A little over five years ago, when I first started this blog, mezcal hadn’t even risen high enough in the cocktail world to be considered an afterthought. Sure, Ron Cooper had begun importing his Del Maguey single-village mezcals back in the ‘90s, but these things take time, and while tequila was in full bloom following the turn of the century, mezcal took its time to step into the cocktail-geek spotlight.

I’m running late in getting this post up, so I’ll keep it short; I’m also a couple of drinks behind on this 60/30 thing due to taking the day off for Thanksgiving, so I’ll toss in a third drink (plus, a bonus / screwup drink that’s still kinda tasty) to help move things along.

For the handful of people out there who still haven’t ventured to the artisanal mezcal well, mezcal in many ways tastes like tequila without makeup. While a blanco tequila can have flavors of peppers, slate and wildflowers, all on top of a gentle, juicy agave sweetness, mezcal is just kind of more everything – more dark spices, more jammy richness of cooked pears and baked apples, more earthy minerality, more firey, more smoky, more primal, more visceral, more grrrrr…. A single mezcal can have most, or all, or none of these characteristics, venturing out into its own part of the spirituous universe where nothing at all tastes quite the way it does.

Given its potency of flavor, not to mention its cost, perhaps the best way to slip into mezcal mixology is to use it as an accent ingredient, where its rich smoky everything can play off the other flavors in the glass without taking over the show. Here’s a drink that uses mezcal as an accent to very good effect: the Red Ant.

I wrote this up for the September/October 2010 issue of Imbibe, as part of a feature on cocktail bitters. The Red Ant was created by Thomas Waugh, then a bartender at The Alembic in San Francisco but now at Death & Co. in New York. The drink is named for the Rio Hormiga Colorada, or Red Ant River, in Oaxaca, and uses a mere barspoon Del Maguey Chichicapa in a mix that includes big, vibrant flavors from Rittenhouse 100-proof rye whiskey, Cherry Heering and kirschwasser. The mezcal hangs over the drink like a plume of smoke from a wood stove, and the combination of mezcal and kirschwasser — which brings its own ethereal drama to the mix in a big way — is really quite enchanting.

Red Ant
From Thomas Waugh, Death & Co., NYC

• 1 1/2 oz. rye whiskey (Rittenhouse bonded; failing that, Wild Turkey 101)
• 1/2 oz. kirschwasser
• 1/2 oz. Cherry Heering
• 1 barspoon mezcal (Chichicapa if you got it)
• 2 dashes Bittermens Xocolatl Mole bitters
• –3 cherries skewered on a pick, as garnish. Sneer all you like, but it looks like an ant; besides, I’m still kind of a sucker for Toschi Amarena

Stir well with ice & strain into chilled coupe. Stick that cherry ant in there and shut up for a while about the damn cherries.

Excellent, excellent drink — but there’s an accidental variation on this drink that I also like quite a bit. See, I first heard about this drink from Avery Glasser, who with his wife Janet is the mastermind behind Bittermens Bitters. Somewhere in talking about this drink with Avery, there was a mixup in the ingredients, and for a couple of weeks I was sampling this lovely drink using the wrong recipe. Thomas Waugh set me right, and the recipe above is the correct version; but, the “mistake” version also kinda rocked, so I’ll pass that along as well. Keep in mind that this alternate doesn’t include mezcal, so the whole “Red Ant” idea is out the window, as is the rationale for including this drink in a mezcal post, but hey, it’s just liquor.

Mistaken Ant

–same recipe as above, except substitute 1 barspoon cinnamon syrup for the mezcal; Trader Tiki Cinnamon Syrup is quite nice here

Sure, you lack the smoke and a little bit of the complexity, but cinnamon, Cherry Heering and kirschwasser, with some mole bitters in the mix? There’s nothing wrong at all with that mistake.

Anyway, the next step in mezcal mixing is often to bump up the mezcal to a full ounce or so, matching it step for step with the mediating effects of tequila. Julian Cox at Rivera in Los Angeles passed along this recipe for his Poblano Escobar, which ran last summer in Imbibe. Julian mixes the drink with mezcal or with blanco tequila; I’ve made these a few times at home, to try out each variation, and for the most recent round I used equal parts Cabo Wabo blanco (it had been sent as a sample and isn’t half bad, so I thought I’d give it a spin in this drink) and Del Maguey Mezcal Vida (not a sample, bought with my own damn cash, and at about $34 a bottle, much more affordable than the rest of the Del Maguey line).

I’ve also been guilty in the past of being dismissive of muddled ingredients, a position I still hold on a certain level because it’s so overdone, and so badly in many places, that I wish it’d be approached more seriously, but I’ve also sampled some fantastic drinks made with the “garden fresh” approach, so I’d now like to extend a cautious and respectful gesture of welcome to the muddlers of the world. In this drink, poblano peppers and pineapple are both crushed into the mix; hey, it works.

Poblano Escobar
From Julian Cox, Rivera, Los Angeles

• 2 oz. blanco tequila or mezcal, or some combination thereof
• 3/4 oz. Royal Combier (Julian’s call; I like it, but if you don’t have it you can sub Cointreau)
• 1 oz. fresh lime juice
• 1/2 tsp. agave nectar
• 4 chunks fresh pineapple
• 2 or 3 1/4-inch-think rings of sliced poblano chiles, seeds removed
• 1/4 tsp. ground cumin

Muddle chiles in a cocktail shaker with lime juice and liqueur. Add pineapple, cumin and agave nectar and muddle again. Add tequila and/or mescal and load up on ice; shake well and double-strain into chilled rocks glass filled with a large cube of ice. Garnish with slices of poblano pepper and orange.

Of course, no discussion of mezcal cocktails is complete without mentioning Phil Ward at Mayahuel in NYC. I’ve written up a bunch of Phil’s drinks in the past, both online and in print, and he’s always one of my favorite bartenders to interview (though, I’m ashamed to say I still haven’t had the chance to sit across the bar from him). I have another of Phil’s drinks coming up later on, but a couple of weeks ago a Mayahuel drink called Jacko’s End (created, apparently, on the day MJ performed that moonwalk into the great beyond) was listed on Tasting Table’s list of “The Year’s Best Cocktails” for NYC. In this one, mezcal is matched against an equal measure of Laird’s bonded apple brandy — a combo I could automatically taste in my mind, with that rich body of smoky mezcal up against the sharp bite of apple brandy — fleshed out with a little Benedictine and a couple of dashes of bitters. Simple, basic, classically designed and with premium ingredients: that’s all I needed to know.

Jacko’s End
From Mayahuel, NYC

• 1 ounce mezcal (I used Vida, for the reasons stated above)
• 1 ounce Laird’s 100-proof apple brandy
• 1/2 ounce Benedictine
• 2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
• –pear slice, for garnish

You know the drill – ice, stir, strain into chilled glass, garnish. Like I said, simple.

Between the Benedictine and the mezcal, there’s a silky, honeyed texture to this drink. The sharpness of the Laird’s bonded and the peppery serrations in the mezcal combine in a really pleasant assertiveness in the drink, followed by the ghostly herbaceousness of mezcal-meets-Benedictine, finishing with that little wisp of smoke. This one’s going into the regular rotation.

Tags: Brandy, Drinks, mezcal, Rye, Sixty in 30, Tequila by Paul
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Years ago, when first introduced to the offbeat booze that is rhum agricole, I had a hard time figuring out how a spirit so similar in origin to the molasses-based rums I’d recently become so enthusiastic about could have a flavor and character so goddamn different.

Fortunately, my first sip of rhum agricole was poured by Ed Hamilton, who at the time was just starting to import the Martinique rum from Neisson and La Favorite, and who was coming through Seattle on a rainy Labor Day weekend. This was in 2005, I had just started this blog a few months earlier, and Ed had invited me to attend his tasting session at Zig Zag Café. In addition to being an importer for these and other rums, Ed’s also perhaps the most ardent and opinionated advocate of rhum agricole I’ve ever met, the kind of person every novel spirit needs in order to get the kind of audience it requires.

To be honest, I wasn’t a fan of this stuff right away. I liked the peppery aroma of La Favorite blanc, which reminded me of a silver tequila, but neither my perspective nor my palate were ready yet to appreciate the vegetal rusticity of rhum agricole’s flavor. It took me a couple of years to truly warm up to cane-based rums; I had to come at them from a training-wheels perspective, sipping Ti Punches made with lighter-styled agricoles such as Rhum Clement, softening rhum agricole’s contrarian flavor by mixing it with molasses-based rums in classic tiki drinks, and learning to appreciate the nuances of aged cane rums by working through the arguably more approachable (for the novice) Haitian rums from Barbancourt. Best of all, just as I was starting to develop a taste for the earthy flavors of cane rums, I encountered Martinique-made Rhum J.M., which has a line of agricoles ranging from a 100-proof (always extra points in my book) rhum blanc to aged varieties that took my mild infatuation with cane rum and turned it into full-blown love.

Once I got to that point, I found plenty of other people already there. I’ve already mentioned Thad Vogler of Bar Agricole in San Francisco, and his fondness for artisanal spirits that maintain some relationship of flavor and character with the substance from which they’re made. Thad’s enthusiasm for rhum agricole is every bit as dedicated as Ed Hamilton’s, and talking to Thad and trying some of his drinks helped turn me into an agricole booster. I wrote about cane rums in July for the San Francisco Chronicle; here’s a drink that ran with the story, that Thad is serving at Bar Agricole: the Agricole Presidente.

Obviously, this is an agricole twist on the Cuban classic El Presidente, which also happens to be the very first drink I ever wrote up for the Cocktail Chronicles. While I haven’t mixed one in quite a while, I’ve always been a fan of the combination of light rum, dry vermouth and curacao, with a dribble of grenadine more for color than anything else.

Swap the base of uber-light Cuban-style rum for the rangy, knuckles-and-elbows flavor of agricole blanc, and you’ve got quite a different drink: where classic Presidentes can suffer from flaccidity, as the blank canvas of white rum can lend little to the fleshiness of curacao and the flatness of vermouth, when made with agricole the drink is taut and lean, with the rum’s signature grassiness and vegetal tang intact. Overall, it’s an excellent take on this cocktail. A couple of production notes: Thad recommends Neisson blanc as the rum of choice; I used Rhum J.M. in mine, because I like it and because I happened to have some on hand. Bar Agricole also uses a house curacao; having nothing like that myself, I opted for Rhum Clement’s Creole Shrubb, a curacao-like orange liqueur with a Martinique rum base. Thad also uses a blanc vermouth rather than a dry; the slight bump of sweetness helps make the agricole bite more agreeable, plus the Creole Shrubb is a relatively drier liqueur than most curacaos, so this helps make up the gap. And, of course, homemade grenadine.

Agricole Presidente

• 1 1/2 ounces rhum agricole blanc
• 1/2 ounce Dolin blanc vermouth
• 1 teaspoon curacao
• 1 teaspoon grenadine
• 2 dashes orange bitters (I used Angostura orange)
• Lemon twist, for garnish

Combine ingredients in a mixing glass and fill with ice. Stir well until chilled, about 30 seconds. Strain into chilled cocktail glass; give that lemon peel a twist over the drink and use as garnish.

While young cane rums are bright, peppery and grassy, older cane-based rums take on the familiar caramel and vanilla notes from barrel aging, but they also turn more serene, less flabby than molasses-based rums in their old age but with wrinkles of flavor that make them more resemble aged brandies or whiskies. Get a good one and it’s worth just sipping on its own, but aged cane rums are also excellent in spirit-forward cocktails that lightly adorn the rum’s flavor with a few complementing characteristics.

I didn’t discover this truth on my own; what really drove it home happened a little over a year ago, when I was sitting at Heaven’s Dog in San Francisco and Erik Adkins prepared a Cap Haitien Rum and Honey. I was familiar with the drink, of course; it’s from Charles H. Baker’s Gentleman’s Companion from 1939, a book I’ve referenced dozens of times over the years, and even if I hadn’t seen it there, the drink is simply a rum Old Fashioned sweetened with honey rather than sugar. Baker’s drink descriptions are incomparable — of this, also called the Clairene au Miel, he writes it’s “a Wary Exotic Contributed by Glenn “Stiff” Stewart of Easton, Maryland, & Miami Beach, Who Spent Much Time in Haiti as American Minister” — but his recipes often leave much to be desired. Baker’s version of this drink calls for equal parts white Haitian rum and Bacardi, or any good dark rum; he also stipulates no bitters or garnish to be used, which is an instruction that should be ignored.

The drink was tweaked at Heaven’s Dog to use Barbancourt 15, an excellent aged cane rum from Haiti; I typically mix it with the similarly wonderful (and cheaper) Barbancourt 8, though I’ve also developed a taste for this drink mixed with the aged Agua Libre, a cane-based rum from St. George Spirits in Alameda, California, that is bolder and earthier than Barbancourt. Also, needless to say, go big on the honey for this one; if you’re mixing with a good aged rum, you don’t want to give the drink a little squeeze from a plastic bear. I use a really dark and rich honey from New Zealand, which was an impulse buy at some point; look for something dark and expensive with an unpronounceable name.

Cap Haitien Rum & Honey (adaptation)

• 2 1/2 ounces Barbancourt 8 or 15, or other good aged cane rum
• 1 teaspoon good honey, mixed with an equal amount of hot water for mixability
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters

Mix honey and water in an Old Fashioned glass and stir to mix; add rum and stir again. Add ice – fewer, bigger chunks are good here – stir to mix & chill.

Tags: Drinks, Rum, Sixty in 30 by Paul
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Alright, it’s the night before Thanksgiving, so I’m gonna make this quick (and I’m also going to take High Turkey Day off from the 60/30 project, then toss in two more drinks over the weekend to make up, just because I can).

About a year ago, as we were descending once again into the holiday season, I became enamored with brandy-based cocktails. I’d always been something of a fan of the brandy realm of mixology, and old-school Brandy Crustas and East India Cocktails satisfied me in ways that many other base spirits and cocktails just couldn’t. But brandy drinks can be clunky; as I mentioned in passing in a piece on California brandy I wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle last month, cognac and similar brandies have a real or implied sweetness about them; as a result, drinks made with these spirits take well to the drying qualities of citrus, but in spirit-forward drinks it’s quite easy to slip into the trap of making a cognac cocktail too cloying. There are alternatives, of course — Armagnac is usually earthier and drier, and has a good backbone as a cocktail ingredient, and then there are California brandies such as Germain-Robin, which I wrote about earlier this week — but for cognac-cocktail fans such as me, what other paths are there to follow?

Fortunately for me at the time, Murray Stenson at Zig Zag Café was already on top of that question. I was in the habit for a few weeks of having a very simple drink made with cognac, Root liqueur and bitters, which is way more of an alluring mixture than it has any right to be, but one night Murray asked if I’d like an Epicurean — a drink I couldn’t recall ever coming across.

Murray is largely a proponent of the David Embury school of mixing, and not surprisingly the Epicurean came from Embury’s The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. I haven’t done a careful sort through the library, but a casual breeze through a few books and a few minutes of stray Googling didn’t turn up any other citations for this drink. Pity, that — I’ll admit the recipe doesn’t look that exciting on paper, simply a 2:1 mixture of brandy and dry vermouth, with a modifier of kummel liqueur and a dash of bitters. I could be just biased about this, but the mix of aged spirits and dry vermouth has rarely taken me anywhere I’d like to go again, and while I find the caraway/cumin flavor of kummel interesting in an academic kind of way, it’s rarely a flavor I find myself really jonesing for — unlike certain other spirits writers, who manage to work it into all kinds of things.

But somehow in this drink, the things I’d ordinarily think of as negative characteristics in dry vermouth and kummel in a brandy context — vermouth’s flattening powers with the light floral flourishes, so nice in gin drinks but distracting with aged spirits; and kummel’s sonorous savory notes, which seem to be dressed in out-of-fashion clothes and come across as stuffy and awkward next to the elegant delicacy of cognac — manage to cancel each other out, mostly, leaving a drink that still has the plushness of brandy but is streamlined, with little pops of spicy filigree out at the edges of the palate.

Anyway, the Epicurean: check it out.

Epicurean

• 2 ounces cognac or other good brandy
• 1 ounce dry vermouth
• 1/2 ounce kummel
• 1 dash Angostura bitters

Stir well with ice, strain into chilled glass. Embury doesn’t call for it, but a slender wisp of lemon zest emancipated from the fruit and sent, with a quick twist, into the depths of the drink, certainly isn’t a bad idea.

Of course, once I started thinking about dry vermouth and kummel, the immediately obvious drink to pop up on the radar is the Allies Cocktail. This drink appears in The Savoy Cocktail Book as 1:1 gin to vermouth, with a couple of dashes of kummel; I’ve seen it elsewhere as a 2:1 ratio with a couple of dashes (Embury) to a quarter-ounce (Gary Regan’s The Joy of Mixology) of kummel, essentially a wet martini with the spiced liqueur in place of orange bitters. And as to its name, story goes (which I can’t seem to find right now — help on a source for this, anyone?) that the ingredients — English gin, French vermouth, Russian kummel — represent the Triple Entente at the outbreak of World War I. Of course, the only kummel I’ve seen around lately is Gilka, from Germany, which kind of screws that whole thing up, so maybe best not to play up that story too much.

Anyway, the Allies has made the rounds of the cocktail guides and Internet searches way more than has the Epicurean. Which is one more example of a mediocre drink trumping a middling-to-good drink, for no discernable reason whatsoever. Not that the Allies is bad, not in any way — indeed, if you’ve got some kummel kicking around, whip out one of these (I vote with Embury on the tight-fistedness with the kummel); it has the lean brutality of a dry martini, with that little extra something that’s sometimes fun to have in the glass, like the brightness of orange bitters or the casual savagery of a little absinthe; the kummel adds a little archaic-yet-endearing Sally Bowles edge to the drink, which isn’t something you might want all the time, but when you want it, it works.

Allies Cocktail

• 2 ounces London dry gin
• 1 ounce dry vermouth
• 2-3 dashes kummel, to taste

Ice, of course; stir, of course; strain – now you’re getting it. Garnish? Lemon zest, why not.

Tags: Brandy, Drinks, Gin, Sixty in 30, Vermouth by Paul
1 Comment »

A few years ago at Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans, I ran into a little bit of an issue.

I was working a couple of events — participating on an absinthe panel with Gwydion Stone from the Wormwood Society (and later Absinthe Marteau) and with Jim Meehan from PDT, and later on hosting a dinner with Jim — but we were short-handed when it came to mixing drinks for all the guests. Fortunately, two bartenders I’d never met before stepped up and volunteered to help at both events, and they proceeded to bang out cocktails by the hundreds, leaving everyone happy and buzzed. After we’d thanked them for saving us from what would likely have been an angry, sober mob, they invited me to check out the gestating cocktail scene in their city. Great things, they told me, were afoot in Los Angeles.

At the time, LA was considered a mixological wasteland by most people on the cocktail circuit, and almost the only Los Angeles bar I’d heard anything good about was Tiki Ti, though I’d heard through friends like Chuck Taggart that something was going on at a place called The Edison, and that a private club called The Doheny was worth looking into. Today, of course, everything has changed, LA’s craft bars and bartenders are making up for lost time, and the bartenders who came to our aid that summer — Marcos Tello and Eric Alperin — are at the center of the city’s cocktail revival. I’ll spare you the longer story of what’s been happening in LA — for that, there’s a piece I wrote for Imbibe (pdf) last summer, as well as great blogs like Thirsty in LA and Los Angeles Cocktail Community — and instead pitch a couple of drinks your way that these guys have since put on the map.

The Los Angeles Cocktail came out of the Hi Ho Club in Hollywood during the 1930s. The club’s signature drink was a mix of gin and white port with a dash of orange bitters — haven’t tried it, but plan to — but this drink was adorned with the name of the city, which is quite an awesome responsibility for such an odd little number. Here’s what’s confounding about the Los Angeles Cocktail (which I initially wrote up for Imbibe): first, it’s made with a base of bourbon rather than rye whiskey, an atypical move for whiskey cocktails from that era; second, it combines sweet vermouth with lemon juice, which you just really don’t see all that often (though there are a few exceptions); third, it throws a whole egg into the mix, which along with the citrus and the vermouth is, in my humble opinion, absolutely bizarre.

But, it works. The oldest printed reference to this drink I found was from Trader Vic’s Bartender’s Guide from 1947 (but to be honest I didn’t perform a full booze-library excavation; with 60 drinks to cover in 30 days, I’m being economical with my time) (*UPDATE: from the comments, Erik Ellestad teaches me not to be lazy; the drink also appears in the “Savoy Cocktail Book” from 1930 and in “Here’s How” by Judge Jr., from 1927 — which is all the more embarrassing since Savoy is usually one of the first places I check; I’d just assumed the book predated the drink), and that version calls for a mere dash of vermouth. Marcos Tello tinkered with the formula, boosting the vermouth to a full half-ounce, and calling for the big flavor of Carpano Antica, which is possibly the only sweet vermouth capable of making its presence felt in such a wild drink. Marcos also uses Elijah Craig 12-year-old for the bourbon, which is a favorite around my house; left to my own devices, however, I’m reaching for something in the bonded-or-better neighborhood so the extra firepower will keep the bourbon’s flavor from receding – something like Old Fitzgerald if you still want to go smooth and lean, or Old Granddad bonded for a bit more spark, or you can just say what the hell and beat the crap out of the other ingredients with a dose of Old Weller 107, Old Granddad 114 or, if you want to get more modern with the brand, hit it with some Baker’s. In think it’s absolutely okay to go this route; it’s vermouth, it’s used to being pushed around.

Los Angeles Cocktail
Adapted by Marcos Tello

• 1 1/2 ounces bourbon
• 1/2 ounce sweet vermouth (Carpano Antica preferred)
• 1/2 ounce simple syrup
• 1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice
• 1 dash Angostura bitters (can be skipped if using Carpano)
• 1 whole egg
• Fresh nutmeg and a total absence of fear, for garnish

Combine everything except garnish in a cocktail shaker and shake, without ice, for at least 10 seconds, until the egg has been suitably smacked around and is mixing well with everything else. Add ice to the shaker and shake again, very hard, for at least 10 seconds. Strain into a chilled wine glass or sour glass and garnish.

A more contemporary cocktail that’s also a native Angeleno is the Skid Row, from Eric Alperin, who now helms The Varnish. I wrote about this drink a little over a year ago for a gin article (pdf) that appeared in Imbibe, and it’s also been blogged about by Chuck Taggart and by Keith at The Speakista, among other folks.

I say it’s contemporary — sure, it’s of recent provenance, but the flavors of this drink are all vintage. Constructed with a rich, malty base of Bols genever, the Skid Row matches the unctuous richness of apricot liqueur with the bitter-citric nip of Ramazzotti Amaro. Snap an orange peel over the drink (Alperin flames the oils, for that floor-show experience and that smoky, caramelized thing) and you’ve got a giant bucket of flavor in a little bitty glass.

Skid Row
Created by Eric Alperin

• 2 ounces Bols genever
• 1/2 ounce apricot liqueur (Rothman & Winter’s the way to go here)
• 1/2 ounce Ramazzotti Amaro
• 1 dash Fee Brothers orange bitters
• Flamed orange zest, for garnish

Combine ingredients in a mixing glass and fill with ice. Stir well until chilled, about 30 seconds, then strain into chilled cocktail glass. Using a wide swath of orange zest (a vegetable peeler really helps here) and a lit match or non-stinky lighter held just above and adjacent to the drink, briskly squeeze the zest so the oils spray through the flame and over the surface of the drink; use as garnish.

Anyway, these two fine gentleman did me a great kindness several years ago, and it’s been my pleasure to see good things come their way since.

Tags: Bourbon, Drinks, Gin, Sixty in 30 by Paul
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Earlier this fall I wrote a piece for the San Francisco Chronicle on a topic that just a few years ago would have made me roll my eyes: California brandy.

My parents kept a liquor cabinet when I was a kid, but except for a bottle or two of decent whisky, much of the inventory was, I’d later realize, kind of ho-hum: Gilbey’s gin, in the frosted bottle that I thought was the height of ‘70s glamor; Cutty Sark; a few liqueurs as garishly colored and as artificially hued as the shirts in my parents’ guests’ wardrobes.

Among the regular selection, as I recall, was a squat bottle of E&J Brandy. It would be a few more decades before I’d learn from Jim Meehan that while working in bars in Madison, Wisconsin, in his years before Pegu Club and PDT, bartenders referred to the brand as “Easy Juice” — but I knew from even that young age that there was something suspicious about that particular liquor. As a teenager, sneaking illicit sips from the bottles, I quickly learned the E&J just wasn’t for me (and to be fair, had it been a bottle of a truly tasty brandy such as something from Germain-Robin or Pierre Ferrand, I’d likely have thought the same thing). Once I was actually of legal age, and would come home to visit at Christmas, I’d reluctantly add a slug of the stuff to my cup of carton eggnog, figuring the sugar and the fat would somehow render it approachable.

This was all long ago, and once again to be fair, if a glass of E&J were placed in front of me now, I’d probably enjoy it more than I would have back then, even if “enjoy” isn’t exactly the word I’m looking for. My point is, for me and countless other drinkers, an introduction to brandy through the lens of the California-made spirit was usually an experience that didn’t bear repeating.

Today, of course, it’s all different, and there are some excellent brandies made in California; and in yet another case of “what’s old is new again,” California brandy did enjoy a certain degree of quality and respectability before Prohibition; afterwards, as with so much else, quality was primarily an afterthought. I’ve mentioned Germain-Robin as the producer of great California brandies, and there are others (read the full article for a few suggestions); and while working on the story, I came across two of my very favorite bartenders in the country who are both working with California brandy for what it can bring to a drink.

Thad Vogler, now proprietor at Bar Agricole in San Francisco, was the one who really got me thinking about California brandy to begin with. Thad’s primarily using the stuff from Marian Farms, near Fresno, which has a kind of rugged, Armagnac-style quality to it. It’s also a bit drier than some more familiar cognacs (and this also applies to brandies such as those from Germain-Robin). This is a big plus; while I love cognac cocktails, one of my prime concerns (aside from cost) is the overall sweetness level of the finished drink. Hit a cognac cocktail with sweet vermouth and a liqueur, and often the flavors get muddied, much like mixing with bourbon instead of a drier rye whiskey. With some of the California brandies (and with Armagnac, in many cases), there’s an earthy dryness that really makes for a more balanced drink, and that enables the base spirit to keep more of its distinctive flavor even when mixed with strong-flavored ingredients.

Here’s an example of a spirit-forward brandy drink that shines with these drier brandies: the Bombay Cocktail. This is on Bar Agricole’s menu, and is adapted from the Savoy Cocktail Book; Agricole makes it with the Marian Farms brandy, and locally made curacao and absinthe, along with Dolin vermouth. For my version, I’m going with Germain-Robin Fine Alambic brandy (now sold as “Craft Method” brandy), Marie Brizard curacao, Marteau absinthe and Dolin dry / Martelletti sweet vermouth, as this is what I have on hand / like / can get.

(I should also chime in here before I get too much further along: this post is part of Mixology Monday, the monthly online cocktail gathering; hosting this round is Dennis at Rock & Rye, and Dennis has chosen “Forgotten Cocktails” as the theme. While both of these drinks can currently be found on bar menus at top cocktail bars on the West Coast, so they’re not exactly “forgotten,” until recently they were pretty damn close, so cin cin and let’s keep playing.)

Bombay Cocktail

• 1 1/2 ounces brandy
• 3/4 ounce sweet vermouth
• 3/4 ounce dry vermouth
• 1/4 ounce curacao
• 2 dashes orange bitters
• 2 dashes absinthe

Combine in a mixing glass and fill with ice; stir well until chilled, about 30 seconds; strain into chilled cocktail glass. Twist a piece of lemon peel over the drink and use as garnish.

This strikes me as a kind of flavor balance between two old favorites, the Saratoga Cocktail (the rye/brandy/sweet vermouth one; there are other drinks with the same name) and the El Presidente, with its balance of dry vermouth and curacao. There is a measured richness to the drink, through the three darker, heavier ingredients, but the dry vermouth helps keep things in line (and I really do think the Dolin would work better here than Noilly Prat — you need light and bright for this drink), and the absinthe adds some complex aromatics to the finished product, along with a snaking taste of decadence.

While working on this article, and wondering who the hell else I should talk to, I went to Portland, Ore. and parked myself at Daniel Shoemaker’s Teardrop Lounge. Daniel is another fantastically talented bartender, and has one of the most finely tuned palates I’ve ever encountered. When I noticed that his bar menu listed a Brandy Scaffa made with Germain-Robin, I knew it wasn’t merely by chance that he was using that brandy. Daniel said that especially with a drink such as the Scaffa, which has a large dose of green Chartreuse and is served, sans ice or dilution, at full, just-you-and-god strength, the spark of California brandy just made sense.

The Brandy Scaffa is an old-timey kind of thing; versions of the drink appear in both Jerry Thomas’ 1863 guide and in Harry Johnson’s Bartender’s Manual that appeared a few years later (and I’ll spare you the blow-by-blow recap, but here’s a thread on the Scaffa on the Chanticleer Society – go, learn something). There are some differences between the two, but Teardrop’s version balances between them, notching up the already boisterous character of the drink with a little maraschino liqueur and a good shake of Boker’s bitters. This is a drink with tremendous flavor: not for the novice, no way, huh-uh, but as a nightcap for someone who really enjoys the taste of good spirits, the Brandy Scaffa is a fantastic choice – though since it’s served room-temp and full-strength, it’s also somewhat unexpected. I know it’s strong, I know it’s warm – if necessary to enjoy this drink, please feel free to grow a pair.

Brandy Scaffa

Adapted by Daniel Shoemaker, Teardrop Lounge, Portland, Ore.

• 1 1/4 ounce brandy
• 3/4 ounce green Chartreuse
• 1/2 ounce Luxardo maraschino
• 3 dashes Boker’s Bitters*

Build ingredients in a small rocks glass, without ice, stirring or garnish…

* Teardrop uses a housemade Boker’s bitters, and serves more in the drink, maybe a barspoon; for this version, try Adam Elmegirab’s Boker’s Bitters, available here and there and way over here.

And there you go – the first round to get the rest of the month underway, and for November’s Mixology Monday.

Tags: Brandy, Drinks, Mixology Monday, Sixty in 30 by Paul
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