Six weeks ago or thereabouts, the good Dr. Cocktail set a little corner of the cocktail- & tiki-blogging community a-twitter with an in-depth discussion of the classic Barbados liqueur / sweetener known as falernum. As those who, for some inexplicable reason, have been visiting this blog since last summer may attest, I’ve been on a sporadic quest to create my own falernum, one that will compare in flavor and surpass in freshness the commercial brands that are available (in certain markets, typically not Seattle, which was another impetus behind taking on this mission). After Doc’s story came out, I talked big about having landed the Giant Falernum, then quickly had to scurry into my kitchen to make sure I knew what I was talking about.

I didn’t, but that’s nothing new.

Still, by that point I’d got my hackles up — no falernum’s going to make a monkey outta me! — and I embarked on several more rounds of falernum experimentation before finally arriving at this recipe. I liked it fine, but distrusting my tastebuds, I took some to Tales of the Cocktail where I sought the expert opinions of Dr. Cocktail and Jeff “Beachbum” Berry. The experts succeeded in getting a taste down without gagging, making me damn proud, and Doc even gave me an uneasy smile before offering me $5 to go sit at a different table. I consider that a ringing endorsement.

Now, as I’m kind of tired of messing with the recipe — you have no idea how my family is reacting to a refrigerator full of mason jars with green, funky-smelling liquids in them (and that’s in the spaces between the vermouth bottles) — I thought I’d share it with my readers. Both of you.

Falernum #8

• 6 ounces Wray & Nephew Overproof White Rum
• zest of 9 medium limes, removed with a microplane grater or sharp vegetable peeler, with no traces of white pith
• 40 whole cloves (buy fresh ones — not the cloves that have been in your spice rack since last Christmas)
• 1 1/2 ounce, by weight, peeled, julienned fresh ginger

Combine these ingredients in a jar and seal, letting the mixture soak for 24 hours. Then, strain through moistened cheesecloth, squeezing the solids to extract the last, flavorful bits of liquid.

Add:

• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract*
• 14 ounces cold process 2:1 simple syrup (two parts sugar to one part water, shaken in a jar or bottle WITHOUT HEAT until all the sugar is dissolved)
• 4 1/2 ounces fresh, strained lime juice

Shake it all together and serve.

Is it the be-all and end-all of falernums? Of course not — rather, it’s an easy and cheap way to make a fairly obscure flavoring that’s essential in a class of exotic drinks. As it uses fresh ingredients, it has (to my palate) a better aroma and snappier flavor than the commercial brands I’ve tried. Of course, this freshness also limits its shelf life, so make small batches — this recipe may easily be halved — keep it refrigerated and use it within a month or so. Either chuck the old falernum or, better yet, just have a big swizzle party before your batch expires.

You can also customize this recipe. If you really like the tartness of the Fee’s falernum, for example, you can either add more lime juice (be careful though; the flavor will take over) or you can track down some citric acid crystals and add them to your mix (it won’t be as natural and pure, of course, but what the hell — it’s your drink).

If anyone decides to give this a spin, toss a note my way in the comments — I’m curious to hear what other folks think.

Tags: Falernum, Special Projects, Tiki by Paul
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Sorry for the delayed post - I’m sure a few folks figured I’d fallen into a giant Pimms Cup and was never seen again, and they wouldn’t be far from the truth, but the reality is I was so wiped out after days of cocktail-related seminars and shenanigans that I just didn’t have the energy to post on Saturday night, and since then I’ve been traveling and getting back into regular life — you know, the kind of days that you don’t start by sipping absinthe, followed by rounds of whiskey.

But suffice it to say that on Saturday morning at Tales of the Cocktail, every eye in the house was bloodshot and every hand had a tremor. All systems normal, in other words.

It was one hell of a hot morning, 90 degrees by 9:30 am, and I soaked through my shirt while just taking a walk around the French Quarter. Fortunately, the first event of the day was air-conditioned, and a cool room full of hungover people was the perfect setting for “Books & Beignets,” a panel about writing about drinking. Led by David Wondrich, the panel included Anistatia Miller & Jared Brown, authors of many cocktail manuals and editor and publisher, respectively, of “Mixologist: The Journal of the American Cocktail”; Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh; and St. John Frizelle, a writer from Brooklyn who’s been researching one of my favorite drink writers, Charles H. Baker, Jr.

This seminar was a bit more subdued — instead of cocktail tastings, there was Starbucks coffee to try to get the engines running — but Jared got things flowing by reading from an essay by Irvin S. Cobb, a distinctively Southern writer from the early 20th century who covered what he called a “civilized and rational indulgence” in books such as Red Likker. Ted Haigh followed, reading snippets from Carl Van Vechten’s Parties, along with parts from The Hour, by martini-fueled curmudgeon Bernard DeVoto, and from another favorite of mine, Alma Whitaker’s 1933 manners guide, Bacchus Behave. Anistatia picked up with readings from Kingsley Amis’ On Drink, and then ventured into Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms, in the lengthy hospital scene where bottles of brandy and vermouth play significant roles. Frizell read purely from Baker’s faux-Victorian Gentleman’s Companion and South American Gentleman’s Companion, while giving a more detailed glimpse of Baker’s background and life than I’d ever encountered. Wondrich then finished the event with readings from a cocktail hoax perpetrated by H.L. Mencken, a short bit from the Brooklyn Eagle on “morning glories” (in the same vein as “fog cutters” and “corpse revivers”), and a segment from an old anti-Catholic book called Father Tom and the Pope, from 1838.

After the seminar, I was about to watch Dale DeGroff’s presentation on tequilas, when something else came up. On Friday, you’ll recall, I quickly became unhappy with a tour of New Orleans bars and restaurants and ditched it early on; having become aware of this, the organizers of the tour offered to give me and my small group a private tour led by Joe Gendusa, a former teacher and tour guide who’d been recommended to me by almost everyone at the conference. Of course, we leapt at the chance, and Joe led us on a two-and-a-half hour tour of a few French Quarter institutions–leading us up Bienville Street past the Old Absinthe House, and on to Arnaud’s, a vast and elegant restaurant with the Richeleu bar, a former speakeasy with massive old mirrors and heavy wooden benches lining the walls, and the French 75 bar, a more casual establishment with faux-jungle decor such as chairs upholstered in leopard-print patterns, and carved monkeys wearing fezzes, holding lamps with zebra-skin shades. Joe then led us upstairs, to see the small museum devoted to Arnaud’s daughter, Germaine Wells, who lived her life as a princess (long-trained gowns, tiaras, sceptres and all) and was a legendary New Orleans character for many years.

Joe then took us to Antoines, another massive New Orleans restaurant that unfortunately suffered great damage in Hurricane Katrina, both physical and emotional — in addition to part of the roof collapsing, the restaurant lost 22,000 bottles of wine, and its maitre d’ for the previous 54 years drowned in the flooding. Joe took us through some of the restaurant’s many alcoves and dining rooms, including the “Mystery Room,” once a speakeasy and now the temporary main entrance; the Hermes, Rex and Proteus rooms, all named for the Carnival Krewes who regularly meet and dine there; and the 1840 room, for Antoine’s family.

Joe left us at Court of the Two Sisters, another historic New Orleans institution. From there, we tried a minor bar crawl, heading to Lafittes Blacksmith Shop for Sazeracs and Obituary Cocktails, then after a quick bite at Remoulade, over to Tujagues for the best Sazeracs I’d had all week (though still kind of on the sweet side), and where we bumped into Robert Hess, Martin Douderoff and Audrey Saunders.

The night dissipated into a swirl of thunderstorms, gumbo and whiskey, and that seemed to be a fitting end to Tales of the Cocktail. After breakfast with Jeff Berry and his wife, Annene, I flew home Sunday morning, missing the few remaining events.

To wrap up Tales of the Cocktail, I’ve got to encourage everyone to set aside some time next summer and put together a little cash to make sure you don’t let this event get away. The price for everything was remarkably reasonable, and the benefits of being around a swarm of other spirits-heads and cocktail geeks are indescribable. I’m already planning my strategy for next year, and you should be too. Head over to Tales of the Cocktail’s website, bookmark it, and keep coming around until you see info for 2007. I hope to see everyone there.

Tags: Events by Paul
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The hangover was blissfully mild, but I learned my lesson — keep the food coming, and don’t go crazy when the drinks start flowing. Easy to say, but when you wind up with back-to-back events and you have some incredible cocktail personally mixed by a cocktail luminary, saying “no” isn’t really an option.

Still, today I planned to take it easy, and, for the most part, I did — at least, as easy as I could take it when the first event of the day involved drinking absinthe at 11:00 am.

I wasn’t the only one left creeping from the night before, but somehow a mighty crowd made it into the day’s first event, a discussion on absinthe from absinthe expert and Jade Liqueurs founder Ted Breaux, and Gwydion Stone from Seattle’s own Wormwood Society. Ted’s received a lot of press lately — profiles in Wired and The New Yorker spring to mind — and he gave an incredible one-hour presentation on absinthe’s tumultuous history, then showed photos of his own artisinal absinthe plant in southeastern France, which still has the original Eiffel-designed cast-iron structure and the original stills and equipment from more than 100 years ago.

Even among booze geeks, absinthe still has a mystique, and is plagued by a lot of the old myths — that it’ll make you hallucinate, that it made Van Gogh cut off his ear, that drinking it will make you crazy. Breaux’ presentation called bullshit on all of that, and he walked us through how he (a chemist and microbiologist) managed to prove in the peer-reviewed literature that the original, quality absinthes (not the cheap knock-offs that, due to the use of various chemicals for color and effect, typically did present a genuine hazard) posed none of the threats that were used to frighten the public into banning the spirit in Europe and the United States in the early 20th century. He also covered the differences in today’s absinthes, and warned how many brands — including some of the most widely-advertised and most popular — aren’t, in fact, absinthe, but rather, just high-proof alcohol that has had some flavorings and colorings sloppily added, and bills itself as high-priced absinthe.

But the real treat, of course, was the tasting. Breaux had brought two types of absinthe — Jade’s Vert Suisse, and a white Swiss brand (the name of which I unfortunately couldn’t make out, and didn’t have a chance to write down afterwards). Each absinthe had its own unique quality — the Swiss brand had a chewy, buttery base note, while the Vert Suisse was more funky and botanical — and as all of these glasses of absinthe were louching all around the room, the air filled with this perfume-like aroma of anise and herbs.

I had to dash out before the end of the tasting to make the next event, the Bourbon Academy — a grand lunch at the Bourbon House (on, go figure, Bourbon Street), featuring Buffalo Trace whiskies presented by master distiller Harlen Wheatley. This event really marked a shift in gears — instead of a bunch of cocktail fiends all milling about, the Bourbon Academy was composed primarily of locals who’d come to drink some really fine whiskey and to have some incredible food. I wound up sitting next to a vice-chancellor for the University of New Orleans, who had decided to skip his usual Friday-afternoon Scotch tasting with his friends to come to this event (he also revealed that he lost his house, and an extensive Scotch collection, to the flooding following Katrina).

Starting off with Mint Juleps made with Buffalo Trace bourbon (they also had “New Fashioneds,” which appeared to substitute blueberries for the bitters in an old fashioned — I stuck with the juleps), the restaurant served up hors d’oeuvres including smoked catfish on crab mousse, and a bacon-wrapped jalapeno duck & quail popper. This was followed by “pickled” crawfish and green tomato salad, paired with Eagle Rare Single Barrel 10 year bourbon.

As an intermezzo, the restaurant served a sorbet; nothing unusual there, but this sorbet was a Sazerac sorbet, made with the new Sazerac 6-year rye whiskey, a product that is popping up all over the place out here, along with some Herbsaint.

Then, the gloves came off — short ribs braised with orange and a lot of bourbon were paired with a snifter of Weller 12 year bourbon, possibly my favorite bourbon to keep around the house. Finally, a coffee mousse made with Blanton’s single-barrel bourbon came for dessert.

While I can’t say I learned a great deal about whiskey from this event (other than the fact that Buffalo Trace completely rocks), it marked nearly three hours of undisturbed bliss.

After swinging back by the hotel, I decided to catch the special cocktail tour that Gray Line offers of the bars around the French Quarter. I’d been informed that this was a great event, and to try to get a certain tour guide who makes it all worthwhile; unfortunately, we wound up with a pinch-hitter who, while very nice, managed to screw up several details about spirits and cocktails within the first few minutes of the tour, and turned the event into a promotional spiel for Southern Comfort (the promoter behind the event). Fed up, my little group ditched the tour at the Napoleon House, where we ordered Pimms cups as a swarm of cocktail luminaries — Robert, David, Audrey, Ryan, Jared, Anastatia, etc. — took over the bar, and suddenly the afternoon looked brighter. After the Pimms, followed by a Sazerac, I headed back to the hotel for a long interview with one of the VIPs for an upcoming story (more details will eventually follow).

The evening event drew a big crowd — more than 100 tickets were sold, and that’s not even counting all the badge-wielding freeloaders like me who crowded inside, demanding amusement and free drinks. Fortunately, we got both — the event focused on New York cocktails, and was hosted by Chad Solomon, a freakishly talented bartender at Pegu Club and Milk & Honey, and Christy Pope, a bartender at Milk & Honey (who I’m sure is also freakishly talented, if only I’d gotten to know her better). They showed a long film clip of interviews with David Wondrich about the origins of cocktails in New York, and traced the history of drinks, starting from whiskey cocktails to old fashioneds to the Manhattan, talking about Jerry Thomas, blue blazers and every other related topic as they went.

Then, after nearly an hour-long history lesson, the drinks started flowing (Ryan Magarian and David Wondrich handled the mixing, while Chad and Christy talked) — first came an early version of the Manhattan, made with equal parts whiskey and vermouth; this was followed by an original 1915 (or so) version of the Aviation, using Monin Violet syrup mixed with vodka in place of Creme de Violette, along with Luxardo maraschino, lemon and gin. They then proceeded to modern classics, starting with Audrey Saunders’ impeccable gin-gin mule, and finished with a Silver Lining, created by Milk & Honey’s Joseph Schwartz, which is basically rye, lemon juice, Licor 43, egg white and club soda.

The crowd got rowdy at times — Chris McMillian, formerly the bartender at the Library Bar in the Ritz Carlton, before Katrina knocked it out of business, had to stand up at one point and, in his bellowing southern voice, tell everybody to shut the fuck up — but overall it was a great event. I even managed to score a recipe for a new house cocktail at Pegu off of Chad, which I’ll be sure to post once I’m home and have had a chance to give it a spin.

Now, still mostly sober and ready to make it a (somewhat) early night, I’m seeing the wisdom of my slow-and-steady approach to today. Tomorrow, of course, I’ll probably be blotto from 9 am onwards, but right now I’m feeling pretty virtuous.

Tags: Events by Paul
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UPDATED 7/21 8:00 am LOCAL TIME — now with pictures and coherent thoughts!

Michael Dietsch said:

Please keep us posted, if you can still see the computer when you stumble into your hotel room each night!

Tough order, Michael.

Having now stumbled into the hotel room, wondering why my vision doesn’t quite focus, here’s what I can tell from today:

* breakfast: about a 4,000 calorie phenomenon at Brennans (which, the manager told me, lost 35,000 bottles of wine in the flooding following Katrina), with baked apple and double-cream followed by two kinds of poached eggs — both smothered in Hollandaise — and (dessert for breakfast!) bananas foster over ice cream to follow. Nothing jolts you out of a hangover quite like flaming fruit in the morning.

After swinging by Vieux Carre liquors to pick up some Sazerac rye and some Herbsaint, I headed back to the hotel for–

* seminar 1: “Get the Hot Dish” — a talk about flavors, coming and going, from chefs including Frank Stitt, Marcus Samuelson and Aaron Sanchez, and Dale DeGroff — a better-than-I-thought-it-would-be seminar, focusing on how chefs focus on flavors and preparations in their cooking, and how trends follow–Dale helpfullly pointed out that the beverage industry is still trying to recover from Prohibition and its lingering after-effects (in the form of blue laws and weird and restrictive state laws, which I frequently bitch about), and that bars are about the point of 1959 in terms of coming to grips with the culinary phenomenon, what with 95 percent of bars still using sour mix from guns, and using lousy, watery ice from outmoded machines. All in all, it was a coup on Dale’s part, hoisting the bar industy on its own foibles and emphasizing a need to get back to basics when it comes to flavor and preparation — “We still have a hard time getting people to even put something in a glass that’s worth drinking,” says DeGroff.

* seminar 2: New Orleans cocktails — in which Phil Greene and Chris McMillian (bartender at the Library Bar here in New Orleans, before it was Katrina-ized) went through the sazerac, the vieux carre, the hurricane, the ramos gin fizz and the mint julep, along with the history of the cocktail, bitters, liqueurs, ice, and all sorts of things, all in less than two hours (answer to the question, “how do you make a ramos gin fizz for a room of 90 or so people? answer: let them shake it themselves). Fun, packed presentation.

* seminar 3: pairing food with cocktails — in which Audrey Saunders, Ryan Magarian, Robert Hess, Karen Page and Andrew Dornenberg walked us through matching the different flavor profiles of cocktails with assorted dishes. This was probably the best event of the day, in my opinion, as it had Robert mixing daiquiris and Manhattans for the group (and since Robert was mixing them, and not a staff member, the drinks were gooooooood), and matching them with different foods that came along. This culminated with Ryan making an excellent tequila Manhattan (2 ounces anejo tequila — he used Herradura — 1/2 ounce sweet vermouth, 1/4 ounce Licor 43, and a dash each of Angostura and Regan’s Orange Bitters), and garnishing it with a slice of mole salami from Salumi, in Seattle, wrapped around a tequila-soaked dried cherry. I can’t even begin to explain how spectacular this drink was.

Highlights for me:

* sharing my latest falernum (I know, I’ll post the recipe soon) and pimento dram with Dr. Cocktail and Beachbum Berry, both of whom made appreciative noises over them, much to my star-struck cocktail geekish delight;

* sitting at the same table as Janet Zimmerman — JAZ from eGullet — then having a lovely discussion about falernum and cocktails with her;

* talking cocktails and falernum with Chad, who bartends at Pegu Club and Milk & Honey in New York, and has come up with an excellent-sounding drink called the Jabberwocky — Tanqueray, lemon, lime, Drambuie –

* getting rapidly schnockered at the happy hour event — Jeff Berry: “Taste this — does that strike you right?” followed quickly by David Wondrich’s “Would you like a Weeski?” (massive cupful follows), Dr. Cocktail’s Straights Sling (which the staff prepared without fizz, so Doc handed out the glasses saying “You may want to hold onto the back of your head so you don’t get whiplash when you taste this”) and Paul Harrington’s Jasmine: “Look, I invented grapefruit” — so that I wisely decided to step out and rest before dinner, so I wouldn’t have to be pulled out from under someone’s book-signing table with a half-slurped drink in my hands. (by the way, it was a very good thing, seeing Paul Harrington with cocktail shaker in hand, and even better to see him pouring a cocktail into my glass)
* tonight’s Spirited Dinner, in which I joined David Wondrich, a guy from Jackson, Mississippi who was treating his son for his 21st birthday, Brad from barmixmaster.com and his lovely wife, Rebecca, the author Poppy Z. Brite and her husband, Chris DeBarr (a chef at The Delachaise who held forth about cooking in a very engaging way, and who summed up the current state of affairs in New Orleans–which, in a word, ain’t good) for an only slightly debauched evening of whiskey and red meat, which I could barely walk home to the hotel from.

Tomorrow: oh, god, there’s another day? I’m afraid of the hangover that awaits me ……

Tags: Events by Paul
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In case I hadn’t mentioned it — and I hadn’t, as I never assume I’ll be doing anything until I’m actually doing it — I’m spending the next few days in New Orleans, attending Tales of the Cocktail, a four-day series of seminars and events focusing on the history and significance of the cocktail. And after just a few hours, my initial verdict is:

I am such a fucking geek.

OK, it’s New Orleans, capital of music, culture, culinary wonders, and everything else that’s great (and obscene) about America, and what have I gotten worked up about today?

* meeting Joe Fee — as in Fee Brothers’ Bitters — in the elevator as soon as I got into town, having him ask me “Are you into cocktails?” (that’s like asking a little kid “would you like to see a puppy?”), then hand me a bottle of the new Lemon Bitters that Fee’s is rolling out in the near future.

* going down to the Carousel Bar at the Hotel Monteleone, where I’m staying, then trying to keep pace with Phil Greene (descendant of Antoine Peychaud and co-founder of the Museum of the American Cocktail) as the bar spins, then finally sitting down and striking up a conversation with the person sitting next to me, who turns out to be Jeff “Beachbum” Berry, and having an incredible hour-long discussion about tiki drinks with him before–

* hopping off the carousel bar — it really does get disorienting after a couple of rounds — and literally bumping into Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh, Robert “Drinkboy” Hess, Gwydion Stone and Audrey Saunders, then–

* heading out to drinks and dinner (through an unexpected, though very mighty thunderstorm) at Cafe Giovanni with the aforementioned group, along with Ryan Magarian and, coincidentially enough (considering I posted about his book less than 36 hours prior) Wayne Curtis — with whom I had a great conversation about rum, cocktails and writing — and while we ate, having Dale DeGroff, Tony Abou-Ganim and Paul Harrington stop by the table, then–

* having a nightcap — a fairly shabby one, unfortunately — at the Old Absinthe House, which (I’m told) recently reinstalled the bar — the actual, physical bar — that Patrick Gavin Duffy used to tend, way back in the day 70 years ago or so.

Do I remember the food? Do I remember the music I heard (aside from having “Ave Maria” belted in my ear by an amateur opera singer at the restaurant)? Do I remember any cultural issue whatsoever, beyond what I had to drink, and which cocktail luminary I was with as I drank it?

No. And why?

Because I am such a fucking geek.

Stay tuned — more geekishness to follow….

Tags: Events by Paul
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