A Visit to Blackbird

Lynn House, previously of the Drawing Room and Graham Elliot, became the chief mixologist at Blackbird six months ago. The Chicago restaurant is a decade old and has long had a good reputation, but House's arrival has raised the profile of its drink program. She brought a farm-to-table approach to the bar that matched the one in the kitchen, and quickly attracted the attention of diners and critics. The owners had her begin with a four-cocktail menu. It sold so well—handily outselling even the desserts— that the number was quickly doubled.

House changes the cocktail menu seasonally, and used locally made liquors like Koval Rye, a white whiskey made in Chicago that, in its creamy profile, reminded me of the wheat whiskey Death's Door makes in neighboring Wisconsin. The bar is also stocked with the works of North Shore Distillery, which makes a vodka, gin, and absinthe, as well as an aquavit that House particularly likes. (I tried it; she is right to like it. It's an aquavit where the caraway does not take over.)

House made me a couple of her signature creations. First came the Oz (above), made of Pierre Ferrand Ambre, plum wine, apple cider syrup and sparkling wine. The syrup is actually derived from a mixture that includes vinegar. This gives a necessary tangy zip to a drinking that is otherwise smooth, soothing, lovely and peaceful-making. It's a beautiful drink that goes down easily.

The same can be said of the Blackbird Orange, one of Blackbird's most popular cocktails. It used Koval Rye as its base, blended with it housemade cayenne pepper-spiced honey, orange juice and Fee Brothers Aromatic Bitters. The peppery honey serves the same purpose in the Orange as the cider syrup did in the Oz, provided an underground tremor under a pleasingly placid ocean of flavor. Nice presentation on this drink to, served as it is in a low, bulb-shaped rocks glass. 

Based on my limited sampling, House's drinks has a elegant composition and subdued glamour. They're not simple, but neither are they too flashy. And they well match the hushed, sophisticated atmosphere at Blackbird. Other drinks on the menu include:

London Calling Plymouth, Pimms, Apple Butter, Cucumber Soda

Tequila Mockingbird Tejano Repesado, Original Pear Cider, Sage, Lemon

The Cranberries Barsol Pisco, Cranberry Sauce, Thai Basil

Starry Night Ron Zacapa, Jans, Coffee, Angostura Cream, Vanilla Sugar

A Taste of Malört

I was sitting at the bar at The Violet Hour when Toby Maloney, the founder of the Chicago cocktail haven, instructed the bartender to pour me a shot of Malört. "This will make you feel like a wimp for liking Fernet Branca," he said. I took a sip and shuddered. It was, indeed, a stronger customer than Fernet, more bitter and austere and raw. But I did not dislike it, and I could see getting used to it, particularly if my life was hard, and I needed something harder to drink to make existence more endurable.

It was only natural that I should first sample Malört in Chicago. The only distributor of Malört in the United States is the Carl Jeppson company of Chicago. The company is named after a Swedish immigrant who popularized and sold the liquor in Chicago. (It's been made for Jeppson in Florida since the 1970s, but is still mainly seen and consumed in Chicago.)

Malört is a liqueur derived from wormwood, the infamous botanical long associated with Absinthe. It is Swedish in origin, even though Maloney led me to believe that the drink was favored by the Poles that once populated Wicker Park, the neighborhood Violet Hour is in. (The word malört is the Swedish word for the wormwood plant.)

Malört has enjoyed a small resurgence of late, with Chicago mixologists toying around with it and using it in cocktails. Not everyone is a fan, however. When I mentioned the intoxicant to Lynn House, the respected mixologist at Chicago's Blackbird, she shivered. "I can't stand the stuff," she said. "It's popular right now, against my wishes."

(Photo courtesy Cocktail Database.)

Barrel Aged Cocktails Go National

As hesitant as I was to make Jeffrey Morgenthaler a national figure (joke), I wrote this lengthy piece on barrel-aged cocktails for the New York Times. Readers of this blog know that I've been slightly obsessed with this trend for some time, first interviewing Morgenthaler about his brainstorm back in March, and recording since then their arrival at Summit Bar and Dram, among other NYC bars. Many others publications and sites have caught on since then. Still, the trend is still young, only just arriving in Chicago and other places.

The article also gave me the chance to write about my experiment of making barrel-aged cocktails at home. (I flatter myself that I'm the first journalist, and maybe the first non-bartender, to try this trick.)

On the very day this article ran, I happened to be in Chicago and got the chance to taste the barrel-aged Manhattans at Girl & The Goat mentioned in the text. I preferred the two-month-old ones made with Rittenhouse Rye about the one-month-old made with Buffalo Trace Bourbon. I also found out that The Violet Hour has just put a barrel-aged Manhattan on their menu. Toby Maloney aged the cocktail in a 55-gallon barrel that previously contained Goose Island Stout—a twist I had not encountered before. The beer barrel informed the drink in a headier, and more positive, way, I thought, than had the whiskey barrels used by others, giving the drink more layers. Maloney served the Manhattan with a touch of Cocchi Americano, to softer the impact. But I preferred the beer-laces Manhattan straight.

Six-Week-Old Martinis, Anyone?

By ROBERT SIMONSON

WITH the precision mixologists take these days in building their more ornate creations, customers have grown used to waiting a few minutes for a drink. For the latest innovation in elite libations, however, they’ll have to wait six weeks or so.

Barrel-aged cocktails are being poured at bars from San Francisco to Boston. They are exactly what they sound like, complete cocktails aged in barrels, just as if they were wine or whiskey.

At Dram in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, an aged Martinez, a 19th-century cocktail founded on gin and sweet vermouth, can be sampled. At the Gramercy Park Hotel’s Roof Club, there’s an cask-seasoned star cocktail, made of apple brandy and sweet vermouth. Temple Bar, near Boston, takes its time with a Negroni.

A Laid Back Punch Palace for Me Hearties in Williamsburg

To tell you the truth, after this fall, I'm about punched out. Everywhere I've turned this fall, I've been ladled out a crystal cupful of Dickensian liquid or handed a copy of David Wondrich's new book "Punch." The Drink—of which Brooklyn bar I write in the below NY Times item—is the second bar in NYC this year to devote itself to punch (the first being Cienfuego in the East Village). And I mean devote itself, not just put a punch or two on the menu. There are no cocktails at The Drink. Just beer and punch. Of course, they'll make you a Martini if you insist. And I may insist.

Punch Pushes Cocktails Off the Menu at the Drink in Williamsburg

By ROBERT SIMONSON

One of the unavoidable drinking trends of the fall has been punch. Hardly a cocktail bar has opened in New York in the past few months without giving a nod to the crystal bowl. Forty Four at the Royalton Hotel, 1534 on the Lower East Side and SoHo’s Lani Kai have all made room for punch in their programs. But the recently opened The Drink in Williamsburg has so devoted themselves to the format that the flowing bowls have actually knocked individual cocktails off the menu.

Hot Tiki Drinks Just in Time for Christmas

Just published this item on the Times' Diner's Journal blog. If I didn't have a family—and one that  would kill me if I went out drinking on Christmas Eve—this is where I'd be on Dec. 24.

Hot Tiki!

By Robert Simonson

Starting this week, the painkilling will run both hot and cold at the Lower East Side tiki bar Painkiller.

Most drinkers associate tiki cocktails with huge heaps of shaved ice. But that, said Painkiller’s co-owner Giuseppe Gonzalez, is only part of the Polynesian playbook.

“Hot drinks are actually a very classic tiki thing,” said Mr. Gonzalez, noting that a good 20 percent of the classic concoctions found in the books of the tiki archeologist Jeff Berry are designed to be served warm. “It’s an escapist mentality that tiki bars try to inspire, so a lot of bars have hot drinks all year round no matter what. Trader Vic’s always had their famous Coffee Grog on the menu.”

Painkiller will offer the Coffee Grog — a mix of hot java, rum, a special batter and spices — as well as the 151 Buttered Rum and Hot Zombie. Mr. Gonzalez will also be doing a hot mai tai, his own invention. “It’s a deconstruction of the drink. Instead of lime juice, we just squeeze a lime wheel in there. There’s Curacao, house-made orgeat, a double measure of Jamaican rum, top that off with hot water and give that a float of almond cream.” Another spin on an old standby will be the warm Sazerac, “primarily because Donn Beach, the inventor of tiki, is actually from New Orleans, and the Sazerac is, to me, a drink that only gets better as it gets warmer. So why don’t we just serve it warm?”

Painkiller will likely start the new menu of hot drinks on Christmas Eve, “primarily because I’m going to be open,” said Mr. Gonzalez. “I’m a new bar and I got bills to pay, brother.” He will also be staffing the shakers on Christmas day, for those who choose to seek their cup of yuletide cheer outside the house.

The new year, meanwhile, will bring a reworked menu at Painkiller. “We’ll have a Painkiller top 10,” he said. “We’ll have staff picks, which don’t have to be tiki. Just to give people the impression that, yes, you’re in a tiki bar, but hey, we’re good at anything. We can make anything for you.”

Don Julio Debuts Redesign

Collectors might want to think about stowing away every single liquor bottle they have after it's empty. Because in a few years time, the way things are going, every famous booze out there is going to be boasting a new bottle design, thus rendering the older bottles antiques of sorts.

The latest to revamp is Don Julia tequila. All three vessels—Tequila Don Julio Blanco, Reposado and Añejo—will boast modernized looks, each bearing a different profile. (The Silver is at right.) It doesn't look so very different from the old bottle. A bit trimmer, the cork a different shade, and the label's not as busy.

Don Julio was founded in 1942 by Don Julio González-Frausto Estrada. The brand was purchased by Diageo in 2005.

A Nightcap at the Opera

A chance to attend a cocktail competition at the Metropolitan Opera is not something one receives every day. So when Allen Katz (above, flanked by Tyne Daly and Kevin Denton) extended an invitation to such a perverse cultural mash-up, I immediately accepted. Every time I talk to Katz, the director of mixology and spirits education for Southern Wine & Spirits of New York, I learn something new. He makes gin (or plans to); he sings; he lived in Italy for two years; he was an intern to Stephen Sondheim. In this instance, I found out about his passion for opera. Here's the account I wrote up for the Times:

Mixing Cocktails and Opera

By Robert Simonson 

An hour before the singers in the Metropolitan Opera's Dec. 10, 100th-anniversary performance of Puccini's "La Fanciulla del West" bent an elbow at the Polka Saloon, a single mezzo-soprano, Susan Graham, bellied up to the Grand Tier's Revlon Bar for a round of cocktails. 

Ms. Graham was one of the judges of an unusual competition that saw some of the city's more prominent mixologists mix it up with the uptown opera crowd. She was joined by cocktail book author Gaz Regan; actress Tyne Daly, an opera fan who will play Maria Callas in an upcoming Broadway revival of the play "Master Class"; and Allen Katz, director of mixology and spirits education for Southern Wine & Spirits of New York.