‘Twas the night before — okay, it was the night before Tuesday, and still a respectable way before Thanksgiving nevermind Christmas (and come to think of it, not much in that house was quiet at all),  but all mangled holiday story preambles aside, on Monday, November 16, the Washington State Bartender’s Guild organized a Yuletide-themed party that put everyone in Seattle in a holiday mood (at least, those 60 or so who braved the rain and wind and had invites to the event).

As I mentioned in a pre-event announcement a while back, this Evening of Holiday Drinks, hosted at Barrio, on Capitol Hill, was the WSBG’s kickoff for the holiday season. Why hold such an event in mid-November? Quite simply, because there are a god-awful number of horrendous holiday drinks out there (a Horny Ho Ho Mojito, anyone?), and it’s time to push a few good ones into the spotlight they deserve.

The event was sponsored by Maker’s Mark, Cruzan, Laird & Co. and Martin Miller’s Gin, and over the course of the evening guests were served samples of six punches and cocktails — some classic, some contemporary — that shared one common element: they did not suck.

Almost all of the drinks served that evening have appeared on this blog before; one notable exception is the Palin’s Christmas Punch; the recipe for this is listed below.

Here are the drinks we served at the event:

• Tom & Jerry – a classic winter warmer, prepared at this event with Maker’s Mark and Cruzan Estate Single Barrel rum.
• Northern Spy – a contemporary Laird’s Apple Brandy-based cocktail created by Josey Packard, now at Drink in Boston, that’s excellent in the late autumn / early winter.
• Palin’s Christmas Punch – created by Milk & Honey bartender Sam Ross, this punch won last year’s Martin Miller’s Masters competition, and with good reason. Ignore or embrace the inspiration behind the name, depending on your personal politics, but do not ignore this drink — it was the clear favorite at the WSBG event, and one of the few (only?) holiday drinks that uses gin as a base.
• Reveillon Cocktail – from my good friend Chuck Taggart, this apple brandy-based drink has become a holiday standard at my house, and hopefully many more after its appearance at the WSBG event.
• Christmas Rum Punch – Rum! Fire! What’s not to like? Simple yet flashy, and tasty to boot.
• Goodnight, Irene – Strictly speaking not a holiday drink, but between the bourbon & Branca Menta this original cocktail from Audrey Saunders tastes like Christmas to me.

Thanks to all who came out for the event, and for those who wish to play along at home, here’s the recipe for Palin’s Christmas Punch:

Palin’s Christmas Punch

• 12 ounces Martin Miller’s Westbourne-Strength gin
• 12 ounces lemon juice
• 10 ounce demerara date syrup*
• 14 ounces Zirbenz Stone Pine Liqueur
• 1/2 ounce Regan’s Orange Bitters #6
• 1 1/2 ounces absinthe
• 1 750-ml bottle dry champagne

Muddle the peel of two lemons in a pitcher with around one ounce of superfine sugar in a large pitcher until the mixture is an aromatic paste. Add everything except the champagne and stir briefly with ice; strain into a punch bowl filled with lemon ice** and add chilled champagne. Stir, serve in punch cups, garnish with absinthe-drizzled dates***.

* Demerara date syrup: Make a syrup by combining 2 cups of demerara sugar with one cup water in a saucepan over medium heat, whisking until completely dissolved. Let cool, then add to a container with a cheesecloth bag filled with 1 cup of crushed dates; let sit for three days. Strain to remove sediment before use.

** Lemon ice: Using small molds (I used a muffin tin), place a thin slice of lemon in each compartment and fill with water. Freeze overnight before using.

*** Absinthe-drizzled dates: Spear a date on a cocktail pick (ideally a twig of pine or Douglas fir) and drizzle with several drops of absinthe.

Tags: Drinks, Events, Gin by Paul
2 Comments »

The preparation ritual required to mix a two-tone Princeton Cocktail certainly does it no favors in the comeback department. Then again, this is an era in which many drinkers don’t think twice about ordering a round of scratch mojitos in a packed bar at 11pm on a Friday night, so who’s to say — maybe the Princeton has a future ahead of it.

As well it should: c’mon, gin, port, orange bitters — what’s not to like? It has the appropriate degree of old-timeyness (Kappeler, 1895) to give it some cocktail-geek street-cred (and that Old Tom flag on the gin doesn’t hurt), and it just tastes good as hell. If you’ve got a hand-wobble that disqualifies you from both brain surgery and from constructing pousse cafes, you may make a mess of this one initially, but fortunately the heaviness of the port pulls it to the bottom of the glass, so slop away — the Princeton is (relatively) forgiving.

A quick word on the recipe: in Imbibe!, Mr. Wondrich suggests using Plymouth and a dab of simple syrup if Old Tom gin is not at hand, so there’s that option out there; for mine, I used the Hayman’s Old Tom as it’s the only one in the house, but I look forward to giving this a go with the Ransom Old Tom at some point.

Princeton Cocktail

• 2 ounces Old Tom gin (see above)
• 3 dashes orange bitters
• 3/4 ounce port

Stir gin and bitters well with cracked ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Carefully pour the port down the side of the glass, allowing it to settle in the bottom of the glass for a nice two-tone effect. Lemon or orange zest over the top? Well, why not…..

This drink is part of 30/30, a series of 30 drinks in 30 days — or as much as I can keep up before collapsing in a weary, booze-addled heap.

Tags: Drinks, Gin, Thirty in 30 by Paul
1 Comment »

It’s been a long Mother’s Day weekend, a busy work week is just a few hours off, and I’m really not in the mood to get all fancy with the liquor cabinet — the couch and the remainder of the Sunday paper just look too inviting. But I’m 23 drinks into this thing, so I can’t stop now.

Nothing I had planned to write about is really grabbing me right now, so here’s a drink I’ve been thinking about recently, being blogged about on the fly; let’s see how it plays out:

The Home Stretch

• 1 1/2 ounces gin
• 1/2 ounce fino sherry
• 1/4 ounce pear liqueur*
• 1 dash Regan’s orange bitters

Stir, strain. That’s it

* for the pear liqueur, the Rothman & Winter Orchard Pear is lovely and light; slightly richer is Xante, a relatively new cognac-based liqueur (disclaimer: a sample of Xante was provided for review).

I love the taste of pears, but have been disappointed with many pear-oriented cocktails: some pear liqueurs taste tinny and artificial, whereas the liqueurs that actually taste like pears are very gentle, and the flavor is easily obscured by other ingredients.

For this drink, I used Hendricks for the gin — thinking its delicate nature might prove a good foundation for the pear — Lustau for the fino and Xante for the pear liqueur.

On first try, I like it — perhaps I’ll bump up the sherry in future versions (I finished the bottle while making this one), but it’s a good balance between the bone dryness of the gin and sherry combo and the richness of the pears. My jury is still out on Xante; the first taste I had of the liqueur turned me off as slightly artificial, but subsequent experiences have warmed me to it, though I’m still having a tough time imagining many cocktails that would use it to good effect. In this drink, its richness isn’t shining through, so the Rothman & Winter may be a better bet for future versions .

All in all, a respectable effort — not dynamite by any means, but not a sinker either.

Has anyone tried working with pear liqueurs to good effect? I’d love to have some ideas to work with.

This drink is part of 30/30, a series of 30 drinks in 30 days — or as much as I can keep up before collapsing in a weary, booze-addled heap.

Tags: Drinks, Gin, Thirty in 30 by Paul
3 Comments »

Before I move away from my last post about a drink created by London bartender Dick Bradsell — and a drink made with blackberry liqueur, at that — I wanted to dig into one other cocktail that shares these characteristics: the Wibble.

As if the use of blackberry liqueur wasn’t distinguishing enough, the Wibble builds much of its flavor on the tart crispness of Plymouth Sloe Gin. Toss in some grapefruit and lemon to round out the tartness, with an ounce of gin for power and balance, and the Wibble is surprisingly engaging, one of the better sloe gin cocktails I’ve come across.

A couple of notes about the recipe: I’ve seen several versions of this around, and while George Sinclair was kind enough to drop by in the comments section on the Bramble to note that the recipe I listed was the one used by Dick, I honestly have no idea what the original recipe for the Wibble is. I first heard of the Wibble last summer, from a Shaken & Stirred column in the New York Times, by Jonathan Miles. In that column, Miles used a recipe provided by Naren Young at Bobo in New York; Naren substituted creme de cassis for the creme de mure (presumably for the reasons I listed yesterday: creme de mure just ain’t all that common in US bars and liquor stores), and relied on the liqueur and the sloe gin to sweeten the drink (by the way, that version is quite lovely as well — if you don’t have blackberry liqueur on hand, you can still get an idea of how this cocktail works by using a decent creme de cassis). Later in the summer, while working on a sloe gin story for Imbibe, I talked to Marcovaldo Dionysos from Clock Bar in San Francisco; Marco named the Wibble as a favorite, and the recipe he gave me for the story used creme de mure for the sweetener. And just to round out what’s become a confusing paragraph, I did a quick Google on the Wibble and found a couple of recipes that called for a small amount — 5ml, or a teaspoon — of simple syrup to be added to the mix. The drink in front of me, that is rapidly disappearing as I type, was made using the recipe below, without the addition of simple syrup. To my palate, it works, but if you still find it too tart, you may wish to add a bit of sugar, and do so in good conscience.

Anyway — here it is:

The Wibble

• 1 ounce gin (Bradsell recommends Plymouth)
• 1 ounce Plymouth Sloe Gin
• 1 ounce grapefruit juice
• 1/2 ounce lemon juice
• 1/2 ounce blackberry liqueur

Combine ingredients in a shaker and fill with ice; shake well and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

This drink is part of 30/30, a series of 30 drinks in 30 days — or as much as I can keep up before collapsing in a weary, booze-addled heap.

Tags: Drinks, Gin, Thirty in 30 by Paul
5 Comments »

Another oldie — if you consider a drink that’s of the same circa vintage as Thriller and Return of the Jedi “old” — but one you don’t see all that often in U.S. bars. While this Dick Bradsell creation was long a staple of UK cocktail bars (and may still be, for all I know — I really need to travel more), American bars haven’t really picked this up in large numbers.

The reason probably has a lot to do with the availability of creme de mure, a blackberry liqueur. Sure, you can find it in some markets around the country, but in others you might as well be looking for Swedish punsch. (And a quick note — you can often see bottles of “Blackberry Brandy” on the bottom shelf of the liquor store. No, it’s nothing like what you’re looking for here — just please for the love of god, no.)

I finally picked up a bottle of Clear Creek Distillery’s Blackberry Liqueur, though “finally” is a bit misleading — it’s not as though Clear Creek has been making their liqueurs for all that long, maybe a couple of years, and I believe the blackberry is one of the more recent additions to the product line. Anyway, it’s fantastic in this drink, which at its simplest is a gin sour over crushed ice with a float of liqueur, but when viewed from a wider perspective is inherently satisfying on a number of levels. It’s got the basics of strong, sour and sweet, but the little dribbles of blackberry that follow the crags of the ice bring this to another level; the drink seems simple and obvious at first, but grows with complexity as you work your way down the glass and the heavy liqueur retreats to the bottom, leaving dark purple stains in the ice as it goes.

I mucked up the ice and liqueur for my photo round, so you won’t see the drink pictured, but on a second round, with more ice in the glass — and you want to fairly pack it — it works beautifully.

Bramble

• 1 1/2 ounces gin (Plymouth is the recommended brand)
• 3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 ounce simple syrup
• 3/4 ounce creme de mure (blackberry liqueur)

Build the gin, lemon and simple over crushed ice in a whiskey glass and briefly stir. Float the liqueur atop the ice, and garnish with blackberries and a slice of lemon, if you got ‘em.

This drink is part of 30/30, a series of 30 drinks in 30 days — or as much as I can keep up before collapsing in a weary, booze-addled heap.

Tags: Drinks, Gin, Thirty in 30 by Paul
6 Comments »