Here was where the weird, hectic day finally turned normal. I cabbed over to the Delachaise along with Darcy, Rick and Gretchen, and after introducing myself to chef Chris DeBarr, I knew everything was going to be alright. Chris introduced Darcy and me to Neal, his head bartender, who had spent an incredible amount of time working his way through our cocktails so he knew them as well as we did. The dedication of Chris and the Delachaise staff was apparent in this attention to detail, which carried through to the elaborate place settings with custom-made placemats and specially wrapped candles.

(And since I’m sure to butcher the descriptions of the food, I encourage you to head over to Chris’ blog for his take on parts of the meal.)

I was still kind of nervous though, never having sampled our cocktails with Chris’ cooking. The first course put me at ease — after the Tropical Palm, our welcome drink made with Absolut New Orleans, Licor 43, Lillet and Peychaud’s (and possibly the only flavored vodka cocktail you’ll ever see mentioned on the Cocktail Chronicles), Chris brought out the amuse bouche: flounder sushi on rose petal rice, which we’d paired with a Tchoupitoulas Street Guzzle: spicy housemade ginger beer chilled and run through a soda siphon over some Cruzan Estate rum. Bingo! Those flavors slid right in next to each other like an analogy I’d love to make except I’d be too likely to blush about it.

We progressed with Chris’ incredible appetizer trio, paired with an Apollo’s cup made with Plymouth gin, sweet vermouth, Patron Citronge, orange bitters and ginger ale. This segued nicely into a skewer with baby artichokes, andouille and grilled shrimp over buckwheat polenta, which was matched with the Les Coulisses cocktail (Plymouth, Cynar, Chartreuse, orange bitters — developed by Murray Stenson, so if you’re in Seattle make sure you go ask him for one).

For the entree, Chris went with Copper River sockeye salmon (whee!) wrapped in red dulce seaweed, and ivory king salmon marinated for two days in sake lees and mirin, then slow roasted and served on a bed of dulce mashed potatoes. This was served with a drink of Chris’ creation, the Matsue Melange, which I can’t even begin to describe except as fruity, chunky with fruit and tapioca pearls, and very entertaining.

Dessert came with the taiyaki pancake-wrapped chilled peach mousse, joined with the Pepe Llulla Swizzle, which had two types of Cruzan rum, Rhum Clement Creole Shrubb, fresh lime juice, demerara syrup, Herbsaint and fresh mint, swizzled with crushed ice and topped with Fee’s Whiskey Barrel Aged Bitters and Peychaud’s, and garnished with fresh mint and a slice of white peach. I knew this one would be a royal pain in the ass to make, but Neal and his crew handled it perfectly for the full bar. It tasted fantastic, and I couldn’t have been happier.

Darcy and I finished the night by swapping a few cocktails with Chris and talking food and New Orleans. After the turbulence of the afternoon, the Spirited Dinner was a perfect antidote, and Chris was the perfect host. If I have anything to say about it, I’ll be back at the Delachaise next year for another dinner.

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I was feeling nice and easy, just in the right mood to prepare for the Lost Ingredients panel. Unfortunately, the snafu started early, and the big box o’ falernum that I’d spent the better part of a week and not a small amount of money making was nowhere to be found. Five minutes before the panel, the setup crew still hadn’t found the falernum, which meant I had to change my presentation on the fly, which was probably patently obvious to all 150-someodd people in the room.

No matter — after my hands stopped shaking and I rushed my way through what was left of my presentation, I got to sit and watch as my co-panellists took the mike. Chuck Taggart detailed his work with pimento dram; Joe Fee covered his falernum and his bitters; Gwydion talked about his Marteau absinthe, due to be available online in a matter of months; Eric Seed poured samples of Swedish punch and his new creme de violette, which was a big crowd pleaser.

All of that would have been enough, but then Robert Cooper got up and unveiled a double whammy: as the owner of Jacquin, which formerly made the highly sought-after Creme Yvette and Forbidden Fruit, Cooper revealed that the company is exploring the re-release of Creme Yvette, and poured samples for the crowd — huzzah, suddenly there are two samples of violet liqueur on the table, when six months ago it was impossible to find any. And, to ramp it up even more, he also displayed a bottle of classic Creme Yvette from 1947 (I believe — though it may have been 1944, if I could find my notes), the cork to which had cracked in transit, meaning he had to pour out the bottle to everyone assembled.

Enough? Not quite. After the session ended, I was approached by Lenell Smothers, who introduced herself to me and mentioned that, in my meandering presentation, I’d mentioned Jamie Boudreau’s Picon replica (details and recipe in my story in the current issue of Imbibe), and how I’d love to try it next to classic Picon … if only I could find some. Fetching a hip flask from her pocket, Lenell said, “Take a snort — it just has Ted’s cooties on it.” Holy Mary! Jamie advanced and soon we were pouring samples of classic Picon and Jamie’s replica — Doc, who has the most experienced palate of us all, proclaimed it almost entirely sound; perhaps the only change would be to tweak back the replica’s sweetness just a tad, and it would be spot on.

After the seminar, I also had the great fortune to meet two incredible women: Misty Kalkofen, who tends bar at Green Street in Cambridge, Mass, and also writes for LUPEC-Boston; and Lauren Clark, who maintains the incredible blog over at DrinkBoston.com.

Thankful that the panel was over, I walked over to the Acme Oyster House for a quick bowl of gumbo with Robert Simonson from Off the Presses, then headed back to the hotel for the Cocktail Hour, where I planned to wander around, sip a bunch of fine cocktails, and relax before getting ready for the Spirited Dinner.

Of course, it didn’t work out that way. After hitting a few tables and sipping a few samples — including another Jasmine, mixed by Paul Harrington — I headed up one of the aisles, which were becoming increasingly jammed. There, I ran into Dave Scantland and Janet Zimmerman from eGullet, and Dave said, “You need to get behind the table and mix us a drink.” Oh, you great kidders, I thought — but then Dave shook his head and said, “no, really — there’s a table with your name on it. You need to get back there and make us a drink.”

Sure enough, Dave was right — somehow I’d missed any mention that I was to be working the event, but right there was a poster with my name on it, a stack of recipe cards and a big bucket of premixed Procrastination Cocktails. After begging a cocktail shaker off a member of the hotel staff, I started shaking up samples for the crowd, which was a pretty weird experience considering how flustered I was to even be back there in the first place. Soon, though, Rick and Gretchen came by, joined by Brad Ellis, and I began to get into a groove. Finally, though, I had to make a run for it, as I’d wound up mixing drinks during the time I’d meant to spend preparing for the Spirited Dinner, so I had ten minutes to go upstairs and change for the event.

So, for the “Lost Ingredients” panel, my ingredient was lost, and at the cocktail hour I’m late to mix up the Procrastination Cocktail. Thank god I didn’t specify the Death in the Afternoon.

Next: Spirited Dinner at the Delachaise

Tags: Events by Paul
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Thursday was a big’un, so I’m breaking it up into more easily managed doses.

After a short stroll through the French Quarter — which reminded me exactly how searing the sun could be in Jackson Square, even at 8:00 AM — I headed to Cafe Adelaide for breakfast, which kicked off with a Brandy Rum Milk Punch and quickly turned spectacular with a blue crab and wild mushroom omelette. Breakfast meant hanging with even more acquaintances new and old, including Rick & Gretchen, Camper English, Joe Fee and Gwydion Stone.

The breakfast also confirmed one other suspicion I’d long held: JOE FEE ROCKS! Described by Ted Haigh as “an alcoholic Jimmy Stewart,” Joe has a habit of wearing cargo shorts with deep pockets filled with bottles of bitters. A question from me about Fee’s excellent whiskey barrel-aged bitters prompted Joe to pull out a bottle and toss it my way, followed by bottles of their two newest products, a Grapefruit Bitters (whoopee!) and a spiced syrup.

The first panel I hit was David Wondrich’s session on the Cocktail Family Tree, in which he was joined by John Myers, Ryan Magarian and the excellent Jim Meehan for an exploration of — well, the cocktail family tree, I guess. The crowd was small, but hardcore, and the brandy daisies that followed the two drinks I’d had with breakfast made for a most interesting outlook on life at 11:00 in the morning.

But the real fun was just beginning. The second session was Rum’s Punch, hosted by Wayne Curtis, with backup from Jeff Berry and Stephen Remsberg, who is credited with owning possibly the single-largest privately-held rum collection in the world. Wayne pulled out the stops with a graphic-heavy presentation on everything that didn’t make it into his book, And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails (which, by the way, is now out in paperback). Jeff joined in with a walk through mid-century tiki, and Stephen displayed an incredibly dry wit as he prepared a Jasper’s Jamaican Planter’s Punch for the crowd.

Next: Thursday afternoon, where the going gets weird …

Tags: Events by Paul
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Since I had to bail out of bed at 2:30 AM to catch my flight, I knew this would be an early evening. Gwydion Stone from the Wormwood Society and I were on the same flights, and we got to the Monteleone around 4:00 — just enough time to freshen up before the cocktail hour. Down at the Carousel Bar, I rendezvoused with Darcy O’Neil, and we parked ourselves at the spinning bar next to Ted Haigh — who was skipping the Herbsaint in his Sazeracs and tipping in a dash from a flask filled with the real deal — and met folks like Cheryl Charming while waiting for dinner to begin. I also had the chance to finally meet Gary Regan, a gentleman as friendly and gracious as I’d always imagined.

A group of us traipsed over to Riche for the evening’s festivities, and in a few short minutes I met old friends like Jeff Berry and Wayne Curtis, and ran into folks I’d been dying to meet for a long time — Rick Stutz from Kaiser Penguin and his wife, Gretchen; John Myers from The Thirstin’ Howl; Eric Seed from Haus Alpenz; Robert Cooper from Cooper Spirits (makers of St. Germain); and, of course, Chuck Taggart and Wes, people I’ve known online for years but hadn’t yet had the great pleasure to meet.

I would’ve loved to have hit the Swizzle Stick or a number of other bars, but that 2:30 wakeup call was dragging me down, so after another Sazerac with Darcy at the Carousel Bar, I crashed nice and easy, all the better to prepare for a jam-packed Thursday.

Tags: Events by Paul
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*gasp!*

Wow, I thought I’d never surface out of that Sazerac.

Gah, now that was an EVENT, people — five solid days (mostly) of outrageous cocktail-sipping fun, surrounded by other people as geeky about the stuff as anybody likely to read this, and all in New Orleans, the cocktail capital of the universe.

Last year I made it a point that, no matter how tired or tipsy I was, I blogged about the event every day. This year, though, I realized that the shorter the time between staggering into the hotel room and doing a faceplant on the bed, the better I’d function the next morning when I ordered my breakfast cocktail. WHO-EEEE!

I’m still trying to catch up on my sleep — a horribly delayed flight out of New Orleans didn’t help matters much (though I think I still got home earlier than Darcy, who was in the van with me to the airport on Sunday) — but it’s been more than 48 hours since I hauled myself out of Louisiana, so I thought I better get something up before someone sent out a search party.

I think I lost a few brain cells along the way, so I hope you’ll pardon if I don’t go into excruciating detail with a lot of stuff. I’ve got a few photos that may help, but the rest you’ll have to imagine. Actually, some of it may really be just things I imagined — five days of lapping at Sazeracs and Pimm’s cups will do that to a person. I’ll put it up as separate posts, so you can come back and wander through at your convenience.

And now, here’s what I hazily remember from Tales of the Cocktail 2007.

Tags: Events by Paul
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