Posted by Paul Clarke, May 7, 2008 at 3:45 PM
If last Sunday’s New York Times T magazine is to be believed, Batavia arrack is one of the "New Staples"—one of the top ingredients of the season. If that’s the case, then never has one spirit gone so far so fast, from a century-plus of obscurity to must-have status in the liquor cabinet.
Produced since at least the early 17th-century on the island of Java, Batavia arrack is rum’s funky ancestor. Made from sugarcane and fermented red rice (one quibble with the Times story: while Sri Lankan arrack made from palm sap has a similar name, it’s a totally different creature), this smoky, aromatic spirit was a mariner’s favorite for years, and was an essential ingredient in punch until well into the 19th-century. Eventually supplanted by rum, Batavia arrack faded from the back bar and the liquor store; in recent years it was primarily found close to its Asian roots, as well as in parts of Northern Europe, where it appeared in chocolates, desserts and sweetened, flavored punches.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, May 2, 2008 at 4:15 PM
A few weeks ago I put up a post about drinking on the cheap during tough economic times. I’m obviously not the only one giving thought to the virtues of affordable booze.
In last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, Eric Felten walked through a blind tasting of six affordable bourbons. While regular readers of the WSJ aren’t likely to be reaching for the rotgut shelf anytime soon, Felten wanted to step away from the boutique bourbons that typically get all the ink, and try a few brands that are available at most any bar in America. To raise the stakes (somewhat), he tasted the bourbons blind, so any prejudices against particular labels or price points would ideally be eliminated as a factor.
His top pick? The humble Evan Williams, which Felten picked up for about $10; this venerable whiskey bested more upmarket brands such as Wild Turkey and Maker’s Mark, which Felten described as tasting "thin, raw and twangy."
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Posted by Paul Clarke, April 23, 2008 at 3:30 PM
When it comes to living an environmentally friendly lifestyle, the consumption of spirits & cocktails is a definite bump in the road. But as Jonathan Miles wrote in last Sunday’s New York Times, there are a few bars and bartenders who are trying to step lightly when wielding the cocktail shaker.
Miles covered Bar 44 in Manhattan, which is trying to reduce its environmental impact by using regional ingredients for some drinks, including a micro-distilled gin made from organic ingredients in Philadelphia. But Bar 44 isn’t alone; in San Francisco there’s Elixir, certified green by the city and serving drinks made with organic spirits and mixers in energy-efficient surroundings. And like Bar 44 and Elixir, many establishments, especially on the West Coast, are sourcing fruits and herbs for their cocktails from local farms.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, April 17, 2008 at 2:15 PM
An olive skewered on a toothpick is the universal symbol for a martini; but are such trappings really necessary?
Eric Felten touches on the olive and other cocktail-related ornamentation in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal column, “Consider the Trimmings.” Invoking Walter Gropius’ harangue against “florid aestheticism,” Felten addresses the questionable necessity of cocktail garnish, along with the East Coast - West Coast divide that’s starting to arise.
In recent years, bartenders such as Jackson Cannon at Eastern Standard in Boston have eschewed garnishes that don’t provide any flavorful or aromatic contributions to the drink, while the “Farmers' Market” bartenders on the West Coast have started to employ a wide array of garnishes ranging from single basil leaves to arrangements of edible flowers.
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Posted by Robyn Lee, April 16, 2008 at 7:00 PM
Photograph from Tina Wong on Flickr
You're not just looking at any old bowl of cereal and milk, marshmallow, or Jell-O cube, but a White Russian with toasted puffed rice cereal, a Ramos Gin Fizz marshmallow, and a cube of Cuba Libre gelatin atop a slice of dried lime. These are the solid cocktails from Tailor, a contemporary dining and cocktail parlor in New York City. Read more about Tailor in Tina Wong's review.
Previously
The Wandering Eater at Momofuku Ko
Unique Desserts at the Dessert Studio in New York City
Posted by Paul Clarke, April 9, 2008 at 3:15 PM
It’s tax time, and once you’re done sweating over the paperwork and writing out your check, you could probably use a drink. Ah, but there’s the rub—the IRS just walked away with your wallet, there’s a recession staring us in the face, and, to top it all, the real estate market is peeking into the abyss. At times like these, it’s hard to saunter out of the liquor store with a $50 bottle of scotch in your hand when within a few months it could turn out to be worth more than your house.
But that’s okay (well, it’s really not, but let’s pretend it is for now)—you can still have friends over for a perfectly satisfying and relaxing drink without cracking into the kids’ college fund. Here are a few ways to accomplish this (beyond the patently obvious "drink less"); be sure to join us in the comments section with any ideas you have.
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Posted by Robyn Lee, April 9, 2008 at 2:15 PM
Are you still thinking about making that bacon-infused bourbon and maple syrup cocktail but don't know where to begin? Watch this video of Don Lee making the Bacon-Infused Old-Fashioned in which he explains each step, including how to make the bacon-infused bourbon.
It's three of your favorite ingredients in one: bacon, maple syrup, and hard liquor! Just in time for maple syrup season, New York Magazine shares Don Lee's recipe for his bacon-infused bourbon and maple syrup cocktail served at East Village bar PDT.
Posted by Paul Clarke, April 2, 2008 at 2:45 PM
In case you’ve somehow missed all media coverage of drink trends in recent years, let me fill you in on something: gin is in. In today’s Los Angeles Times, staff writer Betty Hallock notes the continuing fondness for the juniper spirit among bartenders nationwide.
For decades, starting in the 1950s, it looked like gin was on the ropes, its once-strong grip on the culture of mixology eclipsed by the more approachable vodka. But with the current cocktail renaissance, gin is again in vogue. A quick glance at the shelves of your liquor store could tell you this much: new brands and bottlings of premium and artisan gins are continuing to push the tired cases of Seagram’s and Gordon’s aside.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, March 26, 2008 at 3:15 PM
In Sunday’s New York Times, drinks writer Jonathan Miles pulls up a chair at Elettaria and gets friendly with that timeless tiki tipple, the Navy Grog.
He’s hardly alone. As has recently been noted by writers ranging from New York to San Francisco, tiki is on the upswing. Earlier this month, the soft opening of the nautical-themed Rusty Knot—like Elettaria, staffed at least in part by bartenders seasoned at some of New York’s most renowned cocktail establishments—was apparently so popular that owners remained closed the following days to let the hype cool down.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, March 19, 2008 at 3:30 PM
Photograph from on jmilles Flickr
When it comes to sweetening a drink, many times sugar alone just won’t hack it.
The current issue of Imbibe includes a short article I wrote about one of the alternative sweeteners being rediscovered by bartenders: maple syrup. Yeah, I know, many people find the idea of mixing their Log Cabin with their Grey Goose absolutely revolting, but pure maple syrup mixed with a rich brown spirit, such as bourbon, dark rum or apple brandy, is capable of bringing much more flavor and character to a drink than a spoonful of sugar ever could.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, March 5, 2008 at 3:15 PM
One of the uncomfortable aspects of talking and writing about spirits and cocktails is the dark side of the topic. While other parts of the culinary world have unfortunate consequences that accompany over-indulgence—obesity, high cholesterol and high blood pressure, to name a few—perhaps none has as an immediate, visible and potentially deadly a flip-side as does the consumption of alcohol.
I’ve been thinking about this recently, thanks to a post at the excellent Drink Boston blog titled “The Pink Elephant in the Room,” which questions why drink writers rarely (if ever) mention the intoxicating aspect of enjoying beer, wine and spirits. With two recent articles in the New York Times exploring the ugly side of alcohol consumption—Sunday brought us “Starving Themselves, Cocktail in Hand,” a look at the double-threat of heavy drinking and eating disorders; and on Tuesday, the paper ran “When People Drink Themselves Silly, and Why,” an exploration of binge drinking—and with another alcohol-sodden St. Patrick’s Day coming up on the calendar, talking breezily about the enjoyment of fine libations without looking at all aspects of the issue becomes even more difficult.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, February 27, 2008 at 3:00 PM
It seems that every time I step into a liquor store, a new gin has appeared on the shelf, from new formulas promoted by established liquor giants to microdistilled boutique gins flavored with ambitious—and sometimes unpleasant—new combinations of botanicals.
But as Jason Wilson pointed out last week in the Washington Post, many gin and cocktail aficionados are ignoring the new gins in favor of something old: in this case, a gin known as genever.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, February 20, 2008 at 2:45 PM
In today’s New York Times piece, "Eat 300 and Say 'Spherification'", Pete Wells looks at a big development in one of the most attention-getting aspects of contemporary cocktails: molecular mixology.
Following in the footsteps of Ferran Adria at El Bulli, adventurous bartenders have, in recent years, been working with assorted chemicals and lab techniques that enable them to change the appearance, texture and styling of cocktail ingredients—think gelatinous cubes of Campari, and scoops of “caviar” made from gin. But even as these techniques have inspired a certain degree of gee-whiz admiration, the number of bartenders skilled in the techniques has been until recently quite small.
That could soon change. As Wells writes, liquor behemoth Remy Cointreau is introducing a kit that has everything a bartender needs to convert the company’s signature orange liqueur into tiny tapioca-like pearls, which may then be spooned into a Cosmopolitan or a glass of champagne. The company plans to introduce this kit at 20 bars in New York, including several that are the reigning regents of cocktail culture.
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Posted by Melissa Hall, February 15, 2008 at 11:15 AM
Southern Foodways appears on Fridays as part of our collaboration with the Southern Foodways Alliance, an organization based in Oxford, Mississippi, that "documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South." Dig in!
Inspired by the rum infusions she was exposed to as a bartender in St. Croix, Joy Perrine has developed an entire menu of infused bourbons at Jack’s Lounge in Louisville, Kentucky. Photograph by Amy Evans
Louisville is awash in bourbon. And beer. It's a drinking person’s town, due in no small part to the state’s bourbon heritage and the city’s nickname-namesake brewery, Falls City. This is where the Old Fashioned was invented. It’s where Al Capone dodged the law during prohibition, ducking out of the Seelbach Hotel through secret passageways. And it’s where barkeeps plied their customers with rolled oysters and bean soup to keep them coming back. Louisville’s private clubs, hotel bars, and neighborhood taverns are rich with drinking history and lore, and there’s always time for another round.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, February 6, 2008 at 4:00 PM
As the interest in fine spirits and cocktails has grown in recent years, demand has likewise increased for Italian amaros. The garnet-red Campari has long held a place of prominence, and recently the milder flavored Aperol has earned fans in the cocktail community. Now, the Sicilian herbal tonic called Averna—already the leading amaro in many parts of the world—is hoping to become the next indispensable ingredient in the American bartender’s arsenal.
With a recipe dating to the 1860s, Averna is a much different style of bitter spirit than the more familiar Campari. Where Campari is sharp and bright (essential elements for an aperitivo), Averna is deep and rich, with a gentle, slightly sweet bitterness and a full, firm body that makes it great as an after-dinner drink.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, January 23, 2008 at 3:30 PM
Earlier this week at The Spirit World, cocktail expert Robert Hess addressed the history of that most iconic barroom vessel, the Martini glass. You know the one I mean: its V-shape sleek and modern, easily rendered in neon and often seen in the company of an olive.
While the V-shaped glass is certainly the most prominent type of stemware found in the cocktail kingdom, this wasn’t always the case: a tour of old cocktail manuals and bar catalogs reveals an array of glasses designed to deliver a short one, ranging from Marie-Antoinette coupes to tulip-shaped goblets.
But what really got my attention is the way sizes have shifted. Look for a cocktail glass in the housewares section of a department store and you’ll find 9- to 12-ounce monstrosities more suitable for use as birdbaths than for serving a respectable drink. Here in Seattle, one of the most popular bars in town draws its name from the gargantuan size of its drinks, poured into glasses so obscenely large that a woozy patron could topple forward and drown in one. If Morgan Spurlock were to reprise Supersize Me in many American bars, his liver would give out halfway through the film.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, January 16, 2008 at 2:00 PM
Dedicated lovers of Scotch whisky may wish to look the other way right now.
In his "Shaken and Stirred" column in Sunday’s New York Times, Jonathan Miles addresses one of the touchiest topics in mixology: the crafting of cocktails using single-malt Scotch. Miles writes, “As a Scottish proverb says: ‘There are two things a Highlander likes naked, and one of them is malt whiskey.’ But we New Yorkers are islanders, not Highlanders, and adulteration befits us.”
Outraged purists aside, Scotch is already a very difficult spirit to mix. A handful of cocktails achieve success with blended Scotch—the Rob Roy, Cameron’s Kick and Blood and Sand among them—but these victories are badly overshadowed by the failures. These losses can be seen in the cases of good whisky squandered in undrinkable concoctions that must have seemed promising at first, had it not been for Scotch’s near-sociopathic inability to get along with others.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, January 9, 2008 at 3:00 PM
Orange is one of the most popular and venerable flavors for liqueurs. Early versions of the Manhattan and Old Fashioned called for dashes and drips of orange-flavored spirits, and without these liqueurs it’d be impossible to mix a proper Sidecar, Mai Tai, or Margarita. From the crisp austerity of Cointreau to the lush richness of Grand Marnier—with side trips to Gran Gala and Prunier La Lieutenance, and through a dizzying array of brands of triple secs and curacaos—there is no shortage of boozy citrus options to choose from.
Here’s one more: Rhum Clement Creole Shrubb is another addition to the shelf of orange spirits, but one that distinguishes itself in a couple of ways. While most orange-flavored liqueurs are based on neutral spirits or brandy, Creole Shrubb uses rhum agricole, a distinctive type of rum from Martinique that is made from sugar-cane juice rather than molasses, the base material for most other rums. Rhum agricole has a sharper, more peppery aroma and flavor than do molasses-based rums, and this feature gives the Creole Shrubb an unusually crisp character. Flavored with bitter orange peels and a mix of spices, the Creole Shrubb is lean and sharp, with the rich orange notes typically found in curacaos but without the over-the-top sweetness that mars many other liqueurs.
It may take some searching to track down a bottle of Creole Shrubb, but the result makes the effort worthwhile. I’ve enjoyed using it as a component in exotic rum drinks and as an extra flavor boost in a glass of Champagne, and that’s just the start.
Does anyone else have experience with the Rhum Clement Creole Shrubb? How do you take it?
Posted by Paul Clarke, December 26, 2007 at 3:00 PM
Gin is typically thought of as a British tipple, and no wonder—take a stroll through your local liquor emporium, and you’ll see the gin labels are full of derby hats, regal symbols, uniformed Beefeaters, and the face of Queen Victoria. But while “London Dry” still has a near monopoly on the market, gins from the New World are freshening up the venerable category.
One of the newest and most acclaimed gins to arrive is the Philadelphia-distilled Bluecoat. Described as an “American Dry” gin, Bluecoat uses organic juniper, citrus peels and other botanicals to create a crisp, bright spirit. More herbal and citrusy than more juniper-heavy gins such as Tanqueray, the pot-distilled Bluecoat is an addition to the growing category of “New Generation” gins, a group that includes other highly acclaimed spirits such as Hendrick’s and Aviation.
When I first sampled Bluecoat neat, I was taken aback by the pronounced citrus note. But returning to the spirit, both neat and mixed in a Martini, I’ve come around to its charms: Bluecoat is certainly different from the typical dry gin, but its distinctive mix of citrus, juniper and spice finds a great partner in a decent vermouth; while I haven’t tried Bluecoat in a Vesper yet, I imagine the mix would work quite well.
Bluecoat is gradually expanding into markets across the country. Who's tried it? And what are your thoughts on Bluecoat?
Posted by Paul Clarke, December 12, 2007 at 2:00 PM
Nothing puts your guests in the holiday spirit like a little holiday spirits. From books to bottles to shakers and bitters, there are plenty of gift ideas from the cocktail world that can add pizzazz to celebrations throughout the year.
Prices don't include shipping unless otherwise noted.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, December 5, 2007 at 5:00 PM
In a recent article in the Washington Post, Jason Wilson reminisces about the time a friend of the family took him to a nice hotel bar—where he was apparently a regular—and announced to the bartender that the time had come to switch to his winter drink (a Stinger, in case you were wondering).
Reading this story reminded me of a rule I read on an online message board back when I was first starting to explore mixology: As the seasons change, so should your drink.
Since reading that instruction, I’ve happily taken it to heart—besides, December is no time to be ordering a mojito. While I’m always exploring different recipes, I typically have one or two favorites that I keep returning to, but those favorites change as predictably as the calendar. Spring to me is typically gin, often with citrus such as in the moody, meditative Corpse Reviver #2, but just as often without, as in the crisp and slightly bitter Hoskins. Summer is the season of rum, with variations on the venerable daiquiri high on my list of preferred drinks, and autumn brings the return of brown spirits such as applejack and Calvados, with Fallen Leaves and Stone Fences seeming very attractive.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, November 28, 2007 at 4:00 PM
Sunday’s New York Times tells of how small distilleries – once an anomaly in an era dominated by global brands and arcane liquor laws – are now cropping up across the country at the rate of 10 to 20 a year. And while the laws – not to mention culinary culture – in states such as California and Oregon have encouraged the growth of small-scale distilling, regulators in Midwestern states are increasingly seeing the appeal of licensing local distilleries, which can add considerable value to all those acres of grain.
Early craft distillers such as Fritz Maytag of Anchor Distilling in San Francisco and Steve McCarthy of Clear Creek Distillery in Portland, Oregon, have garnered international praise for the quality of their gins and rye whiskies (for Anchor) and fruit eaux de vie and single-malt whiskey (for Clear Creek).
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Posted by Paul Clarke, November 21, 2007 at 5:00 PM
In Sunday’s New York Times, Jonathan Miles fleshes out the story of a cocktail being served at Primehouse New York. Cocktail designer Eben Klemm took the restaurant’s steakhouse concept seriously while creating the recipe for the Dirty Bull, a carnivorous take on the dirty martini that is made with vodka, olive brine, and a dollop of veal stock, then garnished with a piece of beef jerky.
It would be easy to dismiss the drink as a gimmick, except December’s issue of Food & Wine features an article on Eben Freeman, currently tending bar at Tailor in Manhattan, who is also blurring the boundaries between the charcuterie plate and the cocktail shaker. While demonstrating the process of “fat washing”—in which a liquid fat such as melted butter is mixed with an alcohol such as rum, then chilled until the fat congeals and can be removed, leaving its flavor but not its greasiness behind—Freeman says that any fat can be infused into spirits, and goes on to prepare a bacon-infused bourbon.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, November 14, 2007 at 5:15 PM
While the Wednesday food section long ago cemented its role as a staple of big-city dailies, regular columns devoted to the bibulous side of gastronomy—especially to things spirituous (let's forget wine for now; those guys get all the press)—lag much further behind. While drinks are largely an afterthought in many papers, there are a few notable exceptions: the San Francisco Chronicle has long been home to cocktail columns by Gary Regan, and more recently spirits writer Camper English has taken the reins for Friday features on drinks; the Los Angeles Times has occasional, but often noteworthy, features on drink as part of its food section; and the infrequent Wednesdays when Eric Asimov steps into the spirit world over at the New York Times, the result is always something that ranks near the top of the Times’ “Top E-Mailed” stories list for the day (and while the paper’s Sunday “Shaken and Stirred” column was once the place to find unforgettable cocktail coverage by William Grimes and William Hamilton, recently it’s … well, don’t get me started.)
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The New York Times has some good reading in the dining section today:
Posted by Paul Clarke, October 24, 2007 at 5:45 PM
From left: Fred Noe and Richard Paterson
I’m on a quick trip to San Francisco to enjoy the bounty of WhiskyFest, which is—well, it’s called WhiskyFest, which should give you a pretty good idea of what goes on. Think of a big hotel ballroom filled with tables stacked with bottles of whisky (the pour list topped 250, if you include the handful of rums and gins tossed into the mix), typically served either by guys in kilts, with rich Scottish accents, or by guys in jeans and boots, with thick Southern drawls.
This stylistic dichotomy was not lost on event organizers, who pulled together a recurring seminar-cum-riot called "Scotch...or...Bourbon?" featuring two of the more passionate advocates of each style of the spirit: Fred Noe, great-grandson of Jim Beam and representative of the Jim Beam Small Batch Collection; and Richard Paterson, master blender for The Dalmore.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, October 17, 2007 at 12:55 PM
Over at The Pour this week, New York Times chief wine critic Eric Asimov enjoys a heavy meal and follows it with an Old World flourish: a drink of bitter digestif. Asimov’s choice is Underberg, the venerable German bitter sold in paper-wrapped, single-portion bottles, widely acclaimed to be the most fitting cap to a meal, especially one that’s particularly heavy or rich.
Bitters aren’t particularly big in America—and here we’re talking potable bitters, as opposed to aromatic bitters such as Angostura which are used in drops and dashes—with a few notable exceptions. Campari has a firm grip on the bitters market here, but that mainly crops up as an aperitif as opposed to a stomach-settling finish to a meal; and another once-esteemed German herbal liqueur, Jägermeister , has seen its image sullied as its profits have soared, thanks to its widespread embrace by the spring break, drop-a-Jäger-in-your-Red-Bull crowd.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, October 10, 2007 at 1:30 PM
It may not carry the same fear-inducing firepower as challenging foods like tripe, brains, or other "variety meats," but there's an ingredient in occasional use behind the bar that sometimes rattles the unsuspecting customer: raw eggs.
Mixing eggs with liquor has a long heritage. A prime mover at colonial taverns was the flip, a drink typically made with a spirit such as rum, cream, and raw eggs (other ingredients such as hot beer or sherry were not uncommon); and while it's now thought of primarily as a holiday tipple, eggnog was once a fairly common concoction to call for across the bar. Egg whites became a staple ingredient in drinks such as the gin fizz and the whiskey sour, adding foam and body to the drink while slipping a little sustenance to the imbiber. And for sheer decadence there was the Knickerbein, composed of several liqueurs in a glass topped by the unbroken egg yolk and a mound of whipped egg white; the drinker was instructed to first inhale the froth, then drink the liquor while leaving the yolk untouched, and finally to gulp the remaining spirits while breaking the yolk in the mouth.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, October 3, 2007 at 5:15 PM
Baseball fans have opening day, but what do whiskey drinkers have to look forward to all year? If you’re talking bourbon and rye, it’s the annual release of the Antique Collection from Kentucky’s Buffalo Trace Distillery.
According to John Hansell, publisher and editor of Malt Advocate—think Wine Spectator for the whiskey crowd—this year’s antique collection has now been bottled, and will be going into distribution later this month. The collection consists of five whiskies—three bourbons and two ryes—and if this year’s demand is anything like that seen with previous releases, the bottles should be snapped up in a matter of weeks.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, September 26, 2007 at 4:00 PM
In a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle, drinks expert Gary Regan delved into the long history and rich character of the most regal and storied of cocktails.
No, not the Martini.
Titled “The Manhattan Project,” Regan’s article covers that other legendary drink served in a V-shaped glass. Of the same generation as the gin-based Martini, the whiskey-based Manhattan enjoyed greater prominence and popularity for decades. Even after Prohibition, the Manhattan continued to rival the Martini for dominance at the bar until a demand for lighter spirits—coupled with the ascendance of vodka and, later, the Margarita—pushed the Manhattan into semi-retirement as king of the cocktail heap.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, September 12, 2007 at 5:00 PM
As if you needed an additional reason for having a drink or two this month, by official decree of the U.S. Senate, September is National Bourbon Heritage Month.
Bourbon was first declared “America’s Native Spirit” in 1964, and the spirit certainly inspires thoughts of handsome old Colonels rocking on the porch while sipping mint juleps and sniffing the fragrance of the magnolia trees on summer afternoons (we’ll ignore the whole doing-shots-of-Jim-Beam-in-a-frat-bar thing for now). And what could be more all-American than a whiskey that claims the rolling hills of Kentucky as its birthplace, and lists names such as Elijah Craig, Jim Beam and Pappy Van Winkle among the giants of its long history? (Okay, we'll ignore rye whiskey for now, too.)
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Posted by Paul Clarke, September 5, 2007 at 4:30 PM
Vodka is the top-selling spirit in the United States, but this liquor-market leader has taken a couple of very public punches in the last few days.
In Advertising Age, Bob Garfield takes Grey Goose to task in a column with the two-fisted headline "Obnoxious Ads for Overpriced Vodka." The body copy is hardly more nuanced in taking on parent company Bacardi's ads, which seek to equate the consumption of Grey Goose with enjoying a very exclusive, high-class lifestyle:
Bacardi wishes to sell preposterously expensive ultra-mega-super-premium vodka to showoffs, wannabes and snobs. […] It's the hoariest gambit in the world: to flatter customers into imagining they are not conspicuous consumers but discriminating ones. That when they belly up to the bar calling for Grey Goose, they can tell the difference between it and Stoli and Absolut and the rail vodka, because they have rarified tastes that the mere hoi polloi could never understand. That they are, sniff, a cut above.
Garfield's slap at Grey Goose follows close on the heels of Eric Felten's most recent weekend column in the Wall Street Journal, titled "Make Mine a 020001"—referencing the Archer-Daniels-Midland product code for their high-proof ethyl alcohol, which is shipped to bottlers in bulk, diluted, and then sold as vodka under brands ranging from plastic bottle to top shelf. Felten methodically dissects the vodka market, revealing how low-cost grain alcohol can suddenly become an ultra-premium brand of vodka, based entirely on a marketing campaign.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, August 29, 2007 at 3:15 PM
This one’s promoted from the comments on the Aviation. Noting the liqueur used to sweeten that drink, emily20008 asked a good question:
What is maraschino liqueur? Don’t tell me it’s that sugary syrup they soak those evil red cherries in...
Everyone’s familiar with those neon-red orbs that perch atop sundaes and dwell in the depths of Manhattans. While I’m now kinda freaked out by the chemicals and processes that turn a natural piece of fruit into a freakish, preserved-for-eternity caricature of itself, I’ll admit to an inordinate fondness for them back in the day when my mom had to drive me to swim lessons and I considered Dr Pepper the ne plus ultra of liquid refreshment.
But is there a link between these gaudy globules and the engaging, esoteric liqueur that acts as a defining ingredient in so many classic cocktails? The answer, of course, is "kind of."
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Posted by Paul Clarke, August 22, 2007 at 2:30 PM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail to kick things off. Need more than one? Here you go. Cheers!
Five years ago, if you were looking for a bar that could mix you a martini, 1930s style—that is, replete with a dash or two of orange bitters—in all likelihood you were just out of luck. Trying to find orange bitters in the dark days of 2002 was asking for disappointment.
Bitters of different styles and with different flavors have a special place in the history of mixology and are a defining ingredient in the original definition of the cocktail. But while the hardy souls at Fee Brothers in Rochester, New York, and Sazerac in New Orleans kept the bitters flame alive during the ingredient's darkest days, and paper-wrapped bottles of Angostura bitters could always be found next to the margarita salt at Safeway, bitters entered a long, steady decline beginning in the 1960s. For all the drinks that utilized bitters' seasoning power at the dawn of the 20th century, by the dawn of the 21st, they were all but extinct.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, August 8, 2007 at 5:30 PM
In last Friday’s San Francisco Chronicle, drinks writer Gary Regan offered readers a brief guide to the basics and terminology for ordering a drink.
I wish I’d had such a lesson when I was first starting to frequent bars. Throughout my twenties and well into my thirties, I was a dedicated beer drinker—partially because I really liked beer but also because I was so flummoxed when ordering an actual cocktail. There were so many options that left me mystified—what drink, what spirit, what brand, shaken or stirred, straight up or on the rocks, with a twist or no—that I simply didn’t know the answers to provide in order to get a drink I’d like. Part of the reason I started to delve into mixology was so I could decipher the language of the bar, figure out what different spirits taste like, and know how to ask for a decent drink.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, August 7, 2007 at 4:00 PM
There's a great interview with cocktail blogger Paul Clarke on Salon [Heads up: You'll have to wait out an ad to enter the site].
Paul is a contributor here on Serious Eats, so we all read it with particular enthusiasm. And it was nice getting to know Paul a little better through the piece. His enthusiasm and knowledge of the subject really come through:
On your blog, you list everything in your liquor cabinet. It's quite an extensive collection—including over 17 types of rye, 12 types of brandy and 29 types of rum. Where do you keep it all? By last fall, I had overtaken all the top shelves in the kitchen, so my wife graciously gave me the hall closet, which is pretty big. I put in shelves and I thought: It will take me forever to fill that up. But I did it pretty quickly.
Paul's blog can be found here: The Cocktail Chronicles.
Posted by Paul Clarke, August 2, 2007 at 3:30 PM
Vermouth has an image problem.
For many people, vermouth is the stuff you're supposed to be miserly with when mixing a martini—or, taking the Winston Churchill route, it's the liquid you merely glance at across the room before proceeding with mixing the drink. If you've gotten curious what it tastes like on its own and have taken a swig from a bottle that's been lying around ever since that party in 2004 when you thought it would be fun to mix martinis, you probably received a rude shock. "No wonder you're supposed to avoid it," would be the common reaction.
Pity, that. Along with sherry, port, and marsala, vermouth is one of the world's great fortified wines. Flavored with herbs and spices and lightly fortified with neutral spirits, vermouth has a wonderfully complex character when enjoyed fresh and chilled. Vermouth is commonly served as an aperitif in much of Europe, but it has mainly been relegated to use in cocktails in the United States ever since it was first imported in the late nineteenth century.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, July 25, 2007 at 4:25 PM
The beautiful thing about New Orleans is that, if you stand in one place long enough, someone will eventually hand you a drink.
At least, that was my experience this past week at Tales of the Cocktail, the grand convention of spirits and cocktail enthusiasts that takes place in New Orleans each year. One afternoon I was standing in the ornate lobby of the Hotel Monteleone, minding my own business, when out of nowhere a smiling man appeared bearing a tray of condensation-cloaked glasses and asked me if I’d like something to quench my thirst. A beautiful thing, as I said.
What made the experience even more memorable was the drink that was in those glasses. Composed of an icy mix of Moët & Chandon White Star Champagne, club soda, and an intriguing liqueur known as St. Germain, the drink was light yet fortifying, and was the perfect foil to the steamy weather outside.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, July 18, 2007 at 3:00 PM
In last Sunday’s New York Times, Alex Williams reports on the latest quest of our health-conscious era: the pursuit of the healthy cocktail. As Williams writes,
In an era of “natural” cigarettes, trans-fat-free chips and low-carb beer, it is probably no surprise that that last guilty pleasure, the cocktail, is trying to atone for its sins.
But while the practice of muddling organic raspberries, pineapples and pears into alcohol-laden libations may seem like a modern trend, the creation of cocktails that at least hint at good nutrition is not a new concept.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, July 11, 2007 at 3:15 PM
This entry marks the debut of Paul Clarke here at Serious Eats. Paul has been blogging about cocktails on his site The Cocktail Chronicles since 2005. He'll drop by on Wednesdays with some insight into the world of cocktails and then again on Fridays with a recipe for your weekend tippling pleasure. —The Serious Eats Team
Words by Paul Clarke | Trouble must have made Richard Nixon pretty thirsty. In 1973, just as Watergate was gathering an unstoppable head of steam, the increasingly besieged president began to seek refuge in, of all places, Trader Vic’s. As Eric Felten wrote recently in his “How’s Your Drink?” column in the Wall Street Journal: "Oddly, the mai tai was the favorite drink of Richard Nixon, a man who—though sorely lacking in beach-bum credentials—found solace in the Trader’s tiki fantasy land."
Nixon’s fortunes soon plummeted, but it could be argued that those of the mai tai fell just as hard. A staple of every Waikiki tourist trap and grim strip-mall Polynesian grill, the mai tai was once the grand kahuna of the tiki bar. Created in Oakland, California, by Vic Bergeron in 1944, the original mai tai—the true recipe for which was kept confidential for more than 25 years—was an elegant blend of aged Jamaican rum, Dutch curacao, French orgeat syrup and fresh-squeezed lime juice, as perfectly balanced and nuanced as any concoction by a modern-day bar chef.
While Trader Vic’s was still making a more-or-less authentic version at the time Nixon became a repeat customer, by the early 1970s the venerable mai tai had slipped into the Gilligan’s Island wilderness, obscured by countless phony replicas calling for all manner of tropical juices and glow-in-the-dark syrups and flavorings.
Nixon never recovered his stature, but there’s still hope for the mai tai. Last month, tiki aficionado and self-styled cultural anthropologist Jeff “Beachbum” Berry released his latest book, Sippin' Safari
, which explores the bars and restaurants that made up the mid-century Polynesian fad and celebrates the people who prepared such popular and top-secret creations as the Zombie, the Last Rites, the Pohoehoe, and, of course, the mai tai. Berry makes no secret of his mission: to restore the reputation of what he calls “faux-tropical” drinks (“faux,” because most trace their lineage to Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale, or Columbus, rather than some exotic Pacific port of call), and to celebrate their role in contemporary culinary history. As Berry writes:
Far from the culinary ghetto in which they dwell today, tropical drinks were once considered the height of cocktail chic by the rich, the famous, and the most finicky of food critics; they were served in lavishly appointed Polynesian-themed restaurants, often designed by Hollywood art directors to create the illusion that you were dining by moonlight in a South Seas island grotto, complete with indoor waterfalls, imported jungle foliage, and museum-quality native art and artifacts.
The much-maligned tiki drink has finally found its champion, and its shot at redemption. Haldeman and the gang should have been so lucky.
About the author: Paul Clarke blogs about cocktails at The Cocktail Chronicles and writes regularly on spirits and cocktails for Imbibe magazine. He lives in Seattle, where he works as a writer and magazine editor.
Posted by The Paupered Chef, February 28, 2007 at 7:00 AM
Photographs by The Paupered Chef
The cocktail party is an estimable but endangered social institution. Its demise may be blamed on factors as various as the waning popularity of hard liquor, the regrettable decline of the sibling arts of conversation and flirtation, and the growing acceptance in this country of the European idea that dinner by itself is sufficient diversion for an evening. (The cocktail party, remember, is an American invention.) We steadfastly defend the cocktail party, however, both as an abstract notion and as an uncomplicated and extremely pleasant means of entertaining. —The Joy of Cooking
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Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 15, 2007 at 5:55 PM
"Dessert is a fine thing. Creamy, fruity, chocolaty — I like a sweet finish to the meal. But I like it even more when dessert arrives in a cocktail glass. The best dessert drinks are as carefully crafted as any cocktail, with well-balanced flavors and innovative ingredients that go beyond the run-of-the-mill chocolate martini. And, thanks to mixology trends, such drinks are easier than ever to find." Short but sweet piece by Anne Brockhoff on something I've been seeing more and more of on dessert menus these days, although I have yet to give any of them a try; most just sound like liquid candy and really I'd rather have a nice simple panna cotta instead.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 8, 2007 at 3:03 PM
Frank Bruni on the trend towards giant cocktail glasses: "The gargantuan drink — intended to impress and often genuinely intended as a good value — has proliferated, and there’s a downside. Cocktails meant to be consumed at a certain chilly temperature begin getting significantly warmer before anyone who’s not quaffing them in three big, speedy sips can get to the bottom of the glass. That’s not what the cocktail gods intended, and yet these larger drinks have made their smaller counterparts seem stinting, setting up a Goldilocks situation: this one’s too stinting; this one’s overwhelming; where’s the one that’s just right?"
Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 7, 2007 at 2:21 PM
Regina Schrambling on the third Identità Golose, The taste of things to come: At a most unusual chefs' conference, great ideas trumped pomp and pretention: "There were chefs quoting Kandinsky and Lars von Trier as comfortably as they evoked Escoffier. There were chefs filling balloons with spices to pop over dinner plates, and chefs demonstrating how to flavor the bread crumbs so ubiquitous in Italian cooking with lime zest and syrup. They were using all the new-wave toys — agar-agar and sous vide and digital thermometers and no end of Pakojets — but they were also sharing discoveries as basic as this: Baking butternut squash or sweet onions on a bed of rock salt will concentrate the flavor and texture."
Other highlights:
Amy Scattergood on the crepe: "There's an economy of movement and coordination of design — a swirl of batter, a tilt of the pan — that's beautiful, whether the crepes are coming off the pans of the street vendors in Paris, or the crêperies in Brittany or Santa Monica, or the one on the stove top of your own kitchen. The crepe's beauty is in its utter simplicity, both in composition and in consumption; and though it looks difficult, it's actually much easier to make than you think."
Cocktails enter the ice age by Charles Perry, on how bars are paying more and more attention to what goes into what they pour drinks over: "I am starting to make ice cubes with Fiji Water for my Cocktail Reservado list," says Adam Seger, owner of Nacional 27, a Latin restaurant in Chicago. "For my Richy Roy, I stir 28-year-old unfiltered, cask-proof Glenlivet with sweet vermouth and Fiji ice cubes, then finish with homemade bitters and a homemade maraschino."
Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 1, 2007 at 8:25 AM
Apparently yesterday was National Brandy Alexander Day—if the cocktail isn't your thing, perhaps you'd like to try making it as ice cream? It's hard to say no to a recipe that involves whole milk AND heavy cream, let alone one that's got brandy and Godiva chocolate liqueur too!
Posted by Adam Kuban, December 7, 2006 at 1:46 PM
Rancho Gordo's Steven Sando decides to make a tequila with some kick:
"Several years ago, I discovered you can take ripe fruit and add it to a mason jar of tequila with a spoonful of sugar and make a fine little drink. You let it sit for a week, agitating daily and then pour it into shot glasses for a nice aperitif. I'd been successful with pears and peaches and thought, what the heck, I'll try it with some puree from the tunas [prickly pears]."
