Sites you should know

If you don't know Brian Rea, too bad for you. He knows as much about bars, bartenders, drinks, drinking, and drink memorabilia as any man alive. He worked among other places at the 400 Restaurant and the Little Club, was head barman at the “21” Club, and even went astray and owned his own restaurants in New York City. He's done it all, and knows it all (just ask him), and as far as I'm concerned, is one of the bar businesses keenest and funniest resources. Luckily, there's a way to get to know him - check Brian out here, and be sure to scroll a third of the way down the page for his gimlet-eyed view of pain in the ass moments at the bar. My hero.
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First Taste: Tuthilltown Manhattan Rye

Everyone has a friend who thinks he's good at something...and isn't. Or prides himself on his secret recipe for barbecue sauce, or kimchi, or the way he smokes his own 18 pound turkey, yet always has so much food leftover.

I think of those folks sometimes when tasting spirits sent to me as part of the wave of new products coming from small distillers and entrepreneurs. (There's no space here to distinguish between those who really own and operate their own stills and those whose spirits are made to order by large distilleries; perhaps some other time.) So many I try are oddly out of balance, with one note or another so dominant that I think they must be created to satisfy no one but the maker. Gin isn't supposed to smell like Provence during the lavender harvest, ya feel me? So I've become skeptical when spirits new to market appear in my tasting lair (actually, the kitchen counter.)

It took Tuthilltown Manhattan Rye Hudson Whiskey to shut my mouth and open my nose. There are a lot of oaky aromas at first, but they are clean and crisp, not the puff of plywood or sawdust that often comes from poor barrel management. There are also fresh crushed apple notes, with a hint of vanilla and a fully grainy, almost cooked breakfast cereal quality. On the palate, there's little of the expected rye roughness; instead, the edges have been smoothed, perhaps by Tuthilltown's use of small barrels, but this is still a lively, peppery rye, and there's even some anise and caraway popping through. It finishes with a bit of char, but clean, brisk and quite smooth, and not the slightest bit hot, even at 46% alcohol. It is both robust and charming, Hugh Jackman, but not Wolverine.

I offered some as an after dinner treat to a couple of neighbors recently, guys who I don't think of as boozehounds. Suffice it to say that it was a good thing I did my tasting before passing the 375 ml bottle around. Currently limited availability, 45% alcohol by volume.

My score: 8

(Photo of bottle: Matt Calardo)
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Waiter, there's a beer in my cocktail!

There doesn’t seem to be much call in bars and restaurants today for the rudimentary Red Eye (beer and tomato juice) or the Wine Cooler (wine with sparkling water or soda and fruit juice). But there’s nothing wrong with mixing other ingredients with beer or wine to create drinks with new, contemporary taste profiles. In fact, a small but significant move is afoot to incorporate the two into contemporary cocktail culture.

(Read the rest of the story, below, originally published in the Summer 2009 issue of Flavor and the Menu magazine.)
Flavor - Wine Beer Cocktails
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Monkeys love cocktails!

My friend Mark Marowitz sent this along, and I'm passing it on with no comment.


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Gin from gaz...

...(the bartender formerly known as Gary Regan) has arrived in the form of "The Bartender's Gin Compendium," a book for amateur mixologists, and for the pros, for gin tipplers, gin connoisseurs, gin lushes, gin swiggers, gin aficionados, and for people who don’t like gin, too (hey, G., shouldn't you now represent your name with a squiggly line thingee instead of letters?)

"I’m in the mood to change some minds out there," gaz says. "Going the self-publishing route this time has been very interesting for me. It's allowed me to say some rather naughty things that the big boys might not have let me get away with."

A trade paperback copy of the "Compendium" is $23.99, or around 6.5 cents per page, as G. points out, while hard cover goes for $30.99 (under 8.5 cents per page. It's 354 pages long, sans index,and there are discounts for bulk orders (trade paperback only, 25-copy minimum). You can buy it here, or for discounts and freebie grovelling, write to gaz.

Here's what another know-it-all, David Wondrich, has to say about "The Bartender's Gin Compendium." (Wonder how many Clover Clubs this bit of log-rolling cost gaz?)
“Reading this highly informative and raffishly charming book is almost as fun as sharing a drink—and make mine a Doc Daneeka Royale, or maybe an 1820, or a Leo Di Janeiro, or, hell, you choose—with the highly informative and raffishly charming Mr. Regan himself (but please don’t tell him I said so; it’ll only encourage him).”

Go ahead, buy two (one for dear ol' Mum) and help keep an old fart off the streets.
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Savory - and culinary - cocktails

At the recently opened Copa d’Oro bar in Santa Monica, Calif., customers find one of the latest twists in the evolution of drink making: the market menu.
Arrayed before them and listed in great detail on the menu are all the fresh ingredients bar owner Vincenzo Marianella gathered that morning at a local farmers’ market, much as chefs have been doing for years.

Conspicuous among the usual fruits — strawberries, grapes, oranges and such — is a rainbow of herbs and vegetables: basil, thyme, rosemary, sage, parsley, habenero peppers, wasabi, ginger, bell peppers, cucumbers, carrots. What happens with these farm fresh ingredients is quite culinary in style. Customers pick a spirit by price, select a few fresh ingredients and watch as Copa d’Oro’s bartenders custom-make their drink.

“It’s the most popular part of our menu,” says Marianella, adding that many of the drinks are made with the most savory of available ingredients.

At many other bars and restaurants across the country, the cocktail renaissance is taking a distinctly savory turn, with mixologists employing ingredients and culinary techniques that expand the flavor options of mainstream drinking.

“Working with savory ingredients treats people to an entirely different flavor spectrum they may not be used to,” says Jamie Boudreau, bar director for Seattle’s Tini Bigs and a spirit and cocktail consultant. “When I first started
making cocktails, my inspiration was pastry books, but then I started looking at chefs and what flavors they make work together.”

(Read the rest of the story, below, originally published in the Summer 2009 issue of Flavor and the Menu magazine.
Flavor - Savory Cocktails
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Manhattan Cocktail Classic

It's hard to get the best-known New York City drinks people together in one room in the city - to have a cocktail with my neighbor Dave Wondrich, I usually have to go to San Francisco or New Orleans. But thank goodness for the much-talked about Manhattan Cocktail Classic, a multi-day event celebrating the history, contemporary culture and craft of the cocktail, which will be making a not-so-dry run this fall on October 3 - 4 in preparation for the full-tilt boogie version set for next May. Part festival, part fete, part conference, part cocktail party, the event will bring together the talents of the bars, bartenders and restaurants of New York for two days of educational and celebratory activities.

The brainchild of some of my favorite bartenders, bar owners, educators, critics and all-around Champion Livers (Dale DeGroff, Simon Ford, Doug Frost, Allen Katz, Steven Olson, Paul Pacult, Sasha Petraske, Gary Regan, Julie Reiner, Audrey Saunders, Andy Seymour, Charlotte Voisey and David Wondrich), the MCC also boasts Lesley Townsend, former director of Astor Center, who will direct traffic and egos.

Tickets don't go on sale until after Labor Day, but for all current info, visit the Manhattan Cocktail Classic website.

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Calling New York bartenders!

Bärenjäger Honey Liqueur has launched its first bartender competition, inviting professional and amateur NY bartenders to submit cocktails using their creativity and all-natural Bärenjäger Honey Liqueur through August 25, 2009. I'll be joining mixologist and spirits aficionado Allen Katz of Southern Wine & Spirits, Gaz Regan, director of the Worldwide Bartender Database, main man at Ardentspirits.com and author of The Joy of Mixology, and barstar Julie Reiner of Clover Club and Flatiron Lounge to select the top recipes, which will move on to the final round. All finalists will be invited to a private event for media and industry on September 15^th, where they will make their cocktails for the last round of judging. The grand prize winner will receive an all-expense paid trip for two to Oktoberfest 2009 in Munich, Germany. Enter here.
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Drinks: The Rickey

Cocktails come and go, but the good ones keep resurfacing, it seems. The professionals who make up the DC Craft Bartender's Guild, for instance, have wholeheartedly embraced the Rickey as their own, and in fact plan on celebrating its various qualities next week. Good for them - nothing like a little bit of local historical authenticity tied to really good drink making to set a party off.

Meanwhile, I know that the original drink, named for the lobbyist Joe Rickey, called for whiskey, soda, lime and ice only, but by the time I was a kid, Rickeys were non-alcohol coolers, served in every soda fountain or corner luncheonette, usually in branded glasses like those pictured. In fact, all but the soda and ice were gone in those versions, and soda jerks whipped them up using sweetened lime syrup and highly-charged soda that fired out of the bar tap with a sizzling whoosh. My first adult Rickey, like many others, was made with gin, and I still have a taste for them made thataway, though in the batch pictured, I threw in some freshly-picked blueberries that soaked up the gin and lime, a savory treat to encounter at the end of the drink.

Gin Rickey

Squeeze one half lime into a tall glass, preferably a Rickey glass; fill with crushed ice. Add 1.5 ounces gin, top with bottled soda water and agitate drink with a long spoon until glass frosts.
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First Taste: Beefeater 24

Gin is blossoming among the cocktail cognoscenti, as bartenders turn to old favorites for drink inspiration or experiment with newly created gins crafted with a mix of botanicals previously unknown. Some I've tried are difficult to imagine in a drink; others have good qualities, but don't differ enough from the established brands to make a mark.

The standard Beefeater, I found years ago in a blind tasting, is my favorite G and T gin, its robust juniper punch and 47 abv exactly what I'm looking for at the end of a sweltering day. It's also a fine Martini gin, and for me the benchmark Negroni gin. But its prominent flavor profile may be keeping it from more drink experimentation.

Recently, Desmond Payne, Beefeater's master distiller, found inspiration in tea during an Asian trip, and has tinkered with the classic formula by adding sencha and green tea and grapefruit peel to the steeping mix for 24 hours. The result: Beefeater 24, a smooth, assertive, but rounder and less angular gin, with a slightly muted juniper quality. The tea brings in a slightly tannic pucker but with a paradoxically softer mouthfeel tied together by the zip of grapefruit. The characteristic anisey-orrisy Beefeater finish is mellowed but lengthened; in fact, this finishes longer than the original. If the mellow Payne was looking to give bartenders a new version of an old favorite, with fewer sharp edges and more adaptability - juniper, after all, dominates every conversation in which it takes part - then he has succeeded. Currently limited U.S. availability, 45% alcohol by volume. (Imported by Pernod-Ricard USA)

My score: 7
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