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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Dangerous substances

Perhaps you've read the story in the New York Times this week about bartenders, restaurant workers and alcoholism. Good piece on a worthy topic. But the logic behind this story appearing in the Dining section devoted to "Summer Drinks" escapes me.

What's that? Alcohol is a drug with serious and widespread side effects on all society, especially restaurant workers, and their struggle deserves attention and acknowledgment? Then it should get better exposure than this section (scrutinized each week by restaurant owners, publicists, recipe hunters, food trendoids and, well, people like you and me) gets. But it was reported by a food section's regular writer, which makes the story's arrival appear to be someone's idea of counter-balancing all this talk about festive and serious modern drinking with some stern lessons in the wisdom of sobreity. Was a recent collection of barbecue stories accompanied by a piece explaining the link between charred meat and cancer? Will the next piece in the Times covering wild food foraging highlight the Center for Disease Control's annual body count of pickers mistaking a poison toadstool for something toothsome?

I searched the words "chef" and "diabetes" on the Times site just to see if I was being too sensitive, and the most recent complete article I found dates from late 2001, a serious account of a chef who had to leave his pastry craft behind when developing the disease. But nothing more current about the risks chefs run in developing or managing the problems of diabetes. So I tried "heart disease" and "chef" and got mostly obits. But surely the level of diabetes, heart disease and other weight related illnesses is high among professional cooks? When's the last time the section ran a piece about the battle chefs face in weight control, hyper-tension, diabetes, cholesterol, or about heart disease rates among food service professionals? Leave aside the activities of Alice Waters and others promoting better eating habits and NYC's trans-fat ban and the coverage devoted to health-related topics, especially regarding restaurant employees, shrinks to near-invisible.

It's not news that there's a strong strain of puritanism among Americans and especially journalists, and a tendency to allow the worst define the whole. And I'm not arguing that the causes and effects of alcoholism don't deserve serious coverage - nor that the strength displayed by those folks who continue to work in booze-drenched environments (like the great Harry Denton and Pegu Club's Del Pedro) while remaining sober aren't to be celebrated. (I didn't drink at all during my last 18 months as a bartender, an experience that sobered me in an unanticipated way and sped my departure from behind the bar and ultimately from service.) But I am saying that, of the many pleasures that can become habits and habits, addictions, it's the enjoyment of alcohol that seems most likely to fall under scrutiny in the modern nanny state and to be blamed for the ills misuse cause. The juxtaposition of the "Guide to Bartending" and "Mixing Drinks with Work and Staying Sober" in Wednesday's Times was just the latest example.

Meanwhile, I await the sidebar on the dangers of sharp implements and chronic cutting among chefs to accompany the "Dining" section's next knife guide.
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Cognac at "Tales"

FYI, Tales of the Cocktail starts in a couple of weeks, and I'll be hosting a seminar on Cognac's neglected place in the cocktail. If you're attending Tales, there are still some tickets available.
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Rum on the rise

Increasingly, bar and restaurants are making room on the back bar for more rum bottles. Some are new flavored brands used to spike cocktails with tropical flavors like guava and mango, while other aged and more complex brands are entering the U.S. market from the Caribbean and Central America, expanding the range and quality of rum available to mixologists.

(Read the rest of the story below...)
Rum Cheers June 09
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Tasting Good

The New York Spirit Awards competition starts in about ten days - so here's my take on the best way for anyone to get started tasting spirits - vodkas, whiskies, rums, tequilas, everything - like a professional.

Spirit Tasting

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Magazines & Newspape spirit tasting

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