Yesterday, I launched into a wandering and long-overdue meditation on the whiskies that, for me, made the long, grisly winter of ’12-’13 endurable. Yesterday’s post covered bourbon; today, it’s all about the Scots and the Irish.

When looking back on brown-booze season, it wasn’t all a bourbony blur around here. These are a few approachable, available and affordable whiskies that helped me span the gap between October and April.

* Aberlour A’Bunadh –  I was pitifully ignorant of Aberlour before 2012, but the happy coincidence of a visit to Seattle by Aberlour brand ambassador Ann Miller, and a visit of my own to the distillery last spring, made me a fan of this whisky.

The 10 year is a perfectly agreeable Speyside malt, a mix of whiskies matured in bourbon casks and olorosso butts (the same goes for its older kin), but A’bunadh is where Aberlour really shines: cask-strength, un-chill-filtered and entirely sherry aged, the whisky is silky and rich, with touches of chocolate and cherries and honey and all those reassuring flavors that remind you that, even in the depth of a blustery winter, liquid compassion can still be found.

* Dalmore 18 – A few years ago, I spent a day driving across the Scottish Highlands in a van with Richard Paterson, the master blender for Whyte & Mackay who deserves much of the credit for this whisky’s nonstop deliciousness. We drove from Edinburgh to the Dalmore distillery, blurry and beaten (at least I was) from a long night of oversampling the Dalmore Mackenzie expression. At the Dalmore, we tasted a handful of whiskies (including a particularly rare one that Richard dispensed by the dropper), poked around in the barrel warehouses, then skedaddled back to Glasgow before nightfall.

My head still faintly aches from that first, long night, but what I recall from the journey — and the reason the Dalmore 18 has earned a spot in my regular winter rotation — is the whisky’s oily lushness, its balance of coarse earthiness and bold fruit. All of the expressions of the Dalmore have this to some extent, but the 18 walks a particularly fine line between the soft nature of wildflowers and honey that you find in so many Highland malts, and the blustery ruggedness that’s bold enough to bolster you through the worst winter days, while retaining enough freshness of spirit to remind you of better times to come.

Bourbon is for shaking off the chill and settling into the comforting warmth indoors; malts like the Dalmore 18 help you pull the coat more tightly around your shoulders, and tell the wind and rain that they can just fuck off for today.

* Pretty much anything from Highland Park – Highland Park is the most Game of Thrones of whiskies.

Think about it: They’re making whisky at the northernmost distillery in Scotland, so they’d better know a thing or two about dark and cold and how to keep them at bay. Highland Park’s answer is to lace the spirit with just a mild lashing of smoke — not enough to make the whisky a brawling brute like the peaty bastards from Islay (though there’s plenty of room for those in winter, of course) — but enough to blow a little air on the embers of a drinker’s insides, a bold (but not too much) shove back against winter that can fan the flames in mind and body while soothing the season’s restlessness with honey, and grass, and toasted nuts and fruits.

My mainstay this past winter was the basic HP12. Why the 12 year? Because it’s what I have, and it works, and I can afford it. Go for the higher range if your inclination and your wallet allow — there is no disappointment to be found here.

* Redbreast 15 year – Because when St. Patrick’s Day rolls around, green beer is for suckers.

Redbreast has a lightness of character like the rest of its Irish brethren, but it also knows how to land a punch, its gentle flavors of honey and grass matched with a robust oiliness. Redbreast 15 year is as comforting as having breakfast with your grandmother, but as serious as having breakfast with the grandmother who can kill a mouse by flinging her shoe across the room at it without taking her eyes off the story she’s reading to the kids.*

(* actual example from my actual grandmother, who to the best of my knowledge never drank a drop of Irish whiskey.)

Tags: Irish Whiskey, Scotch by Paul
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Some people — okay, me — are of the mindset that brown booze is a year-round sort of thing, the kind of drink you keep in your glass on winter’s darkest evenings as well as summer’s brightest afternoons. But there are also people — okay, me again — who think that whiskey and other aged spirits are particularly well-suited for the cooler months, and make these spirits a staple of their October-through-April sipping, if for no other reason than to leave a few months open so all those gins, light rums and blanco tequilas in the liquor cabinet don’t start feeling neglected.

It’s been sunny and in the 60′s in Seattle, and this past winter was quite gentle in these parts, though snow and ice and traffic-snarling storms seem to have continued right up to Easter in other parts of the country. But with the season finally starting to shift, I thought I’d perform my semi-annual dusting off of the blog in order to tip my proverbial hat to some of my most reliable whiskies from this past season.

Note I didn’t write “essential whiskies” or “best whiskies” or “greatest whiskies you’ll never be able to taste” or any of such tripe (those ideas I save for my paid work– KIDDING! But not really…) —  but rather, these are whiskies that, over the past six months or so (with several making repeat appearances from winters past), have made it into my glass with such frequency that they deserve a generous pour of credit for keeping me from absolutely losing it during another gray, damp, moss-gathering Seattle winter.

I’m not listing anything exceptionally rare or expensive here — hell, some of these may come across as downright pedestrian — but especially during the winter grey, whiskey hour is regularly observed in my house, and if it was all Pappy 20 and Gordon & MacPhail selections around here, I’d be even more financially destitute than my questionable career as a booze writer already leaves me.

Anyway, here’s what kept me kicking during the bitter badness of the winter of ’12 – ’13; for the sake of readability and something resembling organization, I’m splitting this post in two, with the first covering American whiskies and the second, whiskies from Scotland and Ireland:

* Pretty much anything from Four Roses – You couldn’t buy Four Roses straight bourbon 10 years ago — not in this country, anyway. But one of the best things to happen to bourbon drinkers in the century thus far is the grand American homecoming of Four Roses.

What makes Four Roses so notable? How the hell should I know; it could be the two mashbills they use (one rye heavy, and one, um, not), or their five yeast strains, or the way they take these 10 bourbon recipes and marry them (or not) to make everything from Special Edition Limited Barrels (single yeast strain, single recipe) to the Single Barrel (ditto) to the Small Batch (four of the ten recipes) to the Yellow Label (a little dab of everything).

Again, how the hell should I know how they manage to pull flavor magic out of a pile of corn and rye — but whatever they’re doing, it works across their product spectrum, and the Four Roses Yellow Label is one of the few basic, entry-level (read: around $20 or less) bourbons I’ll drink all on its lonesome, though it does make a very comforting Old Fashioned. As far as the more premium bottlings — well, they’re just perfectly balanced, a nice mix of rye spice and corn sweetness with enough barrel influence to make it sugary and seductive without going over the hill into oaky astringency.

Four Roses? Anytime…

* Pretty much anything from Heaven Hill – Pretty much, that is; ignore the novelty items and the assorted vodkas, liqueurs and other spirits that help them pay the bills, and focus on the exceptional (and extensive) range of bourbons, rye whiskies and others (Mellow Corn! Bernheim Wheat Whiskey!) that Heaven Hill produces.

I’ll admit to sentimentality about Heaven Hill’s whiskies: the basic Evan Williams black label was the first straight bourbon I ever purchased way back when I was … well, let’s not get into that; Elijah Craig has been my workhorse bourbon in god knows how many Old Fashioneds in recent years; and Rittenhouse Bonded Rye Whiskey is goddamn Rittenhouse Rye, world without end amen — but my fondness for their whiskies extends beyond mere sentiment.

Old Fitzgerald Bottled-in-Bond has been dueling it out with Four Roses Yellow Label for ownership of my “everyday bourbon” shelf for the past few years. Wheated bourbon is one of my many weaknesses, and Old Fitzgerald has that wheated softness that I find so sultry, with a little fillip of sourdough tang to keep the whiskey from lapsing into somnolence. Last year Heaven Hill introduced Larceny Straight Bourbon — exactly the same stuff as Old Fitz, but bottled at a different age and a different proof, which gives the old whiskey a fresh appeal — and I’ve been known to nip into that these past few months for the occasional Old Fashioned or Revolver Cocktail. The only problem with the arrival of Larceny is now I have to keep an additional bourbon stocked in my house at all times.

While both of these whiskies are still in the very modest $20-ish range, depending on where you live, Heaven Hill also delivers very well at the higher echelons of bourbon: Evan Williams Single Barrel is one of the best bargains on the bourbon shelf, a lovely sipping bourbon that flirts around the $30 mark; and to show how much they care (and what they can do), Heaven Hill has been annually releasing blockbusters under the Parker’s Heritage Collection label. Last year’s release, the “Blend of Mashbills,” spotlighted the diverse skills of Parker and Craig Beam, but my favorite so far has been the cognac-finished bourbon from a couple of years ago. Exceptional aged bourbon with the fruity kiss of cognac? That pretty much eliminates the need for me to ever make the choice again.

* Eagle Rare Single Barrel Bourbon – Yes, Buffalo Trace makes a hell of a lot of good whiskey, and everything from the distillery’s eponymous bourbon to Handy and W.L. Weller makes it into my glass every winter, but Eagle Rare is the one I start to sweat about when the supply is running low.

This is such a gorgeous, balanced whiskey at a cheapskate-friendly price, which is what I’m usually looking for when I’m about to make a liquor run and I’m going through my pockets looking for misplaced $20 bills. Chuck Cowdery recently pointed out that Sazerac has shifted Eagle Rare’s bottle proof in recent years; this may have happened before I started keeping it on hand (or maybe I just wasn’t paying close enough attention), but Eagle Rare still delivers a much more complex flavor and rounded character than you’re likely to find in any other bourbon at a comparable price.

– coming in Part II: The whiskies from Scotland & Ireland that got me through winter….

Tags: Bourbon by Paul
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Some cocktails are like caresses — smooth and soothing, with delicate touches that deftly flick away all the assorted troubles of the day.

But sometimes, tenderness isn’t what’s needed. Sometimes, a little savagery is entirely appropriate.

Dark, bitter drinks have become almost a cliché in today’s cocktail world – and I say “almost,” because no matter how commonplace these cocktails may become in the sprawling suburbia of faux speakeasies, and no matter how fawning we behave over mixtures of rye whiskey, small-batch vermouth and amari so obscure they only exist in the bartender’s imagination, these brown, bitter and stirred drinks have one redeeming factor that will always keep them relevant: many of them, if not most, are just so fucking delicious.

I vacillate in my taste for these kinds of rough, boozy drinks. For months on end, I’ll venture little further into the realm than the occasional Manhattan or Boulevardier (I’m exempting the Negroni from this argument, with its base of gin, along with other, softer-though-still-bitter aperitifs, which I swill pretty much always), then something will grab my attention – the acquisition of a new amaro, a change in the seasons – and I’ll happily roll in the cocktail-geek muck again, if only for a little while.

The season’s gradually shifting here in Seattle, so that’s been impetus enough to dig the brown booze out of summer storage along with my sweaters and winter coat; and with the arrival of a recent box of goodies from an online booze outlet – Washington-state liquor prices having become obnoxiously high following our privatization debacle – I’ve found motivation enough to fall back into my old BBS (brown/bitter/stirred) habits.

The newbie in my house now is Bittermens Citron Sauvage liqueur. I’ve long been a fan of the products from Avery & Janet Glasser – I was evangelizing about their bitters long before they were commercially available, and continue to be impressed by everything of theirs I’ve tasted – and, as someone who thinks the bitter complexity of grapefruit is one of the cocktail world’s less-explored avenues of wonder, I made sure Bittermens’ grapefruit liqueur made it into my order.

I’m only just starting to play around with it – save your sneering, East Coast barfolk, it takes a while to get these things out West – but here’s a simple little Red Hook-style riff that I’ve come back to a couple of times, with no complaints.

The Awkward Pause

• 2 oz. reposado tequila
• 3/4 oz. Punt e Mes
• 1/2 oz. Bittermens Citron Sauvage liqueur
• 2 dashes Bittermens Xocolatl Mole bitters

Combine ingredients in a mixing glass and fill with ice. Stir until chilled, about 30 seconds; strain into chilled cocktail glass. Twist a thin piece of orange peel over the drink for aromatics; use as garnish.

Tequila + grapefruit = obvious yum, the Punt e Mes bumps up the bitter quotient without being too pushy, and the bitters give hints of cinnamon and chile that seemed like a good idea at the time.

Given that the Red Hook is now long in the tooth, this isn’t the most original drink, but hey – simple variations often have a longer life span than do more daring ventures, so I’ll stick with it. And the name? If you’ve ever attempted to have a conversation with preternaturally shy me, it should make perfect sense.

Anyway, thumbs-up for the grapefruit liqueur – the only drawback is now I need to clear space in the crowded liquor cabinet for another keeper bottle.

Tags: Drinks, Tequila, Vermouth by Paul
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Oh, so that’s where WordPress hid the “Publish” icon!

It’s been a long drought around here, for all the usual reasons — laziness, busy-ness, and some lingering technical snafus that took much longer than I’d hoped to be resolved — but I’ve been meaning to dust off the blog for a bit, and today seemed the perfect time.

You see, not only is today Mixology Monday, but it’s the first MxMo since I founded the event more than six years ago that I’m not moderating. This monthly cocktail party has brought a lot of boozy enjoyment over the years — to me, certainly, but also to the scores of people who’ve hosted and participated since the debut MxMo in April 2006 — but as with any ongoing event, you need some fresh blood to keep the whole thing from sagging into redundancy.

Feeling myself turning into the saggy sort when it came to keeping MxMo operational, I long considered either retiring the event — which struck me as somewhat selfish, so I shelved that idea for the time being — or handing it off to someone else, someone I trusted to keep the thing going without turning Mixology Monday into an embarrassment, and whose enthusiasm for good drinks would mean MxMo would give all its participants and readers a lingering buzz for years to come. So, starting this month, the whole Mixology Monday shebang is in the hands of Fred Yarm at Cocktail Virgin Slut, an experienced MxMo host who I’ve been fortunate enough to bend an elbow with in person, and who is basically booze-blogging personified.

Anyway, Fred is serving as both MxMo moderator and host this month, and he’s chosen for his inaugural theme: Equal Parts. Essentially, this means taking everything you’ve learned from proportionately equivalent drinks such as the Negroni and the Last Word — and by “everything,” I mean the premise that “1+1+1+1=awesome” — and deploy that understanding in the wild.

I’ve always had a thing for aperitifs, and as I wrote in the current issue of Imbibe magazine, American producers are increasingly making some delicious things to play with. My latest toy in the cocktail department is Imbue Petal & Thorn, a bitter aperitif that’s more like a vino amaro than a standard vermouth (or Imbue’s Bittersweet Vermouth). Delicate and herbal to the nose, the aperitif has a nice, lingering bitterness and a complexity that’s engaging enough to stand up to bold ingredients. Most of my trials with Petal & Thorn have been simple, martini or martinez-like combinations; this Negroni-esque drink is similarly simple, but has a crisp, earthy flavor that is anything but simplistic. Christened after my recent and temporary hiatus from the blog world, here’s the–

Disappearing Act

• 1 oz. reposado tequila (I used Partida)
• 1 oz. Imbue Petal & Thorn aperitif
• 1 oz. sweet vermouth (I used Cocchi Vermouth di Turino)

Combine in a double old-fashioned glass and add ice; stir to chill. Garnish with grapefruit twist.

Somewhere between the agave snap, the spice in Petal & Thorn and the cola-esque sweetness of the vermouth, the Disappearing Act is almost chocolate-ey in its smoothness, with a light bitter bite in the finish that keeps the drink alert.

Now that I’ve rediscovered the “publish” icon, and apparently didn’t hurt myself too badly while typing this post, I may stick around in the blogosphere a while longer. But for now, head over to Fred’s site and see what everybody else was mixing for this Mixology Monday.

Tags: Drinks, Mixology Monday, Tequila, Vermouth by Paul
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I’ve gotten lazy. Not just with this blog–I mean, look at how long it’s been since the last post–and not just with documenting whatever drinks-related writing and cocktail-related things I’m working on at any point in time. No, I’ve gotten lazy, in general, with drinks–which explains why, on this Mixology Monday, when the theme is tiki, I’m mixing something that goes into a damn cocktail glass.

There was a time when a call-to-tiki-arms would have had me making batches of syrups and shopping for passionfruit puree or essence of guava or some other exotic ephemera, and at times I still summon that kind of energy. But nowadays, my mixological habits tend to follow the path of least resistance; unless I have a particular hankering for something, preparing for a group event or tinkering with a work-related project, most likely I’m mixing something no more ambitious than an Old Fashioned or a Martini, or punting into even easier territory by skipping straight to whiskey-rocks or simply popping open a beer. And there’s not a damn thing wrong with that.

But as I said, it’s Mixology Monday, the somewhat-monthly event that pokes me into action, prompted in large part by the guilt I’d feel at shirking an event that I originally introduced in 2006–oh, the innocence of those bygone days!–and have moderated for almost six years. This month’s host, Doug Winship, selected tiki as his theme, no doubt envisioning a minor horde of home mixologists breaking out their blenders and their tiki mugs for some mid-winter escapist tippling.

Blender? Tiki mug? This Monday’s motivation level says, “Ain’t happening.”

But the guilt! Plus, I’m thirsty! So, here’s something fairly easy, but that still fits in with the general theme: the Trade Wind Cocktail.

As with almost anything else faux-tropical related, I’m nabbing this recipe from the valuable work done by Beachbum Berry. In his Beachbum Berry Remixed, Jeff notes that this drink is from the Trade Winds Restaurant on Long Island, and dates it to 1959. Unlike the flood of other drinks that came from the mid-century Polynesian-style era, the Trade Wind is based on gin, not rum, and really, the only touch of the Caribbean or any warm-weather locale is the three-quarters of an ounce of curacao that sweetens this otherwise simple twist on the gin sour.

And as I said earlier regarding a beer or a whiskey-rocks: there’s not a damn thing wrong with that. Not all drinks that fit under the tiki umbrella are fabulous 12-ingredient formulations; there’s a need in the exotica pantheon for drinks that are smaller, drier and brighter than the syrup-laden punches that fill massive ceramic mugs. Most traditional bars, even today, have little room for tiki and its ilk (for good reason, in many cases); tiki bars, however, are more forgiving, and a basic gin-based drink tagged with a tropical moniker can still evoke ideas of a lazy day in the islands, even if the most exotic place on this particular island is within walking distance of the LIRR.

Trade Wind Cocktail
adapted from Beachbum Berry Remixed

• 1 1/4 oz. gin
• 3/4 oz. orange curacao
• 1 1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp. simple syrup
• 1 egg white

Combine in shaker; dry shake until foamy, about 10 seconds, then add ice and shake again another 10 or thereabouts. Strain into chilled cocktail glass.

Tags: Drinks, Gin, Mixology Monday, Tiki by Paul
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