Barrel Aged Cocktails Trend Grows

As the journalism maxim goes, "Two makes a trend."

A while back, I posted about Portland, OR, mixologist Jeffrey Morgenthaler's experiments with barrel-aged Manhattans, Tridents and Negronis. (Promised samples of such concoctions never made it through the mails, so I can't report on the success of the experiments.)

Now, I hear tell of some barrel-aged Negronis in the works at Sardine (above), a joint in Madison, WI. Brian Ellison, chief at Death Door Spirits, told me about it. He should know. They're using his gin.

Negronis are an interesting choice, since the drink involves white spirits, not brown. Brown, you would think, would be the natural spirit for barrel-aging. But, hey, everything's worth a try.

Why doesn't anyone give this a try in New York, so I can actually sample the stuff?

Review: Malted Wheat White Whiskey

I figure that headline is enough to get you to read this item.

Wheat whiskey we know. White whiskey is a growing market. But malted wheat white whiskey?

This product, surely unique (for now) in the liquor market, comes from Death's Door, the Wisconsin micro-distillery that already produces a vodka and a gin, and, for my money, it's the best thing they've done.

I encountered it at Bar Celona, the new Spanish-influence cocktail and tapas bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where Tad Carducci of Tippling Brothers is in charge of the cocktail program. I had had a couple drinks, and was about to clear out when a colleague recommended I try the Albino Old-Fashioned. Well, "Old Fashioned" are two words (one word?) that always catch my ear. So I stayed and had another. Am I glad I did. It was one of the most original and delicious spins on the old drink I had ever had. It was composed of white whiskey, sugar, bitters, brandied cherries and grapefruit peel, and was as mellow and smooth as a southern California day.

I asked what whiskey was being used and the bartender showed me what appear to a clear bottle, the kind waiters plunk down in trendy bistros as your water decanter. Looking more closely, there were a few words on it, near the bottom, in black. "Death's Door Whiskey." Then, in smaller letters "Made with wheat from Washington Island, Door Country, Wisconsin." To me, the simple bottle is one of the great design triumphs in modern liquor packaging.

My colleague and I thought that this might be the first appearance of the product in a New York bar, but we weren't sure.

Death's Door rolled out the whiskey last year. It's not just another moonshine jumping on the bandwagon. It's an unusual un-aged combination of 20% malted barley and 80% organic hard red winter, all grown grown in Washington Island, which lies in Lake Michigan just off the Door County peninsula in Wisconsin. It sits in stainless steel barrels for three weeks and then oak barrels for 3 days, at which point it’s bottled.

The result has a beguilingly fruity nose of melon, a few vague tropical traces and baked sweet breads. (Not sweetbreads, but sweet breads.) It's strongly flavored, but mellow, as I saw, and soft, with muskmelon, golden raisins, baking spices, apple, maybe some white pepper. It's not hugely deep, but it's hugely appealing. And it has a long finish, a nice companion on a cold night.

I made a Old Fashioned for myself at home using the stuff. It wasn't as good as the one at Bar Celona (I didn't follow their exact specifications), but it was damn good.

While were on the subject of Death's Door, the company has wisely listened to their marketing people and debuted some new bottles. It miles beyond the old, dull, high-shoulder wine bottle with a simple map of Washington Island on the label. Death Door's Brian Ellison tells me I'm the first to see the new bottle, even before the new distributors. Which means you, readers, are the first enthusiasts to eyeball it on the Internet.

The Curious Case of Death's Door Gin

You could have knocked me down with a feather when Brian Ellison handed me a bottle of Death's Door Gin at "Tales of the Cocktail." Pasted right there on the bottle was a map of a land I've known since my childhood: Wisconsin's Door County peninsula and Washington Island. What did the Badger State's version of Cape Cod have to do with gin? Fish boils, sure. Cherry wine, certainly. But gin?

It got stranger. Death's Door Gin (named after the treacherous strait of water that separates the tip of Door County from Washington Island, and which has sunk many a ship in its time) is a recent product, made solely from wheat grown on Washington Island as well as juniper berries picked on the sparsely populated, largely rural isle. The wheat is grown by father and son farmers Tom and Ken Koyan, whose ancestors have lived on the island since the 1850s. It's distilled at the Cedar Ridge Vineyards, Winery & Distillery in Cedar Rapids, WI, and extension distilleries in Madison, WI. And the whole enterprise is connected with the Washington Hotel, Restaurant and Culinary School on the island, where chef Leah Caplan created the flavor profile of the gin. Brian and his sister-in-law Jill are on the marketing end.

I spoke to Brian, who said, oddly enough, that Death's Door's goal is to be a regional product, available mainly in the Midwest. Curiously and refreshingly modest. (Death's Door fits right in in a state where the odd drinking traditions include the Brandy Old Fashioned and drinking Angostura Bitters by the glassful.) Death's Door also makes vodka and a wheat ale.

Armed with only the mini-bottle given to me, I experimented at home with the liquor. Death's Door being a seemingly laudable enterprise, supporting local farmers and all, and hailing from my home state, I wanted to like it. The gin appears to belong to the relatively new category of gins called "botanical gins," called so because the makers get creative with the botanicals, not relying as heavily on the traditional and defining element of juniper. I got lavender, fennel and cardamom from Death's Door, along with a fuller body than one associates with, say, the London Dry style.

I only had a couple ounces to work with. That meant my experimenting was limited to one drink. And what drink do you make gin with, if not a Martini? I built it up, four parts to one of vermouth. Sorry to say, Death's Door does not make a good Martini. The odd botanical profile threw the drink out of whack. It was a Martini that wouldn't stand up stand. It was a confused drink.

To be fair to Death's Door, I will experiment more (if I can find a way to get the stuff in NYC). The website offers several recipes (tellingly, one of them is not a Martini). But I have begun to wonder about the new wave of gins. Gin has two bedrock drinks, historically: the Martini and the Gin & Tonic. If a new gin is not good at making those drinks, why is it around? Why not just give the job to vodka, the odd-job spirit of the booze world?