Spirited Cocktails

Last week I told you about my trip to Rye House to celebrate Mardi Gras, New Orleans-style. I mentioned some of the cocktails we sampled, including the Sazarac and the Vieux Carre. I’d like to share one more staple of the Mardi Gras celebration – or any celebration for that matter – The French 75.

This cocktail is actually named after the French 75-mm field gun; a commonplace piece of artillery during World War I. Apparently this particular gun was known for its recoil system, which allowed for much smoother operation than had previously been possible. Once you try the cocktail, you’ll understand how appropriate that is. (History once again courtesy of Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails; a must-have for any bartender’s bookshelf.)

Here’s what you’re going to need:

2oz gin
1oz fresh lemon juice
1/4oz simple syrup
Champagne

Combine the gin, lemon juice and simple syrup with ice and shake well. Strain into a tall glass – either a Collins glass, or ideally, a champagne flute – and top with champagne (or other high-quality sparkling wine). Stir gently, and garnish with a long lemon peel. Some like to add a cherry as well, but I generally prefer to skip it. The choice is entirely yours.

This cocktail offers one of the more surprising combinations in the bartending world – gin and champagne. But with the lemon and sugar to balance things out, it works beautifully. And as Ted points out in talking about the appropriateness of the cocktail’s name, “….smooth, yet packs a wallop.” So true.

Cheers!

-Josh

Our friends over at The 50 Plus Male – a blog for men of the baby boomer generation – asked us to write a guest post about cocktails and the role of the cocktail hour in social life. We chose to write about the cocktail we most identify with the baby boomers – the Martini. You can find the full post over at The 50 Plus Male. The boozy part is provided below.

One of the best parts of writing about cocktails and spirits is that the audience is nearly universal. I actually come from a technology background where, with a few exceptions, there wasn’t much diversity in the crowd. But writing about spirits on Spirited Cocktails, I’ve met so many people from so many different backgrounds and walks of life, and it truly enriches my experience.

All of that being said, there are a few mainstay groups of the cocktail world, and one of them includes men of the baby-boomer generation. When I meet these guys at various bars and events around New York City, they’re generally the type that appreciate the classic cocktails – Manhattans, Old Fashioneds, Gimlets and so on. And of all the cocktails that the 50 plus male seem to appreciate, none comes up more frequently than the Martini.

There’s a folk lore surrounding martini. It’s probably something we should blame on James Bond, but it seems that everyone has their own recipe for the perfect martini. To be clear, though, in my mind, a martini is not any cocktail served in a martini glass (Appletinis are most certainly not martinis). Again, in my mind, a martini is a cocktail made with gin, not vodka. Many of you may prefer vodka, and that is certainly your choice, but if you’ve never prepared a classic gin martini with a quality gin, I strongly urge you to give it a try.

So for those of you who may not be used to preparing your own martini, I wanted to share two variations that might help you get started.

The first is the classic dry martini. This recipe dates back to around 1895, and is my preferred method when preparing martinis for my guests. The recipe is as follows:

1.5oz gin (I prefer a London Dry gin, such as Beefeater 24)
1.5oz French dry vermouth
1-2 dashes orange bitters

Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass with fresh ice, stir well to chill, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a peel of orange or lemon.

Those that prefer the extra dry variety may prefer this more modern recipe:

3 oz gin
1/8oz French dry vermouth

To make this extra dry, add ice and the vermouth to your mixing glass. Swirl to coat the ice with vermouth, and strain off the excess. Add your gin, stir well to chill, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. The traditional garnish for this variation is a pitted Spanish olive.

A few notes:

-Yes, I said stirred. The general rule of thumb is that any cocktail made with only spirits (no citrus juice, sugar, etc.) should be stirred. A shaken martini is a cloudy martini, and probably a bit too watered down as well.
-The orange bitters in the classic recipe may be unfamiliar to you, but trust me – it’s a worthy addition. A dash or two of bitters in any cocktail can go a long way towards providing the depth and character that makes a good cocktail great. If you can’t find orange bitters in your local grocery or liquor store, you can order them online from my friend Greg at Cocktail Kingdom.
-As with any cocktail (just as in cooking), the quality of ingredients matters. Use a cheap gin, and you’ll get what you paid for. Gin has seen a wonderful resurgence in the past decade, and there are some wonderful, high quality gins for you to chose from. For a martini, a classic London Dry like Beefeater or Tanqueray probably works best. But some other brands worth trying for your home bar include Plymouth, Hendricks, and my favorite hometown gin, Blue Coat (distilled in Philadelphia!)

Cheers!

-Josh

It’s nearly impossible to pick a favorite cocktail from my week at Tales of the Cocktail. The choices were so varied and plentiful that narrowing down  the list was a difficult task in and of itself. However, if I’m really honest with myself, one cocktail in particular rises to the top. It was prepared for my by Erin Williams, the Cointreau Brand Ambassador (formally of Pegu Club). In actuality, I’m not certain of the name of the cocktail, as it was custom made based on a survey I completed about my cocktail preferences (Tales was just so awesome!) I think the Rosemary Gin Sour adequately explains it though.

Here’s what you’re going to need:

2oz gin (Erin used Hendricks)
3/4oz fresh lemon juice
1/2oz simple syrup
1/2oz Cointreau
2 slices of cucumber
1 sprig of rosemary (plus another for garnish)

In the bottom of a mixing glass, muddle the rosemary and cucumber with the lemon juice and simple syrup. Add the gin, Cointreau, and plenty of ice, and shake well. Strain into a tall glass over fresh ice, and garnish with a fresh sprig of rosemary.

Many thanks to Erin Williams from Cointreau for mixing up my favorite drink at Tales of the Cocktail! Cheers!

While the sessions at Tales of the Cocktail are wonderfully interesting and informative, another big draw at TOTC are the tasting rooms. At any given time over the course of the day, there are usually 3-4 rooms running simultaneously, and there are usually at least 3 sessions per day per room. So when you do the math, there ended up being about 40 different tasting rooms over the course of the event. Of course, not every tasting room is dedicated to one individual brand, either. There was a cognac tasting room, a scotch tasting room, and so on.

So here are some of the new (or particularly noteworthy) things I tried at Tales:

Martin Miller’s Gin is celebrating its 10 year anniversary, and Martin Miller himself was on-hand to tell their story. Martin Miller’s is distilled in England, then bottled in Iceland with very soft, unfiltered water. The argument is that the particularly soft, glacial water gives a particularly soft, sweet mouthfeel to the gin. I’m not 100% sure I’m sold on that, but I definitely enjoyed my first tastes, and I look forward to tasting more of both blends of Martin Miller’s (the traditional bottling at 40% ABV and the slightly spicier Westbourne at 45.2% ABV), and getting them into some cocktails of my own.

Xante is new to the US, having been around in Europe for some time. It’s a liqueur composed of cognac and Belgian pears – sweet, with hints of vanilla. I sampled it neat, and the pear flavor is very nice, so I look forward to playing with it in a few cocktails.

Ty Ku is an Asian liqueur blended of soju (a distilled spirit made from rice or barley, native to Korea), citrus, melon, teas and botanicals. It’s an interesting flavor – definitely citrusy and sweet, with a touch of ginger, too. Again, I only sampled it neat, so I’m looking forward to doing some mixing with it. Ty Ku also produces a sake, which I’m anxious to try.

Pierre Ferrand is good cognac, plain and simple. I tasted the Ambre, which is light and balanced, as well as the Reserve, which is aged longer, producing a richer taste. Not even sure I want to mix with these… maybe just sip on them by a fire.

Cointreau Noir is the first variation of the famous orange liqueur ever released. It starts with the traditional Cointreau (an orange liqueur) and blends it with Remy Martin cognac. The result is a sweet, nutty flavor, and I’m told that it’s really meant to be sipped (though I’m going to play around with mixing it anyway, as soon as I get ahold of a bottle of my own!)

Averna Sambuca agli Agrumi is a citrus-infused sambuca. Sambuca has always been one of my favorite digestifs, particularly enjoyable after a large meal. This particular variety was still clearly sambuca (have on the anise, which I love), but with a nice citrus infusion (I picked up most on notes of grapefruit). In my mind, plain sambuca is perfect the way it is, but the citrus sambuca from Averna was a nice change of pace (particularly in the summer).

Of course, that’s only a fraction of what I tasted, and doesn’t even begin to touch on all of the actual cocktails that followed. One step at a time though! Rest assured, there’s much more to come.

Cheers!

I’m still sifting through all of my material from Tales of the Cocktail – so many sessions, so many tastings, so many parties… So maybe it’s not so much that I’m sifting, as recovering.

I didn’t want to wait any longer though before I started to share some of the best information to come out of the show.

One of my favorite sessions of the week was “The Science of Shaking,” presented by Eben Klemm (beverage director of the B.R. Guest restaurant group), Alex Day (bartender at the famed Death & Co.), and Dave Arnold (director of the culinary technology department at the French Culinary Institute and author of the Cooking Issues blog). This session was the perfect blend of the two biggest areas of my life: mixology & tech geekery.

Debate swirled around the pros and cons of various shaking techniques, types of ice, shaking materials, and so on. There were charts, graphs, tools to measure dilution, temperature… it was awesome. Among the most significant conclusions: metal-on-metal shakers (as opposed to a shaker that includes a glass) consistently produce the coldest cocktails, shaking style is largely irrelevant when it comes to temperature or dilution, and in the end the best advice is “use lots of ice.”

A bonus bit of info – Famed Seattle bartender Jamie Bordreau was in the audience and made a great point: colder is not always better. Depending on the ingredients in the cocktail, there may be times when “cold” might provide a more well balanced cocktail than “really cold” (where the alcohol might become a little too prominent). It’s often subjective, but it’s something to keep in mind.

The geek continued with full force in the “21st Century Gin” session. The session was moderated by the lovely Charlotte Voisey (brand ambassador for Hendrick’s Gin), and attended by Jim Ryan (also of Hendrick’s Gin), Ryan Magarian (creator of Aviation Gin), and Angus Winchester (ambassador for Tanqueray). The fun geek part centered around what we actually call gin.

After a long period of stasis, gin has developed a lot in the last 20 years. Blends of botanticals have changed, the distillation process has evolved, and loads of new boutique gins with wildly varying flavor profiles are popping up left and right. So the question is, “Is all gin, gin?” Is Bombay the same kind of gin as Tanqueray? As Hendricks? As Aviation, Gordons, Plymouth, North Shore, Bluecoat and Bulldog? Should newer varieties of gin be called something else? Or should we have subcategories of gin (London Dry vs New Western etc.)

There’s no right answer, but it’s a fascinating and fun discussion to have, and certainly brought out my inner-geek.

Much more to come as I continue to report on my trip to Tales. Questions or requests? Leave your comments here, or send me a tweet.

Cheers!

I’ve been on the hunt lately for new summer cocktails. I’m hoping that, in a tribute to mind over matter, the imbibing of summer cocktails will actually cause summer to materialize (which, as those of you enduring the incessant rain along with me in New York know, is long-overdue).

So recently when the folks at Bulldog Gin sent me their list of new summer cocktails, Friday I’m In Love jumped out at me (you’ll see why in just a moment). It also gave me a good opportunity to give Bulldog a try.

Bulldog itself is very well suited to summer cocktails. It’s on the drier side with some nice hints of citrus and pine. It’s also got some interesting ingredients like poppy and Dragon Eye (which is related to lychee). I’ll admit though, I had trouble picking out the Dragon Eye in the flavor, but hey, I’m still an amateur taster :-)

In any case, here’s what you’re going to need to give Friday I’m In Love a try:

2oz dry gin (I used Bulldog, obviously, which worked very well)
2oz white cranberry juice
1/2oz lemon juice
club soda
lemon wedge to garnish

Combine the gin, cranberry juice, and lemon juice in a cocktail shaker with ice and shake well. Strain into a tall glass over fresh ice. Add club soda to top and a lemon wedge for garnish.

The crisp, citrusy flavor of the gin combined with the tart white cranberry and just a hint of lemon gave me exactly what I was looking for – a light, refreshing summer cocktail; the perfect choice to enjoy outdoors on a warm summer day (if we ever have one).

Plus, any cocktail named after a song by The Cure gets extra points in my book.

Cheers!

Those of you who know me well, know that my father is a die-hard fan of Frank Sinatra. And as much as I tried to prevent it from happening as a child, my father’s love of the Chairman of the Board has been passed down to me. So when I heard the waitress at Raines Law Room mention a cocktail called The Tramp while listing their specials a little while back, I’ll admit, the lyrics “She gets to hungry / for dinner at eight…” started playing in my head immediately. Thus, I had to try the drink.

The Tramp is a simple, tasty little cocktail. Here’s what you’re going to need.

1.5oz gin
1.5oz sloe gin
1.5oz apricot brandy
Club soda
A lime wedge for garnish

Combine your ingredients in a shaker along with ice, shake well, and strain into a tall glass over fresh ice. Top with club soda, and garnish with a slice of lime.

Where this recipe might need some adjusting largely has to do with your apricot brandy.  Not all apricot brandy is made the same, and strength and flavor can (and will) vary. I found that the particular brand I chose here was quite strong in flavor, which may have warranted dialing the amount back a bit (perhaps to 1oz instead of 1.5oz). Using equal measure of all three core ingredients, though, should give you a good place to start, and you can experiment and adjust to suit your taste.

So, now we know why that lady was a tramp. It wasn’t because she liked the theatre, or never bothered with people she hates… it was too much sloe gin!

Here’s to Ol’ Blue Eyes.

Cheers!