Spirited Cocktails

Well, the time has come again – Tales of the Cocktail! The annual New Orleans gathering of bartenders, spirit brands, enthusiasts, and even us lowly bloggers, where we taste, shake, talk and live the world of spirits and cocktail culture. It’s a pretty good time!

I arrived yesterday, and was lucky enough to kick off the event with two amazing parties – a welcome reception hosted by Beefeater Gin at the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center, and a classic New Orleans garden fete at the Elma Mansion hosted by William Grant & Sons (the group that brings you Hendricks Gin, Glenfiddich, The Balvenie, Sailor Jerry and more). Once again, a pretty good time! Many thanks to Beefeater and William Grant & Sons for a warm (very, very warm) welcome to New Orleans.

My first session of the conference was this morning – a guide to tasting spirits with the true master of the craft, F. Paul Pacult. I’ll admit right from the start – I kinda suck at tasting spirits. I mean, I can drink ‘em with no trouble at all, but my ability (and particularly my vocabulary) to describe what I’m tasting is severely limited (and limiting). All the more reason why I was excite for this session.

Paul took us through the 49 – yes 49 – criteria he uses to evaluate spirits, including the visual (clarity, sediment, color), olfactory (dryness/sweetness, aromatic intensity, acid intensity, base materials, fruits, nuts, spices, etc.), and gustatory (flavors and intensity on entry, midpalate, and aftertaste). It’s an intense experience to say the least, but by breaking down the process into categories, then into individual attributes (with choices), the difficulty involved in expressing what you’re tasting fades away.

To get us started, we tasted six different spirits: Absolut 100 vodka, Plymouth gin, Jameson Gold irish whisky, Chivas 12 blended scotch, Scappa 14 single malt, and Martel XO cognac. This provided a great framework for tasting different types of spirits, and would make for a great self-guided tasting at home.

To benefit from Paul’s expertise on your own, be sure to order his latest book, Kindred Spirits 2, which includes Paul’s review of over 2,400 different brands and varieties of spirits. 

Stay tuned for more updates from NOLA. For more in real-time, be sure to follow me on Twitter (@cocktailspirit).

Cheers!

-Josh

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!

Our friends at LOUNGERATI have pulled together a list of the winners of the Spirited Awards at this year’s Tales of the Cocktail. We join LOUNGERATI in expressing our pride – and our thanks – to the winners representing the New York scene: Audrey Saunders at Pegu Club, Julie Reiner at Clover Club, and Jim Meehan at PDT (finally recognized as the World’s Best Bar!) Congratulations on this well deserved recognition.

Best American Bar: Audrey Saunders’ Pegu Club, NYC
Best Hotel Bar in the World: The Merchant Hotel, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Best Cocktail Writing 2009: David Wondrich of Esquire Magazine
Best New Product: Bols Genever
Best American Brand Ambassador: Simon Ford for Plymouth Gin
World’s Best Drinks Selection: The Merchant Hotel, Belfast, Northern Ireland
American Bartender of the Year: Jim Meehan of PDT, NYC
Best New Cocktail/Bartending Book: The Essential Cocktail: The Art of Mixing Perfect Drinks by Dale Degroff
World’s Best Cocktail Menu: The Merchant Hotel, Belfast, Northern Ireland
International Bartender of the Year: Tony Conigliaro, Lonsdale, London
World’s Best New Cocktail Bar: Julie Reiner’s Clover Club, Brooklyn
World’s Best Cocktail Bar: Jim Meehan’s PDT, NYC
Helen David Life Achievement Award: Peter Dorelli, London

Special congrats as well to Dale DeGroff, winner of Best New Cocktail Book. Dale’s books were the first ones I picked up when I started to learn more about cocktails, and I finally had the chance to meet him this week in New Orleans (which was a thrill for me). This award couldn’t have gone to a nicer (or more deserving) guy.

And as much as I love all of our New York bars, I’m thinking I need to make a trip to Belfast to check out the Merchant Hotel! Right?

Cheers,

Josh

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!

The fact is, there’s so much going on here at Tales of the Cocktail that I barely have time to blog (at least not in a way that will do the event justice.) So here’s the deal: I’ve decided to provide regular updates via Twitter (which will constrain my thoughts to 140 characters each), and I’m going to share initial impressions here with you now. Then when I get back to New York, I’m going to write up a detailed post that covers all of the nitty-gritty, and highlights the best of what I’ve seen.

At its heart, Tales of the Cocktail (or Tales, for short) is about exactly what you’d expect from a 5-day conference dedicated to the spirits industry and cocktail culture. That is to say, it’s really freakin’ fun. Gathered together are the country’s (and likely the worlds) most talented bartenders, brand ambassadors, historians and devotees, and the combination is nothing short of spectacular. Throughout the course of the day, an attendee is inundated with information on new ingredients, new brands, new techniques, and a great deal of history and culture, exposure to which can only serve to create better bartenders.

Some of the highlights I’ve experienced so far (all of which I’ll go into further detail about later as promised):

-A session entitled "The Fine Art of Banging Out Drinks like a Maniac", presented by Philip Duff (of door74) and Dushan Zaric of Employees Only/Macao Trading Co.
-A session on the History of the Saloons in America (which is fascinating), presented by H. Joseph Ehrmann, David Wondrich, and John Burton
-A reception sponsored by Beefeater 24 with cocktails made by Audrey Saunders (owner of Pegu Club)
-A meeting with Martin Miller of Martin Miller’s Gin (and of course, a tasting of Martin Miller’s Gin, which was phenomenal)
-A cocktail tweetup at Bar Tonique, organized by the always-amazing Lindsey of Lush Life Productions (@livethelushlife)

And that’s a) not everything and b) within the first 24 hours of landing in New Orleans.

So much more to come. In the meantime, you can follow my live updates on Twitter. You can also search for other updates about Tales of the Cocktail by searching Twitter for the hashtag #totc09.

Cheers from the Crescent City!

As with many of my inebriated brethren, I’m packing up this week and heading to New Orleans for Tales of the Cocktail for what’s sure to be five days of unbridled debauchery; the way New Orleans should be.

So for those of you who have been before, or those who are just smarter than I am: as I pack, what am I forgetting?

@Mr_Cocktail, an organizer of the conference, tweeted a few suggestions the other day: sunglasses, business cards, and extra suitcase for swag – all good ideas. But what else am I missing? For those of you who have already landed in NOLA – what should I know?

This is going to be fun.

Next message from the site of Tales of the Cocktail 2009. See you there!

-Josh