November 5, 2009
Posted by Paul Clarke, November 4, 2009 at 7:45 PM
Bartenders are getting into the game, not only producing high-quality bar ingredients for themselves but for wider audiences.
[Photograph: Robyn Lee]
As Jonathan Miles wrote in Sunday's New York Times, the vintage-cocktail renaissance has a few drawbacks. While this interest in the drinks of yesteryear has led to the revival of once-lost favorites such as the Aviation and the Corpse Reviver #2, assembling some of these cocktails can still be frustrating. He writes:
It's the ingredients that can get really arcane: ground gentian, capillaire, raspberry syrup, tansy, ambergris, gum syrup. Throw in some eye of newt and toe of frog and you've got the cauldron from 'Macbeth.'
Fortunately for those who love vintage drinks, it's easier to find the once defunct or simply unavailable ingredients. Several years ago, importer Eric Seed began sourcing hard-to-find spirits and liqueurs such as Batavia arrack, all-spice dram and crème de violette through his company, Haus Alpenz. These products are now available in select markets nationwide.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, October 28, 2009 at 5:00 PM
©iStockphoto.com/ManuWe
Autumn is whiskey season in Kentucky, and at the recent Whiskyfest in San Francisco, I was able to try out some of the recent releases now appearing in bars and liquor stores (typically in very small amounts).
One of the most appealing American whiskies I tasted was Wild Turkey "Tradition," a 14-year-old, 101-proof bourbon that entered the U.S. market last week in a limited run of 14,000 bottles. With the characteristic spicy tang of Wild Turkey bourbons, the Tradition bottling has a deeper, richer character that comes from its older age, as well as its aging position in the "center cut" of the distillery's warehouse. Also memorable is the latest bottling of Old Forester Birthday Bourbon, a 12-year-old, 97-proof whiskey that's pleasantly mellow with the aroma of wheat and iodine.
And of course, it wouldn't be autumn without the annual release of the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection, a series of limited edition and very much sought-after whiskies that appear each fall (and are usually snapped up by Christmas).
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Posted by Paul Clarke, October 15, 2009 at 6:15 PM
[Photograph: Robyn Lee]
This Friday is Whiskyfest in San Francisco, the annual event (it also takes place in Chicago and New York) that's part collector's geek-out and part Detroit Auto Show for booze, where distillers reintroduce thousands of enthusiasts, media, and industry colleagues to their standard selections, as well as debut unique and rare bottlings and special editions. I'll no doubt have some interesting whisk(e)y-related news in the coming weeks, but as I prepare for my visit to Whiskyfest, there's one question in particular that'll be on my mind: how many women are going to be there?
No, it's not what you think—rather, I'm heading to Whiskyfest thinking about the changing world of whiskey consumers. As recently noted by spirits industry expert and educator Paul Pacult and reinforced by recent Nielsen surveys, while whiskey buyers have historically been overwhelmingly male, women are a fast-growing segment of the whiskey world. Earlier this year, the Guardian noted that the UK-based Scotch Malt Whisky Society had almost doubled its female membership over the course of three years (to a total of around 15 percent of its membership), and that an estimated 25 percent of all scotch drinkers in the UK were female, an increase from around 10 percent only a few years ago. Earlier this week, while speaking at a BarSmarts certification course in San Francisco that I attended, Pacult pointed out that Irish whiskey is the fastest growing segment of the whiskey market in the United States, and noted that this may in part be related to the growing number of women purchasing whiskey in this market, as well.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, October 7, 2009 at 6:00 PM
"Long before they were hallmarks of any cocktail geek's liquor cabinets, Gourmet ran recipes for homemade allspice liqueur (1977) and Cherry Bounce (1966)."
[Flickr: lulubrooks]
This news of Gourmet's shuttering has touched every food lover, and this sense of sadness and disappointment extends into the world of drinks.
While the magazine's drinks coverage always seemed to feel more natural when the topic was wine, over the decades the editors occasionally gave spirits and cocktails a serious eye. Perhaps nowhere has this been more evident recently than on the magazine's website, which features drinks plumbed from Gourmet's archives arranged by decade, starting with the first issue in 1941.
This series of drinks forms a curious liquid time capsule. While certain drinks such as the Vermouth Cocktail or the Ward Eight appeared on bar menus decades before they appeared in Gourmet, the inclusion of truly era-appropriate drinks summons a feeling not unlike that of digging through the yellowed pages of old issues in your parents' basement.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, September 30, 2009 at 8:00 PM
"Sometimes people see chocolate and think alcoholic milkshakes."
For the most part, those seeking to indulge both chocolate and cocktails have been restricted to the realm of heavy, sugary after-dinner drinks. But as chefs take chocolate more seriously—working with the savory, bitter flavors that cacao can bring to a dish—so have mixologists.
As I wrote for last weekend's San Francisco Chronicle, a number of bartenders are getting into the chocolate game, making their own bitters, tinctures, and liqueurs that capture the rich character of chocolate without weighing down the drink's flavor with a palate-thumping load of sugar.
Some classic cocktails and 18th century punches utilize the power of chocolate to good effect, playing the flavor against that of whiskey and gin, using it in small doses to avoid today's all-too-familiar chocolate martini decadence. But recent mass mixology, with all of its reliance on sugary alcopops for beginning drinkers, has made chocolate a bit of a bugbear for serious bartenders.
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