Wow, July came early this year. One day I’m moseying through my day, putting the kids on the school bus in the morning and sitting down at my desk to wrangle with whatever mess of projects I was working on at the time, and then all of a sudden HOLY SHIT! It’s July, and we’re less than a week away from Tales of the Cocktail.

In case you’re coming to New Orleans this year — and even if you’re not, but are bored and just want to poke around on the Internet right now — here’s where you can find me:

• On Thursday, July 9, from 10:30am - noon, I’ll be joining Haus Alpenz founder and all-around esoteric-booze madman Eric Seed and Nopa bar manager (and no-less an esoteric-booze madman) Neyah White for a wide-ranging, bare-knuckle debate about Vermouth & Aperitif Wine. Okay, it’ll actually be pretty mellow in all likelihood, and it’s a presentation rather than a debate, but how many times do you get the chance to put “bare-knuckle” and “vermouth” in the same sentence? Join us, and you’ll find out–
• Thursday afternoon, from 4:30 (VIP arrival) to 7:30, I’ll be shaking up a mess of Dunniettes during the Cocktail Hour, which appears to be SOLD OUT. Get ‘em while they last–
• Friday afternoon, from 12:30pm - 2pm, I’m moderating another SOLD OUT event, “Using Blogs and Online Tools to Promote Your Bar, Brand or Career“. I’ll likely prattle about my fellow bloggers o’ the booze for a bit, as well as share some insights both from my role as a blogger and as a journalist who relies on blogs and tools like Facebook and Twitter to see what’s going on out there, but the real fun starts when the panelists step in: Robert Heugel, who blogs at Drink Dogma and recently opened Anvil Bar & Refuge in Houston, one of the most ambitious new craft-cocktail bars in the country; and Steve Raye, who heads Brand Action Team and is a marketing consultant to the drinks industry. Robert will talk about the world of blogging bartenders and how his blog became an effective tool in building and launching Anvil (among other things); and Steve, who actually studies this stuff for a living, will unleash a mighty flood of information about the marketing side of things that should help better explain the blog world for brand managers and other industry types looking to utilize this young resource. But before I move on, I thought maybe I’d utilize this online tool to ask: Are you coming to this session (or would you, if you were at Tales)? And if so, what kinds of topics would you like to see addressed by the panel? I’ll try to address a few of the suggestions during our Q&A. Drop a note in the comments or shoot me an e-mail at paul{at}cocktailchronicles{dot}com. And in case you saw earlier coverage of this event, yes, Jeff Morgenthaler was originally on the panel, but he had to drop off when he realized it conflicted with his back-waxing appointment, or his audition as a Xante spokesmodel, or something like that — I’m hazy on the details.
• Immediately after that panel, until about 2:30, I’ll be in the Monteleone lobby, signing newly released reprints of Cocktails: How to Mix Them, by Robert Vermiere, published by Mud Puddle Books and including an introduction by … well, me, of course — why the hell else would I be standing there in the lobby?
• Friday evening, I’ll have my ass handed to me several times over by some of the top bartenders in the field as I participate in the On the Fly Competition. Why Morgenthaler, who’s emceeing the event, invited me to compete is a mystery to me, unless he anticipated my back-waxing and pull-my-finger comments and wanted to get back at me somehow. Regardless, I’ll be up against powerhouse bartenders including Neyah White, Eric Alperin, Misty Kalkofen, Todd Thrasher, Michael Glassberg and Giuseppe Gonzalez, plus David Wondrich just so I can’t take the “but I’m a writer, I don’t know what I’m doing” path. For extra humiliation, I’ll not only prepare my drink against these bartenders in public, but serve it to a team of judges that includes Dale DeGroff, Tony Abou-Ganim, Francesco Lafranconi, Bridget Albert, Xavier Herit and Antoine Gervais. I’d invite you to come watch me be shamed in public, but alas this event also appears to be SOLD OUT. That’s just great.

In between times, I’ll be downing Sazeracs and Pimms Cups, along with a muffaletta or two and a couple of more ambitious meals around town. Be sure to keep track of the whole boozy bliggety-blog gang over at Tales Blog while Tales is underway, and if you’re in New Orleans next week, I’ll see you soon.

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UPDATED 3/7/09 - RESERVATION DEADLINE EXTENDED & TICKETS STILL AVAILABLE! (scroll down for info)

Once upon a time, there was a group called the Wormwood Society. With members scattered around the world but with a surprisingly large contingent in the Pacific Northwest, the group bantered online about the then-banned (in the U.S., anyway) spirit known as absinthe, wondering if it would ever again be legally available close to home. And from time to time — usually in Seattle, on Saturday nights following a great amount of housecleaning and the purchasing of bags of ice, party snacks and extra glasses — members of the group would assemble to sample many, many absinthes while plowing through the snacks and discussing, at length, why absinthe was so damn expensive when you had to order it from Europe and have it delivered by flying monkeys, and how much better it would be for everyone all around if you could just pick up a bottle at the goddamn liquor store. And a good time was had by all.

Oh, but that was years ago, and the last Green Hour — one memorable not only for its astounding length (I bailed after around 7 hours, but the party went on for at least 6 more), but for the fact that it took place right about the time that the first legal absinthe hit U.S. store shelves — was on Memorial Day weekend in 2007. Was that the end? Once the stuff could be found in any well-stocked liquor store, was there the need for another Green Hour?

Hell yes. And now, it’s here: this coming Thursday (no, not tonight), March 12, at 7pm, the Green Hour returns.

Taking place at Kathy Casey Food Studios in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, Green Hour XV will feature an open bar with absinthes including Marteau Belle Époque, Vieux Carre, St. George, and Pacifique (and probably more), plus absinthe cocktails both familiar and obscure, which will be mixed by myself and some guy who goes by the nom-de-booze Drinkboy. (Plus, there’ll be canapes, hors d’oeuvres, and a bunch of really nice people to talk to.)

Tickets are $35 per person, and — very important — need to be purchased by this Saturday, March 7 (UPDATED 3/7- DEADLINE EXTENDED!). There are about a dozen spots left, as of this morning, so grab ‘em before they’re gone.

Buy your tickets here, and hope to see you there!

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God, I love whiskey.

That shouldn’t be surprising to readers of this blog, but I felt the need to point that out while packing for my trip to San Francisco, which will host its second annual Whiskyfest on Friday night.

Created by the good folks at Malt Advocate and now swinging into its second year with the sponsorship of the Wall Street Journal, Whiskyfest features more than 200 whiskies full of superlatives — some of the finest, the rarest, the most expensive in the world will be at the San Francisco Marriott on Friday night, along with many that are more accessible to people of my pay grade.

I attended the event last year and had a grand time (even though Jimmy Patrick was there, and now tries to avoid me), and I’m really looking forward to sampling some of the bottlings that will be poured this round, as well as stopping at a few of San Francisco’s bars to try out a few (dozen) of the drinks mixed in one of the best damn cocktail cities in the world.

If you’ll be at Whiskyfest, I hope to see you there, and if not…well, why not?

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It’s early autumn in Seattle, the time when typically the rain starts to fall, the days grow short and everybody starts to retreat indoors for the next nine months. Being the antisocial sort, I usually find myself staying at home for days on end at this time of year, except when the need for food, booze or cheap entertainment forces me out of the house. This weekend, however — thanks to an unlikely combination of the Munat brothers and Martin Miller’s Gin — I found myself at two fantastic events that managed to cover the food/booze/cheap entertainment bases more thoroughly than I ever could have expected.

In case you’re one of the few people remotely interested in cocktails who have not yet been friended by them on Facebook, the Munat brothers are an unruly trio (though there are additional siblings, guest siblings and honorary siblings, if that’s the right term, which I’m quite certain isn’t) of booze-addled freeloaders whose self-described primary goal in the mixology world is to devise a way that will allow them to never again pay for their own drinks. As with the invention of a perpetual motion machine and the creation of a worthwhile cocktail that includes Apple Pucker, many have ventured down this path in the past, only to have failed miserably.

Never ones to give up, at least when free drinks are concerned, the Munats somehow managed to convince the folks at Martin Miller’s Gin to sponsor a couple of events this weekend: The first, a party dubbed “Le Mixeur Cinq” (named after an obscure and eerily poetic drink blog and celebrating, I believe, an assortment of five French egg-beaters), and the second, a cocktail-pairing dinner at Elemental, one of the stars in the Seattle culinary cosmos.

Never one to turn down free (or cheap, anyway) drinks myself, I swung by Le Mixeur Cinq on Saturday night. Learning from their experiences from hosting Le Mixeurs Un through Quatre, the Munats apparently realized that less work would be required (on their part, anyway) if they trashed someone else’s home instead of their own. Managing to cadge not only free drinks but an offer to host the party from Vessel bartender Zane Harris and his girlfriend Anu Apte, the Munats took over the bar — no, really, there’s a full freakin’ bar in Zane & Anu’s loft — and proceeded, over the course of the evening, to knock out an estimated 700 cocktails for a crowd that Zane gauges around 200, and that included such luminaries of Seattle’s booze scene as Robert Hess, Jamie Boudreau, Gwydion Stone and Stevi Deter, along with Anita and Cameron from San Francisco and a whole slew of lushes who somehow made their way onto the Munat’s mighty e-mail list.

Cocktails on the menu were devised by an assortment of West Coast bartenders, who had also been suckered into contributing drinks — I particularly liked the Smallflower, created by Zane, and the Spiced Marmalade, from Kevin Diedrich — and were prepared by a group of bartenders that  included seasoned pros such as Jon Santer and Zane, along with the Munat brothers and additional willing and over-worked volunteers.

When Ted and Charles Munat manned the bar, though, it was something to behold (not that you can tell from my horribly blurry photo; hopefully Anita got something better): Fully embracing the ethic of the Slow Food movement, the Munats not only used the freshest ingredients, but they also made certain that guests had time to enjoy the drinks by moving at a pace that resulted in a 30-minute (or longer) wait at the bar at times. It was a brave and risky stand to make for sustainability, but ultimately the planet and our palates owe them thanks.

As if cajoling innocent bartenders into turning over their homes and their booze wasn’t enough, on Sunday the Munats proceeded to take over one of the city’s finer restaurants. Elemental at Gasworks is a small and intimate place, owned by a couple, Phred Westfall and Laurie Riedeman, who are trying to run an honest, ambitious restaurant during difficult economic times.

Taking advantage of their generosity — not to mention the free labor they wheedled out of some of the city’s finest bartenders, including Andrew Friedman from Liberty, Jamie Boudreau from Tini Bigs (oh, like it’s still a secret anymore), David Nelson from Spur, Jim Romdall from Vessel, and Andrew Bohrer from Everywhere, along with some last-minute assistance they hit me up for last week — the Munats talked their way into another allocation of gin from Martin Miller’s and then waited to see what would happen; here’s the menu, so you have an idea of what was served (though I managed to neglect writing down the drink ingredients, so you’ll have to let your imagination work out some of the details).

Canapes, served with a North Sea by Phred Westfall, Elemental

Diver Scallop with Celeriac Custard, served with a Sad Flower, from David Nelson, Spur

Citrus Cured Salmon with Fennel Salad, served with a Drugstore Cowboy, from Jim Romdall, Vessel

Tasting of four infused gins, prepared by Andrew Friedman, Liberty

Juniper-dusted Venison with Hazelnut Gnocchi, served with a Tuxedo, from Paul Clarke, The Cocktail Chronicles (*blush*)

Buche Maitre Sequin Chevre with Essential Baking Walnut Toast, served with an Okanagan Sour, from Jamie Boudreau, Tini Bigs

Chocolate Pot de Creme, served with a Wistful Cricket, from Andrew Bohrer, Everywhere

What happened was absolutely brilliant. Turning the typical meal-cocktail pairing event on its ear, dishes were constructed around the drinks, instead of the other way around. This was pretty confusing at first (C. Munat’s instructions to me consisted almost entirely of the single word, “Savory”; pressed to elaborate, the response was basically “Meat. Red.”), but once cocktail recipes were sent to the restaurant, Phred and Laurie worked with the flavors and came up with some phenomenal dishes. A couple of the pairings were a little squiggly, and some were spot-on; overall, it was a fantastic meal that hopefully exposed a lot of local people to Elemental, the participating bartenders and the bibulous brilliance of Martin Miller’s Westbourne Gin. Plus, C. Munat wormed his way into extra dessert, which he no doubt got for free.

So thanks to Martin Miller’s Gin, to Zane and Anu, to Phred and Laurie at Elemental, to all of the participating bartenders who pitched in and against all odds kept me from making a total ass of myself when mixing drinks for 30, and to everyone else who busted their asses to make this weekend’s events such woozy-memorable experiences. Thanks also, I suppose, to the Munat brothers for being such shameless mooches that they came up with a perfect party space, a great restaurant and several cases of booze, and for being generous enough to share it with us all, you bastards.

Tags: Events by Paul
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Tales of the Cocktail is a much different experience when you find yourself on the other side of the presenters table. Instead of just freewheeling it around like you’ve done on other days, you actually find yourself in work mode, busy and slightly stressed, and stone-cold sober (or close to it) at an event dedicated to booze.

Like last year, I worked two panels at Tales this year: the first, on Friday, was “Cocktails With a Kick: Absinthe Returns to America,” and the second, on Saturday, was “Making Your Own Cocktail Ingredients.” And despite an assortment of unexpected challenges ranging from a chronic and near-catastrophic shortage of bartenders and drink-mixing equipment to the sudden loss, and then regain, of a panelist, from where I sat — up in front of packed, 150+ crowds for both sessions — they both came off pretty well.

It’s safe to say I prepared more for the absinthe session — no wonder, I had a 30+ slide presentation on vintage absinthe cocktails, along with details from old humor books and morality missives that I thought worked well with the idea of historic absinthe cocktails. For this session I had the great fortune to be paired with co-moderator Gwydion Stone, of the Wormwood Society and Marteau Absinthe, and to be joined by Jim Meehan, general manager at PDT in New York. Gwydion set the stage by talking about absinthe as a spirit, and its distinctiveness as a category, and Jim followed my presentation with a look forward, at how we can move forward with new absinthes coming on the market.

The session hit some problems about an hour before we went on; due to a shortage in personnel, it turned out we had nobody to mix drinks for the crowd, so we began cutting drinks from the list, and at one point Jim told me I had the choice of mixing drinks or talking. Fortunately, though, he managed to wrangle two fantastic bartenders from Los Angeles to man the kitchen, and he spent the better part of the session getting drinks out to attendees. For my part, I lost my place a couple of times during my presentation, plus I realized at one point that I was speeding through and would be done in much less than my allotted time, so I may have wandered a bit while trying to fill up space, but I managed to not break down and start babbling like an idiot before I finished my Powerpoint.

The “Making Your Own Ingredients” session faced many of the same challenges, but fortunately this time I knew they were coming: initially we had no staff to mix drinks, so I recruited volunteers before discovering that we didn’t even have basic things like cocktail shakers to use. Fortunately I had a lot of support, so the panel participants batched their own drinks, Daniel from PDT stepped in to mix, and we recruited Keith Waldbauer and Zane Harris to help him get drinks out to the crowd; up front, Heather (Tiki Mama) volunteered her services to pour Tequila por mi Amante, falernum, orgeat and bourbon for everyone.

Complicating matters further, one of the panelists, John Deragon from PDT, was participating in the Cocktail Apprentice program, and about an hour before the session he realized he wouldn’t be able to participate. He arranged for Daniel to fill in in the kitchen plus talk about the bar’s fat-washed bacon bourbon, and recruited Robert Hess to step in and talk about Abbot’s bitters. Crisis just barely averted and with the panel running on rims, we had to just dive in and see what happened — fortunately, the nervous energy translated into a really lively session, and panelists Erik Ellestad and Jamie Boudreau had some fantastic drinks and some good pacing to keep things moving along. Just an hour before the session I was convinced it was headed for disaster, but somehow — SOMEHOW — it came together great. And to top it all, by the last 15 minutes John Deragon was able to tear himself away from the pastry kitchen, and before the bloodhounds could find his trail, he was able to talk about his fantastic recreation of Abbot’s bitters that we served earlier in a 50-50 Manhattan.

That’s my perspective, anyway — I dunno, maybe from where you were sitting we looked like a bunch of idiots. Anyway, if you were at one or both of the sessions, thanks for coming and I hope you enjoyed the drinks; and if you weren’t there, then … I guess we’ll see you next year.

Tags: Events by Paul
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