Posted by Paul Clarke, June 11, 2008 at 5:30 PM
In January, I vented about the difficulty of finding and purchasing various types of spirits, thanks in no small part to the bewildering system of state liquor laws that govern the trade in alcoholic beverages. Now, just as you’re trying to find that great bourbon you’ve been searching for in time for Father’s Day, Eric Felten at the Wall Street Journal is letting loose, too.
After running a recipe that called for the somewhat hard-to-find maraschino liqueur, Felten writes of the experiences his readers encountered, epitomized by the liquor store owner who insisted that the complex Italian or Croatian liqueur was the same thing as the sweet, neon-red syrup that cocktail cherries are packed in. A simple mistake for a rookie, but for someone in the industry, a dumb—and all too familiar—move.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, January 30, 2008 at 5:15 PM
In today’s New York Times, Eric Asimov steps into the bizarre and confusing world of U.S. liquor laws.
This topic’s been setting parts of the online wine world ablaze in the aftermath of a recent operation in which representatives of Wine.com gathered evidence of rival wine retailers illegally shipping wines to certain states (including New York), and reported those retailers to state authorities. While Wine.com representatives say they’re out to change these rules, the event has turned attention to the Byzantine tangle of state laws that came out of the repeal of Prohibition, more than 75 years ago.
Asimov writes: “The attention illuminates the tensions inherent in an Internet economy bound by post-Prohibition laws that created the three-tier system of producers, distributors and retailers, regulated on a state-by-state basis.”
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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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Posted by Paul Clarke, November 7, 2007 at 3:15 PM
In Sunday’s New York Times Style Magazine, Toby Cecchini tackles a spirit that’s seen better days: sloe gin.
Chances are if you’ve had sloe gin in the United States, you’ve either been somewhat disappointed in the product, or young and exuberant enough that you didn’t really care. Traditionally made from gin that has been flavored with an infusion of sloe berries—the fruit of the blackthorn tree, which grows wild in the U.K. and Ireland but is mostly if not entirely absent from these shores—and then sweetened, sloe gin has now slunk to the bottom rack of the liquor store, its bright, fruity flavor abandoned in favor of cheaper, artificially colored and flavored alternatives.
If your sole exposure to sloe gin is from drinks with gaudy flavors and tawdry names—such as the Alabama Slammer or the Sloe Comfortable Screw—a sublime drinking experience may not have been what you were looking for at the time; but for classic and delectable drinks such as the Sloe Gin Fizz or the Blackthorn Sour, a cheap sloe gin can ruin the entire experience.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, October 31, 2007 at 5:00 PM
This is where “covering current events” merges with “shameless self promotion.”
In the November-December issue of Imbibe magazine, there’s a feature I wrote called "Sherry on Top," about—you guessed it—sherry. Now I’m a dyed-in-the-wool spirits and cocktails guy, and sherry is usually the province of the more oenologically inclined. But sherry is such a strange bird, with its multitude of styles and its solera blending process, that it appealed to the part of me that likes murking about with different combinations of flavors.
Among the things I learned from writing the piece: I really, really like amontillados and olorossos. My previous experiences with sherry had mainly been with either the super-dry finos or the sweet and rich dessert sherries like the creams and the noteworthy Pedro Ximenez; exploring the classes of dry yet robust wines really gave my palate something to get excited about, and I’m hoping to learn more.
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Posted by Robyn Lee, October 24, 2007 at 7:15 PM
I did a double-take when I first saw Sara's photo of basil liquor—my first impression was "mint" when I saw the green liquid, but the neighboring tomatoes gave me the sense that it was something else.
Sara describes basilcello as "a very sweet basil liquor that will help take away your indigestion just like the best limoncello." Although anything with alcohol in it tends to give me indigestion, not take it away, I'm curious to find out what this tastes like. Read Sara's recipe to make your own basilcello!
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 19, 2007 at 3:00 PM
Fans of classic cocktails often run into the same problem: Many distinctive ingredients called for in vintage recipes have disappeared from the local liquor store, and sometimes from the face of the earth. One such ingredient is the French aperitif Amer Picon.
OK, let me qualify that—Amer Picon is still being manufactured in France, and is available and popular (especially when mixed with beer) in some parts of Europe. But this mildly bitter spirit with a flavor defined by orange peel and gentian has suffered a double indignity: Long a staple of every high-quality establishment’s back bar, and an ingredient in classic drinks such as the Liberal, the Brooklyn (you knew the Manhattan had to have a counterpart), and the eponymous Picon Punch, Amer Picon disappeared from the U.S. market in the 1980s (though some lucky scavengers still find dusty bottles in old liquor stores). Prior to that, however, the manufacturer made a "New Coke" mistake, reformulating the long-beloved product, dramatically reducing its proof and eviscerating its once-vibrant flavor. For bars in the United States, Amer Picon went out with a whimper.
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Posted by Lucy Baker, September 12, 2007 at 11:00 AM
I wasn't able to make it to the recent absinthe tasting at LeNell's Ltd. liquor store in Red Hook, Brooklyn, but owner LeNell Smothers was kind enough to sit down with me and answer a few questions about the green fairy, the business of bars, and booze.
How would you describe the experience of drinking absinthe to someone who had never tried it?
Are you talking about the myth of hallucinating? That's bullshit. It's a high-proof alcohol, so you're getting more of a buzz, but it's not the same as taking a hallucinogenic drug.
Do you subscribe to the traditional method of drinking absinthe, with the spoon, the sugar, and the dripping of cold water?
It depends. Sometimes I just drink absinthe straight, without adding water. Personally it's all about the taste.
Do you think the absinthe available in America today is different than the famous French absinthe of the 1890s?
There were a variety of absinthes available back in the day, when the writers and artists were hanging out in Paris drinking it. Quality varied, just like in any category of spirit, so you can't really say if this absinthe is the same or different.
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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 15, 2007 at 3:00 PM
Few things in the world of drink inspire as much curiosity—and as much breathless hysteria—as absinthe. Banished from the U.S. in 1912 as a warm-up exercise by Prohibitionists, absinthe was absent from the U.S. market (legally, at least) until just this past spring. When Viridian Spirits rolled out Lucid, the first (and so far, only) absinthe to meet regulatory approval in almost 100 years, newspapers and magazines immediately began to circulate many of the old, exaggerated claims and contemporary urban myths about the spirit called the "green fairy."
Last week, the Colorado Springs Gazette joined the fray, but with a difference: Reporter Mark Arnest sought to lay many of these rumors to rest, ranging from the Prohibitionist rhetoric that absinthe causes insanity (Vincent van Gogh's gruesome self-mutilation is the perennial example) to the modern-day thrill-seekers belief that it can make a drinker hallucinate (example from the story's Q&A section: "Q: Will it make me hallucinate? A: Ironically, absinthe's reputation as a psychoactive liquor is largely a result of the ban. [...] Q: But what about van Gogh's ear? A: Drunk people sometimes do really stupid things.") In doing so, the story underscores a point that one of Arnest's sources states directly: Absinthe is simply a strong, alcoholic beverage—no more, and no less.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, August 7, 2007 at 6:30 PM
Now that absinthe is legally available in the U.S. again, you might be at a loss as to the proper way to drink it. Time Out New York comes to your rescue. Just don't ...
... set it on fire. Yes, it was very cool to light your absinthe-laced spoonful of sugar on fire before stirring it into your glass in that dingy Prague pub, but that’s how the Czechs drink it. The only (legal) absinthe you’ll find on these shores is produced in the French style, and thus should be consumed the French way.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, May 3, 2007 at 5:15 PM
You've probably already read that Danny DeVito's recently launched his own brand of limoncello to make the most of his drunken appearance last year on The View, which he blamed on a long night out with George Clooney, saying on the show, "I knew it was the last seven limoncellos that was going to get me." But have you visited the official website for Danny DeVito's Limoncello?
Ladies and gentlemen, this is liquour with a THEME SONG—a happy kicky one at that. I'll be singing it all day and I suspect you will be too.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 22, 2007 at 4:15 PM
Louisa Chu of Movable Feast was recently a juror at the annual Absinthiades festival in Pontarlier, the birthplace of French absinthe, and got to taste ten absinthes in the course of two hours. So what's judging an absinthe contest like? "During the judging, I made good use of the giant sand-filled spit buckets but my mouth still went numb and I did experience the infamous lucid intoxication - then again I was just terrified that I might pass out. I did stay surprisingly sober, and even managed to scribble some hopefully comprehensible notes." Alas, real absinthe is still illegal to distill in or import into the United States, so American afficionados resort to smuggling it in or buying it from clandestine black market distillers.
[via The Grinder]
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 21, 2007 at 5:26 PM
"When restaurant patrons browse through tequila lists offering dozens of choices, that's a clue. When liquor stores carry high-end tequilas at prices usually associated with single-malt scotch, that's another. But when aficionados toss around terms like "floral notes," "layers of complexity" and "hints of caramel and vanilla" to describe a beverage that used to be knocked back with a lick of salt, a bite of lime and a wince of esophagus-searing pain, there can be no doubt: tequila has arrived." Jack Broom of the Seattle Times discovers there's more to tequila than the nasty shots we all did back in college.
Posted by Ed Levine, January 8, 2007 at 2:47 PM
On a foray into Red Hook, Brooklyn, on Saturday with Mike, my serious grapehead brother, I dropped into wine and spirits shop LeNell’s (416 Van Brunt Street, 877-NO-SNOBS). Mike knows a lot about wine, and he’s spent more than 25 years unsuccessfully trying to get me interested in the stuff. So when I told him that LeNell’s was a really cool place, he was skeptical. After all, he knows how little I know about wine. Then Mike spotted half-bottles of Barolos (Roagna's La Rocca e La Pira) at $27, which he said was an excellent price. One conversation with LeNell, the gracious, unpretentious owner, and he is now a serious devotee of the shop. Here is serious eater and brother Mike’s take on LeNell’s. —Ed Levine
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