Building a home bar is an exercise in setting priorities. Spicy rye whiskey, decent mixing gin and a bottle of Cointreau? Right up there at the top of the list. Maraschino liqueur, Campari and Chartreuse? Maybe around level B, after all the basics are covered and you’re ready to explore a little bit. Dutch-style gin or Martinique rum? Wild cards – grab ‘em when you find ‘em, but you probably won’t use them that much, and putting a lot of energy into the search will only leave you frustrated (unless you live near Hi-Time Wine, Bev-Mo, Sam’s, Astor Place, or a very few other mondo liquor stores in the country. Lucky bastards.). Advocaat? A bargain bin or surprise-your-guests oddity; otherwise, save the space for a bottle of something more useful.

Until about a month ago, I placed Parfait Amour in the same neighborhood as Advocaat, Creme de Noyeaux and Baranjager. It’s an amusing, obscure liqueur, mentioned in plenty of old cocktail manuals, but almost entirely as a layer in a sticky-sweet pousse cafe. Purple in color and with a taste, as Ted Haigh writes in Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, “like the delicate combination of grape jelly beans and marshmallows,” Parfait Amour is a mixological curiosity, an unusual 19th-century violet, orange and vanilla liqueur that somehow made it’s way into 21st-century Washington State liquor stores (plenty of them, too — you’ll have to drive all over town to find a bottle of Punt E Mes, but Parfait Amour? It’s everywhere.)

Or it was until recently, anyway. That’s because a little over a month ago, the rows of pretty purple Marie Brizard bottles suddenly wound up with a bright orange tag on the shelf beneath them — CLOSEOUT. Evidently, someone at the state liquor board finally figured out that nobody was buying this stuff, and decided to drop the axe on the old Perfect Love. It’s days are numbered here in Washington; soon, that shelf space will be given over to Sour Guava Pucker, or Cabana Boy Rhubarb-flavored Rum, or some other ghastly product-of-the-month.

Faced with the demise of this liqueur (locally, anyway), realizing that this classic flavor I’d often sneered at would soon be denied me, I found myself, first, offended and dismayed that the product was being removed, and, inexplicably, with a strong desire to grab a bottle of this liqueur before it disappeared.

After putting it off until I was afraid I’d missed my chance, I finally picked up a bottle last week, and set to making the one non-pousse cafe-style drink I knew of offhand that called for Parfait Amour: the Jupiter Cocktail.

Jupiter Cocktail

• 1 1/2 ounces gin
• 3/4 ounce dry vermouth
• 1 teaspoon orange juice
• 1 teaspoon Parfait Amour

Shake with ice, and strain into chilled cocktail glass.

Back to Vintage Spirits: Haigh credits Harry MacElhone with printing the first known recipe for the Jupiter in 1923. I found Doc’s description of the drink spot-on, mostly: it doesn’t have a very appealing color (kind of purply grey and hazy), but it does have a special something in the flavor. But to my taste, that special something was too vague – with a teaspoon each of the two modifiers, the Jupiter tasted like a classic dry martini with something indefinable dribbled into it. Not bad – actually pretty good – but still, it was a minor taste at the periphery of the drink.

I made a second version of the Jupiter that was more in line with my palate. I increased everything: ratcheted up the gin to 2 oz., the vermouth to 1 oz, and the OJ and PA to 1/2 ounce each (that’s about 3 teaspoons – I added it a teaspoon at a time, tasting as I went until I found an agreeable balance). This version, I found, kept the gin and vermouth flavor dominant, but the fruit and liqueur flavors became more than just a ghostly echo. Of course, I’ve only just started with the drink, so after a few more versions, I may find myself toning it back to Doc’s suggested recipe.

Was it worth the purchase? Maybe. Granted, when the state placed Parfait Amour on the dead-booze-walking list, it did wind up in the bargain bin. But now I’ve got a 750 ml bottle (shy 4 teaspoons) of grape candy-flavored liqueur taking up precious space in my crowded liquor cabinet (actually, it’s now in my liquor annex, on a shelf in the hall closet). I like the Jupiter, but I don’t know if I like it enough to work my way through the bottle. Pousse cafe, anyone?

Tags: Drinks, Gin, Vermouth by Paul
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I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that last week, Esquire magazine published its list of the best bars in America. Among the top-ranked establishments are fine-cocktail havens such as Pegu Club, in New York; No. 9 Park, in Boston; The Matchbox, in Chicago; and, of course, Seattle’s Zig Zag Cafe. Credit where credit is due.

It should also be noted that, of the dozens of places listed, only a few are, quote-unquote, “cocktail bars.” Despite the whole concept behind this cocktail site, some of the best bars, in my estimation, that have given me the best memories (or washed away those memories, as the case may be) are the bars where I wouldn’t dare order anything more complicated than a pint and a shot. Fortunately, the Esquire list includes many of these, from El Chapultepec in Denver to The Office Bar in Hoonah, Alaska, to Freddy’s Bar & Backroom, in Brooklyn. (But not, unfortunately, Milano’s, at 51 E. Houston St., NYC, where I spent a good chunk of the early & mid-90s swilling Bass at the bar and listening to the same circuit of songs from Sinatra and the Pogues until they kicked you out at 4 a.m., and where — on a Thursday evening in July during Fleet Week, when my friend, Julie, and I had come in around 9:00 for “just one round” — Paul, the bartender, let an obnoxious sailor with a paycheck in his pocket buy three rounds for the bar before tossing him out, and then proceeded to keep filling our glasses until closing time, when he simply locked up and drew the blinds while a half-dozen other regulars were propped up in the smoky haze, and Paul turned off the jukebox so his girlfriend, who’d recently immigrated from Cardiff, could sing a few songs in Welsh — one of those odd yet touching, only-in-New-York kind of scenes — then he wrote a “please excuse Julie from work today” note and handed it to me — I was also her boss at the time — before unlocking the door and sending us out into a hot summer dawn, almost nine hours after we’d first entered. She had an excuse note (I still have it somewhere); I still had to stagger to the office a few hours later, reeking of beer and cigarettes and just barely alive. That’s what makes a great bar.)

Tags: Establishments by Paul
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Grenadine is one of the most common and versatile sweeteners and flavorings in classic mixology; it’s also damn difficult to find — the real stuff, anyway. Originally a pomegranate-based syrup, grenadine has been hybridized and bastardized out of existence, so that virtually all commercial versions contain little if any actual pomegranate juice. This is a pity — pomegranate has such a bright, fruity (for lack of a better word) flavor that to replace it with a mishmash of high-fructose corn syrup and red food coloring is a real insult to honest cocktails.

Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to make your own grenadine at home. I’ve come across several recipes for the do-it-yourselfer, and there are two that seem to be the most popular: a cold-process mix of pomegranate juice and sugar, and a hot-process method that involves a pomegranate reduction and sugar. But which version makes the more promising grenadine?

Last week I cozied up in my kitchen with a couple of bottles of POM pomegranate juice and a bag of sugar, and set out to determine which process makes the better grenadine.

VERSION ONE — COLD-PROCESS

I started the comparison with a cold-process version. I first came across this recipe in David Wondrich’s Killer Cocktails a little more than a year ago, and it’s been my go-to recipe ever since.

Take one cup of pomegranate juice, and place it in a jar with one cup of granulated sugar. Seal tightly and shake like hell until all of the sugar is dissolved. Add another ounce or two of sugar and repeat. Voila – a simple grenadine. [Optional: Add an ounce of high-proof vodka or grain alcohol as a preservative. You can also store this in a plastic container in the freezer; the high volume of sugar keeps it from freezing, and you can just tip out a little frigid syrup each time you need it.]

The cold process produces a grenadine that has all the bright, fresh flavor of pomegranate juice, with enough sugar to make it useful as a sweetener in cocktails such as a Jack Rose or a Bacardi cocktail. When working with drink recipes, you may need to use more of the homemade version than the recipe calls for to create the desired sweetness. This version also lacks the depth of color found in commercial varieites; if you like, add a few drops of red food coloring.

VERSION TWO – HOT PROCESS

I first came across this version on Jared Brown & Anistatia Miller’s Martini Place; a recent exchange over at Boston Cocktails got me thinking about it again, and this experiment marks the first time I’ve tried using the hot process for grenadine.

Pour two cups of POM into a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then simmer over medium-low heat until reduced by half. Add one cup of sugar, and stir until dissolved. Remove from heat and let cool; if desired, add high-proof vodka or grain alcohol as a preservative (it also keeps well, and doesn’t freeze solid, in a plastic container in the freezer).

This process produces a grenadine that has a deeper color and a richer flavor. While the cold process makes a grenadine that is fresh and light, the hot process makes a more intensely flavored end product, with a distinct “cooked” taste. It’s still not as sweet as the commercial versions, so you may need to alter the proportions in your cocktail recipes, but the rich, red color is there.

VERDICT: Hard to say — both versions are far superior to any commercial grenadine I’ve tried, and comparing the two is more a challenge for personal tastes. I find myself drawn to the fresher flavor of the cold-process grenadine, as when it’s used in a cocktail such as a Jack Rose or El Presidente, that brightness helps lift the overall flavor of the drink. (The cold process is faster and easier, too.) But the hot process is not without merit, and I can see how its deeper, more intense flavor could be useful in multiple-ingredient drinks such as a Planter’s Punch, to help the pomegranate’s flavor stand a better chance among the other ingredients.

Not to be anticlimactic about it, but both versions are worth trying. The flavor of each is different — fresher, fruitier — from the commercial version, so be prepared for the difference (you can also add a few drops of almond extract, or an ounce of orgeat, to your grenadine, for a not unpleasant variation that hews a bit closer to the flavor of the commercial brands).

Tags: Special Projects, sweeteners by Paul
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Another adventure from Beachbum Berry’s Grog Log.

I’ve been thinking about this drink for a few days, for three reasons:

1. it was mentioned by a couple of folks during a recent-ish discussion over at Tiki Central about the top 10 tiki drinks;
2. in the past week or so I’ve come into the possession of some Lopez coconut cream (leftover from the Flaming Coffee Grog experiment, and which, when kept in the freezer, takes on a viscosity not unlike that of bathtub caulk); a bottle of Pusser’s rum; a six-pack of six-oz. cans of pineapple juice (convenient for the occasional tiki-drink project); and an orange;
3. I just felt like breaking out the tiki mug.

The Pusser’s website has the history of this drink — can’t say it’s all that exciting (bartender makes drink; another bartender tries drink; a mix-off develops; hangovers ensue; etc. etc. etc.) — but it’s fair to say you can’t make a true painkiller without Pusser’s, a heavy, aggressive (95 proof) navy rum from the British Virgin Islands.

Painkiller

• 4 ounces unsweetened pineapple juice
• 1 ounce orange juice
• 1 ounce Lopez coconut cream
• 2 ounces 95 proof Pusser’s rum
• Powdered cinnamon
• Ground nutmeg

Blend without ice and pour into tall glass or tiki mug filled with crushed ice. Top with a shake of nutmeg and a pinch of cinnamon. Garnish with pineapple stick, orange wheel and cinnamon stick.

Somewhat on the sweet side, as you might expect (it is, after all, a tiki drink), but not cloying. It might pay to cut down the amount of coconut cream by half, and replace it with coconut milk, to reduce the sweetness while keeping the coconut bounce.

And I know what you’re probably thinking — swap the Pusser’s for a less assertive gold rum, 86 the OJ and twiddle with the proportions, and isn’t that a Pina Colada? Well, yeah, pretty much. But before you write off the Painkiller, take a crack at Pusser’s and see how much this mighty sailor’s rum can change your perspective of the old PC.

Tags: Drinks, Rum, Tiki by Paul
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Screw eBay.

Over the past few years, I’ve put together a modest library of drinks-related books, most of them out-of-print and many fairly old and somewhat rare. Apparently, I haven’t been alone; as I check out the usual places on eBay and other online sources for old books, I’ve seen prices rise exponentially, just in the few years I’ve been collecting.

Take David Embury’s The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, for example. Three years ago I was shocked by the $40-50 price tag I was finding for the book online; I eventually found a copy at Powells.com for $10, and snagged it immediately. Today? Check this out: as of this moment, a copy of the 1961 edition in good condition is running at $225, with two days left to bid. That’s downright depressing, for someone hoping to expand his collection.

You can at least find Embury; other vintage cocktail books are so rare that I can’t even recall finding them online, much less at a hyper-inflated price. Such is the case with Harry MacElhone’s Barflies and Cocktails, from 1927. Cocktail geeks with greater experience, timing and/or resources than I have wagged this volume temptiingly online and in press as it has, among other things, the first known printed recipe for the Pegu Club. But despite my sporadic searches, I have yet to see a copy for sale.

This drink apparently comes from that book, and it’s a cocktail I’ve been meaning to try ever since David Wondrich wrote it up in last fall’s edition of Drinks magazine. Wondrich notes that the author included a section of recipes contributed by regulars to Harry’s New York Bar in Paris, where Macelhone presided. Credit for this drink goes to a Philadelphian named Chuck Kerwood, apparently known as the “wild man of aviation.” Yeah, well, if you had a couple of these under your belt, you’d be pretty wild in the cockpit, too.

Burnt Fuselage

• 1 ounce VSOP Cognac
• 1 ounce Grand Marnier
• 1 ounce dry vermouth

Stir with ice; strain into chilled cocktail glass and twist a strip of lemon peel over the top.

Verdict? Nice….

Tags: Books, Brandy, Drinks, Vermouth by Paul
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