The Sipping News

Eben Freeman has become "director of bar operations and innovation" at Michael White's Altamarea group. Nice to see Freeman finally land a new place in New York's bar world. He left his previous perch, Tailor, last year. [TONY via Eater]

Is tequila the new vodka? Or: The "Entourage" Effect. [Washington Post]

New York bars are spiking their milkshakes with liquor. [NYT]

More on the ongoing Tiki bar revival, including news of the coming Hurricane Club in Manhattan. [NYT]

A Beer At...Milano's

One reason I enjoy doing the "A Beer At..." column is that it causing me to enter historic bars that I didn't know existed. Certainly, I knew Milano's on Houston was there. I walked by it a million times. I did not know it had been a bar since 1880 and had the architecture to prove it.

A Beer At....Milano's

Milano's is a sliver of a bar wedged into one of the last blocks on Houston Street that looks like New York. Whole Foods is to the east, a BP gas station to the west. The enormous Amsterdam Billiards is across the street. Milano's is a crack of darkness in their modern, roomy, shiny world of clean convenience. 

The Sipping News

An argument in favor of bartender copywriting cocktails and techniques as intellectual property, which may be one of the most unenforceable ideas I've ever heard of. Thankfully, legally, this is impossible. I've always thought the cocktail world's willingness to share recipes and idea was always one of its most likable and noble aspect. [The Atlantic]

There seem to have been a rash of high profile bartender departures in recent months. The latest include Owen Westman, who will leave the San Francisco bar Rickhouse to open his own place all the way over in Melbourne. Westman, who was born in Melbourne,  couldn't say where the bar is or what its name will be (details are still being finalized). But the cocktail list will draw on his experience at Bourbon & Branch, Rickhouse and other bars he's visited throughout the world. (Rickhouse recently lost Erick Castro to Pernod.) He calls Melbourne "by far the most cocktail and food forward city in Australia." Meanwhile,  Nico de Soto is leaving Dram in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to go to London to work at a London branch of Paris' Experimental Cocktail Club.

Toward a lighter, and greener, Champagne bottle. [NY Times]

A lengthy piece on the legendary Mai-Kai in Fort Lauderdale. [Wine Enthusiast]

"Alcohol is not a flavor," says John Ragan, sommelier at Eleven Madison Park. Agreed! [Grub Street]

Roberta's Begins Serving Cocktails

I went to Roberta's, the ultra-hip pizza joint in Bushwick, this week and had me a cocktail. This, I was told by a friend who goes regularly, is a new development. In the past Roberta's only served beer and wine.

The list is about ten drinks long, with prices ranging from $9 to $12. The drinks are inventive, perhaps to a fault. I had something called Saint Michael—Hendrink's Gin, St. Germain, yellow Chartreuse, honey. Good, though the Hendrick's and St. Germain bullied the flavor profile. What made me order it, however, was the inclusion of bee pollen in the ingredient list. It floated there on the surface of the cocktail, like freshly ground black pepper. This is the first I've encountered pollen as a cocktail element, though I understand certain bars have experimented with it. And I must say it added to the drink.  Given the nature of Roberta's, I'm guessing it came from bees in their own garden out back.

I'll print the list as soon as I get it.

The Corn Harvest Arrives at PDT

For some time now, I listed the Imperial Silver Corn Fizz under the Damn Good Cocktails column to the right. Which has been rather cruel of me, since you couldn't order the damn thing anywhere in the country.

That changed on Aug. 30, when Jim Meehan, bar master at PDT, and author of the drink, added to the fizz to the PDT menu.

I was lucky enough to try the cocktail on it's initial voyage, at a cocktail dinner in fall 2009. It is a combination of homemade corn water, whiskey, honey syrup, champagne and egg white, shaken into a frothy concoction that is pale yellow at bottom, white on top. As I wrote then, if there was such a thing as creamed corn whiskey, it might taste like this lightly sweet, absolutely unusual drink.

Meehan has tweaked it a bit. He switched from Maker's Mark to George Dickel, which is not a small thing, since we're talking Tennessee Whiskey now, not Bourbon. But I like Dickel better anyway. So good.

So go and try it and see if you don't agree with me. Enjoy the fruits of the harvest.

The Barrel-Aged Aged Cocktail Trend Will Not Be Stopped

First Portland, then New York and Madison, and now Boston. Barrel-aged cocktails are spreading across the nation at wildfire speed.

This fall, Hugh Reynolds, bar manager at Temple Bar in Cambridge, MA, will add whiskey barrel-aged Negronis to his menu. As with every other bar that's trying this trick, he got his mini-barrels from New York's Tuthilltown Distillery, which has parlayed this trend into a nice sideline.

Reynolds got the idea from Portland, Oregon, bartender Jeffrey Morganthaler, who was inspired by Tony Conigliaro in London, who ages Manhattans in glass bottles for up to five years. (The process is considerably faster in wood.) Morganthaler's concoctions have been selling like hotcakes since he introduced them last fall. Since then, the notion has been latched onto by a growing number of edgy, and not so edgy, cocktail bars.

Reynolds mixes up his Negronis using local Berkshire Mountain Distillery’s Ethereal Gin (a small-batch gin with varying levels of botanicals like rose petals and orange peel in each batch), Campari and Carpano Antica Sweet Vermouth. He then lets the cocktail age in the barrels for six weeks. Next up for the treatment is a rum cocktail called the Cherry Valance, made of Appleton Estate Rum, Cherry Heering and chocolate bitters.

Brooklyn Farmacy to Roll of Egg Cream Cart at Brooklyn Flea

Pete Freeman, owner of Carroll Gardens' retro soda fountain Brooklyn Farmacy, and all-around nouveau evangelist of the egg cream, is not content to merely serve the frothy, old-school treats inside his Brooklyn shop. He's taking his act on the road.

Freeman told me that a Brooklyn Farmacy egg cream cart will soon make its debut at the Brooklyn Flea—maybe as early as this weekend! The wheeled contraction will be equipped with a couple seltzer spigots and a cooling system that will keeping all the ingredients—seltzer, milk, syrup—icy cold.

The cart is actually the property of Ron Starman, a third-generation seltzer man who set up Freeman's seltzer system at the Farmacy. In the past Starman had manned the cart himself. Freeman hopes to have a fleet of carts in the future, so that Brooklyn kids may never lack for egg creams.