling.

If the Carlyle management and Tommy are nobly keeping mum on the subject of the Bemelmans clientele, the gossips on Yelp! aren’t nearly as discreet. “Older men are dressed with the kinds of things that the Thurston Howell IIIs of this universe sport,” writes one Yelper, in a particularly piquant portrait of a typical evening at Manhattan’s swankest saloon. “The ascot, the blazer decorated with buttons of precious metal, and slip-on dress shoes of fine velvet embellished with their initials.” On a given night, “Steve Martin is surrounded by a coterie of admiring ladies, dapper in his tux and retro rimmed glasses,” while “Al Pacino [is] at the bar (looking a little rough and ready in a hoodie), and at a table just the other side of the piano is Jean Reno.” As for practical advice: “If you want to be ignored, show up in a T-shirt and jeans. It works!”

Before finding fame at Pegu Club, cocktail-world doyenne Audrey Saunders ran the liquor program at Bemelmans from 2001 to 2005. She has her own assessment. “It feels like a modern-day Ricks Café Américain,” she says, referencing the famous, fictional watering hole in Casablanca. “It’s a very upper-crust crowd in the best sense of the word: They all have such polish, such grace, such elegance, a détente attitude. I loved looking after them. There was a small group of gents that I admirably referred to as my White-Haired Lions—semi-retired business titans who I looked up to as mentors—they would come into the bar and sit down with me, and we would always have such enjoyable, stimulating conversations together. They continually showered me with nuggets of wisdom.” (Saunders has a reason to remember Bemelmans warmly; she met her husband, Robert Hess, there.)

Saunders was hired soon after the Rosewood Hotels chain of luxury hotels and resorts took over the Carlyle in 2000 and refurbished the bar. The company, looking to refresh Bemelmans’s image, brought in as a consultant cocktail legend Dale DeGroff, who helped kick off the cocktail renaissance with his retro work at the Rainbow Room in the late 1980s. DeGroff recalls, “They wanted me to redo the work manual for the bar, do training sessions and write a new cocktail menu that at least brought the bar into the late 20th century.” But DeGroff had his work cut out for him, for the Carlyle is a union hotel, with union bartenders. “There were a lot of issues,” he says. “You had Rosewood coming in. They weren’t quite prepared for the strong unions, specifically Local 6. The least senior guy was 17 years on the job. Those guys looked at me like a side dish they didn’t order.”

Tommy, in particular, was recalcitrant—but in a charmingly Irish way, of course. He refused to serve an ornate oyster shooter drink DeGroff devised because it contained food. “‘You know it’s such a pleasure to be working for you, you’re such a famous young man,’” says DeGroff, doing a spot-on Tommy impression. “‘But I won’t be able to serve the oyster shooter. It’s such a lovely drink, but I can’t handle food. I can’t go against the union, after all these years, what would happen?’” The oyster shooter was struck. But many other fine drinks were added.

When asked whom to hire to manage the new program, DeGroff recommended his protégé, Saunders, with whom he had worked at the short-lived restaurant Blackbird. “Dale had just begun the initial process of overhauling the liquor inventory, getting glassware samples, working on the cocktail list, the uniform design, everything … soup to nuts,” says Saunders. “After Dale left, they asked me to evolve the menu for the next season. When they saw how well it was doing, they basically gave me the keys to the car the season thereafter and told me to drive.”

As a nod to the Saunders era, a couple of her inventions—the Gin-Gin Mule and the Old Cuban—remain on the menu. Today, it’s the dapper and elegant Brian Van Flandern who switches up the cocktail menu seasonally. But, for all of Saunders’s and Van Flandern’s efforts to keep the drinks program cutting edge, only a fraction of the clientele truly take notice. “This being such a traditional bar, you have to have the traditional drinks,” says Steinbock. “You have your Sidecars, your Manhattans. You can never go away from that. Seventy percent of our guests drink the same drink they’ve been drinking for decades. They don’t change at all. And the other 30 percent change constantly.”

For most of the regulars, “the usual” is a Martini, says Rowles. In that way, the bar and its fans remain steadfastly rooted in the Mad Men era—as does Tommy, who, in his Eisenhower approach to the iconic cocktail, finds little use for vermouth. (One gets the impression, in fact, that he doesn’t put any vermouth in his Martinis.)

Bemelmans is at least the second name this space has worn. After all, the illustrator painted the murals in 1947, and the hotel has been around since 1930. In its first flowering, the bar—along with the areas now know as the Gallery and the Carlyle Restaurant—was known under the umbrella title of the Carlyle Regency. Ludwig Bemelmans was hired to do the murals by then-owner Robert Dowling. (How long after that his name was given to the bar is not known, but it was regularly referred to as Bemelmans Bar by the mid-’70s). Perhaps the most surprising thing about the murals is that they are no longer 100 percent Bemelmans’s handiwork. “Not all of it is original anymore, it’s been touched up so much,” says Steinbock. (After 65 years hanging around a bunch of drunks, you’d need a little help, too.) Inspect the murals closely and you’ll find telltale signs of updating. The rabbit in the far corner, for instance, is wearing roller blades and headphones. When the room was restored a decade ago, the murals had been darkened by years of exposure to nicotine. “The best way we found to get it off was Wonder Bread,” says Steinbock. Wet Wonder Bread, specifically. Slice after slice was applied to the walls.

Smoke is no longer a problem in Bloomberg’s New York, but the room still suffers wear and tear. Recently a steam pipe hidden within a painted column at the center of the bar burst; the illustrations on the pillar will have to be completely recreated. For such jobs, the Carlyle has seven painters on payroll. “You need them in a place like this,” observes Steinbock. “Those guys have a full-time job.”

The painters better get it just right. Ironically, for a hotel that has changed hands a good number of times over its history, the thing the Carlyle’s cosseted denizens crave most is constancy. They don’t want anything about the hotel to change—and at Bemelmans, they largely get their wish. The murals remain the murals; Tommy stays Tommy; Chris Gillespie can be found playing the cocktail hour every night Tuesday through Saturday; and the Loston Harris Trio faithfully arrives those same days with some after dinner music. (The piano is tuned a few times a week.) Sometimes the singers who appear over at the Café Carlyle, the swank cabaret spot just across the corridor, will drift in and jam with the Bemelmans boys. But that’s about as much as things shake up.

When Tommy finally retires, it will be a shattering day. The man not only provides a throughline to the Bemelmans Bar’s storied (or, more exactly, purposefully un-storied) history. He also contributes a welcome blue-collar antidote to the saloon’s blue-blooded atmosphere. Decades after stepping off the boat, his rough, salt-of-the-earth edges haven’t entirely been polished smooth. His hobbies, he says, include partying.

And what is Tommy Rowles’s idea of a good party? “I’m Irish,” he says. “What do you think?”

A Visit to Aviary

2012-01-04T15:34:00.002-05:00

Last October I visited Aviary, the Grant Achatz and Craig Schoettler Chicago bar that has been attracting a lot of positive attention from both critics and bartenders (not to mention the public) since opening last April. My briefly sketched impressions were published in this month's GQ, along with some equally concise thoughts on the barrel-aged cocktail programs at Clyde Common in Portland and Saxon + Parole in New York.

A place like Aviary can not, or course, be captured in 300 words, so I thought I would elaborate on my two-hour, multiple-drink visit in this space.

Aviary is very much a liquid extension of Achatz's culinary philosophy. It is a hybrid of the bar and the laboratory. Mixologists—called Bar Chefs—have "stations," which look like expensive, shiny versions of the lab tables you used in chemistry class in high school. Here, the bar chefs execute the complex drinks Schoettler and Achatz have devised, and deviation from the formulae is not permitted. Soldiers are required here, not personalities. There's no bar, per se, and nothing you can belly up to—no stools. (There is limited seating in the lab area, and, from what I understand, standing is allowed.) Instead you sit at tables in the airy and expansive dining room, which is decorated in muted colors and sheltered by walls of curtain. The feel is very much restaurant-like, with perhaps a page taken, design-wise, from Violet Hour, the Chicago cocktail bar pioneer.

As with the bar chefs, customers are not encouraged to wave their flag at Aviary. The menu is the menu. It's been painstakingly put together and you're expected to order from it. So don't come in and request a Martini, a Gin & Tonic or whatever your usual is. They won't make it. And don't ask for specific liquor brands; the spirit in each drink is pre-ordained.

All of the above encompasses the sort of precious tomfoolery that turns a lot of people off to the cocktail movement. But three things save Aviary from it's own arch seriousness, and make it one of the best bars in the country. One, the cocktails are, for the most part, very good. Two, the air of genial hospitality couldn't be bettered. And three, the bells and whistles accompanying the presentation of many of the drinks—which arrive in all manner of glassware, are often prepared at the table, and sometimes require assembly on the part of the drinker—leads to an amusing experience one can't help but enjoy.

A good example of this is Avairy's take on the Old Fashioned, called In the Rock. The whiskey, bitters and sugar are injected into a partially frozen ice egg, which is placed in a rocks glass. On top of the glass is rooted a circular sling of sorts with a ball bearing in the middle. (Aviary has many devices, as well as glasses, custom made for specific cocktails.) You pull back on the ball, let it fly and crack open the ice ball. The cocktail flows out and what was once in the rock is now on the rocks. Activating the sling might be the most fun I've ever had with a drink. And the Old Fashioned that resulted was excellent. (I have since been informed that, owing to a patron accident, the servers now operate the sling. This is a shame.)

Another example: Oolong. This drink arrives in a sort of coffee percolator. A cocktail base of Clear Creek Pear Brandy, Tanqueray gin, water, citric aicd and sugar is heated up until it bubbles up into glass container filled with pistachio, applewood, Oolong tea, orange peel, brown sugar, lemon peel and lemon balm. Thus briefly infused, it flowed back down as a complete cocktail that is warming, woody, tannic and smelling and tasting of potpourri. (That may not sound good, but, believe me, it is.)

The drink called Cider (many of Aviary's cocktail have refreshingly simple and straightforward names which belie the difficult path they take from kitchen to glass) is similar to Oolong in that it involves exclusive equipment and a complex infusion. Apple brandy is poured into a kind of two-sided glass disc full of spices, apples and other items. To pour yourself a glass, you tilt the disc on a pivot until a spout releases some liquid. Since the infusion continues to do its stuff, every new dose tastes slightly different from the last.

Sometimes the concept is more interesting than the drink. The cocktail named Chartreuse features three drinks nestled inside a wooden Chartreuse box stuffed with herbs. The trio of libations are blueberry soda and yellow chartrese; honeydew, lime and green chartreuse; and pineapple, green and yellow chartreuse—each with an ice cube made out of mint. In all cases, the flavor of the drink was one-dimensional, expressing mainly the fruit in question. The Amari also had an impressive roll-out. An upside-down glass filled with smoke sits on bourbon barrel stave that was recently set aflame; the glass puts out the fire, thus capturing the fumes. This is meant to act as a sort of rinse to the mix of house-made root beer amaro, dry vermouth, Cocchi Americano, and tequila that are poured into the vessel when it is turned aright. But mainly the drink tastes of smoke. The Aviary's take on the classical cocktail Vieux Carre, meanwhile, is basically the drink delivered inside its own personal flask. This is cute, but not exactly an interpretation.

On the whole, though, Aviary's drinks succeed. Among my favorites was Quince, in which sous-vide quince rests with white wine and sugar for eight hours. The liquid is strained, and combined with ginger syrup, Noilly Pratt Dry Vermouth, white wine, and Don Cesar Pisco, and then carbonated, bottled and served in a brown paper bag. It is beautifully simple, tasty and refreshing; a good aperitif. Also carbonated is Aviary's version of the Negroni, which is served with a White Lady (minus the Cointreau) as half of an expermient called 2 in 1. Both drinks are delicious alone (the Negroni, which comes in a Sanbitter bottles, actually tastes a bit like Sanbitter). But you are meant to pour the Negroni over the White Lady, where it floats in between the egg white and the White Lady. Flavor-wise, the two are something delightfully different than the sum of their parts. (Schoettler said this drink came about by accident.)

Also good is Pear, a mild, lightly creamy mix of gin, pear cider and brioche syrup which comes is a beautiful tall highball glass that tapers off at the top. An ice cube the exact shape of the cavity sits inside. (If you're interested, they accomplish this by filling the glass with water, putting it in a circular chiller, freezing the outside of the inside of the glass, and dumping out the liquid center, thus achieving an ice cube that's hollow. Once the cocktail it made, it is poured inside. Think that's a bit much? There's one guy at Aviary who just makes the ice globes for the In the Rock cocktail.)

Instead of one big ice cube, the drink Cranberry has 1,500 one-quarter-inch, frozen spheres of cranberry juice, which cool down a blend of Elijah Craig 12 year old, ginger, orange and chevril foam. It's a delicious, over-achieving Cobbler.

Aviary's menu allows you to order a single drink "a la carte," or three—one each from three columns (fruit, "meat" and dessert drinks)—as a prix fixe. Cocktail prices hover in the upper teens. But considering what you're getting, from concept to ingredients to accoutrements to service, I'd say any item on the menu is a bargain. As I noted in the GQ piece, it's drinks and a show.

As I write this, it strikes me as somewhat odd that I should give Aviary coverage on a cocktail blog. In their way, Achatz and Schoettler are right—Aviary isn't strictly a bar, and it shouldn't really be rated against other, more conventional cocktail bars. It's its own animal, and comparisons to, say, Milk & Honey or Cure are pointless. Perhaps in the future, there will be a few more Aviary-like bars in the U.S., and such comparisons can be attempted with validity. However, I'm not sure multiple, high-end, molecular bars is something I'd welcome—it would dilute the magic of this Chicago original, and needlessly complicate the cocktail movement. But I'm certainly glad there's one.

It's a Bar, It's a Distillery

2011-12-23T17:39:00.000-05:00

From the NY Times. The Perry's Tot Navy Strength Gin makes a good, if dangerous, Gin & Tonic:

A Brooklyn Distillery Lets You Order a Drink

By Robert Simonson

Spaces next to distilleries where you can sample liquor are not unusual. They’re called tasting rooms. Spaces where you can enjoy a mixed drink made with that liquor, or other spirits not produced at that distillery — now, that’s unusual.

In early December, Allen Katz and Tom Potter, the founders of the New York Distilling Company in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, opened the Shanty, a tavern under the same roof as the distillery. Sitting at the bar, in fact, you can gaze through a large plate-glass window onto the 1,000-liter, German-made still that produces the company’s two new products, Dorothy Parker American Gin and Perry’s Tot Navy Strength Gin.

Mr. Katz, who is director of mixology and spirits education at Southern Wine and Spirits and a familiar figure in the spirits and cocktail world, said the saloon was long in planning. “A tasting room is lovely,” he said. “It’s useful and a nice retail setting.”

But the company is not using it for retail. “We want to support local retailers,” Mr. Katz said. “We want people to come here and say, ‘Hey, where can we get your gins?’ We’ll give you a list of stores. You cannot buy the gin here.”

The Shanty has a separate entry on Richardson Street, around the corner from the distillery’s official Leonard Street address. Its bar is as well-stocked as any in Brooklyn and, while drinks featuring the distillery’s two gins are amply featured on the menu, you can order any cocktail or spirit you wish without shame.

The distillery has a special farm distiller’s license from New York State that allows it to run a bar — granted because 100 percent of the grains used for its rye whiskey will come from New York farmers. “I can’t open a bar across the street,” Mr. Katz said. “I can’t open a bar in another borough. I can open a bar in the same bonded facility that is our licensed distillery.”

Putting in a shift or two at the Shanty are some of the best bartenders in Brooklyn, including Brad Farran (of Clover Club), Katie Stipe (Vandaag,Frankies 570) and the head barman, Nate Dumas (formerly of Prime Meats). Mr. Katz himself tends bar twice a week.

Mr. Dumas was a natural choice to head the anomalous bar. “He’s a one-of-a-kind person, in that he is an extraordinary barman, but has also spent a year in Scotland going through the Heriot-Watt University brewing and distilling program,” Mr. Katz said. “It was a no-brainer to have him be the head bartender but work on both sides of the wall. He’s got some wonderful contributions in mind.”

The distillery has already bought a year’s worth of rye from the New York farmers it has contracted with, and plans to start distilling it in a month’s time. But don’t expect that rye whiskey to grace the bar anytime soon; unlike other boutique distillers, Mr. Katz and Mr. Potter are not going to rush out a lightly aged liquor, but intend to wait until it is at least three years old. In the meantime, the Shanty will provide a financial cushion for that waiting game. “The bar, I hope, will mean revenue that we can invest in rye whiskey production,” Mr. Katz said.

There will, however, be one rye product out as early as next year. The distillery plans to release a rock and rye, a once-popular American liqueur that mixes whiskey and rock candy with other flavorings. The two gins, meanwhile, are now available only in New York State.

Sasha Petraske Founds a Cocktail Convention

2011-12-20T22:40:00.000-05:00

Sasha Petraske—owner of Milk & Honey, Little Branch, Dutch Kills, and one of the Mount Rushmore faces of the neo-classic cocktail era—has founded his own cocktail convention. It's called the San Antonio Cocktail Conference, and the inaugural event will take place Jan. 26-29, 2012.

That Petraske would launch such a venture is somewhat surprising. Among the leading lights of the cocktail world, he is perhaps also the most elusive. He avoids talking to the press, and has only rarely presented seminars at other cocktail confabs, such as Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans and the Manhattan Cocktail Classic, where he sits on the founding advisory board.

Petraske said he decided to create the convention because he had become enamored of San Antonio during his various business visits to the Texas city. Moreover, the bash will not be for profit. Conference proceeds will benefit HeartGift San Antonio, "a group of surgeons, pediactric cardiologists, medical personnnel, volunteers, and host families dedicated to providing life-saving heart surgery to disadvantaged children living in developing countries where specialized treatment is scarce or nonexsistent."

Many seminars during the four-day event will be manned by an array of bartenders from the Petraske circle. Eric Alperin, a partner with Petraske in L.A. The Varnish, will present "Ice the Old Fashioned Way." Courtney Munch, another Varnish bartender, will teach "Yoga for Bartenders, Waitresses and Drinkers." Sam Ross, barman at Milk & Honey, will talk about bitters in "The Bitter Truth." Lucinda Sterling, senior bartender at Little Branch, will talk about sweetening agents in "Not Too Sweet." And Abraham Hawkins of Dutch Kills will discuss "The Old-Fashion Cocktail."

Also presenting are Christy Pope, Chad Solomon, John Lermayer, Michael Madrusan, Lauren Schell, Toby Cecchini, Brian Miller, Don Lee and Theo Liebermann.

Tickets and info are available at www.SACocktailConference.com. I

More on Drinking Myths

2011-12-15T01:02:00.000-05:00

In my Dec. 7 New York Times article about popular drinking myths, I was only able to fit a portion of the commentary I culled from mixologists, bar owners and distillers. To trim the article down to the necessary 900 words, I had to dispense with many a wonderfully tart remark. Many were too good to lose. So I've gathered them here, arranged by topic. Enjoy.

THE DRY MARTINI

Derek Brown, Washington D.C. owner of The Passenger and Columbia Room: "I make my Dry Martini fifty-fifty, or equal parts, which will shock people who consider 'dry' leaving out the vermouth altogether. To them, I apologize, because it's likely as surprising as finding out that Pluto is no longer a planet or the Triceratops is no longer a dinosaur. Historically, the Dry Martini was equal parts, 2:1 or 3:1. Some time in the 1940-'50s, 50 or 60 years after the Dry Martini's invention, people began passing on the vermouth. Why? Because of dipsomania, I suppose. Macho writers like Hemingway left it out in his famous Montgomery (15:1) to make a political point, but also because vermouth is the least alcoholic part of the drink. It became popular. People would order super-dry Martinis without thinking. But without vermouth it's no more a Martini than gnawing at the leg of a cow is a steak. It's unfinished, unmixed."

THE PREJUDICE AGAINST THE SWEET DRINK

Frankie Marshall, bartender at Monkey Bar, Manhattan: "I hear this all the time, almost solely from men who are worried if what they've described as wanting to drink is a 'girly.' 'Does it come with an umbrella?' 'Is it pink?' Insert self-conscious 'he he,' then they're still looking at me as if to say meekly, 'Well... does it?' A lot of males also have a problem with glassware: champagne flutes and martini glasses in particular. Ok, so you'd like a cosmo but want me to put it in a shot glass?"

Alla Lapushchik, owner of Post Office, Williamsburg: "What I find interesting is that when people say they don't want soothing sweet, when you recommend something less sweet, they order a sweeter cocktail for the second drink."

Greg Seider, owner of Summit Bar, East Village: "There's a kind of question of manhood if you order a drink that is not so spirit-driven. But it still could be an amazing drink. It's all proportional. It's not necessarily going to be sweet. It's going to be balanced. But any mention of something sweet will dissuade them from trying it."

Derek Brown: "Oh, I love this one too. It plays to that masculine concept of drinking. It needs too be dry and it needs to be strong. Pardon me, but what about tasting good?"

MIXING ALCOHOLS AS THE SUPPOSED SOURCE OF HANGOVERS

Karin Stanley, bartender at Dutch Kills, Long Island City: "The idea of not mixing spirits is one I still see quite a lot. 'I've been drinking gin, so I have to stick with gin.' I think that belief must come from nights where someone has indulged too much, having beer, whiskey, wine, whatever all in one night and the next day they blame the 'mixing' vs. the over-indulgence."

OLDER WHISKEY IS BETTER WHISKEY/WHISKEY SHOULD BE DRUNK NEAT, WITH NO WATER

Ivy Mix, bartender at Clover Club, Brooklyn: "The whiskey drinker considers themselves to be incredibly well-informed. The whiskey drinker can't be changed. They're very set in their ways. It's a statement to order a whiskey neat. Especially Scotch. It's a status symbol."

Derek Brown: "Perhaps the best analogy is found in sex with older women. Generally, it's better. People become more experienced, practiced with age. However, that doesn't mean a tromp with a younger women isn't going to be fun and, even superior in some cases. A lot of it depends on what material you're working with from the beginning."

Derek Brown, again, about demanding whiskey neat: "As obnoxious as people who have never put ice cubes in wine, or think you shouldn't drink cocktails with food. It expresses some characteristics and suppresses others. So does cold, in general. I think the proper way to drink something is how you enjoy it. Besides whipped cream vodka, pre-made sour mix and red bull and anything, I find very little an abomination. The aforementioned, however, doom the world."

Alla Lapushchik: "I see it a lot with people on a date when they're trying to impress someone. They get the oldest and they have it neat...With aging whiskey, you're trying to find the balance. There's a point were it's just right, and there's a point where where it goes off the cliff."

TEQUILA WITH A LIME AND SALT

Ivy Mix: "Training wheels. I won't serve that."

Phil Ward, owner of Mayahuel: "Some people are still in the Stone Age."

Toby Maloney, Alchemy Consulting: "I do have a theory, but it is just a theory, like gravity and evolution. I always figured that the training wheels were for either people drinking shitty tequila, or people who have very little experience drinking good booze, so they are covering up the taste. Either way it's about the coverup, similar to the chilling of tequila."

Derek Brown: "The lime and salt are an example of extreme suppression of characteristics. Use lime and salt in that way only when you don't want to taste what you're drinking. For cheap tequila, this combo is paramount."

MEZCAL SHOULD HAVE A WORM IN IT

St. John Frizell, owner of Fort Defiance, Red Hook: "The worm in the mezcal is so persistent. People are working so hard to get rid of that, and it keeping coming up. To people, the worm makes the mezcal mezcal and makes you hallucinate. They think it got started to mask the flavor of mezcal. If you can think of something that tastes worse than a worm, that's what the old mezcal tasted like."

CERTAIN LIQUORS ARE PERSONAL POISON

Greg Seider: "They'll say, 'I get hungover with gin.' Or 'gin makes me angry.' I say you have no idea because you got hammered on it in college."

Maks Pazuniak, bartender at Counting Room, Williamsburg: "They say, 'I had a bad experience with gin, with tequila.' The only answer is to drink it and get over that time that you drank a whole bottle of bottom shelf gin and spent the next day throwing up."

JIGGERS MEAN YOUR'E CHEAP

Julie Reiner, owner of Flatiron Lounge, Clover Club, Lani Kai: "How about the people who are convinced that we use jiggers so that we can pour weaker drinks?"

Tom Chadwick, owner of Dram, Williamsburg: "Every now and then when we used jiggers, they think that's being stingy. I say we're guaranteeing you two ounces. We're not going to underpour. It's in your favor."

MINDLESS BRAND LOYALTY

Tom Chadwick: "The most annoying is their brand loyalty. They're not thinking what they want. 'I want Patron. You don't have Patron? I'll have Grey Goose.' Well, that a completely different spirit. They just want to make sure they're getting the stuff in the well. They want quality and don't skimp. We do have good stuff. You may not know the brands, but we curate the spirits."

Tonia Guffey, bartender at Dram and Monkey Bar: "I see a lot of people at the bar calling for a brand as opposed to a spirit. If we don't carry Bombay Sapphire, they'll just have a Jack Daniels and coke. No Patron? How does that lead your next order to be a Bacardi and Diet Coke? Because these giant brands are all the customer knows."

Liquor and Its Myths

2011-12-14T11:00:00.000-05:00

If you cover the drinking world, you can't help but take note of the ludicrious notions and habits people pick up in regard to how they order, drink and think about liquor. As much as mixologists like to think of the modern bar as a classroom, few barflies learn their lessons. Instead they cling to myth, superstition, marketing notions, and stuff they learned back in college or on television. Recently, I collected a number of the misguided, but stubborn beliefs stubbornly held by the American drinker into an article for the New York Times, drawing on the experiences and viewpoints of a couple dozen notes bartenders and distillers (of which I managed to cite an even dozen in the piece). As expected, the feature got a strongly positive response from the bartending community. What the public thought of it, I do not know. But if I've caused just one person to stop asking about the worm in mezcal or order their whiskey based on the age statement, I've done my work.

The Myths of the Bar, Debunked

By ROBERT SIMONSON

EDUCATING the average drinker on the qualities of firewater, and how to best enjoy it, has been one of the central credos of the new generation of mixologists. “Knowledge!” they cry, as they throw back shots of Fernet-Branca.

But some booze-addled misconceptions continue to cling like vines to the lizard brain of the American tippler. An army of bartenders can protest that a wetter martini is both more delectable and historically accurate, but certain committed fanciers of the cocktail, channeling their inner Gray Flannel Suit, will still maintain the drink attains perfection only at its driest, when vermouth is banished from the barroom.

Such antiquated contentions are like “nails on a chalkboard,” said Eric Alperin, an owner of the Varnish in Los Angeles. “I think the reason people stand by those myths is because it is a sound bite they’ve acquired, and a bar is a place to feel confident with yourself and exude a little know-how.”

Many reinforce a drinker’s virility, particularly with regard to the most manly of spirits — whiskey.

Some of those idées fixes:

OLDER IS BETTER “It’s absolute nonsense,” said Ronnie Cox, director of theGlenrothes, a Speyside Scotch. “It’s not about oldness, it’s about maturity. Age doesn’t mean anything other than that whiskey’s been in that cask for that amount of time.” Making whiskey requires finding the right balance among myriad elements. A few whiskeys prosper with advanced age, but many fall off a cliff into sensory disharmony at a certain point. Rittenhouse Rye 100, from Kentucky, takes only four years to reach the chewy, spicy sweet spot bartenders swear by. But the Old Pulteney 21-year-old Scotch probably needed to attain drinking age to hit its briny perfection.

Tonia Guffey, a bartender at Dram in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, offered an anthropomorphic analogy. “Not every human hits their peak of beauty at the same age,” she said, “and neither does every spirit.”

WATER IS AN ABOMINATION John McCarthy, head bartender at the Lower East Side bar Mary Queen of Scots, thinks the aversion to diluting whiskey is a matter of machismo. “We’re American men,” Mr. McCarthy said, “and if it doesn’t hurt, it’s not good!” But softening the blow, said Franky Marshall, a bartender at the Monkey Bar, is far from a bad thing. “Adding a little water to whiskey serves to ‘open up’ the spirit, releasing an array of subtler flavors. It can truly show you a completely different profile of a whiskey.” It’s also what most Scots do, and they ought to know. Alla Lapushchik, owner ofPost Office, a Williamsburg bar with a vast whiskey list, offers water even when customers don’t ask for it. “You don’t put water in beer or wine, so it doesn’t occur to people to do it with whiskey,” Ms. Lapushchik said. “I’ve had people order Booker’s 127 proof neat.”

SWEET IS SILLY Another fallacy that hurts the pride of many a modern mixologist is the widely held belief that sweet cocktails are inherently insipid. “I think expectations are still informed by the cocktails of the pre-craft era, when people added sour mix and cranberry cocktail,” said Tom Chadwick, owner of Dram, who insists that all his cocktails, even the sweet ones — like the bar’s current Loose Noose, a mix of bourbon, sweet vermouth, amontillado sherry, and touches of cinnamon syrup and allspice dram — are balanced, with the spirit, citrus, sweetener and other elements cohabiting in the glass. “It’s a way of communicating that you’re sophisticated — ‘I don’t want a Mudslide. I want something complicated.’ ”

GIVE THEM THEIR PROPS The reputation and quality of tequilas and mezcals has risen recently. But drinkers fall back on frat-boy practices, like asking for a lime and salt, a ritual that dates to the days of lousy tequilas. “I say, ‘Whatever spirit I serve you is good, ” said Ivy Mix, a bartender at the Clover Club in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, “and you don’t need to cover it up.’ ” Then there’s the worm in the mezcal bottle. “It was created by Gusano Rojo in the 1950s,” said Steve Olson, an owner of the Lower East Side tequila and mezcal bar Viktor & Spoils, of the widely sold mezcal brand, “when the tequila market had boomed and left mezcal far behind, as an enterprising marketing attempt to get mezcal away from its image as moonshine.”

MISCELLANEOUS MYTHS Despite the avalanche of articles after absinthe’s reintroduction to the United States a few years ago, some ideas about it remain rooted in the 1890s. Customers “really hope they’ll hallucinate,” said Maxwell Britten, beverage director at Maison Premiere, a Williamsburg bar well stocked with absinthe. “I tell them, ‘If you drink enough alcohol of any category, I guarantee you will hallucinate.’ ” Karin Stanley, a bartender at Dutch Kills, in Long Island City, Queens, rattled off her litany of ripostes: “ ‘No, you aren’t going to see anything’; ‘no, you aren’t going to cut your ear off’; and ‘yes, it is supposed to taste like that.’ ”

Other delusions as tough as jerky: that vodka has no calories and is better for you, Ms. Stanley said; that “Jägermeister is made with deer’s blood,” offered St. John Frizell, owner of Fort Defiance in Red Hook, Brooklyn; and that Irish whiskey brands are Catholic or Protestant, depending on where they’re made. “If you look into the ownership, it’s all international corporations,” Mr. Frizell said. “I don’t think the Irish even care.”

Odds are, many misconceptions will survive. The bar has ever been a greenhouse of hyperbole, folklore and rumor. “I’d say a good 30 percent of what’s said over the mahogany is generally baloney,” said Derek Brown, owner of the Passenger and Columbia Room in Washington. “Why wouldn’t that apply to myths about alcohol, too?”

A Beer At...McLoughlin's Bar

2011-12-09T12:42:00.001-05:00

Don't say I don't suffer for my work. To write this column, I had to sit next to the know-nothing, loudmouth, blowhard barfly of all time for a solid hour. It was painful. The bartender, however, was completely charming.

A Beer At...McLoughlin's Bar

"Don't be too successful," said the sage with the load on at the end of the bar. "It's not the Irish way. It's egotistical." The Colleen next to him gave him the same Am-I-Really-Sitting-Here-Listening-to-You stare she'd given him all night. It was the look of an opinionated woman who's only tolerating your bullshit because you happen to be the pal of her boyfriend. The boyfriend was smartly not mixing in. He just looked on with a big open grin, thoroughly enjoying himself.

The McLoughlin family have not taken the sage's advice. They've made a nice go of their small Astoria pub for 46 years. Their generosity might have a lot to do with that long run. Since 1965, they've laid out a Thanksgiving buffet on the night before Turkey Day. It's open to all, free of cost. A free dinner is also offered on one other calendar date. As to that day, I'm only going to say: this is an Irish pub. You figure it out.

The pre-holiday showdown doesn't mean McLoughlin is shut down on Thanksgiving. They'll be open. (They're open 365 days a year.) If you've got nowhere else to go, and are in the mood for a bucket of Little Kings for $10, come on in. You'll be served by a kind-faced bartender with the gentlest Irish brogue and the cleanest white shirt I've ever seen. Even the sage is welcome. "You should read Francis," he said. "Francis Bacon?" asked the Colleen. "No. St. Francis of Assisi." The Colleen said she wasn't the religious sort, and didn't put a lot of stock in a book written 2,000 years ago by people she know. Did he know who wrote it? "It was divinely inspired," he replied after some hesitation. "You're a smart man," she told him. "You're smart. But I don't know how much sense you got."

"We haven't had a real President in the White House since Teddy Roosevelt," said the Franciscan, launching into politics. "Teddy. Not Franklin Delano. Obama is an idiot. He was once asked what his favorite baseball team was. He said, since he grew up in Hawaii, it was the Oakland A's. So he was asked who is favorite player was. He said, uh, ah, um. He couldn't name one! He looked like an idiot. Now, if George W. Bush had done that, it would have been news all over. Take away his teleprompter, Obama isn't that smart. Before he was elected, he didn't work a day in his life. My father always said, don't trust a man who hasn't worked a day in his life."

"But," said the Colleen, "you're unemployed!"

—Robert Simonson

2011-12-07T12:42:00.000-05:00

You never where people are going to fall on certain issues. When this column came out on Eater a week ago, I had regular readers attack me for voicing even the slightest support of Coors Light. Meanwhile, respected bartenders took me to task for knocking Coors Light.

A Beer At...Connie O's Pub

There are two taps at Connie O's. One says Coors. One says Coors Light. They both draw Coors Light.

"I know it says Coors, but it's always Coors Light," said the blonde woman behind the bar with the careworn face. If you want something else, there's Bud Light in bottles. If you want something other than that, go find another bar.

"$1.50," said the woman. $1.50? I looked at my watch. 9 PM. Not happy hour. I laid down two soft, crumbled dollars and got two quarters back. Hell, Coors Light ain't worth much, but it's worth that.

The woman retreated to her high, cushioned chair under the television. "You want to watch something else," she asked her two customers, an unsmiling, unmoving woman wearing a pony tail and a blank stare, and a sweatshirt-wearing retiree who had spread a bunch of dollars on the bar to make sure the mugs of Coors Light never stopped coming. The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree ceremony was suggested.

The channel was switched on both the TVs behind the bar, but to two different networks. So the program was never quite in sync. What Al Roker chirped on one set, he chirped three seconds later on the other. A Mariah Carey-Justin Bieber Christmas video premiered. 41-year-old new mother Carey, dressed in fur-lined Santa mini-dress, all but did a lap dance for the virginal Bieber. No one at the bar blinked, though the ponytail did say, "She just had twins." Michael Bublé lent his harmless head tones to "Silver Bells," back up by a African-American sextet. "Who's that singing with him?" asked ponytail. Roker said. "Naturally 7" repeated the bartender, "whoever the hell that is." "Who they singing with?" asked the retiree. "Michael Bublé," said ponytail, somewhat surprised. Pause. "Who's that?" said the old man.

"You got a tip at the end of the bar," the retiree informed the bartender. "No, that's Byron," she corrected. "He's coming back." Byron did come back. He didn't have long to walk to get to the end of the bar, where he sat alone and said nothing. Connie O's is a snug joint, with low ceilings and a very short, but very old, wooden bar. Video games, a pool table, and boxes and boxes of Coors Light make the Greenpoint dive seem even tighter than it is. And two small windows at the front give the room a bunker-like feel.

But Connie O's is not without spark, especially this time of season. The owner goes all out with the Christmas decorations (as, apparently, she does for every holiday). The lights in the lanterns are red and green. A shelf opposite the bar is laden with Santa and Snowmen statuettes. Lights and tinsel are everywhere you look. Even the bricks outside are painted green (they're always like that). It's damn cheery. As far as real holiday spirit's concerned, Connie and Rockefeller are pretty evenly matched.

—Robert Simonson

Vodka Takes a Positive Turn

2011-11-28T12:47:00.003-05:00

Big Vodka continues to breed the worst habits among drinkers, convincing them that the most desirable qualifier in liquor is "smooth," that a 17th distillation actually means something, and inundating than with ludicrous, infantilizing new flavors like marshmallow.

But a happier trend can be found among America's craft distillers, which have in the past couple years have emphasized their vodkas' source material and provincial bonafides. Message: our vodka tastes like something and has, perhaps, a terroir of sorts. Vodka is still vodka, of course, but this embrace of specificity, instead of packaging, is certainly a step in the right direction.

Here is a brief article I wrote for the December 2011 issue of GQ about three of the newer, better vodkas out there.

This Year, the Choice Is Clear

For the last decade or so, the badge of honor in the vodka world was how many times you distilled. Three times, five times, ten. The more flavorful rough edges sanded off, the better. It was a breakneck race toward smooth, anonymous nothingness. Not any longer. The best new American craft vodka makers want to actually taste like something. Taking a tip from locavore trends, they proudly trumpet the provinciality and specificity of their source material. Here are three small-batch vodkas you won't mistake for one another.

BOYD & BLAIR, Glenshaw, PA. Made from local spuds, this vodka is rich, round, creamy and slightly sweet. The savvy B&B recently made a play for bartenders' hearts by releasing the 151 Professional Proof, perfect for infusions. (Don't worry: Consumers can buy it, too.) ($32)

DRY FLY VODKA, Spokane, WA. Dry Fly is one of a number of vodka distillers that now boast of using wheat from local farmers. Fashioned in a German-made pot still, it's a lightly bready, balanced, understated dram. ($32)

SPIRIT OF THE HUDSON, Gardner, NY. Long before wine, whiskey and summer homes took over, the Hudson Valley was known for its apple orchards. That's what Tuthilltown uses to make this light, unusual and appealingly fruity spirit. If there's a way to drink an Appletini without shame, this is it. ($35)

—Robert Simonson

Getting Your Thanksgiving Bar in Order, Part III

2011-11-23T22:50:00.000-05:00

Here is the third and final piece of Thanksgiving drinking advice I wrote for the New York Times' Diner's Journal blog.

Q. A number of the people coming for Thanksgiving have a taste for, well, "girly drinks." (I'm sorry, but you know what I mean). Is there a cocktail that will I can make for both them and also those with more, er, sophisticated tastes?

A. By "girly," I'm assuming you mean a drink that is on the sweet side. And possibly pink. And very possibly a Cosmopolitan. I can't help you on the latter two points. The discerning drinkers at your gathering aren't going to touch a pastel-hued libation, no matter what the pedigree. But a bit of sugar shouldn't be a divisive issue. Contrary to popular belief, a sweet drink need not be a unsophisticated one. Much of the history of cocktail creation has been striking the right balance of liquor, sweetener and acidity (usually in the form of citrus).

You might want to start people off with a simple Champagne cocktail. French bubbly satisfies every taste, from the frivolous to the dignified. If the serious imbibers balk, remind them that this is what Victor Laszlo drank. And he won both World War II AND Ingrid Bergman.

Champagne Cocktail

6 oz. Champagne

1 sugar cube

Angostura bitters

Pour Champagne into a chilled flute. Soak the sugar cube with the bitters and drop into the glass. Garnish with lemon twist.

Another potential consensus builder is the Bijou, a gin-based minor classic from the 1890s that is a favorite among mixologists. An ounce of sweet vermouth satisfies the sweet tooth, while an equal portion of herbal Chartreuse lends some complexity. Tell your more worldly guests that this drink is found in the "Bartender's Manual" of 19th-century bar legend Harry Johnson and you'll win their approval. (Some choose to increase the gin content to create a more dry, less herbal drink. You may want to test drive the recipe before serving.)

Bijou

1 oz. London dry gin

1 oz. sweet vermouth

1 oz. Chartreuse

Dash orange bitter

Still ingredients over ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Due to the recent introduction of some artisanal sloe gins, such as Plymouth, this sloe berry-infused liqueur has partly recovered from its trashy 1970s reputation as an artificially flavored, bottom-shelf mixer found in low-rent drinks like the Alabama Slammer. Because of this, the bloom is back on the Sloe Gin Fizz, a delicious drink that just happens to be sweet, frothy and purple.

Sloe Gin Fizz

1 oz. Sloe Gin

1 oz. Gin

3/4 oz. fresh lemon juice

1 oz. simple syrup

Shake ingredients with ice and strain into ice-filled highball glass. Top with soda water.

Finally, I can't imagine anyone at your feast objecting to a classic Pisco Sour, founded on the centuries-old, South America-born (both Chile and Peru claim it as their own), grape brandy. You could just give everyone a whiskey sour, and get the same effect, but this will lend a festively exotic note to the day.

Pisco Sour

2 oz. Pisco

3/4 oz. lime juice

1 oz. simple syrup

1 egg white

To best integrate the ingredients, first shake without ice, then shake with ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish the frothy top with a few drops of Angostura bitters.

Getting Your Thanksgiving Bar in Order, Part II

2011-11-22T01:25:00.000-05:00

Here is the second of the Thanksgiving drinking queries I tackled for the New York Times. The reader asked for suggestions on how to make a wealth of different cocktails from a poverty of bottles. I was happy to point out that you don't need to buy out the liquor store to attain a liquid variety at home. The overwhelmingly positive reaction to this article from the cocktail industry reaffirmed my belief that many in the industry favor the simplicity of the classics over the increasingly ornate drinks being produced today.

Can You Recommend a Few Nice Cocktails That Use the Same Spirits?

By ROBERT SIMONSON

Q. Can you recommend a few nice cocktails to serve before dinner? We don’t own a lot of liquor. So, ideally, we’d have the option of three to four cocktails that use the same liquors (so that we can get away with only buying a bottle or two). — TLD, Boston

A. The rococo, nine-ingredient inventions of today’s mixologists notwithstanding, you can do surprisingly well, variety-wise, with just a few elixirs. Get yourself a bottle of quality London dry gin and some dry vermouth, then pick up a dozen lemons and limes each (fresh squeezed juice is always best), and you’re set for successive rounds of martinis, gimlets, rickeys, fizzes and Collinses.

It you’re brown spirits people, buy a good rye or bourbon (depending on your tastes) and some sweet vermouth, plus a bottle of Angostura bitters, as well the aforementioned citrus (add an orange or two), and you’re in for an evening of manhattans, old fashioneds, whiskey sours and, yes, Collinses. And, don’t forget, that vermouth makes a great pre-dinner cocktail on its own and is nothing to be scared of.

Furthermore, if somewhere in the back of your bar or kitchen cupboard you find a bottle of Scotch your brother gave you a few years back, and some stray, neglected standbys like Cherry Heering, Cointreau, Bénédictine and grenadine, you’re good to go for a few other less famous, but no-less-classic, cocktails, like the ward eight, blood and sand, Bobby Burns and white lady. Enough possibilities? Get mixing!

Martini (Gin-vermouth ratios in martinis are highly personal. I prefer 3 or 4 to 1. You may like it drier or wetter. Adjust accordingly.)
3 ounces gin
1 ounce dry vermouth.

Stir over ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with an olive or lemon twist. Or both. (It’s Thanksgiving!) For a Gibson, garnish with one or two cocktail onions.

Gin Gimlet5 ounces gin
1 ounce lime juice
Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into two chilled cocktail glasses.
Note: Some say this is the one cocktail in which Rose’s lime juice must be used. Let your taste be your judge. For a gin rickey, strain into a highball glass full of ice and top with soda water.

Gin Fizz3 ounces gin
1 1/2 ounces lemon juice
2 ounces simple syrup.
Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into two rocks glasses. Top with soda water.
Note: Shake this with an egg white and you’ve got a silver gin fizz; with an egg yolk, and it’s a golden gin fizz.

Collins3 ounces gin, rye, bourbon or (if you must) vodka
1 1/2 ounces lemon juice
2 ounces simple syrup
Club soda.
Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into two highball glasses filled with ice. Top with club soda.

Manhattan
2 ounces rye or bourbon
1 ounce sweet vermouth
1 dash Angostura bitters
Maraschino cherry.
Stir the ingredients over ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with cherry.

Old Fashioned1 teaspoon simple syrup
2 dashes Angostura bitters
2 ounces rye or bourbon
Twist of orange peel.
Place the simple syrup and bitters into the bottom of a rocks glass. (Crushing a sugar cube with the bitters will do as well.) Pour in the whiskey. Add ice and stir. Garnish with thick twist of orange.

Whiskey Sour4 ounces rye or bourbon
2 ounces simple syrup
1 1/2 ounces lemon juice
Orange slice and maraschino cherry for garnish.
Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into two chilled rocks glasses. Garnish with orange slice and cherry.

Vermouth Cocktail3 ounces dry vermouth
3 ounces sweet vermouth
4 dashes of Angostura bitters
1 teaspoon of simple syrup.
Stir all ingredients over ice and strain into two chilled cocktail glasses.

Blood and Sand1 1/2 ounces blended Scotch
1 1/2 ounces Cherry Heering
1 1/2 ounces sweet vermouth
1 1/2 ounces orange juice
Maraschino cherry.
Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into two chilled cocktail glasses. Garnish with cherry.

Ward Eight4 ounces rye or bourbon
1 1/2 ounces orange juice
1 1/2 ounces lemon juice
1 ounce grenadine.
Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into two chilled cocktail glasses. Garnish with cherry.

White Lady3 ounces gin
1 1/2 ounces lemon juice
2 ounces Cointreau.
Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into two chilled cocktail glasses.

Bobby Burns2 ounces blended Scotch
1 ounce sweet vermouth
1/4 ounce Bénédictine.
Stir over ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Simple Syrup1 cup sugar
Mix sugar with a cup of water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer until the sugar has dissolved. Cool and refrigerate.

Getting Your Thanksgiving Bar in Order, Part I

2011-11-21T11:24:00.000-05:00

One of the happiest assignments that have fallen my way in months came last week when the New York Times asked me to field Thanksgiving cocktail queries from readers. I love the idea that there are people out there who consider the pre-feast tipple an intricate part of the day, and want to get it right as much as they want the bird to achieve a perfect brown. I also like having a direct line to inquiring cocktailians.

Here's the first question that came my way:

What Are Some Festive Cocktails That Are Easy to Make for a Big Group?

By Robert Simonson

Q. My future in-laws always have a holiday cocktail contest. What are some sure-to-please recipes which are festive, and relatively easy to put together for a big group?

A. For a pre-cornucopia cocktail to get the gathered into a convivial mood, the temptation is to go with something brown and warming. It’s fall, there’s a nip in the air, and a harvest-like scene awaits on the table. Something in the whiskey or port family seems in order. But you’ve got a heavy dinner ahead of you. The last thing you need is an equally heavy drink.

With that in mind, here a few recommendations that split the difference. (All of the below are stirred drinks, and thus readily made in large batches.)

Simplest solution first. I’ve always found a batch of Negronis — equal parts London dry gin (I recommend Beefeater or Plymouth), sweet vermouth and Campari — makes for a light and enticing opening act to any meal. The gin won’t weigh you down, and the Campari will enliven your appetite. Also, the drink’s as easy as a martini to make.

Negroni1 ounce London dry gin
1 ounce sweet vermouth
1 ounce Campari
Orange peel, sliced.

Stir over ice and strain into a glass, preferably one filled with ice. Garnish with a fat swath of orange peel.

For something along the same simple but satisfying lines, try an Old Pal, which subs in whiskey for the gin, dry vermouth for the sweet. The result is a nice balance of the warm, the sweet, the spicy and the bitter.

Old Pal1 1/2 ounces bourbon or rye whiskey
3/4 ounce dry vermouth
3/4 ounce Campari
Orange peel, sliced.

Serve over ice in a rocks glass with a fat swath of orange peel.

The Saratoga is another surprisingly unsung concoction that is conjured up with ease. It’s just a Manhattan with a significant assist from brandy. But that dose of Cognac adds a world of depth, and a whiff of the gentleman’s club, to the drink.

Saratoga
1 ounce rye whiskey
1 ounce Cognac
1 ounce sweet vermouth
Dash Angostura bitters
Twists of lemon.

Stir ingredients over ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with twist of lemon.

The Fernando is a creation of the Greenwich Village bar Employees Only that I’ve always found to be a pitch-perfect prelude to any repast. The equal play it gives to the intensely herbal Fernet Branca, and the sweeter and more lightly herbal Galliano and Cinzano Bianco will snap you out of the sleepiest holiday fatigue.

Fernando
1 1/4 ounces Fernet Branca
1 3/4 ounce dry vermouth, preferably Carpano Bianco
3/4 ounce Galliano
1 mint sprig.

Stir ingredients over ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Smack the mint sprig to release its natural aromas and place in glass.

The PDT bartender Jim Meehan’s Nouveau Sangaree strikes the right autumnal balance with it twin base of Beaujolais nouveau (released every November) and Laird’s bonded apple brandy. Sloe gin and maple syrup remind you that life should be sweet during the holidays.

Nouveau Sangaree2 ounce Beaujolais nouveau
1 1/2 ounce apple brandy
1/2 ounce sloe gin
1/4 ounce maple syrup
2 dashes of Angostura bitters

Stir over ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

“Beta Cocktails,” the mixologists Maksym Pazuniak and Kirk Estopinal’s excellent new book of counterintuitive mixed drinks, contains a number of potions that — with their emphasis on Italian bitters and amari like Cynar, Campari and Averno — perform well both as appetite-spiking aperitifs and digestion-aiding after-dinner drinks. One of my favorites is Italian Heirloom. Like many of the cocktails in this book, it looks slightly crazy on paper. But the alchemy works.

Italian Heirloom2 ounces Cynar
1/2 ounces blended Scotch
1/2 ounces Laphroaig 10-year-old Scotch
Pinch salt
5 lemon twists.

Mix ingredients, expressing the lemon peels and dropping them into the glass. Stir over ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon twist.

Christina Turley Goes Home

2011-11-08T15:42:00.000-05:00

With a name like Turley, you can't hide from the wine world for long.

I first met Christina Turley in her short, but celebrated, pose as the sommelier of several of David Chang's New York restaurants. She got a lot of attention during that time, as only a beautiful woman with a winning personality holding a bottle of wine can. Last year, she returned to the family farm to take up her part in the Turley wine dynasty. (Her father is vintner Larry Turley, her aunt Helen.) Here's a profile I did of the young turkess for Imbibe.

Back to Her Roots

By Robert Simonson

When Christina Turley was nine, she drew a picture of the perfect wine. “It was a Lancers-shaped bottle,” remembers her father, famed California Zinfandel vintner Larry Turley, referring to the sweet Portuguese wine that was ubiquitous in American liquor stores in the 1970s. “On the label was a picture of herself. And the wine’s name was ‘Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate.’ ”

Now 26, Christina is back at her father’s side in Napa Valley, after a high-profile stint as wine director at David Chang’s Momofuku restaurant empire in New York City. And she’s still coming up with peculiar names for wines. The first-ever Turley Cabernet Sauvignon, which she’s crafting along with her father and Turley winemaker Aaron Jordan, will be called The Label. The name is a crow-eating reference to an infamous verbal dart Larry Turley once tossed at his fellow Napa growers. The jibe was something to the effect that Cabernet people are reputation junkies who “drink the label,” whereas Zinfandel lovers drank the wine. “I wanted to acknowledge the hypocrisy that we had said we’re not Cabernet people, and here we are doing Cabernet,” Christina says. Her voice is soft and polished, yet kittenish, with no trace of accent, either West Coast or East Coast. It's the professional voice of someone who greets strangers with a smile all the time. “I also like the simplicity of the name.”

The grapes for The Label come from a Cabernet vineyard that has long sat next door to the Turley estate and is now part of the family’s property. She emphasizes that the wine, which will be released later this year, will not be like so many other California Cabs. “It’s a throwback to the classic Cabs of Napa in the ’70s,” Christina says. “It’s a little bit lower in alcohol, not as punch-you-in-the-face. The bottle itself is the same sort of flat-bottomed, green, lightweight bottle that those wines came in. The big bottles of today are so heavy you can’t tell when the thing is empty.”

A year and a half ago, Turley was as far from the family business as possible, while still remaining in the contiguous United States. She was wine director of the Momofuku restaurants in New York, overseeing, with fellow sommelier Kristina Sazama, the wine programs at Ssäm Bar, Ko and Ma Peche. The high profile position, combined with Turley’s famous name, youth and Audrey Hepburn-like good looks—long dark hair, short bangs and dark eyebrows frame a pale, elfin face—combined to transform her in a very short time into one of the most visible sommeliers in New York. (She kept her hair style in California, though she jokes its grown longer and more "vigorous" in the Pacific sun.)

It also helped that she was good at her job. “She ran the whole thing,” says Momofuku’s David Chang. “She overhauled the wine list at Ssäm Bar, helping Ssäm reach the ‘S. Pellegrino Top 50 Best Restaurants,’ and her work on Ko’s wine list helped the restaurant to initially earn its two Michelin stars.”

“I was always impressed with the unusual meals and wine pairings that she and the chef at Ko would pull together at the last moment,” says Sazama. “She’s got a great palate for acid. She’s a big Riesling fan. That was one of her go-to regions. She loved going for unusual wines and demanding that the distributors bring those in.”

Before Turley got busy turning Momofuku patrons into Riesling fans, Momofuku inadvertently turned her into one. In 2008, while Christina was still trying to figure out what to do with her life, Larry Turley took his daughter to Ssäm Bar. General manager Cory Lane was on duty that evening. “He recognized us and came over,” remembers Christina. “This was a bit of an epiphany moment for me. He did wine pairings for us. He poured all these dry and off-dry white wines. We were eating all this pork. I was like, ‘Who is this weirdo pouring these weird, off-dry, white wines? Do you have any idea who you’re pouring for? That my dad’s the master of big, red wine?’ But it blew my mind. Not only were the wines delicious, but they went with the food really well. It was the first time I saw how effective wine and food pairings could be.”

A couple months later, Turley met Lane by chance in Terroir, the East Village wine bar known for its vast Riesling selection. She boldly hit him up for a job. Luckily, there was a spot open and she got it. “I’d be lying if I didn’t say my name helped get my foot in the door at certain places,” admits Turley. “I realized how green I was experience-wise. But, like anything, it’s up to you to keep that door open. I worked really hard, and studied really hard.”

Turley began her tenure at Momofuku as assistant manager at Ssäm Bar. But when the wine director departed, she quickly shifted to that department. She became junior sommelier at Ko—whose 12 seats are fought over by New York foodies—where she managed to sneak a few Turley bottles onto the wine list. She was studying at the American Sommelier Association all the while, building on the informal education she’d received as a member of a family that includes star winemaker Helen Turley (Larry’s sister). Even Christina’s grandmother was a wine buff. “I’d always sit next to her during tastings, because she was the most spot on,” remembers Christina. “I’d go after her and whatever she said, I’d agree with.”

Turley’s determination and fun-loving personality put her over with her new colleagues. “She’s really good at connecting with patrons,” says Sazama. “She’s fabulous, outgoing and friendly.”

“We just hit it off as friends,” says Joe Campanale, beverage director at L’Artusi and dell’Anima in Greenwich Village. He didn’t take much notice of the famous handle when he first met Turley at a wine tasting. “I thought it was some weird wine coincidence,” he said. “That wasn’t impressive to me. What was impressive to me was her down-to-earth personality and how fun she was. She’s a total goofball. She doesn’t take the wine business too seriously.”

Turley and Campanale formed a tasting group with Jeffrey Tascarella of Scarpetta (and now with Tenpenny), Tanya Roqueta at Corton and a few others. They gathered weekly, each bringing a wine, and tasted them blind. “We were all such close friends that a lot of times it would go from educational to just hanging out with your friends,” says Campanale. “We weren’t as productive as we could have been, because we liked each other so much.”

Turley helped Chang open his much-hyped midtown restaurant Ma Peche in May of 2010. But despite her rapid climb in the New York wine world, she was receptive when a call came from out West beckoning her home. “I’d wanted my own project for a while,” she says. “David Chang knew that.” For a time, she thought that project would be a wine bar. But the opportunity to launch a new wine was too tempting to pass up. “Our winemaker, Aaron Jordan, is an extremely convincing guy,” jokes Christina. She tendered her notice at Momofuku and moved to California in late summer of 2010, back to the winery where, as a teenager, her dad made her clean all the barrels and wash the floors and walls. “They’ve got a power washer,” recalls the petite Turley. “Christ alive! You accidentally point that thing at your toe and it will take it off!” She arrived just in time to see the Cabernet grapes harvested.

Recently, Turley also took on a position in the winery’s sales department. That will mean a lot of traveling, tastings and wine dinners, but this is where Turley shines. “She is so at ease at dinners and events and tastings,” says her father. “We’ve never traveled during harvest, so she’ll do that. She’ll be very busy in September. ”

Christina doesn’t object. “It’s fun. It made me happy to see how happy my dad was to have me back here. He and I are very similar. I feel more involved, closer to my family. It means a lot to me. This is my family’s name. I’m happy to be a part of it in this way.”

Liquor Program at Brooklyn's Nitehawk Cinema Up and Running

2011-11-02T01:52:00.000-04:00

Word that the Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, intended to make moviegoing just that much more fun by serving drinks was handed down a month or so ago. Last weekend, the spigots were finally opened, with drinks being served in the street level cafe and at the upstairs lobby bar.

We're not just talking wine and beer here. There's a good-sized selection of quality spirits, including Lagavulin Scotch and Fernet Branca. And bar manager Jen Marshall went so far as to embrace that popular trend, barrel-aged cocktails. Two are on offer: a Negroni, and a Manhattan made with corn whiskey, Dolin Blanc and Dolin Rouge vermouths, and orange bitters. Each of them are aging from six to eight weeks, and were batched late September, so they will be ready in a few weeks.

I haven't been, but apparently service is a thing to see. People crowd the bars only just before the show after all, so the bartenders must do about 150 covers in 30 minutes with every screening.

Among the current specials is a "Rum Punch" to accompany a viewing of Johnny Depp's "The Rum Diary."

Bellocq, New Cocktail Bar from Cure Team, to Open in New Orleans

2011-10-31T00:36:00.000-04:00

Neal Bodenheimer and Kirk Estopinal, two of the men behind Cure (above)—arguably the best cocktail bar in New Orleans and one of the best in the country—are opening a new cocktail lounge in NOLA this fall. It will be called Bellocq and will be situated inside the Hotel Modern.

Named after John Ernest Joseph Bellocq, a photographer who secretly photographed the madames living in pre-prohibition New Orleans, the bar will feature live music from international artists, burlesque and original cocktail creations that evoke the city's past. Most interesting to drinkers, however, is the focus of their cocktail menu. They will be dedicating their list to just one genre of pre-Prohibition cocktail: the Cobbler.

The Cobbler was was a very Royal of drinks in 19th century American. The Sherry Cobbler, in particular, won international fame. In days of old, this class of beverage was typically marked by a straw, some adorning fruit, a bit of sugar and a glassful of tiny ice. The liquor in the drinks at Bellocq will vary, but the style of each cocktail will remain the same. The cobblers will be served in metal glassware with real straws, made of actual straw, to replicate how cocktails were served in the 19th century.

The Hotel Modern is located on Lee Circle, near St. Charles Avenue. Opening is set for late November.

The Other Acid

2011-10-22T20:01:00.005-04:00

I had my first vinegar cocktail back in 2008 at PDT. It was called Paul's Club Cocktail, invented by Jim Meehan. Gin, simple syrup, a shrub made of concord grapes and a dash of Ricard. Relatively simple, but it was a revelation at the time. I liked it immediately. Vinegar has been a cultish ingredient in the cocktail renaissance for a few years now, but lately the trend has blossomed. I began noticing vinegar drinks in greater number a few months ago, shortly before and after having attended a seminar on the subject at Tales of the Cocktail in July. Two of the speakers at that seminar—Kelley Slagle and Ashley Greene—are quoted in the below article, which I wrote for the Times.

Make Mine a Vinegar Solution

Like many restaurants, Saxon & Parole likes to tantalize a diner with an amuse-bouche. But at this new Bowery restaurant the waiter doesn’t deliver a lightly grilled scallop or some tuna tartare on a slice of cucumber. No, he hands you a glass of vinegar.

Well, not quite. Saxon & Parole’s palate cleanser of choice is a shrub, which is not a leafy bush in this case, but a genus of sweetened vinegar-based beverage that has its roots in Colonial days. Lately the beverage director, Naren Young, has been assembling a pomegranate shrub, from pomegranate seeds and a tablespoon of pomegranate molasses left to macerate in cabernet vinegar and water, topped with a float of fino sherry.

Make no mistake: the piquant shot will prime your senses plenty for the coming meal. As Kelley Slagle, a former beverage director at Hearth and a shrub advocate, put it, “Vinegar’s the Zamboni for the tongue.”

In the public mind, vinegar doesn’t send off terribly positive vibrations to the drinker. It’s what wine turns into when it goes bad. But a collection of mixologists across the country are reaching back through the centuries to reclaim vinegar’s more palatable past.

“You can trace vinegar drinks back to the 18th century” in America, said Wayne Curtis, the liquor writer and historian. “The berries and fruits came and went so quickly, that people used vinegar as an acid to preserve them.” With the addition of sugar and water, refrigeration-bereft American pioneers had a tart, bracing beverage. Of course, it wasn’t long before someone realized that shrubs made dandy mixers. “You threw in some rum or whiskey, and that has a nice effect as well,” Mr. Curtis said.

Crack a 19th-century cocktail book, and you’ll find a shrub or three. But vinegar lost its position in the back bar early in the last century. Not until recently have restlessly inventive bartenders fetched it up from the pantry, embracing it as “the other acid,” an alternative to same-old-same-old lemons and limes.

And some have gone beyond simple shrubs — “the darling of vinegar cocktails,” in Ms. Slagle’s estimation. They’ll deploy vinegar straight in some drinks, as does Cabell Tomlinson, beverage director at Frankies 570 in the West Village, whose Tossed and Turned is a Dark and Stormy derivative pricked with balsamic vinegar. Or they’ll use a flavor-intense shrub reduction called a gastrique, as does Lynn House, the mixologist at the Blackbird restaurant in Chicago, who uses an apple cider vinegar gastrique in her Cognac-based Oz cocktail.

This fall, Peels, just across the Bowery from Saxon & Parole, will introduce a switchel. Modeled on a popular early American cooler, it combines molasses, ginger, apple cider vinegar, apple cider and dark rum. Ashley Greene, the bartender responsible for that drink, has also been toying with Manhattans, lacing them with a tincture of white wine vinegar and fennel seeds. “If you add a tiny bit,” Ms. Greene said, “it brightens up the acidity in a way that’s really attractive.”

Nonalcoholic vinegar beverages are also back from the dead. At Peels, the beverage director Yana Volfson has a short list of un-spiked shrubs, including raspberry, cranberry and beet versions. So does the Queens Kickshaw, an Astoria restaurant.

“We were making our own pickles in house,” said Ben Sandler, the owner. “The pickling liquid was being thrown away. Shrubs were a way to reduce waste, but also make something delicious.”

Jen Snow, a spokeswoman at Russ & Daughters, the Lower East Side smoked-fish store, told a similar eureka story born of thrift. “We pickle and cure beets when we make our beet, apple and herring salad, and we use the pickled beet juice that results from that step to make a shrub drink,” she said. The beet-lemon shrub was introduced last year and sells well.

Mr. Curtis attributes mixologists’ growing fascination with vinegar to “the restless search for something people haven’t done, and scouring history books.” That may well have been the genesis, but bartenders have found other reasons not to sour on the ingredient.

“For one thing, it’s shelf-stable,” Ms. Slagle said. “I’ve never had a shrub go bad. Flavor-wise, it has a lot more complexity than citrus.”

Noah Ellis, who regularly keeps two or three vinegar cocktails on the menu at Red Medicine, his restaurant in Beverly Hills, Calif., likes the acid’s talents as a fire-delivery system.

“Instead of throwing in a chile in a drink and muddling it, if you use just a little bit of chile or ginger in vinegar, it is a good carrier of that heat,” he said.

Vinegar is also a potential cost saver. “You don’t have to use a lot,” said Damon Boelte, the beverage director at Prime Meats in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, where you can order a Sidewalker, a beer-and-apple-brandy cocktail laced with apple cider vinegar. “You can buy one bottle per season.” (Bonus: vinegar doesn’t have to be squeezed every day.)

Many bartenders have found that their acidulous concoctions have received a surprisingly warm welcome.

The Celery Gimlet — Naren Young’s drink made of gin, lime juice, celery juice, green Chartreuse, chardonnay vinegar, celery bitters and a lightly pickled celery-strip garnish — is the most popular cocktail at Saxon & Parole. Still, it pays to tread lightly in drink descriptions.

“I never flat out say vinegar on the menu,” Ms. House said. “I use words like shrub or gastrique. Most people are shocked when they find out what the secret ingredient is.”

A Beer At...The Pig 'n' Whistle

2011-10-21T20:00:00.000-04:00

My latest Eater column:

A Beer At...The Pig 'n' Whistle

The way Irish pubs crowd the Theatre District, you'd think that George M. Cohan and his fellow Hibernians still dominated the New York stage as they did in the first decades of the 20th century. One of the oldest is the Pig 'n' Whistle, which, the sign says, was founded in 1969. This is one of a handful of bars in the City that go by that name, most under the same ownership. It was founded by John Mahon, who ran an Irish music hall in London, and Peter Magee, who owned a bar in the Bronx, also called the Pig 'n' Whistle. The website brags that the original location was in a W. 48th Street townhouse owned by President Taft, and that the place "quickly became the meeting place for New York's literary and banking elite." What bankers and writers were doing hanging about that part of midtown—or hanging out with each other—I have no idea.

The new location, on W. 47th near Time Square, is the meeting place of tourists and sports fans. Or maybe just tourists who are also sports fans. Anyway, no bankers. To my left at the bar was a Englishman who groaned or grunted with every triumph and failure of Manchester United. To my right were two strapping young German girls, sipping slowly through their glasses of Stella Artois, the ubiquitous Budweiser of imported beer. "Vat is that duck beer?" one asked the bartender. She meant the Goose Island IPA. The tap handle did kind of look like a duck. The bartender gave her a sample. She ordered a Boddington's instead. There is a long menu of Martinis, not a single one made with gin or vermouth. Also a Pig 'n' Whistle Ale on tap. But the bartender didn't know who made it for the bar, so I opted a pint of duck beer.

The guests over at the Doubletree Guest Suites across the street seem to like the Pig 'n' Whistle. Who can blame them? In the costly world of Times Square, it ranks as a cheap date. It's clean and there are t-shirts if you feel the need to take away a souvenir. A mother and two heavily-made-up daughters were given a whole booth, even though they announced their intention to only drink coffee. Most everyone else came in to watch the soccer game. The bartender killed the sound on the television when the commercials came on, but forgot to put it back on when the match returned. Nobody seemed to notice; they kept watching the game. The Englishman ordered another foamy Boddington's, "the cream of Manchester." He handed the barkeep a fifty. She held it up to the light. "It's OK," he said. "I just made it."

—Robert Simonson

Danish Drinking in the East Village

2011-10-06T18:14:00.000-04:00

I have heard from a few colleagues recently that the cocktail scene in Copenhagen had come into its own. I took in the news and then sighed heavily, knowing my chances of experiencing it anytime soon were narrow. But living in New York is great that way. Very often, the thing you want to experience will come to you, rather than you having to go to it.

On Oct. 5, PDT, the East Village speakeasy, played host to Nick Hobbernagel Hovand, a bartender at the Danish cocktail bar Ruby—which, like PDT, has a secret entrance. For the occasion, Hovand, a friendly chap in a brownish-reddish scruffy beard, came up with a guest menu of five drink, all of them served at Ruby.

The theme of the menu was "Salt and the Sea." Indeed, salt could be found in four of the five beverages. Hovand explained that he simply wanted to have the menu stand out from PDT's usual choices; salt isn't necessarily a staple ingredient at Ruby.

I tried two drinks. The first, the Rapscallion, has been on the Ruby menu since it open in 2007. It's a Manhattan riff featuring 2 parts Talisker Scotch, 1 part Pedro Ximinez sherry and a dash of Richard, which is used like bitters in this case. It's a simple, silky, sweet drink, but complex in taste. The ingredients almost war with one another, but stop just short. Instead, you get an ever-intriguing interplay of flavors.

I preferred my second choice, the 866, an on-the-rocks sipper made up Dild Aquavit, Campari, Grapefruit juice and salt. Dild is a modern Danish brand of Aquavit unavailable here. Its key note is not caraway, but dill. It has a fragrant, freshly cut nose and a taste to match. The drink was refreshing and piquant and only slightly bitter. I know from Beta Cocktails how well salt can play with Campari, and it did the same trick here. But, really, it's the unexpected taste of dill that makes the drink. For some reason, I thought the cocktail would go wonderfully well with pickled herring.

The rest of the menu is below.

Byrrh to Return to U.S. Shelves

2011-10-04T17:35:00.000-04:00

Byrrh is a French aperitif, a 125-year-old red-wine-based quinquina that thrived in the early 20th century. It was created by two brothers with the poetical names of Pallade and Simon Violet, and initially marketed as a health drink and sold in pharmacies. It's popularity declined after World War II, despite an heavy ad campaign. (It's hard-to-pronounce name couldn't have helped.) In 1961 the business was sold to CDC who made Dubonnet and Cinzano, which was later merged with Cusenier. In 1977 the brand was bought by Pernod.

Byrrh hasn't been seen on the American market for many years. But, as with many another European aperitif and digestif in recent years, it is now on its way back, it's return instigated by the demands of mixologists, the passion of liquor aficianados and the diligence of quixotic importers like Haus Alpenz. That house, run by Eric Seed, is in fact the one brining Byrrh in.

Byrrh is gentle by quinquina standards: fairly sweet, only mildly bitter—it reminds me of Bonal (another Haus Alpenz import) a bit—and has a fuller body than some aperitifs. The red wine used as the base hails from the Languedoc Roussillon—in the past the source of tons of very middling plonk, but lately the home of vintners of fine, affordable and experimental reds. It's generally drunk cold, straight or on the rocks.

Not Wine-Barrel Finished—Wine-Barrel Matured

2011-10-03T04:49:00.001-04:00

Barrel-finishing has grown so common in the Scotch world as to have become cliched. Nearly every distillery from the Highlands to the Lowlands, it seems, now rolls out whiskys that were finished in Port barrels, in Sherry barrels, in Sauternes barrels, or whatever used wine barrel you care to mention. Some of these experiments are warranted and rewarding. Most are simply "interesting," or just plain outputting, and smack of publicity-seeking stunts aimed directly at the completist whisky collector's wallet.

And so I approached Auchentoshan's new 1999 Vintage Bordeaux Wine Matured Limited Edition with suspicion. Much as I love Auchentoshan, it looked like more of the same trend. But there's a difference here. The distillery didn't just toss some of its aged distillate into another barrel for a few months, called it "finished" and slap a different label on it. This whisky was aged in its Bordeaux barrels the entire time. A full 11 years, in fact. So this commitment began long ago, with the distillers tasting the juice from time to time until they decided it was time to release it.

It's a beautiful, and unusual, Scotch. The color is what strikes you first. That French red did its work, giving the whisky a unique and lovely burgundy hue. It is, unsurprisingly, winey on the palate, a beguiling marriage of the Scotch and wine characteristics, like Auchentoshan wrapped in a Bordeaux cloak. The wine notes don't feel temporal and pasted on, like they do in so many barrel-finished Scotches. It's bottled at cask strength (58%), so it gives quite a kick; water is recommended.

The price is $99.

Ken Burns' "Prohibition" Premieres Tonight.

2011-10-02T16:33:00.001-04:00

"Prohibition," the new six-hour, three-part documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, premieres tonight on PBS, with the second and third parts airing on Monday and Tuesday.

That Prohibition, which was repealed in 1933, is far from a dead issue in the U.S. was aptly illustrated just weeks ago when California struck down an age-old law that prevented bartenders from creating infusions. Loopy laws like this have lingered for decades on state government books, all part of the long, irritating hangover perpetrated by the Volstead Act.

"Sunday blue laws date back to the colonial era," said Ben Jenkins of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, which devotes a lot of time, money and lobbying to junking Prohibition-born laws. "But keep in mind Prohibition outlawed all alcohol in the United States. When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the 21st Amendment gave states the power to regulate alcohol. As states began making laws, as a practical matter most banned Sunday sales at that point." (They are called Blue Laws is because the Puritans in Massachusetts printed them on blue paper.)

Over the last ten years, states and localities have steadily been repealing Sunday bans across the country. Georgia was the latest state to roll back its Blue Law banning Sunday alcohol sales, becoming the 15th state since 2002 to pass such legislation. Pennsylvania is advancing a bill right now that would increase the number of stores the state allows to open on Sundays. Other states likely to repeal Sunday sales bans in upcoming legislative sessions include Connecticut, Texas, Minnesota, Indiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma and West Virginia.

Another leftover from Prohibition are state bans against liquor sales on election days. Delaware and Idaho dropped their bans in 2008; Utah in 2009; Indiana in 2010; and West Virginia this year.

Tennessee recently became the latest state to repeal its statewide ban against liquor tastings by passing legislation allowing tasting events at restaurants, bars and liquor stores. States likely to repeal tastings bans in 2011 or 2012 legislative sessions, include North Carolina, Rhode Island, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

The only downside to this trend: reporters such as I will soon be robbed of juicy stories about the ridiculous enforcement of weird, antiquated liquor laws.

As for the documentary, Burns and Novick do a nice job with the subject, though the telling is a bit sedate and, um, sober. The filmmakers deploy the patented Burns mix of still photographs, well-lit talking heads, celebrity voice-overs and chapter-designating titles. The episodes are nicely divided into "A Nation of Drunkards," "A Nation of Scofflaws" and "A Nation of Hypocrites." It's engrossing enough, but could have used a little more fizz, given the subject. This might have been accomplished by including a few liquor history experts along with the usual assortment of academic historians and stentorian authors. (What, Ken, don't you have my number?) And surely there are more inventive devices than the dramatic, close-up pourings of beer and whiskey into glasses. Saw that coming a mile away.

For Tea Party advocates out there, fair warning: Burns and Novick draw a clear and politically charged line between the fate of the unbending, overreaching, intolerant temperance forces and today's political action groups. If the Tea Party didn't borrow the Anti-Saloon League's playbook, then they're doing a nice imitation.

A Beer At...Rockaway Beach Inn

2011-09-30T21:19:00.000-04:00

I went pretty far afield for this one, all the way to the end of the A line, and then a few stop on the S shuttle. All to get to a crummy dive that caught my eye one day when I passed it on a bus. But, then, there are two kinds of people in this world: those who think a trip miles out of their way just to go to a run of the mill bar is a kind of adventure; and those who think such a detour is a boring waste of time. You know which category I fall in.

It just occurred to me that the bar's initials spelled RBI. Which would be a great thing for a sports bar. But I don't think people come here to watch sports.

A Beer At...Rockaway Beach Inn

I had a grudge against the Rockaway Beach Inn going in. The seedy denizens of this sketchy dive chased my photographer away when she tried to get some shots off. And she doesn't scare easy. I was not as abused by the rummies. But then I'm six feet tall and male. And I entered through the side door, not the main entrance, which gives out onto one of the most forlorn intersections in outer-borough slumdom.

The Rockaway Beach Inn—a rather grand title for this saloon—has a capacious interior. The black-and-white checked floor stretches on forever, past the long, hulking wooden bar, past a beaten-up dart board and a platform lined with a drink-resting ledge, and finally sloping down to a room pool table area. The giveaway that this address has long been a bar are the massive, twin, wooden doors to the ice box—one behind the bar, one around the corner near the bathroom.

The people who drink here tend to have matted hair, like they've just returned from the sea. Most don't look like they're in a hurry to go anywhere, but a few seem to have jobs. One had an impressive array of keys hanging from his belt. Another wore a sweatshirt from a local bait company. The most active barfly kept bouncing back from his stool to the jukebox, plugging in once, sunny hit from 1970 after another. Jackson Five, The Osmonds, The Partridge Family. The bartender knew all the words to "The Love You Save." "I Want You Back" got the bag lady in the pink sweatpants bouncing in her seat.

She was sitting in one of the ponderous round booths made of rough wooden slats that line the western wall. The middle one had a round table, on which was carved the life-size image of a baseball player I couldn't identify. Prying eyes from outside were held at bay by windows armed with both lace demi-curtains and rattan blinds.

The odd ducks at the bar were two young, short bicyclists, who were obviously on a tour of Brooklyn and had stopped in for a fortifying shot and a beer. (Later, I saw them at Rockaway Taco.) At one point, an old guy wandered in from the street with a shopping bag in one hand and a bicycle pump in the other. "Bicycle pump," he said. "Bicycle pump for sale! Anyone want a bicycle pump?" I looked up at the bikers. They paid no attention to the man. Not their pump, I guess.

—Robert Simonson

Portland Cocktail Week to Have Food Cart/Liquor Cart

2011-09-28T19:12:00.000-04:00

I will not be going to Portland Cocktail Week Oct. 20-23, and this picture almost makes me sorry about it. This is no no mere food cart. It is a food cart-liquor cart. You can order various munchies, sure, but also alcoholic concoctions to wash them down, like punch, boilermakers, gin and tonics and Jell-O shots. Makes our New York food carts seem positively unsophisticated.

The Oregon Bartenders Guild first opened the "Craft Cocktail Cart" on September 23 in the Cartopia Pod on SE Hawthorne and SE 12th Street in Portland. The wheeled boozer purveyor has been fully approved by the local liquor authority for a total of 10 "activations," including each Friday and Saturday night through Portland Cocktail Week. Cart partner Pernod Ricard will be providing the liquor.

All proceeds of the cart benefit the Oregon Bartenders Guild, a chapter of the United States Bartenders Guild which is a non-profit dedicated to education and the craft of cocktails.

The Flying Lobster, Le Petite Crevette's Wine Bar, Soft Opens

2011-09-25T13:18:00.000-04:00

The Flying Lobster, the new wine bar from Neil Ganic, the owner of the popular Carroll Gardens seafood eatery, Le Petite Crevette, quietly open on Sept. 24.

The bar, which sits in a corner storefront at Hicks and Union Streets, right next door to the restaurant, has been in the works for more than a year. The space was formerly the home of the Coffee Den.

Ganic opened with a modest selection of three white wines, three reds and one sparkler. Prices ranges from $7-$10 a glass, $30-$36 a bottle. The list will grow as the weeks go by, focusing mainly on small European producers. The initial array of wines were promising, including a 2009 Carpineti Capolemole, an excellent white from Lazio; and a 2009 Decencio Rioja Joven, a restrained, light-alcohol, yet full-flavored wine which harkens back to the old-style Riojas.

There's a small beer selection, and some aperitif-style, wine-based cocktails are in the works. Ganic also plans to serve cheeses and cured meats. Music will sometimes be feature on weekends.

The wine bar's curious name is a joking reference to an incident involving Ganic which received a great deal of publicity in 2009. As the story goes, a couple at Le Petite Crevette sent back their lobster, complaining about how it had been cooked. Ganic reportedly responded to this affront to his cooking by bringing a fresh lobster to the diners' table, asking them, "You think my fish is not fresh? Look how fresh this is!" Some accounts had him throwing the crustacean on the table. Thus: The Flying Lobster. So, I guess the man has a sense of humor about himself.

Another Silly Prohibition Law Bites the Dust

2011-09-23T13:57:00.000-04:00

The upcoming Ken Burns documentary "Prohibition," set to premiere on Oct. 2, couldn't ask for better publicity than this.

California Gov. Jerry Brown just signed into law a bill that permits Cali mixologists to use infusions in their cocktails. Of course, bartenders have been doing this for a decade, and drinkers have been thankful. But in 2010, state liquor authorities dug up an 80-year-old law that stated it was illegal to "alter" alcohol in any way. Harassed bars began to howl about the nonsense, and State Senator Mark Leno got to work. Here's the story:

New California Law Lets Bartenders Be More CreativeBy ROBERT SIMONSON

It is no longer illegal for a California bartender to put a basil leaf in a bottle of gin.

On Wednesday, Gov. Jerry Brown of California announced that he had signed Senate Bill 32, which overturns a legal vestige of Prohibition that made it unlawful to infuse alcohol with fruits, vegetables, herbs or spices. Such infusions have been popular in the country’s best cocktail bars for several years, and the old rule became a nuisance early last year when State Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control agents started warning bars like San Francisco’s Bourbon & Branch that they were breaking California law with their house-made tinctures and bitters.

To bartenders, the sudden enforcement of the obscure rule was alarming. Taking infusions away from innovative mixologists was akin to rescinding a hot dog stand’s right to use mustard.

The bill was introduced by State Senator Mark Leno, Democrat of San Francisco, late last year. After it was approved by the legislature, the San Francisco bartenders Josh Harris and Scott Baird started an online petition to pressure Mr. Brown to sign the legislation. On Wednesday, he did.

“In San Francisco and other cities where tourism is critical to the local economy, restaurant owners have been asked to stop serving infused cocktails in the name of an outdated law written decades ago,” said Mr. Leno in a statement. “This Prohibition-era statute did nothing more than punish California restaurants and small businesses that are using culinary innovations to survive in this difficult economy.”

“More than anything else, it’s similar to developments around the country where cocktail culture has outpaced the legacy of Prohibition laws that exist,” observed Frank Coleman, senior vice president of The Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S., a trade organization representing distillers that spends a lot of its time trying to strike down obsolete, antiliquor laws.

The bill contains an “urgency clause,” which means bars can start slinging their infused concoctions immediately.

Suze to Finally Reach U.S. Shores

2011-09-15T08:59:00.000-04:00

Peruse the back bar of the better cocktail haunts in New York, San Francisco and elsewhere and you'll predictably spot a few bottles that aren't sold in this country, liquors determined mixologists have smuggled in from Duty Free shops around the world. Havana Club, the Cuban rum, is one. Amer Picon, the French aperitif that is a critical ingredient in a Brooklyn Cocktail, is another. A third is Suze.

Suze, a bitter, wine-based French liquor flavored by yellow gentian, has been produced since 1889. It was invented by Fernand Moureaux, and Picasso immortalized it in 1912 in his Cubist work "Verre et bouteille de Suze." It is still fairly popular in France and Switzerland. And in the U.S. you'll sometimes see a bartender slip it in as an ingredient in a new cocktail. But mere mortals can not purchase it at the local liquor store.

Finally, however, the Suze drought it over. Domain Select has decided to import and distribute the Pernod-owned product. (Pernod bought it in 1965.) It will start showing up on shelves in January 2012.

According to Domaine Select, the Suze recipe isn't exactly what it was in 1889. Like so many other French and Italian liqueurs and aperitifs, it "evolved" into a more "consumer friendly taste." Which is another way of saying: sweeter, lighter, less bitter. But, for the U.S. launch, Suze is getting back to its roots. Domain Select will be importing Suze d'Autrefois, which is described as "a return to the original intensity and flavor profile." It will be modeled after the original 1885 recipe.

$30 will be the price.

The Tangled Vines They Weave

2011-09-13T01:53:00.001-04:00

The Tangled Vine wine bar is one of only reasons I'd consider living on the culturally denuded Upper West Side. Seriously, if this wonderful bar was in my neighborhood, I'd go once or twice a week, the wine list is so good, and so ever-changing (while remaining good, no matter how much it changes).

Here's the profile of the place I wrote for Edible Manhattan:

Bottle Shop: Tangled Vine Wine Bar

UPPER WEST SIDE—Victoria Levin has a ready defense for every one of your wine attacks.

Come to the Tangled Vine, the Upper West Side wine bar where she is beverage director, and ask for a pinot grigio, America’s insipid white of choice, and she’ll charm you into trying a sterling example of Gavi, the Piedmontese white. Request something in the line of a malbec, the South American reds now in favor, and you may end up sipping a Cahors, a French wine region where malbec was born.

Don’t misunderstand. These Gavi and Cahors buyers do not feel they’ve been played in some vino version of three-card monte. They’ve merely benefited from Levin’s talent for countering an everyday order with an uncommon bottle.

“How do I satisfy a palate and truly satisfy the customer, but give them a little something different?” This is the question Levin gleefully wrestles with every day. More often than not, she pins it to the mat. “There’s a lot of wine being made because there’s a belief that that’s what the consumer wants. It makes me sad when traditional winemakers start changing their ways because they want to sell to a mass market.”

Consider the troubling chardonnay question. Every sommelier and wine director in New York knows that a certain percentage of their clientele has a taste for the buttery chards that flow out of California in vanilla-scented rivers. But the Tangled Vine’s list is Euro-focused. Not a Yankee bottle in sight. What’s more, every wine is from an organic, sustainable or biodynamic producer. Little chance of finding a woody fruit bomb anywhere on Levin’s list. “I struggled with this since we opened,” says Levin, “to find something that was oaky enough for someone who really likes oak with their chardonnay, but not so oaky that I had no interest in serving it. I’m sensitive to oak.” She who sought did find. “I stumbled upon this,” she says of a Bourgogne Blanc Domaine Ambroise 2009. “The nose is what got me.” Marzipan, brioche, fulsome—an uninteresting nose, it is not. “On the palate, it’s got a hint of honey and tropical fruit, but plenty of toast and olive oil notes. Everyone asking for a California chardonnay has loved it.”

Levin—a brunette, lanky, vaguely Bohemian presence who favors billowy button-down shirts and antique jewelry—finds these missing-puzzle-piece bottles by any means necessary. Importers and distributors now know that she’s open to niche finds and narrow buys. If a wine’s good and available, even in minimal amounts, Levin will listen. Take the Ribera del Duero Viñedos Valderiz. “Guy calls me and says, ‘I have six bottles of ’02. You gotta try it.’ I try it. I’m blown away. I’m shocked by what it is. The ’04 and ’02 are polar opposites. I call him and he says, ‘Now I’m down to four bottles.’ OK, I’ll take it.”

Given this approach, her offerings are constantly in flux—as is the menu. “This keeps everyone on their toes, both staff and patrons,” says David Seigal, the restaurant’s chef. “We have a loyal customer base who are always excited to see new things.”

Before teaming up at Tangled Vine, Seigal and Levin were part of the opening team at the NoHo Spanish restaurant Mercat. It was there that Levin got hooked on Iberian wine. “I drank only Spanish wine. Every time I went to a restaurant, every time I took a bottle of wine to a party, it was Spanish.”

Indeed Levin is the wine equivalent of a serial monogamist who favors national immersion, one country at a time. She began her career in earnest at Alfredo of Rome, the Rockefeller Center mainstay. Confronted with an exclusively Italian list, she dove in headfirst. Following Mercat, she was hired by the Upper West Side wine bar Wine & Roses, where the varied list was mainly French. (Levin comes by this international hopscotch approach honestly. Born in Russia, her family lived in Austria and Italy before finally settling in New York.)

It’s the wines of Spain, however, that have retained the strongest claim on her heart. “I love that Spain has the variety,” she enthuses. “It has the variety of Italy and France, without the price points, without the infamy and notoriety, without the good side or bad side. Very little of it is mass-produced, because it hasn’t gotten the chance to [be].”

Her particular Iberian passion is Priorat, the tiny, mountainous, southwestern area whose reputation has soared in the past decade.

“The wines are big,” she trills. “They’re rich. They have a lot going on, a lot of spice, a lot of earth. They’re not demure in any way. It tastes like the dirt and earth of Priorat. The best ones have acid. If you can get acid in there, you’re talking about something really magical. It goes on and on and on. Suddenly you want food. They make you want to go to Priorat.” (Levin recently got engaged and there has been talk of a honeymoon in Spain.)

Levin, who loves to show off the wines that excite her, orders a bottle of Priorat “Clos Fontá” Mas d’En Gil 2002, a Garnacha- heavy blend. “I love it because it’s big and luscious. It’s got spice and earth and jam and the whole nine. But it’s got, dare I say, a feminine finish. It’s a big masculine wine that’s kind of winking at you.”

The bottle arrives, but it’s the ’01, not the ’02. Levin is even more excited by this (if that’s possible). “Oh, we have the ’01!” she squeals. True to the ways of the Tangled Vine inventory, this is the only bottle of this wine that the restaurant has. “The importer, they called me up and said, ‘Big Name so-and-so restaurant just took their 20 cases of this. I have a couple bottles left over.’ And I’ll take them, gladly. I’ll special it and put it on the list.”

I tasted the ’01, and damned if she wasn’t right. The big, earthy wine did have a feminine finish. It was winking at me. (Don’t worry about the remainder of that ’01 having gone to waste after we tasted it. Levin does this sort of thing all the time. If a customer is willing to commit to two goblets, she will open any bottle on the list.The rest of the wine is then offered by the glass to all takers.)

Levin’s ebullience can be infectious. “She has a well-developed palate and a desire to explore beyond the usual suspects,” says Bruce Kravetz, who owns Tangled Vine with Mark Hausner. “This has broadened my horizons beyond what I have come to enjoy and love to drink.” So, Priorat? “It’s now one of my go-to wines!”

Levin and Kravetz devised Tangled Vine’s debut wine list together, in a collaboration with Evan Spingarn (author of The Ultimate Wine Lover’s Guide). While the list today is more a Levin creation, autocracy is not her style. “I share all my decisions with my staff,” she explains. “If they don’t like it, what’s the point of me putting it on the list? I might think it’s great, but if they don’t think its sellable, so what? I want it to be wines that they’re passionate about.”

The kitchen keeps her thinking as well. Seigal’s menu changes as often as Levin’s wine list, and the question of which came first—the new entrée or the new wine by the glass—is very much a chicken-or-the-egg thing. At one point, Seigal put a steak on the menu because some new meaty reds were crying out for a slab of beef. More recently, some marinated mussels crostini were flying solo—until Levin fixed them up on a blind date with a Txacoli, the dry, high-acid wine from the Basque Country.

“For us, pairing wine is like a game of ping-pong,” says Seigal. “I’ll hit an idea over the net. She’ll hit it back. And so on until one of us slams it home. For me, it is an intellectual exercise, and it heightens the entire food and wine experience.”

Asked to cite an example of this symbiosis, both Seigal and Levin independently point to the same combination: Pork Montadito, crispy pork belly sliders, topped with pickled radish and garlic dijonaise, washed down with the silky, opulent 1992 Zilliken “Saarburger Rausch” Spätlese Riesling. “Riesling and fatty-spicy,” says Levin, simply. “It’s a kind of religious experience.” (I’m not the religious sort, but the two together were a kind of heaven.)

Tangled Vine is the Upper West Side’s first wine bar to focus on organic, sustainable and biodynamic wines. These naturally made wines largely eschew any sort of technological manipulation in the field, including various pesticides, artificial fertilizers, herbicides and chemicals. But the oenophiles who like them tend to care less about that than the wines’ likelihood of honestly expressing their grape varietals and terroirs. That’s why Levin likes them, too. Though she can wax idealistic about specific wines, she is a plain-spoken pragmatist about how the restaurant came to embrace this identity.

“It was a combination of what the neighborhood lacks and what we hoped people wanted and where our love and passion was,” says Levin. “That’s the answer to a lot of things here. We’re very close and tight-knit in our decision-making. We all enjoy sharing. We’re very good about compromising.”

Our tasting and conversation at an end, I prepare to leave. Not possessing much of a sweet tooth, I pass on dessert. But a Semolina Budino, laden with strawberries, lands on the table nonetheless. My questioning glance is answered by a glass of Maculan Torcolato, an Italian sweet wine, set down by the waiter. “It’s one of my favorites,” he explains. “I just had to give you some.” Looks like Levin has a protégé.

The South Africa Wine Conundrum

2011-09-12T01:20:00.000-04:00

It took a trip to South Africa to get me to fully wrap my mind around the hard-to-categorize South African wine scene. But I came back with an appreciation for the area's diversity and promise, the incredible beauty of the Cape winelands, the seriousness of the winemakers and the undervalued quality of many of its wines. I went down with an established affection for Iona's excellent Sauvignon Blancs and Mulderbosch's reliable rose. I came back devoted to so many more: Sadie Family, Raats, Boekenhoutskloof, Peter Finlayson, Vergelegen and Klein Constantia, not to mention the country's version of Champagned, Cap Classique, which is super-cheap and absolutely wonderful. (Also, Andrew Gunn of Iona has a great red blend and a pinot noir in the pipeline.)

Unfortunately, a lot of the best wines I tasted aren't easy to find here. The place where you'll find the greatest quantity of them is Union Square Wines. Go and take a look. For combining price and value, South Africa has few equals in the wine world. Here's the Edible Manhattan article:

Message in a Bottle

By Robert Simonson

Nothing about the South African wine industry is simple.

Start with their grapes. The country’s most widely planted white varietal is chenin blanc but, as in France, that grape wears many masks, from desert-dry to dessert-sweet, clean and crisp to dense and oxidized. Sparklers, too. The country’s best-known (but not most widely planted) red grape is pinotage, a cross between pinot noir and cinsault that’s grown almost nowhere else and despised as much as it is loved. The Cape Winelands are very old, and yet, the country’s categorized as a new-world wine region, its liquid bounty largely unknown to oenophiles until Apartheid fell. It’s a region that experiments with as many different grapes as any country in the world, despite being a beer- and brandy-drinking nation that largely ignores its own (ridiculously affordable) wines, exporting 50 percent of them elsewhere. This is a wine capitol that cannot even decide whether to say “syrah” or “shiraz.”

Stateside, this makes South African wine the face at the cocktail party that nobody can quite place. Even the savviest New York wine drinker’s mind can cloud over a bit when confronted with the South African section of the wine list (if, indeed, such a section exists). France is Bordeaux and Burgundy. Germany is riesling. California is cab and chard. And South African is…what, now?

South African vintners have for years looked on in frustration as other countries have etched out distinct consumer identities. “Argentina took malbec and made it theirs,” says Josh Levin, co- owner of the South African–leaning Kaia Wine Bar on the Upper East Side. “They did a good job at branding [malbec]…. I don’t think South Africa has ever been able to do that.”

“I think it’s a secret,” says Adam Block, who proudly pours South African wine at his Hell’s Kitchen restaurant Print. Block got hooked while consulting with the Sandton Sun hotel in Johannesburg. “They’re the most underpriced wines in the world,” he says. “South African wines fall into that sweet spot: They’re not only cheap, they taste great. I would get a few people who knew the wines to agree with me, but they never seemed to jump on the bandwagon. The big issue is most people don’t know what a South African wine is.”

But that may be about to change. The country has finally found a powerful marketing hook—and it was growing around their feet all the time.

South Africa’s wine lands encompass some of the most breath- taking biodiversity in the world. The dazzling scenery begins at Cape Town, where severe, cloud-capped mountains climb up from the sea. Beyond and around those peaks is the Cape Floral Kingdom, a plant and animal biodiversity hot spot that was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 2004. It is home to nearly 10,000 different species of plants, 70 percent of which are found nowhere else on Earth. As such, it is both the smallest and the richest of the globe’s half-dozen floral kingdoms. On Table Mountain, the flat-topped peak around which Cape Town nestles, the variety of plant life trumps the whole of England.

Nearly all of South Africa’s important vineyards are clustered within the Cape Floral Kingdom. This sort of specialized terrain is the very recipe of that elusive and magical wine concept “terroir.” “If terroir is important, then the age of that soil and the way the soil is constructed is important,” says Flagstone winemaker Bruce Jack. “That’s us—and it makes our wines different.”

The wine industry, recognizing the natural bounty around it—while simultaneously spying a unique selling point—founded the Biodiversity & Wine Initiative (BWI) in 2004. To become an entry-level member of the initiative, winemakers must conserve a minimum of two hectares of natural or restored natural land, as well as meet other strict guidelines for sustainability and protection of natural habitats. As of press time, 211 estates have signed up—just over half of the country’s approximately 400 vineyards—voluntarily setting aside a total of 130,633 hectares for conservation. That’s nearly fours times the land under vine in Napa Valley. Beginning in 2010, cooperating wines began pasting a white-green-and-purple “Integrity & Sustainability Certified” sticker on their bottles. By the end of this year, a full 80 percent of wines produced in South Africa will bear the seal.

At Boschendal—a historic vineyard nestled in the dramatic mountainous passes common to Franschhoek (“French Corner”)— winemaker J.C. Bekker drives his pickup truck up a patchy, paved road. On either side are rows of quarter-century-old yellowwoods, South Africa’s national tree. Further up are countless Protea, the flowering plants that bear spiky, artichoke-like blossoms of fantastic color. “Month on month you’ll find different things flowering,” says Meryl Weaver, a South African wine critic who accompanies us. Weaver knows her Protea like Belgians know their beer.

Bekker stops the truck high up the slope and gets out. Rolling layers of sloping mountains, leading to the sea, are divided this particular a.m. by dangerous brushfires that I initially mistake for romantic morning fog. A flat patchwork valley of farmed land stretches between Groot Drakenstein (“Big Dragon”) Mountain on one end, and Simonsberg Mountain on the other. He describes the Boschendal property as “all of that mountain, and all of that moun- tain and most everything in-between.” Nineteenth-century British imperialist Cecil Rhodes (of Rhodes Scholars and Rhodesia fame) bought and consolidated the land, originally 19 Huguenot farms, in 1887. The cottage he built in 1901 still stands. He stayed in it a single night before he died—the tin roof was too noisy.

Boschendal is a BWI Champion, a status attained when an estate devotes 25 percent of its lands to natural growth. Impressive as that sounds, it wasn’t that difficult for the estate, which is owned by the South African wine-and-spirits giant DGB. “It’s always been there,” says Bekker. “We plant less than 10 percent of our total property.”

Not as effortless has been Boschendal’s war against alien vegetation. Stark gray patches along the mountainside outline where tall umbrella-like Stone Pines, brought in by European settlers, once usurped the soil. “We started clearing this 10 years ago,” says Bekker, “first starting with all the little gullies that take the water from the mountain. And now we’re on the mountains.”

Boschendal has spent two million rand (roughly $300,000) in the effort. Why bother? Because native Cape plants survive on little moisture, whereas “one eucalyptus or blue gum tree will suck up 800 liters of water a day,” according to Sharon Hosking, a manager at Vergelegen. That storied vineyard’s 10-year alien clearing program began in 2004 and will eventually cost Vergelegen 14 million rand (over $2 million). Already, the work has caused three dry streams to flow again. Mountain leopards now prowl the valley. Over at Boschendal, there was a similar benefit. “Our dam filled up two months earlier than before,” says Bekker. “It’s a huge difference.”

When I suggest the watery riches justify the expense of uprooting the thieving alien species, Bekker, a serious man, bristles a bit. “The reason for it, is it’s the right thing to do,” he says. “Not to get mileage out of it.” Indeed, the winemakers who embrace the BWI ethos seem to take an unalloyed pride in their crusade. Estates like Bouchard Finlayson and Boekenhoutskloof crow like proud fathers when they uncover rare plants on their property.

Today’s South African winemakers have roots stretching back to Holland, France, Scotland, Germany and, of course, Africa itself. Franschhoek, for instance, was founded by Huguenots who emigrated in the late 17th century. Those Frenchmen would seem just the chaps to sink the first vines. But that honor goes, ironically, to the gin-guzzling Dutch, who ran ashore in 1652 to establish a base for the long-tentacled Dutch East India Company. The arrival in 1679 of an exacting, wine-loving commander named Simon van der Stel ushered in an era of quality. The vain Simon—Simonsberg Mountain and Stellenbosch, the town that functions as the hub of the vinelands and a name that is almost synonymous with South African wine, are among the many landmarks he named after himself—imposed fines on farmers who picked unripe grapes. He’s also responsible for the countless acorns that litter the Stellenbosch streets: His plan was to convert oaks into wine barrels, but the trees grew too quickly in the warm climate and made for poor wood. (In a sentimental gesture, oaks have been taken off the alien vegetation list.)

Simon van der Stel also produced the first South African wine to win worldwide fame: Vin de Constance.

The Constantia wine-growing district sits on a thin talon of land just south of Cape Town, and Klein Constantia is one of three vineyards that once made up the original Constantia estate. Over the centuries, it’s passed through many hands. During the Roaring 1920s, it was owned by the Pittsburgh steel baroness Clara Hussey, who threw Gatsbyesque parties around the Art Deco pool and enforced a set of wacky “house rules.” (Example:“No one must ever, even in self-defense, do anything to any of the dogs. They are kept for the purpose of barking.”)

A few decades before Hussey arrived, Phylloxera and bankruptcy KO’d the Cape vintners, and Vin de Constance ceased to be. The property was a ruin when it was purchased by Jooste family in 1980. Klein might have plodded along on a dull path had noted viticulturist Christiaan Orffer not told the owners, “Do you realize you’re sitting on possibly the first world-famous vineyard in the Southern Hemisphere.”

The owners vowed to re-create the wine that had once consoled the exiled Napoleon on St. Helena. They planted traditional bush vines of muscat de Frontignan in 1983, and the first new Vin de Constance in a century was released in 1990. “We haven’t fully explored the potential,” says winemaker Adam Mason. “We’re looking on establishing it in the States as a brand.” (In May, Klein Constantia vineyard was bought from the Jooste family by Czech- born U.S. citizen Zdenek Bakala, and Charles Harman from the UK, both investment bankers.)

If Vin de Constance was the first wine to win the Western Cape accolades, the sauvignon blancs are the most recent golden wines. Elgin Valley and Elim are part of the Overberg and Cape Agulhas areas, wine districts so young they don’t yet belong to a greater region. (South Africa’s Wine of Origin scheme, set up in 1973, divides the wine lands, in descending size, into regions, districts, wards and, finally, estates.) They hug the southern shore of the Western Cape, where the warm Indian Ocean meets the icy Atlantic. Until recently, the area was covered with apple orchards. Reborn as vineyards, they now hold the title of coolest grape-growing areas in the country. And cool is currently hot. Large midland wineries boast of buying southern grapes to lend acidity and fruit to their sauvignon blancs.

“It is recognized as a quality grape-growing area,” says Jac- queline Schneider Harris, the bubbly, blonde communications director for the family-run Paul Cluver Wines, which owns 2,000 hectares of the wide, bowl-shaped Elgin Valley (half of which is cordoned off for conservation). “You can demand a higher price.”

“Grapes were planted here in the mid-’80s by Dr. Cluver, so he is regarded very much as the pioneer of grape-growing in Elgin,” says Harris. At first, the good doctor threw any seed into the soil, to see what would spout. With time, his focus was trained on sauvignon blanc, sémillon, chardonnay, riesling, gewürztraminer and a single red grape, pinot noir.

Cluver isn’t the only winemaker who thinks South Africa has a future as a capital of pinot noir, crown grape of vino purists. Peter Finlayson was winemaker at Hamilton Russell—the first South African winery to prove Pinot could thrive there—before founding Bouchard Finlayson in 1989. White-bearded and sage-like, he speaks softly and pours a good wine. “My neighbor says this little valley comes as close to Burgundy, in terms of structure, as any place he knows outside of France,” he says.

Nearby at Iona, winemaker Andrew Gunn has some pinot in barrel, but sauvignon blanc is his calling card. His vineyards are high on a mountain plateau overlooking the sea and accessible only by a steep dirt road. Gunn bought the property in 1997 and, an engineer by trade, placed devices to log temperature around the farm. He discovered a climate “somewhere between Sancerre and Burgundy.” Out came the apple trees and in went sauvignon blanc, a grape that, says Vergelegen’s Hosking, “likes to see the water, but doesn’t like to get its feet wet.”

“What we expected in theory happened in practice,” says Gunn, who is of Scottish descent. “Our sauvignon blancs have none of the asparagus and green pepper that you get from warmer climates in South Africa. They get that because they harvest earlier. We get the pears, white fig, good minerality.”

The first Iona sauvignon blanc bowed in 2001. It cleaned up in awards and acclaim. Today, Iona is that rare thing, a critical and popular South African favorite that has conquered New York’s wine shops and restaurant lists. “Those sauvignon blancs really pop,” says Tanya Hira, owner of the South African wine bar Xai Xai in Midtown.

“Let’s face it, South Africa[’s climate] is hot,” says Rozy Gunn, Andrew’s pretty young spitfire of a wife. “We don’t have a lot of cool growing areas. This allows us to make wines that potentially can age. To me, that’s exciting.”

Still, for all Elgin’s success with sauvignon blanc, Harris feels the region’s reputation is still in limbo. “Ten years ago it had a real identity. Elgin—sauvignon blanc,” she says. “Subsequently, we’ve had a lot of guys planting all kinds of things. Now, it’s a little more confusing for the consumer. Elim seems to have overtaken it in terms of sauvignon blanc. The Elgin growers are trying to develop a language to make it more clear what they do. They’re trying to position themselves as producers of elegant wines.”

The straight-talking Gunn, however, doesn’t put much stock in slick sales angles. He believes South African wine must be un- derstood and accepted as itself. “People are waiting around for people to think about South African sauvignon blanc as being like New Zealand, or like France. It’s not going to happen. It’s its own thing. It’s not something that’s going to be helped by some simple marketing fix.”

Bruwer Raats also believes South African wine must be accepted on its own terms, and that it will take time. But he believes it about chenin blanc, not sauvignon blanc.

Along with the De Morgenzon and Forrester wineries, Raats is one of the premier producers of chenin in South Africa. And he is an evangelist on the subject. I meet him on a balmy night in March at 96 Winery Road, a rural restaurant found by Ken Forrester. It’s celebrated for its wine list and dry-aged steaks, and is the fallback gathering place for area growers.

Tolkienesque in his rumpled hair and ruddy, wide, shopworn face, Bruwer Raats leans heavily over one end of the table. He catches my gaze with a pair of dark, shining eyes and says he has 10 minutes.

“I’d worked in Napa,” says Raats, who founded his vine- yard in 2000. “In Bordeaux. I ran a cellar in Tuscany. I worked in Germany. What I found is there’s too many people in the world who try to be everything to everybody. They’ve got four or five white wine varieties, and six red wine varieties, a single varietal and a rosé and a bubbly. You end up being nothing to nobody.

“What I wanted to do was focus on one white and one red,” he continues. (The red he’s chosen is, eccentrically, cabernet franc. He succeeds brilliantly with it.) “[South Africa’s] got half the world’s chenin plantings. They have it in the Loire, but they call it Vouvray, Savennières. Most people don’t know they’re drinking chenin. We’re the only country in the world that stands up and says, ‘This is chenin blanc. We make it. This is our thing.’” This single-minded devotion, Raats believes, will eventually pay dividends. “It’s like grüner veltliner. It was there and it was there, and then, all of a sudden, it was above the line of vision. I think chenin is hanging right below that line.”

When it comes to trendy growing areas, South Africa’s vintners go to climatic extremes. Nearly as popular as breezy, cool Elgin and Elim to the south, are the hot, parched plains of Swartland to the north. Franschhoek winery Boekenhoutskloof—the critics’ darling whose popular red blend Chocolate Block became the locker room tipple of the 2010 World Cup Spanish soccer champions (they drank 50 cases)—sources syrah grapes from the area. “You can definitely taste Swartland in it,” says winemaker Jean Smit after a satisfying sip.

Eben Sadie is on a mission to find out what Swartland tastes like. That’s why he stuck his flag in that sandy soil. “I don’t want to make a wine that’s been made before,” he declares. “This area is new. No one can tell me what a Swartland wine should taste like.”

There are few rock and roll stars among South Africa’s winemakers. Sadie is one of them. Disheveled, his hair flecked with dust, Sadie is intense and handsome. Philosophical and iconoclastic, he’d blend seamlessly into any New York locavore scene: he lives in near-isolation on a small-scale winery at the end a long bumpy road outside Malmesbury, and expresses open disdain for the internationalist powers (Robert Parker, Wine Spectator) that drive the greater commercial-wine world. “I don’t need somebody to spit my wine into a glass and tell me my fortune,” he remarks. He rarely welcomes visitors. When he does, he regales them for hours, like dinner guests, before pouring samples of the two wines he makes—a complex white blend called Palladius and an equally dense red named Columella.

“I came here because of the soil,” he says of the dust bowl he calls home. “We’ve got wheat here and we’ve got wine. It’s the region from South Africa with the most old vineyards.” Sadie draws his grapes from a dozen-plus small parcels scattered around the area, some of them more than 100 years old. From that, he makes 20,000 bottles. Last year, he put down a costly 30 tons of home- made compost per hectare. And recently he bought some concrete eggs, experimental vessels in which to age his reds. They’re made of South African granite and cost 5,000 to 6,000 euros each.

“You make a wine of a region, and it’s got to be regional,” he says. “It’s got to be in the bottle. What are the characteristics that will define this place? Once you define that, I think that’s fantactic. Wine is a liquid story of a place. Every wine’s got an address.”

What comes out of his barrels is impressive, layered and full of character. It’s also, given the painstaking process, expensive. This makes Sadie wines, critically praised as they are, a tough sell. “They’re pricey,” says Tanya Hira of Xai Xai. “People, because they don’t really know South African wines, they don’t go for the expensive bottles. Unfortunately Sadie’s wines sit on the shelf longer than they should.”

Tired of hitting his head against the price ceiling South African winemakers encounter in the U.S., Sadie says he may pull his wines from the States. He does not believe a high-end Cape red will find success in America in his lifetime.

Sadie’s situation captures the central conundrum of South African winemaking. With his high-style wines drawn from old- world vines, he’s trying to fold the country’s past and future into a single package that makes sense to the buyer. But U.S. wine drink- ers are still puzzling it out. “Since South African is classified as New World, most people are surprised by the wines,” says Hira. “It’s old-world wine with a new-world label. They’re expecting Australia, something that will pop in their mouth.”

At Klein Constantia, the muscat bush vines that feed the Vin de Constance—the old wine newly new to the world—are planted very near the property’s old homestead, in the exact same soil they covered centuries ago. The verdant, quasi-tropical property is pop- ulated by black eagles, lynxes and baboons. The baboons love to tear the traditional thatch roofs off the old Dutch Cape buildings. They probably did the same thing back in Simon van der Stel’s day. “You drive in and the vines are there,” says Adam Mason. “It’s a reminder of the past. That’s what I love about sweet wines. There’s a link to the heritage of that area. It’s that golden thread that goes back. It’s a bit like being a South African, I think. One foot in the Old World, one foot in the New.”

Dale DeGroff Sings

2011-09-10T01:28:00.002-04:00

Dale DeGroff is so old school. He actually wanted to be an actor!

Long before this age of self-serious mixologists, most bartenders you met in New York were frustrated would-be actors. No they're frustrated would-be brand ambassadors. Dale's from another time. He began his bartending career in L.A., waiting to break into film. (Not the movie star good looks.) That didn't happen, so instead he turned the bartending world on its head.

DeGroff will be premiering a cabaret show at Cornelia Street Cafe in October. I've heard him sign. He's good, and has stage presence. Here's an item I wrote for the Times. It combines my two bailiwicks: liquor and theatre. I suspect this won't be the last time that sort of reporting mash-up happens.

Dale DeGroff, From the Bar to the Stage

By ROBERT SIMONSON

Dale DeGroff, the man called by many the father of the craft cocktail movement, began his career as many a bartender has — slinging drinks while waiting for his acting career to take off.

Mr. DeGroff will return to his roots on Oct. 5, when he’ll sing and tell tales in a show called “On the Town With Dale DeGroff: A Salute to Saloons, Neighborhood Bars and Legendary Cocktail Palaces,” at the Cornelia Street Cafein Greenwich Village.

The show “is an opportunity to reveal bar life in the way it naturally unfolds at the bar — telling stories,” said Mr. DeGroff, who has been known to croon a tune or two at liquor industry events and the occasional wedding. “As for the songs, ‘saloon singing’ has a long history and I, for one, want to hear more of it.”

The barman will lend his voice to Hank Williams’s “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “This Is So Nice (It Must Be Illegal),” by Fats Wallers and George Marion Jr., “Lulu’s Back in Town,” by Al Dubin and Harry Warren, and “Scotch and Soda,” a hit for the Kingston Trio. While he is singing, audience members will sample three cocktails— an absinthe frappe, the Major Bailey and the yuzu gimlet — and hear the stories behind them.

“On the Town…” will play a longer run at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, N.J., next May.

“This show gives me a chance to bring performing together with bartending,” Mr. DeGroff said. “They aren’t that far apart to begin with.”

“On the Town With Dale DeGroff: A Salute to Saloons, Neighborhood Bars, and Legendary Cocktail Palaces,” the Cornelia Street Cafe, 29 Cornelia Street (Bleecker Street), Greenwich Village, (212) 989-9319. Tickets are $20, including three drinks.

A Beer At...Whiskey Wind Tavern

2011-09-09T18:27:00.000-04:00

For this Eater column, I went out of town—a first for "A Beer At." Actually, I didn't go out of town expressly to write about this bar; I was already out of town, and found a bar to write about. But I knew about the Whisky Wind anyway. I've love it at first sight by name alone.

A Beer At...Whiskey Wind Tavern

On this, the last big weekend of summer, "A Beer At" follows the vacationers to the east end of Long Island, to the North Fork, where the wonderfully namedWhiskey Wind Tavern has been comforting old Greenport salts for three quarters of a century.

Most of Greenport's Front Street shuts down when the air turns cold, but the Whiskey Wind keeps its beacon on, offering the locals pool, foosball, a jukebox and a line of draft that includes regional pride Blue Point beer. Decor-wise, the only thing inside as interesting as the unique neon sign that heralds the bar's presence to the passerby is the old wooden bar, the round-framed mirror in the middle of which evokes a ship's wheel.

Old photos indicate this is the same bar installed by Bill Worth in 1940, when he founded the joint as Bill Worth's Rendezvous. Worth was a bootlegger who ran a Prohibition-era roadhouse by the name of the Worthwhile Inn. The bar was was then Meyer's Bar & Grill for a while before James Kuhlman bought it in 1993.

There's a sign behind the bar that reads "It's tourist season—why can't we shoot 'em?" But on a recent night, the Whiskey Wind wasn't dealing with too many tourists. And this being the north, not the south, fork, there was little danger of any slumming celebs. The stools were filled by locals and regulars, all men, all chatty, all about twice the age of the sweet, short, blonde and very young barmaid. The tavern is open until 2 AM, which is plenty late for this hamlet. You can be sure that the Whiskey Wind's lights are the last to go out to go out in sleepy Greenport.

The odd name, by the way, supposedly harkens back to the days when fisherman would wait out hurricanes or nor'easters—called "whiskey winds"—in their local saloon. So, was Irene a whiskey wind, then?

—Robert Simonson

Of Pitcher Cocktails and Cecchinis

2011-09-01T21:49:00.000-04:00

Pitcher cocktails will play a central role in the cocktail program at Greenwich Village's Frankies 570 Sputino, the latest in the growing Frankies empire, set to open Sept. 6. Staking out a middle ground between cocktails and punches, pitcher cocktails (and we're not talking Sangria here) have been picking up steam for a couple months now, popping up at Mayahuel, 1534, Prime Meats and Vandaag (whose erstwhile beverage director will now be working some shifts at 570).

One other intriguing aspect to the Frankies 570 cocktail menu, which didn't make its way into the Times article below, is the fact that new restaurant will have a seasonal cocktail called a Cecchini. "We don't have cranberry juice behind the bar, so we're not going to make Cosmopolitans," said Cabell Tomlinson. "Instead, we're going to do a season 'pink drink' and call it a Cecchini, after Toby Cecchini. It will be a variation on the Cosmopolitan." Cecchini is the well-known New York bartender who helped to popularize the Cosmopolitan in the late 1980s, and has never quite escaped from the shadow of that modern "Sex and the City" classic. Tomlinson checked with Cecchini before using his name. "He said, 'I'm never going to get that albatross off of my neck, so go ahead.'"

At Frankies 570 Spuntino, Seasonal Cocktails You Pour

By Robert Simonson

At Frankies 570 Spuntino, the new West Village restaurant from the team of Frank Castronovo and Frank Falcinelli, which is set to open on Tuesday, pitchers aren’t just for beer anymore.

“Pitchers had been on my mind,” said Cabell Tomlinson, a veteran bartender of Mr. Castronovo’s and Mr. Falcinelli’s Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, restaurant, Prime Meats. She is spearheading the drinks program at Frankies 570. “We were discussing whether we would be offering punches. I wasn’t liking that idea, because we already did it at Prime Meats, and there were punches at Death & Co. and Clover Club and other bars. It’s been done. And because this is an Italian restaurant, I really wanted to focus on aperitivo-style cocktails. It’s one of my favorite ways to drink. So instead of the logistics of punch bowls, we’re doing pitchers, which works really well for aperitivo cocktails.”

Frankies 570’s pitcher drinks will be seasonal, the selection adjusted with the weather and available produce. The initial three offerings will an Aperol Cooler (Aperol, Limoncello, lime juice, orange juice and soda), the Americano Royale (sweet vermouth, Campari, creme de cassis and prosecco) and the Basilico Spritzer (basil-infused extra-dry vermouth, St. Germain and prosecco). The pitchers, which yield roughly six glassfuls, will cost $36.

As summer cools into fall, the pitcher drinks will became more spice-driven and warming. “We’ll use some of the Italian amari, as well as apples, pears, rosemary, cinnamon,” said Ms. Tomlinson. “But we’ll keep them aperitivo drinks, keep them light.”

In keeping with the Italian leanings of the program, the house cocktail will be the Negroni, the classic mix of Campari, sweet vermouth and gin, which has been gaining in favor in recent years. “There’s been a sort of renewed interest in that drink,” Ms. Tomlinson said. “I think it’s my favorite cocktail. And, of course, the staff I have will be able to make other cocktails people ask for.” That impressive lineup will include Katie Stipe, lately of Vandaag; Ari Form and Matt DeVriendt of Carroll Gardens’ Jake Walk; Jim Kearns, who has worked at Freemans and Pegu Club, among others; Matthew Hunter from Market Table; John McCulloch of Frankies 457 in Brooklyn, and Natasha David of Williamsburg’s Maison Premiere.

There will also be a seasonal Bellini, variations on the simple sparkling Italian cocktail. “I’ve never really liked the way the Bellini looks in the glass,” Ms. Tomlinson said. “Also, when you drink it, the residue of the peach purée is in the glass. It’s kind of gloppy.” Frankies 570’s Bellinis will feature fruit liqueurs and sorbets instead of purée, as well as the expected prosecco.

Beta Cocktails

2011-08-29T05:10:00.000-04:00

At this summer's Tales of the Cocktail convention in New Orleans, in a room off the lobby of Hotel Monteleone, was an impromptu bookstore featuring only books about beer, spirits and cocktails. The pop-up book shop is a feature of every Tales. This year, the best-selling tome was, somewhat predictably, David Wondrich's "Punch." The second-best-selling volume, however, was a dark horse: a thin, square, white, self-published item called "Beta Cocktails."

"Beta Cocktails" is the second coming of "Rogue Cocktails," a tiny book put out a couple years ago by two New Orleans bartenders with the intense names of Kirk Estopinal and Maksym Pazuniak (called Maks for short). They then worked at New Orleans' much-vaunted cocktail den Cure. (Kirk is still there, while Maks has moved to New York.) Their intent in putting out the booklet was to shake up the working cocktail paradigm by introducing some truly radical recipes that relied not on the usual liquors and liqueurs, but Italian amari and bitters.

I stupidly did not buy a copy of "Rogue Cocktails" when I first saw it in July 2009. But I sampled a few of the cocktails therein at Cure, and was duly impressed by their originality. They frankly amazed me. One used Angostura bitters as its base, the other Peychaud's bitters. As anyone knows, these products are typically employed by the dashful. Kirk and Maks' drinks used full ounces. I also tried something called The Start and Finish (by Rhiannon Enlil, another name that's hard to wrap your tongue around), which combined Averna, Lillet Blonde, dry vermouth, absinthe and orange bitters. It was remarkable.

When Maks started making drinks at Williamsburg's Counting Room, I started bugging him about publishing a new run of "Rogue Cocktails." He told me he had a new version of the cocktail book in the works. It took him more than a year to finally get it together. Beta Cocktails made its debut at the Tales book store. (I, in fact, bought a copy just minutes after the books had been delivered by Maks and Kirk.)

As David Wondrich says in his introduction, most new cocktail books are disappointments. They're either compendiums of old recipes you already have, or new ones that don't quite work or fail to impress the senses. Beta Cocktails is an exception. The lion's share of libations in this book are not only worth the effort, but little short of stunning. And—the authors' somewhat self-important introduction notwithstanding—even two years on, the recipes remain inventive and eye-opening, both in culinary and philosophical terms. (Fellow mixologists and some journalists may have caught on to their ideas, but the general public is still largely uninitiated. Bartenders often make the mistake of thinking a cocktail trend is over when they are through with it.) Based on this slender book alone, I rate Estopinal and Pazuniak among the five or six most talented mixologists in the country.

The drink here may seem a bit daunting at first, so unorthodox are many of the ingredients. But it you stock up on a few vital bottles that appear again and again—Campari, Cynar, Punt e Mes, Carpano Antica, Fernet Branca, Aperol, Green and Yellow Chartreuse, Peychaud's bitters, orange bitters and lots of Angostura bitters—you'll be in business. That list may look foreboding. But take my word, these cocktails are balanced and highly palatable.

About 20% of the cocktails are carryovers from "Rogue Cocktails." These include some of the best ones in the book: the vibrantly red, Peychaud's-based cooler Gunshop Fizz (by Kirk and Maks); the rum and Cynar concoction Art of Choke (Kyle Davidson); Start and Finish; Angostura Sour (which is actually a classic by Charles H. Baker that is getting some renewed attention); The Search for Delicious (Kirk), a blend of Cynar and Punt e Mes which uses lemon juice, orange bitters, sea salt and FIVE lemon twists to achieve the deliciousness is seeks; and Warning Label (Maks), a mix of Cynar, high-proof rum and Punt e Mes, with orange and grapefruit bitters and a Campari wash. It tastes like liquid bitter chocolate with flecks of dried cranberry, the rum softening the bite of the Cynar, vermouth and Campari.

Some of the drinks read like academic experiments. Yet the Campari "Martini"—just a glass of Campari garnish with an orange twist and spiced with a heavy pinch of salt—is actually very good, an object lesson on how a simple addition (salt) can open your mind to a liquor you thought you knew.

Maks and Kirk invited other bartenders from New York and elsewhere to contribute recipes to "Beta." In theory, I'm not in favor of this; I think it dilutes the intention and force or the original "Rouge" concept. Still, some of the newcomers' drinks are worthy. Toby Maloney's Eeyor's Requium, using Fernet, gin, Cynar, Campari and Dolin Blanc, fits in seamlessly. Don Lee's DLB—Rhum Barbancount, Fernet, lemon juice, and heavy doses Angostura bitters, Angostura orange bitters and Peychaud's bitters—is a potent potion on par with what I've come to expect from this talented bartender. To taste Tonia Guffey's 2 Cups of Blood, I had to visit Guffey herself at Dram, because the cocktail contains Suze, a French liqueur which is not imported to the U.S. Sure enough, she had some behind the bar. Employing a full 3/4 oz. of Bitterman's Mole Bitters, as well as Punt e Mes and Mezcal, the cocktail tasted headily of smoke and chocolate.

Beta Cocktail can be bought through the website blurb.com. It costs $18. There are, thus far, roughly 300 copies of "Beta Cocktails" in circulation. There should be more.

Carroll Gardens Gets a New Cocktail Bar

2011-08-23T01:10:00.000-04:00

Until now the residential blocks of Carroll Gardens between the bars of Smith Street and Court Street (Clover Club, Jake Walk, Prime Meats) and Fort Defiance in Red Hook have been a desert for the cocktail thirsty. But the recent opening of Bar Bruno on the largely dry Henry Street fills that vacancy. Previously, this corner opposite the iconic Mazzola Bakery was occupied by a series of unsuccessful delis and cafes. The owner of the most recent coffee house, Cafe Marius, has take a year to convert the space into a restaurant and bar.

I had low expectations for the place, but my hopes rose when I surveyed the impressive back back. It wasn't the usual array of flavored vodka and blended Scotches, but an intelligently curated array of choice liqueurs and spirits nearly on par with the best bars in the area. A brief chat with the personable bar manager, J.T. Almon, shed some light on this happy circumstance. Almon is friends with bartender Tonia Guffey, who works the bars at Flatiron Lounge and Dram; the two grew up together in Orlando. Guffey consulted with Almon on the initial cocktail list and the selection of the back bar, and will later this year come in to train the staff.

Bar Bruno is wisely starting slow in their cocktail program; the opening list is a mere five drinks long. The presence of The Last Word shows an allegiance to classic cocktails. The other five are simple, but smart riffs on standards. Their version of a Hemingway Daiquiri is served on the rocks as a refreshing highball. A spin on a Gold Rush substitutes Dewar's for Bourbon, infused with chilis for a little heat. Their signature drink, the George Best, is an orange juice-laced riff on a Negroni. Best was a famous Irish soccer star; the joint has an odd soccer theme, with old photos of soccer teams on the walls. Cocktail go for $10. There's also a selection of beer cocktails and the usual beer and wine.

A Beer At...Teddy's

2011-08-22T11:07:00.000-04:00

A reader at Eater said the Mae West story I include in this write-up is apocryphal. Could be. Certainly, old taverns dispense their share of self-aggrandizing lies. But I found the tale in two sources. True, one of them was Wikipedia, but the other was the well-respected "Historic Shops and Restaurants of New York." It's funny: another old New York bar I've covered in this series, Neir's in Queens, also claimed a Mae West connection.

A Beer at...Teddy's

Is Teddy's an anonymous, unknown bar? Not exactly. I remember, back in the days when Williamsburg was an actual artistic enclave—when scruffy young men wore wool caps because they were cold and poor, not because it was part of the hipster uniform—Teddy's was a key artist hangout. But today this wonderful old tavern is overshadowed by dozens of trendier new watering holes.

Teddy's is the oldest bar in Williamsburg. It's been around since 1889. For its first 30 years, it was a franchise bar serving a local brew whose name can still be seen in the beautiful stained-glass window facing the street: Peter Doelger's Extra Beer. That the sign is still there is a bit of a miracle, since Doelger's hasn't been made since Prohibition. Doelger was a millionaire beer baron, and probably a bit of a capitalist bastard; an anarchist once left a bomb on his doorstep. He also disapproved of his daughter Mathilda marrying a boxer named John West, even though that union gave the world Mae West.

One would love to picture Mae lifting one or two here at some point. But Mathilda remarried in the 1890s—wedding the son of another local brewer (sounds like daddy's doing)—so it's hard to say. Tammany Hall pols almost made good use of the place back in the day when saloons did double duty as political centers. An Alderman actually lived upstairs once.

The food served here is a relatively new phenomenon—new, meaning the last couple decades—and the weekend brunch is popular. Live bands play here Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays as part of a series that goes by the rather square name of "Williamsburg Nights." Television sets are tuned to the night's game. I always considered televisions in a historic bar a desecration of sacred space. But such are the compromises that must be made to please a modern clientele, for which drinking and talking is not entertainment enough.

The patrons on a recent night seem strangely not of Williamsburg. Parents with children, older couples, a group of visiting Japanese tourists. Or maybe this is just theother Williamsburg, the one that doesn't get the press. And maybe in twenty years, when the current crop of tattoo-parlor habitues have moved on, and the hot bar of the moment is a distant memory, these unglamorous barflies will still be here. And so will Teddy's.

—Robert Simonson

What's New

2011-08-15T02:37:00.004-04:00

More new spirits and associated liquor products are introduced at the annual Tales of the Cocktail convention in New Orleans than at any other place. This year was no exception. I think I tasted more new things this past July than at any previous Tales. Here are a few of the libations that will soon find their way onto the shelves of your local liquor store.

Fee Brother Black Walnut Bitters: Joe Fee always arrives at each Tales with a satchel full of bottles of the company's latest invention. This year's addition: Black Walnut Bitters. Not sure of the applications, beyond offering a nice change-up for Angostura in an Old Fashioned. I'll wait for mixologists to figure that one out.
Lillet Rose: Building on the Lillet line of white and red aromatized wines by 50% is the new Lillet Rose. It is made by blending the wines that form the base of Lillet Blanc and Lillet Rouge, and infusing it with "Bordeaux fruits." You won't be able to get this in the U.S. until April 2012.
Pierre Ferrand 1840 Original Formula Cognac: According to the Ferrand people, this new iteration of their Cognac was inspired by an old bottle of original Ferrand that was bought at auction, and was selected (from among many such old bottles) by Ferrand cellar master Christian Guerin and cocktail historian David Wondrich as being the best and closest example of the sort of spirit that was put out in the 1800s. The more questions I posed as to how such a guess at the formula was hazarded, the less I understand the process. But this much is clear: it is bottled at 90 proof, higher than most Cognacs, and in keeping with the proofs observed in those times; it is fully intended to be a mixable Cognac, to be used in cocktails; and it tastes quite good.
Drambuie 15: This ancient Scottish liqueur has been trying to find a place for itself in the new drinking world for a few years now. They redesigned their bottle a couple years back, making it look less like Drambuie and more like a Scotch vessel. Now they've come out with the first-ever new expression of the producer. To appeal to Scotch fans who find old Drambuie too sweet, they've devised a drier expression that uses less honey and only employs whiskies 15-years-old or older. They're going to market it the way you would a Scotch, and are pushed a drink that uses half Drambuie and half Drambuie 15. There's a way to move product!
Hochstadter's Slow and Low: This is the latest from Rob Cooper, the man people who brought the people St. Germain and Creme Yvette. It's his take on an old-style Rock & Rye, which is to say, Rye whiskey sweetened with rock candy syrup. All the famed 19th century American mixologists mention this potion it at one point or another. Slow and Low uses six-year-old rye, infused with citrus, honey and horehound, and bottles at 98 proof. It could be argued that this is basically an Old Fashioned in a bottle, though much hotter and much sweeter. It's made in Philadelphia. Unlike the high-toned St. Germain and Creme Yvette, the rauchy marketing for Slow and Low aims low. (Check out the name.) No gracious sipping here. Straight shots—the "full pull" mark on the souvenir shot glass I was given was at the 2 1/2 ounce mark.
Merlet Liqueurs: The Cognac-based Merlet clan has been making liqueurs for 150 years. Their line is just now reaching out shores. I tasted through their line, and found not a dud in the bunch, with the rich, dense, bright Creme de Framboise and light, but strong Creme de Poire standouts. The Creme de Cassis is infused with the same fruit twice, with the result decidedly potent.
Brugal 1888: The latest from the venerable Dominican rum distiller. It’s a blend of rums aged 5-14 years, first aged in American white oak and then in Sherry Oak casks from the same source that The Macallan Scotch Whisky uses in Spain. In case you're wondering, yes, Macallan and Brugal are owned by the same corporate body. 1888 is being marketing as a premium sipping rum. It certainly is a smoothy, all caramel, oak and vanilla and just a little spice.

Carroll Gardens Goes Bourgeois

2011-08-12T02:04:00.000-04:00

As was previously reported elsewhere, a second iteration of the East Village bar Bourgeoise Pig will soon open in Carroll Gardens, the Brooklyn neighborhood that is already home to the cocktail bars Prime Meats, Brooklyn Social and Jake Walk. The venture is collaboration between Ravi DeRossi (Death and Co., Mayahuel, Cienfuegos, Amor y Amargo), the stealth force behind the East Village cocktail scene, Luis Gonzalez (chef at Death and Co. and Mayahuel) and Frank Cisneros, bartender of Dram and co-fonder of Drink, both in Williamsburg.

"The beverage program will retain the approachability and affordability of the original's French wine cum sultry-lounge feel yet expand it's horizons, incorporating the whole of the Continent's best wine and spirits," said Cisneros. "Though whiskey, gin and rum will still abound, lesser utilized European libations such as Spanish brandies, Flemish sour beers and German eau-de-vies will play an important role in the cocktail list, which is inspired-by the individuality of each major European region."(Spanish brandies would certainly qualify as a lesser utilized liquor in these parts.)

Food-wise, there will be fondues, cheese, tapas-style dishes, a raw bar and house-made charcuterie.

Bourgeoise Pig will take the space currently held by the Calpurnia, a curious Italian wine bar that looked like a bordello and was forever unpopulated.

A Cocktail Book for Your iPad

2011-08-11T17:52:00.000-04:00

Cocktails books can be frustrating. You're given the recipe and a few instructions, but that doesn't necessarily lead to a great drink. Much is lost or unspoken between the page and the glass. And how-to cocktail videos aren't much better, simply because they're not convenient. Who mixes a drink while sitting in front of a television or computer screen?

A new iPad book would seem to combine the pluses of these two formats and shed the minuses. I had a chance to browse through "Speakeasy Cocktails: Learn from the Modern Mixologists," and found it quite fluid and visually attractive. It was released on Aug. 11. Here's the article I wrote about it for the Times:

Mixing Drinks on Your Lap With No Spills

By Robert Simonson

Now subway riders can use their iPads not just to catch up on the latest best seller, but to prepare for the cocktail hour that awaits them at home.

On Aug. 11, “Speakeasy Cocktails: Learn from the Modern Mixologists,” a cocktail book for the iPad, will be released by Open Air Publishing. It was created by the New York mixologists Jim Meehan (of PDT) and Joseph Schwartz (Little Branch); Rob Willey, a freelance writer who has written about drinks for The New York Times and other publications, and Jon Feldman, president of Open Air.

The book — which will be available for $9.99 through the iPad apps store — combines text with the how-to mixology videos. A reader can surf from a scholarly treatise on tequila to a list a tequila-based cocktails. Click on a specific cocktail and you’re transported to the recipe. With select libations, there’s an accompanying video of either Mr. Meehan or Mr. Schwartz building the drink at their respective bars. Specific techniques (how to stir, shake, cut a twist, rim a glass with salt, even how to adorn a Pisco Sour with a swirl of bitters) are covered in separate linked video clips.

“It’s a little bit of everything,” Mr. Schwartz said. “You get the recipe, but also someone making it, so you can see how it’s put together. And you learn the finer points of different kinds of ice, how to flame an orange peel — lots of different pointers that you can access piecemeal as you need them.”

“Speakeasy Cocktails” will feature more than 200 cocktail recipes. They are divided into four sections: “Master Drinks” (time-tested formulas that work with almost any base spirit); “The Canon,” which covers classic cocktails; “Rediscovered Classics,” including old drinks that have been resurrected in recent years; and “New Standards,” libations invented by today’s crop of ambitious mixologists, including Kirk Estopinal of New Orleans’ Cure, Jackson Cannon of Eastern Standard in Boston, and Kevin Ludwig of Beaker & Flask in Portland, Ore. There are videos for 15 bedrock cocktails, including the daiquiri, negroni and bloody Mary. “The drinks were picked not only because they were classic drinks,” said Mr. Feldman, “but because each had multiple components of technique to demonstrate.”

“I made a point of talking about every single thing I was doing,” added Mr. Meehan.

A number of drinks feature an “after” picture that can be rotated 360 degrees, showing how the completed drink should appear. “Some drinks look the same from every angle, like a sazerac,” Mr. Feldman said. “With the mint julep, Jim explains how you want the mint to be away from the nose. So a person making that at home can see what that drink should look like from the back.”

“In some places we wanted the text to function almost as the guy on the barstool next to you,” said Mr. Willey, “like, ‘See, you’ve really got to shake the thing.’ “

A New Administration for El Presidente

2011-08-09T13:16:00.000-04:00

Being out of step with history can really bring on an inferiority complex.

This is how I felt about the El Presidente. For years, I had been told—by books, by drink experts, by bartenders—that this mix of rum, curacao, dry vermouth, and grenadine was one of the classic cocktails of the 20th century, and certainly one of the two eternal libations of Cuba, the other being the Daiquiri. It was created by Eddie Woelke, an American bartender at the Jockey Club in Havana.

I've wanted to like the El Presidente, but I couldn't. Something seemed off about the mixture, unbalanced. Of course, I blamed myself. This was obviously the fault of my immature tastebuds. So many people have loved and respected this cocktail over the decades; how could they be wrong? One night, I tried to force myself to see the light. I made and drank (and thought deeply about) three El Presidentes in a row.

I didn't see the light. I got sick.

Thereafter, I swore off the cocktail. I didn't like it, and I didn't care who knew it. But I still felt slightly ashamed of the fact.

Then, at Tales of the Cocktail, came sudden relief and insight. I attended a seminar called "Around the World on a Brass Rail." It was led by David Wondrich and Jeff Berry. Berry handled the section of the seminar that covered the proliferation of American-style cocktails in the Caribbean in the 19th and early-20th centuries. Somewhere in there, Wondrich started holding forth on the El Presidente.

I couldn't believe my ears. Was he really saying that for years he had not liked the cocktail? Yes, he was. He had tried and tried, but disliked the taste. (He told me later that he had experienced a regret similar to mine, and had felt something must be wrong with him for not liking the drink.) But finally, he thought he uncovered the reason why. All modern versions of the recipe call for dry vermouth. Wondrich found an old recipe that called instead for blanc vermouth instead. Blanc is a style that is both white, yet sweet. The arrival of the Dolin vermouths in recent years has introduced many Americans to the blanc style. Wondrich said he mixed up an El Presidente with blanc vermouth instead of dry, and suddenly the drink appealed.

I did the same thing when I returned to my Brooklyn home. The cocktail did taste better. The acrid underpinning of the dry vermouth, which had (to my mind) always warred with the drink's sweeter components, and clawed at the lining of my stomach, was gone. Harmony reigned.

It's still not my favorite drink by a long shot. But I like it a lot better than I did. And this is why we need cocktail scholarship.

A Beer At...The Hairy Monk

2011-08-05T14:36:00.000-04:00

One question: Why's it called The Hairy Monk, and not something more Boston-y?

A Beer at...The Hairy Monk

How Boston Bar can The Hairy Monk get? In the back room, they've got a picture of Babe Ruth—the House-That-Ruth-Built Ruth, New York Yankee Ruth, that Ruth—in a Red Sox uniform. That's how Boston Bar it can get.

It's mainly about the Sox here. Red Sox banners, jerseys, news clips, metal buckets (?), little stuffed animals called Wally after the left field wall in Fenway Park known as the Green Monster. This time of year, the televisions broadcast Red Sox games. A few knick-knacks pay homage to the Celtics, Bruins and Patriots (which have given patrons many reason to celebrate in the past decade) are squeezed in here and there. But it's the Red Sox logo that the Hairy Monk puts on its t-shirts.

Sports bars dedicated to non-home teams are a freakish watering-hole subset in New York. I understand being homesick. But carving a Boston sports bar out of the Yankees rock known as Manhattan seems to me a perversely masochistic enterprise. Why does the Hairy Monk put itself through the pain? Well, apparently one of the owners lived in Boston for ten years and never got over it.

It's a decent joint, even if you don't like Boston, or don't care about the pennant race at all. They've got 19 beers on tap (Sam Adams, of course), all served in 20-ounce pints. Happy hour lasts from 11 AM to 7 PM, making it pretty damn hard to miss. There's a set of tables in the back room, where you can order Irish breakfast "all day every day"—though I have no idea who would want to do that. I could have used a bartender less taciturn, but then he was doing double duty as barkeep and waiter.

I didn't get the feeling that everyone in the place gave a damn about Beantown. A few barflies were intent on the game. But most seemed like young office cogs unwinding after work, arguing about the best was to get trashed. Me? I read the Ted Williams obit pasted on the wall.

—Robert Simonson

Bols Brings Out a Barrel-Aged Genever

2011-08-02T11:50:00.001-04:00

Bols' relaunch of its traditional Genever recipe in 2008 has been one of the more successful liquor campaigns in recent years, capturing the imagination of both drinkers and bartenders, and doing more to introduce Americans to "Dutch gin" than any other brand. Now, the huge Dutch liquor outfit is coming out with a barrel-aged version, geared specifically toward the American market. Barrel-aging genever is not a new idea; it's common practice with Korenwijn, an expression of genever that contains more malt wine. But, says Bols, the new product has a higher alcohol content and a different mash recipe than do Korenwijns.

Here's my article from the Times:

Aged Genever: A Dutch Spirit With an American TouchBy ROBERT SIMONSON

Dutch genever is taking a tip from American Bourbon.

In September, Lucas Bols will introduce a barrel-aged specimen of the Dutch liquor known as genever, the company’s signature rendition.

The elixir is derived from a rye, wheat and corn distillate triple distilled in copper pot stills, which is then blended with a potpourri of botanicals including cloves, anise, licorice and juniper. From there, it’s aged in a mix of old and new French barrels for 18 months.

“In our archives we have found some recipes from the 19th century,” said Bols’s distiller Piet van Leijenhorst. “One of the recipes we have used for our Bols Genever already in the U.S. and another of these proved to be perfect for Bols barrel-aged genever.”

The barrel-aged genever will initially be available only in the United States, for $50, and Bols is being blunt in its appeal to American tastes, comparing the barrel-aged genever to bourbon and encouraging drinkers to enjoy it in the context of classic whiskey cocktails like the Old Fashioned. This is not altogether marketing spin. Many bartenders and cocktail experts have long contended that genever—a malty, sweetish, full-bodied beverage—has more in common with whiskey as it does with it lighter, London-based stepchild, gin.

“I think it’s great,” said Jim Meehan, who runs the East Village cocktail bar PDT, and who has tasted the new genever. “It’s another weapon in the arsenal. It has a very corny flavor. It would be good for someone who likes young bourbon or whiskies.”

Aging genever is not an altogether alien notion. Korenwijn, an expression of the liquor of more recent vintage which contains a higher percentage of malt wine, is traditionally aged in cask.

A Royal Wedding in Cocktaildom

2011-08-01T03:42:00.013-04:00

I've taken on many roles in my 25-year career as a journalist. I never expected that one of them would be what used to be quaintly referred to a Society Writer. But here it is, my first—and very probably my last—Vows column in the New York Times. I suspect that many of my relatives and friends will care more about this byline than anything else I've written.

Of course, the wedding is one from the drinks world, or it wouldn't make much sense my writing it. On July 4 in Seattle, Pegu Club owner Audrey Saunders married all-around cocktail philosopher Robert Hess. Then, on July 23, they got married all over again in New Orleans, at the "Plymouth Gin Bartender's Breakfast" at the Tales of the Cocktail convention. It was meant to be a surprise ceremony. But, by midnight that night, I think I may have been the only person who knew of it who had kept his mouth shut. Still, as far as I could judge in my informal polling of the celebrants, about half to two-thirds of the crowd were taken aback. The ceremony was performed by the dueling distillers act of Desmond Payne (of Beefeater) and Sean Harrison (of Plymouth). The wedding party included such cocktail luminaries as Allen Katz, Julie Reiner, Chad Solomon, Christy Pope, Gary Regan, Anistatia Miller, Jared Brown and David Wondrich. Dale DeGroff gave the bride away.

The Seattle wedding was a much more tranquil affair, held near a lighthouse on Vashon Island in the Puget Sound on a bright, breezy day. Still, there were signs of Bacchus along the edges. Someone had a water gun that sprayed Negroni shots into people's mouths. (Pictured below.) Francesco Lafranconi brought a bottle of Hennesy Paradis (which will cost you about $600) that lasted about a half hour.

The bar program, it's safe to say, was unbeaten in American weddings of this or any year. Executed by some of the best bartenders in the nation, as well as the entire staff of Seattle's Rob Roy, it included almost every cocktail that can be found on the Pegu Club menu, as well as two drinks invented by Hess (including the Trident), one by DeGroff and one by longtime Pegu barman Kenta Goto. The Rob Roy folks spent the entire night before the wedding batching cocktails. The morning of, they carted an actual ton of craft ice over to Vashon Island. (That means the ice and batched cocktails took the ferry.) For teetotalers, there were fancily infused waters, a non-alcoholic Moscow Mule, and Mexican Coke.

One element of the New Orleans bash that did not make it's way into the Times piece was an encounter with adult film legend Ron Jeremy, who was in town promoting his new rum. I told him about the wedding, that he had somehow missed. "Was it a big deal?" he asked. "Are they big in the industry?" I intimated they were. "I should have played my harmonica," he said. Around 3 AM, he took to the stage and did just that.

Here's the story:

VOWS: Audrey Saunders and Robert Hess

By Robert Simonson

The couple’s first face-to-face meeting in 2002 took place exactly where it should have — at a bar.

Audrey Saunders was then overseeing Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel, and Robert Hess was the barfly.

Both had become leading figures in the then-nascent cocktail renaissance — which began in the late 1990s with a few scattered professionals and enthusiasts striving to reclaim classic libations and create new drink concoctions. New York became a capital of the movement.

DrinkBoy, the cocktail-oriented Web site founded in 1998 by Mr. Hess, an executive at Microsoft in Redmond, Wash., was their first point of contact. And from that point on, Ms. Saunders, who preached the religion of mixed drinks, through jigger and shaker, knew that Mr. Hess — a man with a published predilection for a classic Old Fashioned, but whom she then somewhat contemptuously viewed as a “civilian” — would show up at her bar eventually.

Finally, a Microsoft event brought him to town. She was ready: “I took his recipe and gave it to all my bartenders. I said, ‘If someone orders an Old Fashioned, it’s him. He might not announce himself. We’ll show him.’ ”

But instead of trying to slip in unnoticed, he parked himself right in front of her, and properly introduced himself. “Here was this lovely, soft-spoken guy with very gentle eyes,” recalled Ms. Saunders, 48, who had been married once before and was dating no one at the time. “I thought, he’s nothing like he sounds.”

They talked all night. When it came to drinks, they shared the same canon: the juice must be fresh squeezed, the ice hand cut and the martinis properly measured.

The next night, they went to Lupa Osteria Romana, under the guise of conducting “research” into the Greenwich Village restaurant’s bar program. “We could tell there was something going on,” Mr. Hess said. (Years later, he would tell Ms. Saunders that he knew she was the one for him that first night at Bemelmans.)

Ms. Saunders remembered: “I was tortured by liking him, because it just didn’t fit into my plans. He was in Seattle, I’m in New York. I wanted to open my own bar. I didn’t think it could work.”

Over the years, they’d see each other at liquor industry events. Occasionally, they became lovers.

She tried closing the door on the relationship. “I couldn’t,” said Ms. Saunders, now an owner of the famed drinking mecca Pegu Club on West Houston Street.

But the miles between them remained an issue. After an event at the Merchant Hotel in Belfast in fall 2007, where both were invited guest bartenders, Ms. Saunders said, “ ‘That’s it.’ I was frustrated. How does this work? We cooled it for a while.”

Ms. Saunders had a change of heart in 2009 at the liquor industry’s Tales of the Cocktail convention, which draws the cocktail demimonde’s elite to New Orleans every July. She spied Mr. Hess from afar at an early party.

“That was the moment, like in a cartoon, where you get hit in the back of the head with a frying pan,” she said. She sent a “long, gushy” text message suggesting dinner.

Then, silence.

“He never responded all week. My heart just sunk.” A few days later, at another party, “I feel these hands on my shoulders,” Ms. Saunders recalled. “I see Robert towering over me.” Her text? “I had lost my phone,” Mr. Hess said. “She assumed that I’d given up on things.”

“Him not responding that week really made me think how much he meant to me,” Ms. Saunders said.

The couple’s first official date also took place where it should have — at a bar. Mr. Hess arrived at the New Orleans hotel bar called Swizzle Stick first and ordered a Sazerac. Ms. Saunders joined him soon after and called for a manhattan.

Lu Brow, manager of the bar and a friend, recognized what was going on immediately, and alerted her fellow bartender, explaining, “This is a special night,” and adding, “This may take a while.”

Ms. Brow then plied the couple with pinot noir, Champagne, Cognac and stingers. “They were there a long time,” she said.

While setting up a new bar in Los Angles that fall, Ms. Saunders broke her ankle and was laid up for weeks. Soon, she realized Pegu Club could run on its own.

“That was really the deciding factor. I thought, ‘I really can consider a life out West with Robert.’ ” She moved into Mr. Hess’s house in Lake Forest Park, Wash., in July 2010 and began commuting, spending roughly four out of every five weeks in the Northwest.

Mr. Hess — a man of few, but heartfelt, words — said their shared affinity for cocktails is just a “small piece” of what makes them made for each other. “She has an adventuresome soul,” said Mr. Hess, who is also divorced. “I like status quo and relaxing in the moment. Audrey likes to kick things up sometimes. One of my faults, perhaps, is that I’m a little too monochrome. Her infectious behavior pushes my bounds in healthy directions.” Directions like some day turning their home into a sort of cocktail institute, a Taos for tipplers. “It would be wonderful to tap our friends for the betterment of beverage,” Ms. Saunders trilled.

Friends and family began noticing a change in the “always very solemn and quiet” Mr. Hess, as his father, Robin Hess, a retired Methodist minister, put it. “It used to be when you would talk with him, you would have to keep the conversation going. Now you just sit back and let him go. He’s so happy now.” Ms. Brow saw an alteration in Ms. Saunders. “Audrey’s always been a loving and sweet person. It’s just more magnified now. She’s more bubbling and effusive.”

Ms. Saunders and Mr. Hess became engaged in November 2010 while she was working an African-coast cruise as — what else? — a guest bartender.

Their wedding was one part Seattle, two parts New Orleans.

It began on July 4 with a small private religious ceremony led by Mr. Hess’s father on Vashon Island in Puget Sound. A select collection of cocktail luminaries attended. Some of them, including much of the staff of Seattle’s Rob Roy lounge, jumped behind the bar to execute a reproduction of the Pegu Club’s cocktail menu — modern classics like the Gin-Gin Mule and Old Cuban — as well as a couple of inventions by Mr. Hess.

But being members of a close-knit, sybaritic community that will give a party at the drop of a Champagne coupe, the couple couldn’t stop at that. They wanted a second public wedding — an unannounced event at this year’s Tales of the Cocktail that all their colleagues — bartenders, bar owners, distillers — could witness. They chose a post-midnight event on July 23, euphemistically called the “bartender’s breakfast,” held this year at the grand, high-ceilinged New Orleans Board of Trade. The party traditionally closes out the convention.

“We basically turned it into the wedding reception,” said Mr. Hess of the well-lubricated ’70s-themed soiree. The bride, in a loose white, flowered dress, and the bridegroom, in a powder-blue tuxedo and white platform shoes, were led into the room by a brass band playing “What a Wonderful World.” The couple then danced their way through the roughly 1,000 revelers to a platform directly behind a long, glowing bar staffed by star mixologists from New York, Boston, San Francisco and elsewhere.

The couple read their vows; the crowd cheered; the bartenders continued to mix drinks.

Meanwhile, partygoers jumped in the courtyard fountain and accepted shots funneled through a giant ice sculpture. “See,” Ms. Saunders said, with a gesture that encompassed the surrounding donnybrook. “This is why I wanted a wedding here.”

Lemon Hart Goes Red

2011-07-27T11:10:00.000-04:00

Next time you go searching for the always-hard-to-find Lemon Hart 151 rum (a critical ingredient in many tiki drinks), don't look for the familiar bright yellow bottle. The sought-after product has a new importer, and they have changed the label. The new red look was displayed at the recent Tales of the Cocktail convention in New Orleans. Can't say I like it better. But can't say I like it worse. One definite improvement: the "151" is good and prominent, rather than hiding in the corner, as it did on the old label.

A Beer At...Wheeler's

2011-07-20T13:24:00.007-04:00

My latest column at Eater:

A Beer at...Wheeler's

It was a cool night in Sheepshead Bay. But every man in Wheeler's was wearing a t-shirt. And not necessarily the kind with words or an image on it. That would be too fancy. Just a plain white T, some of them the sleeveless sort known colloquially as "wife beaters." This was all the better to show off tattoos, celebrating the wearer's allegiance to Brooklyn or various girlfriends, on muscled-up biceps. There's a Bally's across the road from the bar. I was pretty sure some of these guys used it.

Wheeler's, founded in 1979, is a port in a storm for old school Sheepshead Bay. You won't find many of the Russian immigrants who have taken over the neighborhood in the last decade or so. Though you'd expect a joint as old and isolated as this to have long ago matured into an old man bar, the clientele is pretty young. They're mainly Italian-Americans, and they all seem very comfortable with one another, sending calls down the bar to friends—"Hey, Mick! You play this song? This is Mick's song!"—and offering bear hugs. And though Wheeler's clearly has a regular crowd, the bar did not make an outsider feel unwelcome. (And, believe me, as the only person in the bar wearing a shirt with buttons, I stood out.)

This place is local in the extreme. The television was showing not a major league game, but a Cyclones match that was taking place only a mile away. One patron, confined to a wheelchair, regularly rolled out onto the sidewalk for a long, leisurely smoke. There he sort of held court, taking to whomever entered or exited the bar. Most conversations were about some guy that both of the talkers knew. This guy was either a stand-up gent, or had recently pulled some unbelievable horseshit. One man spent twenty minutes on the injustice of a parking ticket he'd just gotten. It was OK, though, because Jimmy was gonna fix it. "Jimmy's my get out of jail free card," said the guy. I gathered Jimmy was a cop.

All the "Hale Fellow" camaraderie aside, my favorite person at Wheeler's was the incongruous bartender, a sore thumb if there ever was one. Tall, bone-thin, with greying blonde hair and a long, sorrowful, Scandinavian face, he wore a white shirt and black tie. He spoke little and smiled not at all. He could have easily been cast as a saloon keeper in a Eugene O'Neill play. I ordered a Brooklyn Summer Ale, which he took forever drawing it into one of the odd assortment of glasses that Wheeler's uses to deliver booze to its customers. I liked him tremendously.

—Robert Simonson

Dram Goes Dive

2011-07-17T13:19:00.009-04:00

This is the best solution I've encountered to the bartender exodus that occurs every July during Tales of the Cocktail.

Dram to Temporarily Ditch the Cocktail

By Robert Simonson

Dram, the cocktail bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is celebrated for its rotating murderer’s row of star mixologists. But its owner, Tom Chadwick, was confronted with a personnel crisis.

Most of his bartenders were planning to take the same week off to attendTales of the Cocktail, the drinks convention that attracts the country’s top bar talent to New Orleans each summer.

“I really couldn’t find reliable coverage for the week of Tales,” Mr. Chadwick said. “I didn’t want to have too many outside bartenders, since the execution and operation of a bar like this has a lot of moving parts. And closing the bar seemed like a rather severe solution.”

The fix? From July 20 to 23 — nearly the exact run of Tales — Dram will be supplanted by a pop-up dive bar called 86’d, which is to be run by two of Dram’s lesser-known staff members.

“Our door guy, Reggie Cunningham, and I used to work at the Bushwick Country Club together,” said Mr. Chadwick, mentioning the Brooklyn bar known as one of the wellsprings of the pickleback phenomenon. “We’ve been reminiscing about our dive bar experiences. My server, Reba Thomas, who has been at Dram since Day 1, is also a dive bar vet.”

Mr. Cunningham and Ms. Thomas will play hosts at 86’d. Artisanal cocktails will be 86’d from the menu. Replacing them will be some some of the bêtes noires of modern mixologists: noncraft domestic beer (Coors, Miller High Life), Jägermeister, shooters and the aforementioned picklebacks. If you must have a cocktail, you may avail yourself of a déclassé White Russian or Salty Dog. Prices take a dive, too. Drinks start at $4 and top off at $8. As for food, there are two choices: Reggie’s Boiled Peanuts ($2) and Reba’s Homemade Pimento Cheese.

Patrons might also get friendly chit-chat, something that is often missing at the city’s fanciest cocktail joints. “Reba and I had a chance to work together behind the bar one weekend night,” Mr. Chadwick said. “I really liked her skills as a bartender — a sincere interest in engaging them in conversation and making sure they were having a good time. I would make the drinks and she would interact with the guests in a geniality and charm I miss in cocktail bars, mostly because we’re always heads down focusing on the technical aspects.”

D.C.'s Derek Brown Reveals Rogue 24 Cocktail Menu

2011-07-07T15:53:00.000-04:00

With about two weeks to go until Washington D.C.'s highly anticipated new restaurant Rogue 24 opens, Derek Brown—the District's most vaunted mixologist mind—has unleashed his cocktail program. The creations are designed to go with the food of chef R.J. Cooper, who plans a 24-course tasting menu, with diners sitting around an open kitchen. (The restaurant offered New Yorkers a pop-up preview at LTO on the Lower East Side earlier this summer.)

"I've always been curious about new methods of delivery and texture," said Brown. "I want the cocktails in the salon to present a narrative and to incorporate new techniques and ways of thinking about cocktails, but stick firmly to the principles I've gleaned from the classics." He also said he was interested in "a story embedded in the cocktail."

Creativity and a narrative can be found in a menu entry called Three Martini Lunch. The cocktail consists of three smaller-than-usual Martini glasses. The contents look identical, each as transparent as the next. But the first is a classic gin Martini, the second a Daiquiri made of filtered aged rum and clarified lime juice, and third a "white" Manhattan made with white dog, Dolin blanc vermouth, apricot eau de vie, orange bitters and smoky Scotch. "It's about getting people to try these classic cocktail all over again," said Brown. "If you see the Daiquiri on the menu, you might think of something with strawberries in it coming out of those slushy machines. Here, you get to try it anew."

Last Night's Party, meanwhile, tells a tale through edible visuals. Ingredients are arranged to look like a messy morning-after scene as a swank bash. The top edge of a glass filled with Coteaux Champenois is edged with a paste of creme di cassis made to look like lipstick traces. Another champagne glass nearby appears to have fallen over and broken. The shards of "glass," however, are really pieces of crystalized cassis. The glasses are paired with an ashtray with cavier in it, and Crème Fraîche that looks like a cigarette.

Brown's Pimm's Cup (seen above) comes in solid form. "We take Pimm's and turn it into jelly. We infuse cucumbers with gin." Meyer lemon foam, micro-orchids and ginger beer complete the picture. "Solid cocktails are nothing new, but there is certainly room for elaboration," said Brown. "I had an idea: what does a Pimm's Cup looks like under a microscope."

Brown is aware that some of these processes may not necessarily strike the cocktail-savvy as new. "RJ is fond of saying that nearly all experimenting has been done, and it's now time to apply those experiments. It's using all the tools available to me to delight the guest and offer them an experience."

Brown will train Rogue 24's cooks to make the cocktails, which will be put together at a particular station.

For the less adventurous, there will be beer and wine. Cocktails will be about $12-$14, with some of the more elaborate drinks such as "Last Night's Party" being a little pricier. Here's the complete list:

MIXED DRINKS
Melon Sangria
Horton Viognier (VA), Elderflower Cordial, Compressed Melons, Grapefruit Bitters

Helios Cocktail
Boyd & Blair Vodka (PA), Passionfruit Puree, Lime & Coconut Cream, Citrus Charcoal

Blagden Tonic
Bluecoat Gin (PA), Gooseberry Syrup, Lime, Q Tonic, Gooseberries, Chive Blossoms

"Pimms Cup"
Pimms Jellies, Cacoctin Creek Gin (VA)-infused Cucumbers, Lemon Foam, Micro-orchids, Ginger-lemonade

Strawberry-Balsamic Shrub
Dogfish Head Brown Sugar Rum (MD), Strawberry-Balsamic Shrub, Lime, Dried Strawberries

Texas Is the Reason
Balcones Blue Corn Whiskey (TX), Hickory-Smoked Cola, Blue Corn Flowers

Pepper & Pepper
James E. Pepper Bourbon (KY), Sirop de Gomme, Fig Bitters, Lemon Peel, Black Pepper Tincture, Brandied Figs

Our Pal
Cacoctin Creek Rye, Gran Classico Bitters, Dolin Dry Vermouth, Orange Peel

NON-ALCOHOLIC

Elderflower & Tonic

Ginger-Lemonade

Hickory-Smoked Cola

Strawberry-Balsamic Shrub

PAIRINGS

"Three Martini Lunch"
Dry Martini, Clarified Daiquiri, White Manhattan

"Last Night's Party"
Coteaux Champenois, Cassis Lipstick, Cassis Crisp

A Beer at...Finnegan's Wake

2011-07-06T13:30:00.000-04:00

Every city in America has a bar called Finnegan's Wake (usually full of people who have never cracked the book). This is New York's:

A Beer at...Finnegan's Wake

I thought it must be Ladies' Night at Finnegan's Wake. And I do mean ladies, because every woman at the bar was of a certain age or older. They came in in twos and threes, unencumbered by men, and wrapped up in floral prints. They drank beer and sipped glasses of white wine that the bartender filled to the brim. One poured melting ice from a bar glass to cool down her Martini. None of them were unfamiliar with the place, a pub as Irish as they were.

A tiny, middle-aged Asian woman came in with a clutch of bootleg DVDs. I've seen these sort of hucksters in bars all my life. Usually they're chased out by the owner. But at Finnegan's Wake, the woman's reception was warm. The trio of ladies at the end of the bar looked through her stock. No sale. But the two film industry lushes nearby, who had been dropping names like James Gandolfini all night, were willing customers. "Hangover Part 2"? Yes. "The Dilemma"? Definitely. "The Adjustment Bureau"? OK. They bought about 12 movies. Then one went out for a smoke, jostling the lady with the ash-blonde bouffant hairdo next to him. He apologized by warmly shaking her hand and introducing himself. He was that kind of drunk, the sort that endeavors to remain civilized by constantly shaking hands with strangers. He did the same thing to the identical woman 20 minutes later. She asked for her check soon after.

Two-thirds of Finnegan's Wake is given over to dining. At 8 PM one recent weeknight, there wasn't a table to be had. The diners were obviously regulars, gray around the temples, thick around the waist. They sat in married couples of one or two. Occasionally a grown son or daughter was thrown in. And, as at the bar, plenty of ladies enjoying a drink and a talk and tossed green salad, or a dish of steamed vegetables that looked remarkably fresh. (Don't worry pubsters—you can get your bangers and mash and burger here, too.) The staff is constant. The owner, Anthony King, who opened the bar on the corner of First Avenue and 73rd Street in 1972, brags on his website that the kitchen workers have been with him a total of 130 years, and he has seen waitresses through college. He even praises his wonderful landlord. There's a first.

—Robert Simonson

In Praise of Liquor Label Fussiness

2011-07-01T12:46:00.001-04:00

The makers of Jack Daniel’s, the number one whiskey in the world, recent rolled out a new bottle image and simplified label, thus messing with what is arguably the most recognizable look in the liquor world. The new vessel is still boxy, but a more sharp-shouldered and smoother around the neck. The label, meanwhile, loses about half its text, including the words "Old Time" and "Quality."

I'm sure the market department could expertly argue that all that verbiage was a vestige of the past, and had no further practical purpose. And they'd be right. But value can not always be quantified. The ineffable and the extraneous can actually be that thing that quietly and inexplicably lends your product character, and you shed it at your peril.

Me, I have always adored the copious amount of information that is crammed onto the labels of the liquor world's more historical elixirs. The are reminders of the bygone days when the look of a bottle of booze wasn't that much different from the vials of prescription medicine you'd obtain at the local apothecary. (This makes perfect sense, since the histories of booze and health-giving tonics have often crossed paths.) What's more, some of the more mysterious markings on a bottle are reminders of the liquor in question's long past, while also lending the liquor a certain mystique. What does "Old No. 7" mean? Nobody at Jack Daniel's knows. Yet they leave it on the label. Because it's a good marketing tool, yes, but also (presumedly) because it is part of Jack's legacy.

Some of my favorite bottles on the shelf are those with the most crowded labels: George Dickel, Fernet Branca, Angostura Bitters, Bombay Gin (not the Sapphire), Pimm's No. 1. They are works of graphic art that double as curious historical documents.

Many old brands have been revamping their looks in recent years in an effort to make themselves newly sexy to the cocktail maker and the cocktail drinker. To my eyes, the revamps are always in the direction of sleekness, simplicity and a slick vulgarity. They go from bottle to branding device, and everything ends up looking like either a new-generation Scotch bottle or an elephantine perfume container.

The decision to change the Jack bottle was, of course, market-driven. "Given the worldwide economic situation and the increasingly competitive environment for premium spirits brands, we recognize the importance of having Jack Daniel's continue to stand out in the marketplace," said Jack Daniel's Managing Director John Hayes in a statement.

It already stood out.

The Other Punch Book

2011-06-29T11:43:00.002-04:00

Dan Searing is either the bravest or most unlucky author in the cocktail world at present.

Searing, a Washington D.C. mixologist and partner in the bar Room 11 (and the host of a weekly soiree, begun in 2009, call The Punch Club), has just come out with "The Punch Bowl," a compendium of punch recipes and punch history. This comes about eight months or so after David Wondrich released his "Punch," the first major work in decades (maybe ever) studying the once-popular form of libation. Wondrich's influence in cocktail circles is such that the book's arrival has resulted in high-end cocktail bars across the nation tacking a punch or two onto their cocktail lists. In New York, for example, there were, a couple years ago, maybe three or four places where one could order a traditional punch. Today, there are dozens. There are even a couple (Drink in Williamsburg, Cienfuegos in the East Village) which are devoted almost exclusively to punch.

So what can Searing offer that Wondrich hasn't already provided in his scholarly work? Or, put differently, why would anyone need two books on punch? Well, the books are actually vastly different in character. Searing has basically provided a very attractive recipe book. There are brief sections at the front about the history and proper service of punch, but they are cursory when put next to Wondrich's text. The meat of Searing's book is the formulae for the 75 punches (some modern, but most drawn from ancient cocktail books, including Jerry Thomas') he's chosen to feature. They are easy to follow; a line or two of introduction to Fish House Punch or Spread Eagle Punch or whatever, then straight on to the ingredients and how they're compounded. Searing's volume is also a highly decorative work, full of glossy and attractive color photographs, not only of many of the punches but also of some ancient punch bowls.

In short, "The Punch Bowl" is a book for those civilians out there who simply want to learn to make punch. "Punch" is for the mixologist and cocktailian wonk who desires to learn the subject up and down, and in depth. As I am sometimes one of these people and something the other, I am happy to have both books on my shelf.

What I Will Drinking This Summer

2011-06-28T12:03:00.000-04:00

One of the frustrations of magazine writing is the feckless fluctuations in the endless "best of" lists. I don't mean the "Best of 2011" type articles. Since each of those deal with a separate year, it makes sense that the honorees would be different from list to list. No, I mean the things like "Best French Fries in New York" or "Best Pizza in New York," where Di Fara tops the list one year, but Totonno's emerges triumphant the next. What? Di Fara suddenly went sour in that twelve-month period, leaving room for Totonno's to sneak onto the throne? Where was Totonno's the previous year, if it's so good? It stunk the year before, and now it's great?

Of course, the magazines do this because they can't just print the same damn list of the same damn suspects year after year, can they? Even if that would be telling the actual truth, it would would be too boring. But this seeming editorial necessity breeds factual fraudulence.

I bring this up because last year I posted an item titled "What I Will Drink This Summer." I considered I doing the same thing this year. But, then I thought, well, I'll probably just be drinking the same things. It's not like Gin & Tonics and Pimm's Cups stopped being tasty and amazingly refreshing summer quaffs. I'm not going to leave them off just for novelty's sake. So, what I've decided to do is compose a similar but slightly altered list. It includes a number of things I listed last year, because I still drink those things every summer. But there are a few additions, things I've discovered since then, as well as some adjustments to previous entries.

CLASSICS

Southside. When the weather starts getting warm, this is usually the first summer drink I order. I think I had my first in May this year. One has to be careful asking for them in cocktail bars. A few errant souls serve them up in a coupe. I know there's room for argument here, but this mix of gin, limes, sugar and mint is a sipping drink, not something you throw back. It's best served in a high ball over ice. The colder the better

Pimm's Cup. I still opt for ginger ale over lemon soda. But I've since found that, if I make it with homemade, fresh lemonade, it's damn good. For a variation, I like the Spy Cup over at Northern Spy Food Company in the East Village.

Gin and Tonic: I put this classic drink in the "new" category last year because I was making them last summer with Beefeater Summer, a new expression of the London dry gin made with hibiscus, elderflower and black current. Alas, they discontinued the Summer this year, so I can't use it. But there's always regular Beefeater, so who's complaining. I always make my G&Ts with either Plymouth or one of the classic London Dry Gins (Beefeater, Bombay, Taqueray, etc.) I've tried many of the so-callled new-world gins. Most of them just don't play well with tonic. They're too soft, or too oddly flavored.

Rose: My favored label of last summer—2009 Channing Daughters Rosato di Refosco, made in Long Island with a Friulian grape variety—has fallen off the list, because the 2010 isn't nearly as good. I recently took a trip to South Africa, so I've been turning to Mulderbosch's reliable rose, drawn from Cabernet Sauvignon, a lot. I was also pleasantly surprised by the Washington State-born Charles and Charles 2010 rose, made from Syrah.

NEWBIES

Becherovka and Tonic: I cited this last year, and then was embarrassed when the Czech liqueur didn't appear on the U.S. market as scheduled. But now it's safely on the shelves. So try this winning concoction. It's addictive, and wonderfully different.

Cocchi Americano: Now one year old in the U.S., and I still can't get enough of it. It's Lillet with bite, with extra personality. Drink it straight on the rocks, or with some soda water and an orange slice.

Zucca Rabarbaro: I've grown fond of this rhubarb-flavored aperitif from Milan, which reached these shores just last fall. Drink it as the Milanese do, over crushed ice, half Zucca, half soda water. Lovely.

Americano Cocktail on Tap: You can get this mix of Campari, sweet vermouth and soda on tap at the new bitters bar Amor y Amargo in the East Village. The taste is fantastically fresh. I've never had one better.

Aperitifs in General: In researching my recent article on aperitifs for the Times, I became so attached to these light before-dinner drinks that now they're pretty much all I drink. For the life of me I can't imagine why anyone would indulge in a heavy, alcoholic cocktail, or big, red wine, in warm weather. Give them a rest until the fall.

Bartenders Sick of All Bartending Trends

2011-06-24T01:56:00.001-04:00

In its recent summer cocktail issue, Time Out New York took it upon itself to interview 52 of New York's most distinguished bartenders. Each subject was given a variance on five to eight boilerplate questions. Among them were "What cocktail trends would you like to see die?" and "Soapbox Time: What pisses you off?" The answers—which made for fun reading—included what seemed like every cocktail trend and bar behavior in the current mixed-drink universe. Reading all 52 interviews and tallying the grievances, the best bartenders in town collectively hate these things (and asterisk indicates that more than one bartender weighed in against this offense):

Bars that don't allow standing at the bar

Small batch bitters

Back-seat bartenders

Cocktail-Food pairings

Anti-vodka bias

Cucumbers

House-made anything

Diet spirits/"skinny drinks"*

Energy liquors

Customer who request non-sweet drinks

Mayor Bloomberg

Infusions

Bartenders who do not properly practice hospitality*

Eggs in cocktails

The term Mixologist*

Reservation-only bars

The Speakeasy aesthetic

Homemade bitters

Patrons who behave like "assholes"

Yelpers

The facial-hair-and-suspenders look among bartenders

Over-complicated drinks*

Bartender elitism

Foreigners who don't tip

Americans who don't tip

The Pickleback

Hello Kitty credit cards

Over-the-top bartender showmanship

Bartender competitions

Molecular mixology

Cocktail bloggers (guess I'm violating that one right now)

Cocktail nerds (Whoops, did it again)

People who get drunk

People who don't order from the cocktail list

High-priced cocktail

Poor service

Pop-up bars

Guest bartenders

Bartenders bereft of technique

Bartenders who don't say "Hello" to patrons

Big ice

"Solid" cocktails

People who order a Ramos Gin Fizz

People who order obscure drinks

People who wave their hands and their money

People who touch the garnishes

People who don't have their money ready

Bacon

"Emotional" cocktails

It should be noted that some of the bartenders indicated a few of these very same things as trends that they liked.

Among the Old Bottles

2011-06-23T14:30:00.000-04:00

The annual Wine Media Guild, in which members cart along bottles from their personal cellars to supplement the dinner's lubricants, is always a welcome opportunity to drink wines I wouldn't normally have access to. My elders and betters in this club have been collecting since the 1970s, when good wine could still be had on a middle-class income.

We're talking mainly Bordeaux and Burgundy here, because these men and women are traditionalists. So, ninety percent of the old bottles I sampled during the three-hour-long dinner were old-school Claret. The evening began well with a 1982 Chateau Fourcas-Hosten from the Listrac section of Bordeaux. Listrac doesn't necessarily inspire excitement among wine lovers, but this house is known as a source of good value wine. The elegant 1982 bore that rep out. It was restrained and very dry, with lovely notes of dried current, cherry and rose petals.

An example of the great Chateau Figeac followed. I've long been a fan of this vaunted St.-Emilion house, and the 1986 was the oldest vintage I've tasted from them. It was elegant, yet full of plump, lively, bouncing, full fruit. Quite alive for a quarter-century old.

Next arrived a 1979 Chateau Montrose, the so-called "Latour of St. Estephe." It had a forceful, barnyard, mushroom nose. The wine itself, however, seemed past its prime, a bit thin and soft. I thought it would die imminently. Owner John Foy pointed out a tea leaves finish he didn't care for, but thought would vanish after the bottle had breathed a bit. Sure enough, an hour later the tea was gone, and the wine had revived considerably.

The wine of the evening did not hail from France, but Germany. It was 1979 riesling from Dr. Burklin Wolf. The label was barely attached, and the Pfalz wine so advanced in age that it was absolutely brown. It was the darkest riesling I've ever seen. This was a Wachenheimer Gerumpel trockenbeerenauslese, so it had plenty of sweetness to ease itself into old age. The wine was amazing, silky and rich like Madeira, tasting of ambrosia, turkish delight and raisin, with rock-solid acidity holding everything in place.

A Beer At...The Punch Bowl

2011-06-17T12:33:00.000-04:00

For a liquor history buff, few excitements match the discovery of an old bar you never knew about. From the outside, The Bronx's The Punch Bowl looks like just another unlovely Irish pub. Inside, however, it's a feast for the eyes and the imagination. There's been a bar at this location since 1901—that is, since there's been a building at this location. And ample evidence of the joint's layered history lies inside. I recommend you take the 1 line all the way to the end, save one stop, and find out for yourself.

Here's the column:

A Beer At...The Punch Bowl

Things can get lost and forgotten in The Bronx.

Most of the extant pre-Prohibition bars in New York City have been pretty roundly celebrated. But The Punch Bowl in Kingsbridge, while only steps from the elevated 238th stop on the 1 line, has somehow snuck under the radar for 110 years. Its anonymity might have something to do with the aluminum siding and faux fieldstone that have covered over what was once a handsome, wood-paneling whistle stop, with swinging doors at the corner and stained glass along the sides.

Those stained-glass panels are now inside, hung and backlit high above the old wooden bar. The ceiling—comprised of brown-painted tin and timbers and cooled by four ceiling fans of various ages, sizes and speeds—is high and can accommodate such decorative touches. (The ceiling of old bars are always high, which I think is part of what makes their so welcoming.) Unlike McSorley's or the Old Town Bar, whose ancient interiors are basically frozen in amber, The Punch Bowl design is a jumble of eras. Yes, there's a pool table, a juke box, and the usual mirrored advertisements for various beers; and there are framed and signed jerseys from both the Yankees and the Mets. But above the restroom doors are stuffed deer and boar heads. The wood-framed, round clock has a yellow face and looks prewar. Bolted to the wall are a couple of nut vending machines of a sort I haven't seen in years. The ceramic floor is circa 1901. And a wooden statue of a soused German in lederhosen bids you adieu at the door as you leave. As an impromptu collage of 20th century artifacts, it's quite wonderful.

The business began as a German pilsner hall, complete with back entrance (still there) and beer garden (gone). It was called Buckeye's, and very likely poured beer by a particular local brewery. During Prohibition, it masqueraded as an ice cream parlor. When it reopened, it was as an Irish pub. It was renamed The Punch Bowl in the 1960s and was taken over by the Barry family in 1979.

The hulking, bald bartender pulls a good beer from eight different drafts. The owner walks around in a robin's-egg-blue bowling shirt and says hello to the customers, all of whom he knows. The clientele is friendly and working class—not a tie in the bunch. They take their darts seriously. A cubby hole opposite the bar is reserved for throwing the tiny missiles, and is as brightly lit as a photo studio. A neon beer sign in the corner is covered with a curtain so that no bullseyes get lost in the sun. Though surrounded by remnants of a century's worth of bar life, and the old IRT rumbled outside, as it has for all but seven years of the tavern's life, the crowd was very much alive and in the moment. I've rarely seen the years melt together as seamlessly as they do at The Punch Bowl.

—Robert Simonson

All-in-One Bar Gadgets, Yesterday and Today

2011-06-13T01:06:00.013-04:00

Americans love all-in-one gizmos. You know, those things they advertise on local, late-night TV, that chop, slice, dice and make Julian fries. It's just how we're built, and the reason why we can't get enough of Swiss Army Knives.

The drinking world is no different. Contraptions that can do it all for you—open bottles, measure, squeeze, mix, chill, whatever—date from the time cocktails met the Industrial Revolution. Recently, I received an example of the latest prototype in this genre. It's called Bartule, and it combines in one package a corkscrew, a bottle-opener a jigger, a juicer, a coaster (which can also function as a salt rimmer, we are told) and an ice bucket. "The Bartule," relates a press release, "is the only bar accessory that provides consumers with an all-in-one party solution when throwing great social events." It also comes in six colors.

The Bartule is a nifty-enough looking piece of merchandise. I would recommend it more for wine-lovers than cocktail lovers, though. For wine, all you need is a corkscrew, coaster and ice bucket (if it's a wine to be chilled). To mix drinks, you need much more than a jigger and a juicer—notably, a cocktail shaker and bar spoon.

Nonetheless, I was rather pleased with the item. That is, until I visited a nearby flea market in Manhattan and happened upon this little beauty from the 1950s.

It's called a Drink-Dialer and it was made by a company called Apex. I haven't been able to find out much about the company but apparently they also produced a similar device called a Chip-Chop.

Like the Bartule, the Drink-Dialer has a corkscrew (which you pull out of the central handle, as seen above), a bottle-opener (on the same end) and a jigger which measure 1 1/2 ounces. The jigger is hefty enough that it can be used as an ice hammer—a very trendy utility in these ice-focused days.

The coolest feature by far is the "Drink-Dialer" itself. Turn the handle and the two windows in the handle open up to the name and recipe of nine different drinks. The recipes are quite classic and much to my liking, I was surprised to discover. The Manhattan called for Rye, for instance, and the Martini formulation is not too dry, as was the tendency in the 1950s.

Now, the Drink-Dialer does not have an ice bucket. But that's just the thing that makes me prefer the 1950s device. It is compact, as all-in-one gadgets ought to be. The Bartule is a foot tall and about eight inches wide. This is mainly because of the bucket, but the other parts of the product are also on the large size. Because of this, I've had a hard time finding counter or cupboard space for it in my one-bedroom apartment. The Drink-Dialer I can slip in my pocket, if needs be.

I would still recommend the Bartule as a gift. It could "pull double-duty as a sculptural icebreaker at parties, backyard BBQ’s and first-date picnics," as the release boasts. Just make sure the recipient has a big house.

Christina Bini Will Not Back Down

2011-06-10T15:23:00.000-04:00

The Florentine mixologist Christina Bini caught a lot of flack last year for the curious cocktail program she delivered at the quirky Tribeca Italian restaurant Il Matto. Cocktails made of tomatoes, lettuce, ricotta cheese and vermouth-soaked stones didn't exactly fit the accepted New York model.

You'd think the relatively quick closing of Il Matto (it lasted less than a year despite some good reviews) would have chastened Bini. But the blonde bartender is made of sterner stuff. The owners of Il Matto have returned to the same space with a new restaurant called White & Church, and the new iteration bears an even more focused emphasis on Bini's creation. Bini has upped her game to meet the challenge. Of particular notice is a whole section devoted to cocktails with insects. That's right: insects. Grasshoppers and bees and such.

Any bartender in this town who thinks their concoctions are brave should take a look at the cod-infused gin and eggplant cream-filled libations below before their next boast:

WHITE & CHURCH COCKTAIL LIST

MARTINImaltese
ginger infused vodka, red bell pepper, ginger, Martini rose
14

via de neri

gin, Martini rose, cucumber, pink peppercorn

breakfast martini
pear Grey Goose vodka, St. Germain, emmenthal cheese , black pepper

smoked martini
scotch whiskey, vodka, smoked salmon

black and white stone
vodka, Mongolian black stone infused in vermouth dry, vodka, Ligurian white stone infused in vermouth

dry
corteccia martini gin, butter and anchovies
vodka, liquid butter , anchovies

paco-taibo
tequila infused with mustard, cherry tomatoes, fresh thyme, parmigiano cheese

SALTY
buffalo 66
vodka infused with rosemary, lemon juice, Worcester sauce, celery salt, red beet, hot pepper 14

bloody frida
white tequila infused with ginger, tom-yan-gum, lemon juice, tomato juice, curry powder

beer and tomatoes
lager beer, celery salt, tabasco, lime, tomato juice

salty cappuccino
vodka, eggplant cream, Worcester sauce, salt, black pepper, sundered tomato, fresh oregano

clamato mary
Cod infused gin, worcester sauce, salt, black pepper, tabasco , clam juice

ANYTIME
zucchidorini
Midori, zucchini, green apple, ginger, heavy cream 14

dolce vita
Amaretto di Saronno, Bourbon whiskey, Mascarpone cheese, biscotti di Prato

rosso tiziano
rum, lemon juice, sugar, chestnut cream, raspberry pure', tomato juice

smilla
vodka, lemon juice, sugar, celery, peach

peru'
vodka, lemon juice, sugar, arugula, pear

pasolini
brandy, Frangelico, fresh ricotta cheese, strawberry pure'

strega
Strega liquour, lemon juice, honey, sage, apricot

do you remember last night
Scotch whiskey, Pimm's No .1 , Aperol , soda water

SPARKLING
vicolo dell'oro

Pimm's No.1 , red port wine, fresh ginger, carrot, ace juice 14

storm
Cynar, Fernet Branca, lemon juice, fresh mint, soda water

studio 54
tequila infused with St. Germain, mango puree, Chinotto S.Pellegrino

basil americano
Campari, Martini red, Orangina S. Pellegrino

TROMP' OILovetto fritto
white tequila, lemon juice, sugar, soy milk, egg white, peaches under syrup, balsamic vinegar reduction 14

pollo fritto
Martini rosso budino

INSECTS
rosemary
rum infused with apple and cinnamon, lemon juice, sugar, honey, toasted bees
14

blue velvet
black opal, brandy infused with tobacco cigar

why not
tequila, Contreau, lime juice, avocado, sugar, mexican worms, red pepper

summer
milk, coconut, creme caramel, grasshoppers

Pusser's Rum Brings the Pain to Painkiller

2011-06-09T13:22:00.004-04:00

In its single year in business, the Lower East Side Tiki bar Painkiller has arguably achieved greater name recognition than any other new tavern that has opened in the last 12 months. Constant press and regular accolades have been its lot. Question cocktail enthusiasts in Portland, Atlanta or Los Angeles and they're recognize the word as not only the name of a classic Tiki drink, but also the instantly classic Tiki bar that took the drink for its name.

But the bar's legal reign as Painkiller has come to an end. Owing to a federal law suit brought by Pusser's Rum Ltd., the bar will be henceforth know at PKNY. Pusser's has also demanded that Painkiller turn over its website address and stop selling the rum concoction know as Painkiller (which, according to them, has to be made with Pusser's).

Where does a British Virgin Islands rum manufacturer get off telling a Manhattan bar what to do? Well, it seems the 31-year-old company holds two U.S. trademarks, one for "alcoholic fruit drinks with fruit juices and cream of coconut and coconut juice," and one for "non-alcoholic mixed fruit juices," which they market as "Pusser’s Painkiller Cocktail Mix"—a product I have no familiarity with, and which, I'd hazard a guess, is far less known among cocktailians than is the Painkiller bar.

According to the Lo-Down site, in the lawsuit filed April 12 in U.S. District Court, plaintiff Pusser’s Rum Ltd., "sued tiki bar owners Giuseppe Gonzalez and Richard Boccato, claiming irreparable harm to its brand, unfair competition and unfair business practices, according to court documents on file in the Southern District of New York."

That Pusser's successfully copyrighted the Painkiller cocktail name is a curious thing. According to Tiki expert Jeff Berry, the Painkiller (a blend of pineapple juice, orange juice, coconut cream, rum, cinnamon and nutmeg) was invented in 1971 by George and Mari Myrick of the Soggy Dollar Bar, in the British Virgin Islands. Jerry O'Connell, who currently owns the Soggy Dollar, told Berry that the Myricks originally made the drink with Mount Gay and Cruzan dark rums. But now Pusser's—founded a decade after the drink was created—is the official, legal rum of this libation. Because of Pusser's legal action, Berry himself initially thought the company invented the cocktail.

Pusser's may have won the battle here, but it may lose a very long, painful war. It's legal strongarming of Painkiller has already inspired some bad blood within cocktail circles. Gonzalez and Boccato are extremely popular figures in the cocktail world, and their friends are faithful. Within hours of the announcement of the bar's forced name change, various bartenders and industry figures proclaimed on Facebook their antipathy toward Pusser's, and said they were thinking of boycotting the rum.

There is also a Facebook page called "Bartenders Against Pusser's Rum." At press time, it had 90 members. UPDATE: There are 250 as of 4 PM ET. Also, the page has changed its name to "Bartenders Against Trademarking of Cocktails." There is, however, a newer Facebook community called "Bartenders and Cocktailians Against Pusser's Rum." It has 70 people who "like" it as of 5:30 PM. The Pusser's Rum Facebook page, meanwhile, has 76 members.

New York Distilling History, Before the Current Boom

2011-06-06T12:53:00.000-04:00

New York City distilling has been a hot topic over the past year or so, what with the advent of new micro-distilleries such as Kings County Distillery, New York Distilling Company and Breuckelen Distilling. At the recent Manhattan Cocktail Classic, Allen Katz and Tom Potter, partners in New York Distilling Company, gathered to remind the audience that Gotham has had a long relationship with distilled spirits, even if the names and products involved may not be as storied as those of New York City brewing history.

According to Katz, the first distillery in New York City was built in 1640. It was on Staten Island, and likely produced applejack. The town was still a Dutch colony back then, of course. A few decades later, rum was the tipple of choice. American rum from this era is associated with New England, but New York had its share of production. Katz said there were 16 rum distilleries in New York by the 1720s.

It will surprise no one who knows history that rich and prominent families were involved in this trade. The moneyed old clans have always found ways to make more lucre by producing, importing and distributing various drugs and intoxicants for the masses. In the case of Colonial America, the dignified Livingston and Lefferts families owned distilleries. The Livingstons were prominent in New York politics for centuries; one member was a signer of the Declaration of Independence; another signed the Constitution.

In the early 19th century, Hezekiah Pierrepont (from another famous New York family; his grandfather founded Yale) founded Anchor Gin, the first commercial gin produced in the U.S., according to Katz. Pierrepont, a massive land speculator, was largely responsible for the creation of Brooklyn Heights. He bought Philip Livingston's distillery at the foot of Joralemon Street and started producing gin. Anchor Gin, which was aged in barrels for twelve months, had wide distribution, being pouring at points as far as New Orleans. By 1819, however, Pierrepont had abandoned the business. Other distilleries include one run by William Johnson at 16th Street and Ninth Avenue in Manhattan. After distillery taxed were raised in the 1860s, there was a spike in illicit distilling.

During the 20th century, or course, New York didn't have much to boast about, distilling-wise. The 21st century, meanwhile, has seen a boomlet. Breuckelen and King County have been producing their gin and moonshine for a year or so now. Both are toying around with lightly aged spirits (gin in the case of Breuckelen, whiskey for Kings) but getting your hands on a bottle is a bit of a job.

Bottles from New York Distilling are imminent. The company won't be firing up its stills until, perhaps, August. At the seminar, Potter and Katz said they hoped to be selling product by the end of the summer.

What will those products be? They're largely keeping mum. But there will be gin. In fact, at least two different expressions of gin. They won't say which, but there aren't many to choose from; there's London Dry, Old Tom, Genever and, well, not much else. But who knows what they have up their sleeves. "We're going to look at all of the historical expressions of gin and we're going to try all of them," said Potter.

Rye is also in NYDC's future, as well as a bar directly in the distillery.

Also at the seminar was one Dan Prieto, proprietor of Cacao Prieto, a curious enterprise which will combine chocolate-making and booze-creation into one enterprise. He will be creating a variety of rums and liqueurs from cacao beans from the Dominican Republic. Brooklyn distilling has certainly become very interesting, very fast.

The Beagle Brings Birthplace of Barrel-Aged Cocktails to New York

2011-06-03T01:21:00.005-04:00

Barrel-aged cocktails became a thing after Portland, Oregon, bartender Jeffrey Morganthaler began experimenting with them and selling them in late 2009. That happened at Clyde Common, the bar and restaurant in the Ace Hotel in Portland.

There are many places where one can purchase a barrel-aged cocktail in New York now. But on May 10, one was opened by an actual partner in Clyde Common, Matthew Piacentini. Called The Beagle, it's located at 162 Avenue A in Manhattan's most drinkingest neighborhood, the East Village.

"There were ceratin aspects about Clyde that I liked," said Piacentini. "But it's absolutely a Portland restaurant and I wanted to make absolutely a New York place." One thing he wants the Beagle to share with Clyde, however, is "that the food and bar program will be given equal billing."

"With the Beagle, we started with the bar," he continued. "It was the driving force. Everything had to, not defer to the cocktails, but nothing could take away from it." The chef is Garrett Eagleton, a veteran of that Clyde Common. Piacentini, who lives in New York now, and was most recently the bar manager at inoteca e liquori bar, hired a colleague from there, Dan Greenbaum to help created the bar program.

Two barrel-aged cocktails are in the works. Piacentini doesn't see the point in aging liquors that have already seen some wood, such as whiskey and brandy. So he is concentrating on white spirits. One cocktail already in barrel is the Tuxedo No. 2: gin, dry vermouth, maraschino liqueur, orange bitters and absinthe. A second is a "white" Manhattan, using high-proof Buffalo Trace white dog, sweet vermouth and Angostura bitters.

The Manhattan will be made through an interesting, multi-barrel process similar to the solera system used to make sherry. A week or so after one barrel is filled with Manhattans, another barrel will be similarly prepared. When the first cask is ready, half of it will be emptied out, and the cavity will be filled by part of the younger contents from the second barrel. Theoretically, this will result in a constant supply of a consistent product.

The cocktails should be ready by late June or early July. There will also be a variety of classic and original crafted cocktails and a selection of "pairing boards," in which a food is paired with a particular liquor; i.e. Sweetbreads and Calvados, Lamb Neck and Rye, and, most intriguingly, Braised Celery and Gin. Mmm. Celery.

Take Two Before Dinner and Thank Me in the Morning

2011-06-02T01:09:00.004-04:00

Every article about a broad category of liquor requires some, well, research. Meaning, a lot of sipping and sampling. In some cases (Canadian whisky, liqueurs) this can be a bit trying. In others (white whiskey, Cognac), it can be hit-or-miss interesting. And, when you're lucky (barrel-aged cocktails, eye-opener A.M. cocktails), it can be slice a heaven. File aperitifs under the latter category. The last month, in preparation for the following article on before-dinner drinks for the New York Times, I've sipped at an aperitif or two before every dinner. How Americans do without these appetite-stirring bitter drinks, I don't know. And yet they do. Aside from Campari, few aperitivi are actively exploited in the Land of the Free. Instead, we hit back brain-muddling and tongue-numbing cocktails before dinner. Even in hot weather. Hopefully, with the new influx of European americanos and vermouths and amari and quinquina, that will change. If Cocchi Americano doesn't become a national craze, there is no justice.

Here's the article:

Aperitifs, a Sip of Europe Before Dinner

By Robert Simonson

NORTHERN SPY FOOD CO. had a drinking problem. The farm-to-table restaurant in the East Village had a beer and wine license but wanted to serve cocktails. An additional license for spirits was needed, but Community Board 3 refused the request.

Then a friend, the mixologist Erick Castro, spied a creative opening, right between wine and spirits: aperitifs. Because many of these classic, bitter before-dinner drinks are wine-based, they could be poured legally. Mr. Castro stocked the drink menu with a selection of Italian and French aperitifs, as well as a few sherry-, vermouth- and apertif-based cocktails, including the Spy Cup, a bracing blend of Dubonnet, ginger wine and two kinds of vermouth.

Mr. Castro had plenty of material to work with. Not in years has such a rich selection of classic aperitifs been available in the United States.

Thanks to the work of a few adventurous importers, a slew of little-known European aperitifs has recently reached these shores. Among them are Rabarbaro Zucca, a rhubarb-flavored amaro — the Italian word for “bitter” — from Milan that sells for about $30; Maurin Quina, a cherry-infused concoction from France ($34); Becherovka, a cinnamon-spiked herbal liqueur beloved in the Czech Republic, and available only spottily in the United States until Pernod Ricard recently brought it back ($25); Cardamaro, a wine-based amaro infused with cardoon and blessed thistle from Piedmont ($23); and Bonal Gentiane Quina, a French quinquina (an aperitif flavored with cinchona bark, the source of quinine), which has a base of Mistelle, grape juice whose fermentation has been stopped by the addition of spirit ($19). Aperol, a sort of sweeter but equally red cousin of Campari, arguably started the trend when it was brought to the United States in 2006.

Northern Spy carries Cardamaro and Bonal Gentiane Quina, and plans to add Cocchi Americano ($19), a sweet yet biting mix of Moscato, herbs, fruit and spices that has been pleasing the citizens of Asti for 120 years, and has recently found its way into countless cocktails. (“Americano” is another way to say bitter, not a gesture in Italian-American relations.)

You can find an even wider selection at Amor y Amargo, 443 East Sixth Street, a dark, pint-size East Village bar dedicated to bitters, amari, liqueurs and the like, which has house-made vermouth and Americano cocktails (Campari, sweet vermouth and soda water) on tap.

“It’s been really exciting the last year or two,” said Joe Campanale, who champions aperitifs at his West Village restaurants, L’Artusi and dell’anima. “We’ve gotten access to products we haven’t before.”

The last two decades have seen Americans educating themselves on the multitudinous expressions of wine, beer, whiskey and cocktails. But aperitifs — perceived as immovably European — remain a confidence-shaking conundrum to many consumers.

“Americans have been scared of aperitifs, especially vermouths, since Prohibition,” said Anistatia Miller, a liquor historian whose “Mixellany Guide to Vermouths and Other Aperitifs” will be published in July. “When the league of experienced bartenders who were immigrants or first-generation children of immigrants went to war and died or left the U.S. to work in Europe and South America, it left the work pool with people who knew nothing of traditions such as aperitivo.”

Cultural assimilation did its own damage. “Germans, Italians, French and Spanish émigrés learned to become Americans, rather than embracing their own cultures,” Ms. Miller said. “They adapted traditions that worked and discarded traditions that made them different.”

As a result, today, the terms themselves — aperitif, aperitivo — affect some Americans like headlights do a deer. “They seem like foreign concepts because we’re not accustomed to using the word,” said Eric Seed, owner of Haus Alpenz, the Minnesota-based company responsible for importing Cocchi, Bonal, Zucca and other aperitifs.

But aperitifs are simplicity itself. Pour over ice, add soda water and an orange or lemon twist, and that’s that. The recipes haven’t changed much since the mid-1800s, when aperitifs took root as a popular tradition. Campari, Lillet and Dubonnet are a few of the benchmark creations of that era.

“They stimulate the appetite,” Ms. Miller said. “They do what the term ‘apertivo’ means: a before-dinner stimulant, that allows you to enjoy the aromas and flavors of the food that follows.”

Mr. Castro tried to make patrons less insecure by providing quick instructions for each aperitif on the Northern Spy menu. For instance, under Cardamaro, it suggests “on the rocks or neat.”

“A lot of people know the aperitifs but don’t know how to order them,” he said. “If they see it on the list already, that takes a lot of the fear of ordering out of it.”

The wish of Americans to “supersize” everything may also hinder the aperitif’s popularity, he said. “America being the country of more bang for your buck, people think ‘If I spend $10 on a drink, I want it to be really strong.’ ”

Yet to fans of these drinks, their light touch is the essence of their appeal.

“There is nothing more relaxing and enhancing than finding yourself in a cafe in the afternoon,” Ms. Miller said, “sipping a drink that is lightly alcoholic but not so spirituous that you cannot function on a social level.”

Roberto Bava, a member of the family that founded and owns Cocchi, pointed out another bonus: “When you drink an aperitif Italian-style and have sparkling water in it, you start at 16 percent alcohol, but you reach 8 percent. So you can have two.” Thus, less alcohol not only helps you pace yourself, but leaves move for another round. “In a way, it can be healthy,” Mr. Bava said.

More drinks and health to boot? What more do you want? Tchin-tchin!

Pilsner Urquell Four Ways

2011-06-01T11:41:00.000-04:00

Who knew one could get all fancy about Pilsner Urquell?

Hospoda, a new restaurant that recently opened in the old Bohemian National Hall on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, has brought back some of the eastern European flavor to what was once a heavily Czech area of the city. The place has a fine liquor list, topped by Becherovka, and a smattering of wines. But the drinking program's distinction lies in its treatment of the Czech Republic's home brew. Tanks of Pilsner Urquell are shipped over cold; according to the restaurant, they are the only people in the U.S. who go to this bother. All other tanks are shipped room temperature.

There are no other beers on offer. Instead, Hospoda serves the Urquell in four different way, based on the amount of head they give you. Here's how they describe it:

Creme Urquall (Hladinka): the classic way of draughting Czech pilsner, with a thick creamy head and a full, balanced flavor.
Slice (Snyt): drawn from the tap with a substantial four-finger foam to impart a refined bitterness and velvety mouth-feel.
Sweet (Mliko): a rich and original all-foam specialty designed to impart the beer with a hint of satisfying sweetness.
Neat (Cochtan): rarely seen, even in the Czech Republic, this headless beauty offers razor sharp bitterness that cuts straight through the heaviest meals.

Now, doubtless, this makes the usually pedestrian experience of ordering a Pilsner Urquell more exciting and fun. I have talked to people who have seen this done in Prague. However, I'm suspicious as to whether Czechs actually are in the habit of ordering their beer in four different fashions. My waitress pretty much said that, in Europe, the beer is mainly drunk in the Creme Urquell style most of the time. Nonetheless, I gave the gamut a try. I figured I'd been having Urquell in the Creme style, by default, all my life, so there was no need to order that. I started with the Slice (top photo), then the Neat (above) and finally the Sweet (below).

The beers were as advertised in appearance. The Slice had exactly four fingers of foam; the Neat had no head at all; and you can see for yourself what the Sweet looked like upon arrival. Did the flavor vary? At the start, somewhat. The head does lend a creamy softness, as it does to any beer. So the less of it you have, the more other flavors come through, such as the bitterness of the hops. But the difference lies in the first five minutes or so of drinking. once the head settles down, and you start to get down to the bottom half of the glass, you end up with Urquell regardless. Which isn't a bad thing. And it went very well with the delicious food.

How About a Nice Swedish Punsch?

2011-05-20T13:28:00.000-04:00

Whenever importer Eric Seed hits town, you can pretty much bet he has something new and great up his sleeve. Recently, it was the first commercially sold Swedish Punsch to see these shores in half a century. Here's the item I wrote about it for the Times:

How About a Nice Swedish Punsch?

By Robert Simonson

The passion for resurrecting pre-Prohibition cocktails has helped fetch out of history’s dustbin several forgotten elixirs, including Crème Yvette, allspice dram, orange bitters and, most famously, absinthe. The latest one to be rehabilitated is Swedish punsch. Beginning this summer, the sweet liqueur will return to liquor stores courtesy of Eric Seed, the owner of Haus Alpenz, a Minnesota-based importing company that specializes in unique and arcane liquors.

Mr. Seed was the logical candidate for the job. The base spirit of Swedish punsch is Batavia arrack, the southeastern Asian liquor derived from sugar cane and red rice. This, too, was lost to Americans, until Mr. Seed began importing it a few years ago.

“We knew Swedish punsch would eventually come back as long as Batavia Arrack existed,” said Ted Haigh, a noted cocktail historian. (Mr. Haigh likes Swedish punsch so much his nickname is “Dr. Cocktail,” the name of the best known punsch concoction.)

The liqueur — which also contains rum, sugar and spices — dates from Sweden’s exploring days. “The tradition goes back to the Swedish East India Company,” Mr. Seed said. “To mollify the sailors on board the ships, they let them dive into the Batavia arrack that they brought back from the East Indies. They would mix that with sugar and maybe a touch of the spice, and that grog they called their punch.”

Sometime in the 19th century, Swedish punsch was bottled. “Swedish tradition is to warm it up and enjoy it with pea soup,” told Mr. Seed. “It was a Thursday night tradition.”

By the turn of the 20th century, the liqueur had gained a foothold in America as a cocktail ingredient. But when Prohibition hit, momentum slowed. Punsch went out of fashion and then disappeared altogether.

Mr. Seed teamed with the Swedish-born, America-dwelling oenologist Henrik Facile to come up with a new Swedish punsch recipe. The new product has been labeled Kronan. Unlike many other punsch brands, it will actually be made by Swedes in Sweden — just out Stockholm. Kronan will be sold in both Sweden and America for $30.

“It’s traditional applications are for very simple drinks,” Mr. Seed said. “The Swedes have it straight or straight warmed up.”

Maybe Americans can start a new tradition of punsch and pea soup Thursdays.

What I Saw at the Manhattan Cocktail Classic

2011-05-18T20:55:00.000-04:00

Whoopie Pies filled with Patron.

A white-haired woman whose dress upheld dozens of cans of "hangover cure."

A hog-shaped, cheddar cheese, liquor luge. Poor booze in at the top and it comes out the pig's mouth.

A Moonshine dispenser prototype that unleashes 12 shots when you turn the dial on top.

A woman hand-sewing canvas bags meant to crush ice in. (Cost: $30)

Much well-lit, but un-bussed glassware.

And a tattoo stand where, if you allowed them to tattoo you with the outline of the state of Oregon, you would be given free passage to the Portland Cocktail Week in October.

Talking Absinthe With Ted Breaux

2011-05-18T01:44:00.000-04:00

Because who else would you talk about absinthe with? I mean, if you had the choice.

The green-hued fairy has lost some of its bloom a bit since the heady days when it returned to the market in 2007, after a century-long absence. But Breaux remains a true believer. The man who made Lucid—still the most ubiquitous brand of absinthe—is not retreating, as many absinthe producers have, but has brought out three new artisanal bottlings, all based on ancient recipes.

Here's my Wine Enthusiast interview with Breaux:

Booming Breaux

BY ROBERT SIMONSON

Ted Breaux has already made his mark in the absinthe world. An early expert on, and advocate of, the green elixir—one of the world's most popular and fabled liqueurs before disappearing for much of the 20th century—his Lucid was the first absinthe to hit the U.S. market when all legal barriers to the product fell in early 2007. Four years later, as absinthe's fortunes have boomed and then somewhat cratered, the world's foremost absinthe evangelist is back with three new products—Jade C. F. Berger, Jade Esprit Edouard and Jade 1901—all replications of original 19th century brands, and all priced over $100.

Wine Enthusiast: Why, after creating Lucid, was it important to you to bring three more absinthes to the U.S.?

Ted Breaux: Because Lucid is a solid upper-mid-market product. It is a product we intend for people to use to make classic absinthe cocktails. It satisfies that need very well. But we felt there would be a growing group who would appreciate the upper premium. These new ones appeal to a niche crowd of, basically, absinthe snobs.

WE: These are all recreations of Belle Epoque absinthes. How did you piece together the recipes?

TB: I owned several bottles of each and analyzed their make-up with the 130-year-old equipment at the Combier Distillery [in the Loire Valley]. Each one is an accurate reproduction of an original brand that existed in the 19th century. This was made possible by my analytical efforts, which started 11 years ago.

WE: If you had to give thumbnail sketches of the three absinthes, how would you describe them?

TB: It's like the difference between Pinot Noir, Cabernet and Malbec. They’re all instantly recognizable as absinthe. The difference is in the nuances in the spirits, in the herb bill, the distillation and the finishes. Even with an amateur palate, you can discern the differences.

WE: OK, say I'm a Pinot Noir man. Which absinthe would you recommend?

TB: I'd say my Espita Eduoard. Despite that it's 144 proof, it's round in the mouth, with a forward herb bill and nice round herbal finish. It's punchy, but elegant.

WE: Absinthe hit the U.S. market with a big splash, but then retreated some after it was seen that demand wasn't as high as expected. How to you view absinthe's future in the U.S.?

TB: We knew before 2007 that, upon getting absinthe re-legalized in the U.S; there would be two phases. In the first phase, availability outpaced education. People rushed out and bought it, just because they could, even though they didn't know what to do with it. I don't care how big a wine or whiskey snob you are, when it comes to absinthe you're an amatuer. This is where phase two starts. Basically we train bartenders and mixologists and journalists and industry people in classic absinthe cocktails and the strategy and purpose of those cocktails. This is what I do every day.

Garnished With History

2011-05-17T13:55:00.000-04:00

The first seminar I attended at this year's Manhattan Cocktail Classic was a lively one about a timely topic—when does excessive historicism and general cocktail geekdom get in the way of a customer's simply enjoying his cocktail. Historian David Wondrich asked this question of panelists Chad Solomon, Philip Duff and St. John Frizell, and the audience, which, in this case, had a lot to say on the matter.

One question that was asked by Wondrich, but not adequately answered by the panel or audience, was why is tracking a drink's history so much more an obsession and practice in the cocktail world than it is in the food world. I have a theory about this. Culinary tradition in cooking is, I believe, more of a continuum. Chefs aren't ignoring history. They've just absorbed the work of their antecedents and express those influences in their food and techniques, without drawing particular notice to it. Restaurants never suffered anything like Prohibition, which closed down regular bars, and interrupted drinking traditions for more than a decade. When it was repealed, the historical timeline was lost, as were various products, practitioners and books. The industry had to piece everything together again. That is why I think cocktail people are so interested in their work's history—it was taken away from them. The excessive notations of today's cocktail menus are a way of making sure that never happens again.

Here's my write-up for the Times:

Do You Have to Think When You Drink?

By Robert Simonson

Pick up a drink menu these days and it’s not unusual to find a citation for each cocktail detailing its inventor, its place of origin and year of creation. There might even be a few lines of colorful back story. This can charm and inform, or in the wrong hands, it can be very annoying.

So on Saturday four cocktail historians and mixologists gathered at Astor Center to discuss whether this historicism has gone too far.

David Wondrich, author of a recent historical study of punch, presided over the event, titled “History: What Is It Good For?” part of this year’s Manhattan Cocktail Classic convention.

A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, said the writer, cocktail consultant and bar owner Philip Duff. The road of half-baked “research,’’ he said, “leads to the palace of arrogance.”

But St. John Frizell, a writer and owner of Fort Defiance in Brooklyn, said there was a value to knowing about a cocktail’s provenance.

“Knowing where the cocktail comes from makes it taste better,” Mr. Frizell contended. “You never drink in a vacuum.” He suggested that sketching in the historical framework of a classic drink can help to “provide an extra level of enjoyment.”

Chad Solomon, a founder of the consultancy and catering group Cuffs and Buttons, added that, at this point in the cocktail revolution, bartenders have little choice but to stow a little history up their gartered sleeve. “People want context,” he said. “People expect it.”

The challenge, it seems, is to deliver that context so that it’s received as a pleasurable accompaniment to drinking, and not, as Mr. Wondrich put it, “a club we beat people with.” One audience member wondered how most bartenders would answer the question, “Am I doing this for my guest, or for myself?”

Mr. Duff suggested the problem of preachiness may rest largely with the more ego-centric male members of the profession. “You know that drink recipe you’ve never heard of in the book that’s out of print?” he said, imitating a certain grandstanding type of bartender., Mr. Duff, however, believed a bar’s advertisement of historical fealty to old drinks telegraphed a useful message to the consumer: “These drinks are taken care of.”

Misty Kalkofen, a mixologist at Drink , in Boston, who was in the audience, said that knowing the story behind an old drink is a great hospitality tool. “If a story connects us with the guest, that’s great,” she said.

Still, Mr. Solomon said he thought it was perhaps time to move on from history-happy cocktail bars. “I think we’ve plateaued with the use of history,” he said. “The history is stifling the recreational aspect of the bar.”

Cachaça Sorbet to Start Your Day?

2011-05-16T17:48:00.000-04:00

This is the first sight that greeted me at this year's Manhattan Cocktail Classic convention. A bright lime-green Leblon Cachaça truck. In a city gone truck-food mad, why not?

At first, I thought they were passing out Caipirinhas. But that might actually be illegal or something. Not sure. Anyway they weren't. They were giving out something better: Cachaça sorbets.

And just to show Leblon has not given up on its quixotic fight with the U.S. Government's labeling of Cachaça:

A Chat With Murray Stenson

2011-05-15T11:37:00.000-04:00

I have still yet to have the pleasure of meeting Murray Stenson, Seattle bartender of legend. But this Wine Enthusiast assignment gave me the chance to chat with him on the phone.

Mixologist of the Month: Murray Stenson

By Robert Simonson

Star bartenders of the 19th century, like Jerry Thomas, became famous by hop-skipping the nation, setting up short-lived grog shops in San Francisco, New York, New Orleans and Chicago. Murray Stenson is a more efficient worker. He became a modern-day legend by working a couple of bars along a two-block stretch in Seattle.

Last July, Stenson, 61, was named the best bartender in America at the 2010 Tales of the Cocktail convention in New Orleans. Stenson, who doesn’t think much of awards, did not attend, instead putting in his usual shifts at the Zig Zag Café, Seattle’s best-loved classic cocktail bar. Murray’s been senior bartender there for a decade, ever since he abruptly quit his job at Il Bistro, an Italian restaurant down the street. Stenson considers his education in craft cocktails to have begun at Il Bistro. But he is as loyal to his customers as they are to him, and he saw red one Valentine’s Day when the owners favored lovey-dovey diners over regulars. “I saw them turning away people who had been coming for a year and half. I just turned in my keys at the end of the night.” The Zig Zag lost little time capitalizing on Il Bistro’s loss; the bar hired Stenson that night.

Unlike today’s career mixologists, Stenson fell into bartending the old-fashioned way. “I was drifting, trying to figure out what I was going to do when I grew up.” His first job was at Benjamin’s, in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue. He worked the service bar, dealing only with waiters. That suited him fine. “At that time I could not talk to people at all. I had the biggest inferiority complex.” His next gig, at Henry’s Off Broadway, cured him of his shyness. “It was one of the most popular bars in the city. I was forced to talk to people.”

Stenson figures he has 10 more years of drink-slinging left in him. His model is a bartender at Maneki, a Japanese hole in the wall that is the oldest restaurant in Seattle. “She’s tended bar for 50 years. She is 80 and still going strong.”

Rum Via Cognac

2011-05-12T11:33:00.000-04:00

I wrote this little item about the lovely Banks 5 Island Rum for Wine Enthusiast:

Banks 5 Island Rum

By Robert Simonson

Rums wear their places of origin like badges of honor. A Jamaican rum maker would bristle if his product were mistaken for one from Barbados, and vice versa. And the distillers of Martinique—producing several rums that boast a rare AOC designation—would raise a cri de coeur if their rums were lumped in with the rest of their Caribbean brethren. So Banks 5 Island Rum—a blend of white rums from a quintet of different nations: rinidad, Jamaica, Barbados, Java and Guyana—is born of a new and unorthodox notion. The motivations behind its creation become clearer when one discovers that Arnaud de Trabuc is the brand’s master distiller. Formerly the president of Thomas Hine & Co., de Trabuc has a long history of working with Cognac, where blending is the name of the game. He considered rum’s prevailing commercial model—where islands work only with home-grown liquor—to be shortsighted. “I thought since we were going to do a new rum, we had to do something a little bit different,” said de Trabuc. He spent 18 months toying with the blend for Banks (which is named after explorer Sir Joseph Banks), finally settling on a cocktail of 21 diffrent rums anchored by a Trinidadian distillate. Not surprisingly, the result tates like nothing else in the rum world, viscous and pungent, with unexpected notes of green pepper, coconut and ripe tropical fruit. The only gripe with the result: 5 Island is a bit of a misnomer, since Guyana isn’t an island.

New Bombay Sapphire Product Christened "East"

2011-05-12T09:30:00.000-04:00

I still haven't sampled it (I expect to at the Manhattan Cocktail Classic, which begins tomorrow), but I now have the name of the new bottling from Bombay gin. It will be called Bombay Sapphire East.

The new gin to be unveiled in July in three test markets (including New York). East is a logical name, for joining the 10-botantical recipe found in regular Bombay Sapphire will be Thai lemongrass and Vietnamese black peppercorn. The original ten ingredients are Spanish almonds, grains of paradise, lemon peel, licorice, juniper, orris root, coriander, cassia bark, and cubeb berries.

Like Bombay Sapphire, which was launched in 1987, and is one of the first premium gins to hit the market, the botanicals for the new liqour will not be steeped in the spirit. Rather, the distilled alcohol vapors are passed through a mesh basket containing the botanicals in order to catch the flavor and aroma.

Sapphire has such a following, I predict the line extension will do splendidly, and enjoy success similar to that of Beefeater 24, a like-minded product that was introduced in late 2008, and features Chinese green and Japanese sencha teas.

The End of Flavored Vodka

2011-05-10T16:33:00.000-04:00

Surely this must be a sign that the era of flavored vodkas has reached its nadir and is coming to an end.

Burnett’s Flavored Vodka, which has about a gajillion different flavors, announced today the latest addition to their wine.

Whipped Cream.

"Burnett’s Whipped Cream Flavored Vodka was a direct result of the demand for great flavors that we see in the market," said Reid Hafer, Senior Brand Manager, Burnett Flavored Vodkas, in a statement. "We regularly seek out opportunity to grow the franchise with high quality, relevant flavors. This flavor, in particular, speaks to our consumers and their interest in the expanding line."

I would say that it speaks to their consumers and their interest in not drinking like adults, but like overgrown adolescents. Or their interest in never drinking anything that remotely tastes like alcohol, but stays closer to candy.

Burnett’s already traffics in many of the execrable and absurd (and endless) vodka flavors already out there, including Blueberry, Cherry, Citrus, Coconut, Cranberry, Espresso, Fruit Punch, Grape, Lime, Limeade, Mango, Orange, Orange Cream, Peach, Pineapple, Pink Lemonade, Pomegranate, Raspberry, Sour Apple, Strawberry, Sweet Tea, Vanilla and Watermelon. (How Whipped Cream tastes much different than Vanilla, I can not imagine.)

So, do I pour this stuff over my ice cream sundae, or stick a nozzle on it and stream it straight into my mouth?