It’s the first day of school here in Seattle, the day I dropped off my son for the start of first grade and started looking ahead to the routine that is fall and winter. Back when I was part of the elementary school set, it was customary to start the school year by recapping all the fun you’d had that summer, so you could then put it away and forget all about it while stuck in a classroom for the next nine months.

Old habits die hard, so before autumn totally moves in — it already made a good grab for it here on Monday — I want to take one last, lingering sip of the drink that I fell head-over-heels for during the summer of ‘07.

No, it’s not the Paloma (even the Mi Amante version) — though we had our fun, I found something deeper. No, through a fortunate convergence of events, this summer I wound up mixing a drink I found even more swoon-worthy, and it became my go-to refresher on hot summer nights (what few of them we have here in Seattle): the Picon Punch.

The recipe is from Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, and the first time I tried it, a couple of summers back, I was pretty unimpressed. The true Picon Punch, of course, was made with Amer Picon — the stuff that used to be everywhere, but then was reformulated in the 1970s and pretty much disappeared from U.S. liquor stores (though it seems some has cropped up recently in Boston and other places). The primary substitute in recent years has been Torani Amer, made in California, which has a mostly similar but not-quite-on-the-nose flavor to that of the original Picon. My first punch was made with the Torani Amer, and as I said, it didn’t go over well.

But last spring, two things happened, both related to research I was doing for the Vintage Ingredients story that appeared in the July/August issue of Imbibe. First, I interviewed Ted Haigh, and listened to him wax rhapsodic about the pleasures of a good Picon Punch — “That’s the drink for me on a summer day,” he said. His enthusiasm for the drink was infectious, and I made a mental note to try it again in the near future.

Then, that very afternoon, I interviewed Jamie Boudreau at Vessel, fully intending to talk only about creme de violette and falernum, but during our talk Jamie told me something electrifying: he’d come up with a facsimile of the original Amer Picon. I tasted it then and there, side by side with the current Picon, and the difference was startling: the basic flavor profile was near-identical, yet the replica was much more robust — higher proof, too — and had a much more satisfying oranginess about it, a taste that is sorely lacking in the more vegetal Torani Amer. Jamie passed along the recipe, and that ran in Imbibe, too. (And if you look around, you’ll find the results of a side-by-side tasting of the replica with vintage Picon somewhere around here.)

With the recipe, however, I wasted little time, and put together a batch — which, unfortunately, takes about two months to make. The replica was finally ready in early July, and the very first drink I made was the Picon Punch. Anticipating the weird celery quality of the Torani Amer, I sipped the drink with some apprehension, but that was unnecessary — this is a fantastic drink. Rich, bitter but not overwhelmingly so, pleasantly orangey and with a nice fruitiness from the grenadine and the cognac, the Picon Punch is quite possibly the ultimate summer cooler. It was my favorite for the summer of ‘07, anyway, and whatever happens in the fall, we’ll always have memories of the summer.

Picon Punch

Fill a collins or highball glass with ice. Add

• 1 teaspoon grenadine (my homemade stuff isn’t as sweet as commercial, so I used a little more)
  
• 2 1/2 ounces Amer Picon or replica

Fill almost to the top with club soda and give a gentle stir. Float:

• 1 ounce brandy or cognac

Sweet Jesus, that’s good.

Tags: Brandy, Drinks, Special Projects by Paul
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Embarking on a tiki quest can be one long series of disappointments. You come across a recipe in Grog Log or Sippin’ Safari, it sounds fantastic, you set out to make it and — dammit! you have no guava nectar. No problem — there’s this recipe a few pages further, it sounded good last time you looked at it, but — hold on, you needed to start working on the syrup for this three days ago. So you flip around in the book some more, find something else that seems like a drink you absolutely must make right this very minute, but — Jesus! who ate the goddamn grapefruit!

I first read this recipe around nine months ago, when I was working on an article about the Bum for last May’s issue of Imbibe, and I managed to wheedle a few Sippin’ Safari drink recipes out of him in advance so I could break out the booze and start working on a few of Donn’s rum rhapsodies without having to wait for the book to hit the shelves. I even ran this recipe in the story, but the thing is — I never made the drink. Not because the list of ingredients calls for anything that distinctive, but rather, it was the drink’s finishing touch that kept me away.

I regret to say I’ve been mixing out of Jeff’s books for about two years now, but I haven’t tried my hand at an ice cone until tonight (or, last night really — since it’s another of the damn things you have to start planning for in advance). But, I finally broke down and bought an ice shaver — perfect timing, what with summer crapping out on us early up here in the Pacific Northwest — so between me and Mr. Snowman, we’re ready to take a crack at the Luau Grog.

Luau Grog (from Beachbum Berry’s Sippin’ Safari)

• 3/4 ounce fresh lime juice
• 3/4 ounce grapefruit juice
• 3/4 ounce soda water
• 1 ounce honey mix*
• 1 ounce gold Puerto Rican rum
• 1 ounce dark Jamaican rum
• 1 ounce Demerara rum
• dash Angostura bitters
• 2 ounces crushed ice

Put everything in a blender (ice last); blend at high for no more than 5 seconds, and pour into a double old-fashioned glass. Serve with ice cone**.

* honey mix - equal parts honey and hot water, stirred until honey is dissolved, and allowed to cool to room temperature.

** ice cone — shave a heap of ice, and pack it into a pilsner glass. Run a chopstick down the middle to make a hole for your straw, and freeze overnight.

Very, very similar to the Navy Grog, the Luau Grog has a lovely balance among the rums, with the honey and the grapefruit pulling in different but complementary directions. And while it’s mainly for appearance, the ice cone really is a nice touch — it gives one last little burst of chill to each sip of the drink, and it’s a refreshing step away from the mundane of the everyday. Which, when you come right down to it, is kinda what tiki is all about.

Tags: Drinks, Rum, Tiki by Paul
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Finally got around to updating the blogroll, so many of the fine sites that I’ve managed to ignore over there in the past few months have now been added. I’ve also cut a few blogs — sites that have disappeared, or that have publicly stated that they’re closing up shop — but if the blog has been updated in the last 6 to 9 months, I’m leaving it alone … for now.

Did I miss anyone? Let me know and I’ll get you on there…

Tags: General by Paul
2 Comments »

Earlier this summer, I decided the time had come for me to finally start wrestling with tequila cocktails. Until then, tequila had been a big blind spot for me, so over the past few months, I’ve tried to clear that up by playing with different bottlings and recipes to get a better idea of the spirit.

One of the first off-the-beaten-path tequila drinks I was introduced to was composed of (this is from memory, so I could be slightly off) reposado tequila, Lillet, Licor 43 and Peychaud’s bitters. It tasted like it should work, but it never completely did — the flavor was about 80 percent there, and I loved the interplay between the tequila and the Licor 43, but I couldn’t figure out what to do to make it go over the top.

Tonight I tackled it again, substituting amontillado sherry for the Lillet. I think the result is pretty good — maybe a tad on the sweet side — but I’m hoping that some of the licoristes that come by here could take a stab at it and let me know what they — what you – think. And, if it turns out I’ve reinvented the wheel and this drink has been on a bar menu somewhere for the past two years, I hope someone will let me know before I look like a TOTAL jackass.

Here’s the drink:

• 1 1/2 ounces reposado tequila (I used Herradura)
• 3/4 ounce Licor 43
• 3/4 ounce amontillado sherry (I used Hidalgo Napoleon amontillado)
• 2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

Stir with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass. Grapefruit twist.

So, anybody? Thoughts? Hello, is this thing on?

Tags: Drinks, Tequila by Paul
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