Cocktail ingredients Utah update – November 2012

Find something on sale to make a nice Manhattan.

Salt Lake City cocktailians will be disappointed to see that the Special Price Adjustment (SPA) list this month is a lot leaner than it was last month.  This is just the normal pre-December doldrums that we experience every November; Santa Claus comes next month, and his SPA list is usually very generous in December.  We will soon be presented with a cornucopia of liquor oriented gift items and sparkling wines for New Year’s celebrations.

The standout Tequila deals this month are a pair of El Jimadors®: the Reposado and the Blanco are both marked down from $20 to $17.  Regular readers will know that a good Silver (or Plata or Blanco) is an essential ingredient in the ever popular Margarita, but this Reposado also makes outstanding cocktails.  For those who love Vodka Martinis, this month it’s bottles of Ketel One that are marked down from $25 to $22.  There are also a bunch of Vodkas and the usual large number of flavored Vodkas on SPA.

This month the Gin to try is Tanqueray, marked down from $25 to $22. Try it in a Tom Collins.  If you have an open bottle of sparkling wine but you’re in the mood for something a little stronger that a Champagne cocktail, try a French 75 – a reliable champagne (and gin) cocktail that is sure to have just the kick you need. 

November is not a total desert in the cocktail arena, however.  If you’re into Bourbons, and if you like something a little pricier, Jack Daniels® Single Barrel (CS# 026906) is available for $43 (that’s a generous $3 off) should make a great Bourbon Manhattan.  All of the Scotch Whiskies marked down this month are blends, so if you’re looking for something to put into your Rob Roy you can get some Johnnie Walker® Red or a large (1750 ml.) bottle of Dewars® White Label.

Vesper Martini will help you Bond with Skyfall

You can also mix Vespers by the pitcher,
but they will be stirred, not shaken.

The new James Bond film, Skyfall, opens this week-end.  Roger Ebert thinks it’s the best Bond in years, so it should be a good one.  A new James Bond film always brings attention to Bond’s hard-drinking life-style, and Bond’s drink of choice, the Vesper Martini, is named after James Bond’s girl in Casino Royale, Vesper Lynd.  Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, was a noted bon vivant as well as a famous author.  According to cocktail legend, Fleming asked noted bartender Gilberto Preti at Duke’s Hotel, London, to design the Vesper in sixty years ago.  In the book, Bond orders his Martini and then tells the bartender exactly how to mix it: “Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel.”  Thus contributing to the great Martini shaking vs. stirring controversy without ever uttering the phrase “shaken, not stirred”.  The cocktail has also been credited to Fleming’s friend Ivar Bryce.

Preti’s recipe is an interesting one when you consider why the vodka is in there at all.  Vodka is not a particularly strong flavored liquor, and during the length of Bond’s literary adventures Martinis made with Vodka (yes, they’re not really Martinis) slightly outnumber Martinis made with Gin (yes, I know, “made with Gin” is redundant).  The Vodka can only be there to tone down the taste of the Gin to bring out the flavor of the Lillet.  Kina Lillet, has a distinctive orange-based flavor that differs from the Vermouth used in a Martini, and changes the character of the drink a bit.  There are two ways to create a pretty good approximation of the original Vesper, even though Kina Lillet hasn’t been made for over 20 years.  It turns out that Kina is another name for quinine.  So adding two dashes of Angostura Bitters to the mix will move the flavor a little closer to what James Bond actually was drinking.  The second way is to use Cocchi Apertivo Americano, the closest thing to Kina Lillet that is currently available in many markets, and which is, sadly, not available in Utah.

As for the Gin, lately I’ve been enjoying my Vespers with Plymouth Gin.  Give it a try if you have any around and let me know what you think.  Next, using a half-ounce as a “measure” is recommended.  Using an ounce will result in a cocktail that is a solid double, a pretty stiff drink that will probably have warmed up a bit by the time you finish.  Better to start with a smaller cocktail, and then have a fresh, ice-cold one later if you want more.  Finally, if you will be driving to see Skyfall, plan on enjoying your Vesper when you arrive back home.

Vesper Martini

• 1 ½ oz Plymouth Gin (or premium gin of choice)
• ½ oz Ketel One Vodka
• ¼ oz Cocchi Apertivo Americano (or Lillet Blanc with Angostura)

Pour ingredients into a mixing glass half full of ice.  Stir very well until ice cold. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.  Twist a lemon twist over the glass to express the oils, rub it around the rim, and then drop it in or drape it gracefully over the edge of the glass.  (An olive in place of the twist is optional, but then it won’t be a Vesper.)   Straighten your bow-tie (you are wearing your tux, aren’t you?) and enjoy.

Halloween Coctails

Watch out! Those Zombies can kill you.

Need cocktails for Halloween? Look no further. Here is a great selection of Halloween cocktail articles.  Have a great Halloween and drink responsibly. 

Portland Cocktail Week wrap-up

Volunteers set up for a whiskey tasting.

Portland Cocktail Week (PDXCW) is over, and now it’s time for reflection.  PDXCW was first organized two years ago by Lindsey Johnson of Lush Life Productions and bartender Dave Shenaut.  This celebration of craft cocktails and cocktail culture is “organized by bartenders, for bartenders,” and has a friendly, informal vibe.  PDXCW has doubled in size every year.  When I asked Lindsey how much she expected attendance to grow, I was surprised that she expressed misgivings about the event getting much bigger.  At the current size, she knows most of the people who are involved, and she is accessible to just about anyone who wants to talk to her.  If too many people start coming, PDXCW might change and become more like some of the larger, more commercial, cocktail weeks.

My posts have told you about a lot of the fun at PDXCW, but bartenders also come to the cocktail week to improve their craft.  Local Oregon Bartenders Guild is a chapter of the US Bartenders Guild.  All 34 chapters of the USBG were represented, with attendees traveling to Portland from 26 states for a total of around 500 bartenders.  Many bartenders also volunteer.  Volunteers are a key contributing factor to the success of PDXCW.  Volunteers help set up for tastings and events and pick up afterwards so that classrooms may be turned around quickly.  There were always volunteers available to pitch in and do what needed to be done.  

PDXCW has plenty of sponsors that provide support, sponsor events, and provide food and drink for tastings and other events.  On the sponsors’ page you will mostly see brand logos, but behind many of those brands are large corporate sponsors like Diageo and Pernod Ricard.  In addition to the sponsors, other craft bartenders devote days or weeks to develop seminars on topics referenced in other posts like molecular mixology or cocktail photography.  Camper English of Alcademics organized two days of seminars called the Drink.Write program on cocktails and writing with, of course, some tastings and fun thrown in. 

My apologies if any significant contributors were missed or if credit was misattributed.  Please let me know and it will be corrected.

Extra-curricular activities at Portland Cocktail Week

Vendor drink cards feature cocktails
made from new products.

After the long school day is over at Portland Cocktail Week (PDXCW), it’s time for extra-curricular activities.  As in high school, students are encouraged to participate because it will eventually help them gain admission to cocktail college.  Activities are sometimes held in the big tent at the Jupiter Hotel (a semi-permanent structure) and other times at local bars or clubs.  There is usually a band, a DJ, or some other entertainment, food, and (of course) cocktails.  On Tuesday night there were five different activities scheduled, beginning at 4:30, 7:00, 9:00, 10:00, and 11:00 PM respectively.  The first was hosted by Drambuie, who was celebrating Drambuie 15, a tasty concoction of 15 year old Scotch with the same spices as classic Drambuie, but only 1/3 the sugar.  A Drambuie punch was on offer as you came in the door, and it looked like there were three Drambuie 15 cocktails available, too.  One of the tricks to being able to navigate back to your hotel room after a number of these functions is to not drink everything that is offered to you, and not to finish every drink you accept.  Your success at doing this may vary with how much you enjoy each cocktail.

Rather than hiring a run-of-the-mill caterer for this event, Drambuie hired a food-truck to park outside the club and serve food on demand.  The food in question was poutine; the truck seemed to have twenty kinds of the dish that consists of french-fries smothered in cheese and gravy and more cheese.  Each mouthful of poutine seemed like another cholesterol-laden nail in my coffin, so I only ate a partial serving to ensure that the coffin was not firmly sealed and to leave some opportunity for escape from the tomb.  It was then, with only a little food in my stomach, that I decided to sample the cocktails.  My favorites were the Fortified Cup (Drambuie, Sweet Vermouth, Cocchi Americano, Punt E Mes, and lemon) and the After School Special (Drambuie 15, Orgeat, Angostura Bitters, lemon, and soda).  At this point I discovered another bar with three more cocktail recipes, and decided it was time to move on to the next activity.

The House of Zwack is a Hungarian firm that produces a nice Amaro named Unicum and is introducing a sweeter variation of it that is aged with plums in the barrel named Unicom Plum, and sixth generation descendant of the founder, Isabella Zwack, was present to talk about her family history.  They also were serving some Hungarian dishes that appeared to have a lower cholesterol content than the poutine.  Just looking at them made me feel healthier.  For cocktails, the House of Zwack not only had some original recipes, but had world-class bartenders serving them: Tim Philips (Hemmesphere, Australia) is Diageo Reserve World Class Bartender of the Year 2012, and Ricky Gomez (New Orleans) is U.S.World Class Ambassador Winner 2012.  Two of the cocktail suggestions had caught my eye, one was made with Scotch and Unicum, and the other with Rye and Unicum Plum.  I asked Tim for a recommendation, and he suggested the Safety Deposit Box (Unicum, Johnnie Walker Gold Label, Mezcal, and Bianco Vermouth with a twist of lemon).  It was an excellent, well balanced cocktail, and made by a great bartender to boot.

The night was still young, and there were only three more parties to go!  Even astute readers will have difficulty determining how much I had to drink, and so did I. Don’t forget that in addition to all of the cocktails and partial cocktails I had at the first two parties, that was building on the foundation of all of the damage I had done during my day at cocktail school.  While I’m sure that there were some hearty souls who made it to all five parties, I decided that I would not attempt to be among them, and caught a bus back to my hotel.  Before casting aspersions, just remember that two out of five means you’re batting 400.

A school day at Portland Cocktail Week

Samples of Jameson Whiskeys await tasting.

At Portland Cocktail Week (PDXCW), your day will normally start with a school bus ride sometime after breakfast.  Cocktail week actives do not tend to start too early in the day (10:30 AM is standard here), but as the week wears on 10:30 AM seems to come earlier and earlier.  The headquarters and venue for many evening parties is the Jupiter Hotel, and that’s where most of the “scholarship” students reside, but the daytime classes and seminars are scheduled for McMenamins Kennedy School Home, a school building that has been converted to a hotel full of meeting rooms, restaurants, and (best of all) bars.

This labyrinthine hotel seems to be short on maps, but the staff is very helpful, so the diligent student can usually find his or her destination.  Cocktail week classes operate on what is known as “bartender time,” which means they start late. My first class on Tuesday was “Modernist Techniques for the Cocktail Bar,” presented by Dave Arnold, Don Lee, and Tristan Willey.  The class ran over two hours and the key message was that these techniques should be used to make cocktails taste and look better and to create a better customer experience, not in an attempt to impress people.  After a discussion of the tools you will need to employ these techniques, along with safety considerations, the presenters wowed the students with the intensity of the flavors they were able to extract from herbs and spices and infuse into the liquors they gave us to sample.

The next class was a tasting of Jameson’s Irish Whiskeys.  Master Distiller Barry Crockett had been scheduled to appear, but had been hospitalized and had to be replaced by Patrick Caulfield, who very ably led us through the tasting.  After a brief history of Irish Whiskey and a discussion on its increasing popularity, Patrick talked about the four whiskeys he had brought for us to taste: Jameson Black Barrel, Jameson Gold Reserve, Midleton Barry Crockett Legacy, and Red Breast.  The first two blend pot and column distilled whiskeys, and the last two are both single pot still whiskeys.  The Midleton (~$350) has not yet been released in the US, and the US will only receive 12,000 cases, so Utah may not see much of this excellent whiskey.  We each had four wine glasses, each with about ¾ ounce of one of the whiskeys, and while the normal protocol at a tasting is to just drink a bit, all of mine seemed to disappear by the time it was over.

By now you will have noticed that Cocktail Week school differs from most other schools: they serve cocktails in class… lots of them.  My next class, “It’s not the size of your Barrels, It’s how you use them,” presented by Gable Erenzo, Hudson Whiskey Ambassador, was no exception.  This class was a little more scientific than most; it came with PowerPoint slides of tables and graphs that summarized the research on using smaller barrels to age whiskeys.  The findings were very interesting.  Small barrels greatly accelerate the aging of whiskey.  Rather than checking the barrels yearly and then perhaps monthly, small barrels must be checked monthly and then daily when they approach maturity.  60% of the flavor of a whiskey comes from the barrel, and while whiskeys age faster in small barrels, their taste at maturity will not match that of the same whiskey aged slowly in a larger barrel.  Gable led us through the tasting of four excellent whiskeys, including a white dog corn whiskey that was surprisingly smooth for not being aged.

The school day ended with a ride back to the Jupiter in a school bus where liquor samples were being poured and shared.  It was one of the more raucous school bus rides I have ever had.  When school is out, though, the day is only half over.  On this evening, there were four different extra-curricular activities scheduled.  They will be covered in the next post.