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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I love the Appletini.

Mind you, I’ve never actually had one — not a “real” one, anyway, assuming you can call a drink that’s become an icon of all that’s saccharine and false about cocktails “real.” Even when I was younger and (more) stupid, when I was less picky about what went into my glass, a drink that both looked and tasted like Jolly Ranchers just seemed to be wrong, not only a fraudulent fake of a proper cocktail, but yet one more molestation of a natural flavor.

But as someone who makes his living writing about drinks, the Appletini has been a godsend, a useful tool for mocking all that’s wrong with bars, and an instrument of warning to those who are tempted to take the quick, easy way out. Plus, with the drink’s pioneering appropriation of the ‘tini suffix, the Appletini became a punchline in itself, a gaudy green scapegoat in a cocktail glass for craptinis everywhere. Long may it wave.

There’s a problem here, though. Y’see, for all its faults, an Appletini has one thing going for it: it tastes decent to a lot of people (so I assume — again, I’ve never had one, but it’s easy to come to that conclusion) — and why not? It tastes like apples (kinda, or at least what apples taste like as interpreted by food scientists), and apples are awesome. Even spirits actually made from apples don’t really, truly taste like apples (except on a certain ethereal, completely engaging level), thanks mostly to the effects of barrel aging — not that I’m complaining, of course. But, apples — why not? If you can take a drink that’s emblematic of all that’s fake in mixology, and render it in a natural way, isn’t that a worthwhile cause (or at least a potentially interesting way of spending a Monday evening)?

Fortunately, today is Mixology Monday, and as this month’s host Jacob Grier chose to frame it, this month’s event is themed “Retro Redemption.” Jacob’s challenge is to take a misbegotten concoction, preferably from recent decades, and tweak it into something appealing to the growing craft-cocktail crowd. And if ever a drink needed tweaking, it’s the Appletini.

So, here’s how I’m going to proceed: I’m going to take the Appletini at its most literal, and break it down by the constituent parts of its name — first, it has to have an apple influence; and second, it has to earn that ‘tini suffix.

My starting ground rule is that the drink’s base elements must be gin (vodka? really? are you in the right place?) and dry vermouth; bonus points if the orange bitters stay in the equation. And for the apple? It must be a natural component, something from an actual apple, not a mock-up of apple flavor or a processed apple product. Simply adding an ounce of apple juice or the like to the drink would be cheating on a certain level — my self-imposed rule stipulates that the drink must still be identifiable as a martini — but what if I process the drink through an apple?

We know from experience that apples and dry vermouth work fantastic together, as demonstrated in Audrey Saunders’ Eve — a simple five-day infusion of Macintosh apples in vermouth. Had I given this project much thought prior to the last couple of days, I might’ve smacked a bottle together, but by the time I started thinking about the apple + martini project earlier today, the infusion ship had sailed.

Or had it? No, I didn’t have five days for an infusion, but I had a few minutes — not to mention a couple of Granny Smith apples and an iSi cream whipper, which, by following the nitrogen infusion process first explored by Dave Arnold, was all I needed to do a flash-infusion of apples into my drink, and which hopefully would only bring the delicate, fruity notes of the fruit, without the darker, bitter flavors that come from oxidizing apples.

Okay, this post is way too chatty by this point — let’s get down to the recipe:

The Appletini is Dead! Long live the Appletini!
makes 3 drinks

• 6 ounces gin (I used Plymouth)
• 3 ounces dry vermouth (I used Noilly Prat)
• 1 large (or 1 1/2 small) Granny Smith apple
• 1 dash orange bitters
• lemon zest, for garnish

1. Core the apple and chop it, peel and all, into small chunks. Place the apple chunks in the canister of an iSi cream whipper, and add the gin and vermouth.
2. Seal the whipper, and get your stopwatch ready. Use a N2O charger to pressurize the whipper, and swirl the contents around for 30 seconds; at the end of 30 seconds, place the whipper on the counter and let it rest an additional 30 seconds.
3. Rapidly depressurize the whipper by placing a plastic container over the spout (to catch the spraying liquid) and squeeze the lever. Once the whipper is completely depressurized, strain the liquid into a large glass. Let it rest a few minutes before using — the flavor develops better with a little time.
4. Proceed as with a standard cocktail: place three ounces of liquid in a mixing glass, add a dash of bitters along with a bunch of ice, and stir until chilled. Strain into chilled cocktail glass; hit it with the lemon zest.

This worked out better than expected. The liquid went into the canister a light straw color (from the vermouth), and came out a delicate, chlorophyll green. At first sip, the apple was barely noticable — it was all martini, with a softer, rounder edge.

But after the liquid rested a bit more, the apple flavor developed; the drink was still no fucking doubt a martini, but it had a lightly floral aroma, and a lingering finish that was had the bright, acidic crispness and the very gentle sweetness of a fresh Granny Smith apple. You wouldn’t sip this drink and have “apple” immediately leap to mind, but the fruit gradually manifested itself as a welcome addition to the martini’s familiar flavor — as though the bright freshness of the fruit was one of the botanicals in the gin or the vermouth, pronounced enough to be identifiable as a flavor, and definitely lending a soft, fruity caress to the drink, but not attempting to seize control of the drink’s character from its spirituous base elements.

Does it taste like a “real” Appletini? Hell, no. That’s why I’m still drinking it…

Anyway, that’s my MxMo contribution for this month. Head over to Jacob’s place and see what others have got up to for this round.

Tags: Drinks, Gin, Mixology Monday by Paul
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I’ve been at this cocktail thing a long time. A little more than eight years ago, if memory serves, I bought my first bottle of rye, tracked down a copy of David Embury’s The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks on eBay (price: $10 — oh, how things have changed) and started mixing the hell out of everything. But over the years (as the dwindling frequency of posts here suggests), I’ve grown lazy and jaded on some issues related to creative drinks, and the transformative episodes of finding a rare spirit or tasting a paradigm-shifting cocktail are now fewer and much further between.

Still, I’ve had my moments, and some of these have been quite memorable, based largely on the olfactory experience of a particular drink. This isn’t surprising, of course; the sense of smell has a tighter link to memory than any of our other senses (or so I recall reading somewhere, and it seems to make sense so I’ve stuck with it so far). And while I sometimes struggle to recall the precise flavor of a certain whiskey or of a once-mindbending cocktail, there are experiences I recall with complete clarity, due largely to the assertive aroma of a particular drink: the first Sazerac I had that was mixed with French absinthe (rather than Pernod or Herbsaint in those not-so-long-ago times when absinthe was still verboten), as the ethereal fragrance of green anise wafted up from the glass; or the moment at a Tales of the Cocktail past, as Eric Seed from Haus Alpenz poured sample cups of the not-yet-released Smith & Cross in a crowded tasting room and I caught the lascivious funk of the rum’s aroma from a full 10 feet away. And another? The Gin Basil Smash is right up there.

The Gin Basil Smash has a history that is blissfully short: created in 2008 by Jorg Meyer at his bar, Le Lion in Hamburg, the drink has reportedly enjoyed a good deal of popularity in Germany and environs (and is the only cocktail I know of that has its own Facebook page). The drink’s composition is ludicrously simple: just a basic gin sour with the addition of fresh basil and the lemon shell, which you muddle together and shake before double-straining over fresh ice (or, more in tune with the drink’s inspiration, a contemporary-style smash with the addition of basil).

Gin Basil Smash
by Jorg Meyer (adapted for us non-metric types)

• 2 oz. gin (I used Hendricks because it’s decent, I have a lot of it in the house and the urge struck)
• 3/4 oz. fresh lemon juice (about half a medium lemon)
• 3/4 oz. simple syrup
• 1 bunch fresh basil
• basil leaf, for garnish

Place basil and lemon shell in a mixing tin and muddle away (you can instead drop in half a lemon rather than a squeezed lemon shell, but you’re ramping up your muddling work a little). Add the remaining ingredients, fill shaker with ice and shake well until chilled, about 10 seconds. Strain into old-fashioned glass filled with fresh ice. Garnish with basil leaf.

Anyway, whatever – the drink is absolutely delicious, yes, but it’s also intensely aromatic. With a big bunch of fresh basil going into the mixing tin, the cocktail comes out alluringly green, but also enormously fragrant, impressing it all that much more on your memory the first time you tuck into one, while also making what would otherwise be a simple gin sour into a more three-dimensional drinking experience.

…which is kind of what this month’s Mixology Monday is all about. The theme is “Come to Your Senses,” and it’s hosted over at 12 Bottle Bar. Head on over and see what everyone else has come up with–

Tags: Gin, Mixology Monday by Paul
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There are three drinks to get through in this post — one familiar classic that I’ve somehow never blogged about here, two not-so-familiar variations — so let’s dispense with the niceties and get right down to it.

The Negroni. A moment of silent veneration, if you please. Three ingredients, equal parts — easy to remember, easy to prepare. That each of these three ingredients seems to be custom crafted to be mixed with the other two makes this core classic all the more perfect, if you can enhance superlatives like that, which I’m not sure you can but what the hell, it’s my blog and I’ll do what I like.

While the Negroni is simplicity itself, it’s also flexible, and you can take the basic formula, as countless bartenders have, and tweak it in any number of directions. Here’s the original, to get started.

Negroni

• 1 ounce dry gin
• 1 ounce sweet vermouth
• 1 ounce Campari

Combine in a mixing glass and stir well with ice until chilled, about 30 seconds. Strain into chilled cocktail glass or, if you prefer, into an ice-filled rocks glass. A wide swath of orange peel is a very good idea here; give it a twist over the drink and use as garnish.

A quick note before we move on: with such simplicity and balance, you need to pay attention to your ingredients. Campari is Campari, but everything else offers choices. For the gin, go as traditional as you can; Plymouth works well if you don’t want the juniper all up in your face, or go for old-school London drys like Tanqueray and Beefeater if you like that kind of confrontation. You can use a more contemporary gin if you like, but don’t get all frou-frou with lavender and rose petals and cucumbers and the like; for a Negroni, the gin’s gotta have some guts and gonads, and it can’t shy away from being GIN, so if you want something less in the Plymouth / London dry tradition, go for something savory and full-flavored like Martin Miller’s, Junipero or Voyager.

And the vermouth? Craft-cocktail types need to calm down a little when approaching this drink; sure, we all love Carpano Antica and it’s so much fun in Manhattan-esque drinks, but in a Negroni it’s just simply out of place (and while we’re on the topic of premium vermouths, Vya Sweet? Nice stuff, but keep it away from the Negroni for the same reason). Seriously, that’s not a Negroni — that’s a vanilla bomb, and at that point you’re hiding from the Campari (though there are exceptions, as I’ll get to in a minute). And Dolin Rouge is a favorite in some quarters, but in my opinion it’s just too light in character for this drink. You need a classic Turin-style vermouth (and “Antica” and history aside, the Antica formula flavor isn’t typical for a Turino vermouth), with sweetness and body but not too much; while Martini & Rossi takes some licks among the liquorati, I think it has the right combination of sugar / herbaceousness that a Negroni requires, and lately I’ve been using Martelletti, because it’s excellent vermouth and when I first found it I could only buy it by the case and I still have a shitload of it around. But really, Martini & Rossi is what you should reach for with a Negroni, and while you can argue with me all you want, I have the awesome palate of Neyah White on my side with this one, so there’s no way you can win this argument — though if you want to try, go read this first and then come back to fight.

Anyway, now that you have the basic, where to go next? Let’s stick close to home while still getting ambitious: the Negroni Swizzle. The recipe is from Giuseppe Gonzalez at Painkiller in New York; I’d heard about the drink for a while, then a few weeks ago I saw the recipe on Tasting Table. I finally mixed one last night and, hell: it has everything that’s fantastic about a Negroni, but somehow more approachable. If you have a friend who’s still a bit Campari-phobic but is willing to try, this is a great way to get them to warm up to a Negroni.

Negroni Swizzle
by Giuseppe Gonzalez, Painkiller, New York

• 1 ounce dry gin
• 1 ounce sweet vermouth
• 1 ounce Campari
• 1 ounce club soda
• 1 pinch salt

Fill a Collins glass with crushed ice. Add the ingredients, and using a bar spoon between your palms, spin the spoon in the mixture to combine and chill. Add more crushed ice — really, pack the fucking glass until the ice is mounded and the liquid threatens to overflow — and garnish with an orange wheel or, if you’re like me and didn’t leave enough room, a long, broad strip of orange zest carefully inserted down the side of the glass. Straw, please — and let it sit for a minute, to get a good frost on the outside of the glass.

The ingredients and proportions are the same as the original, with one exception: a pinch of salt (use sea salt or kosher salt; none of that iodized crap for the table). You don’t want a big enough pinch for the drink to taste salty; rather, you want it to function like a pinch of salt in a bowl of soup, where it just points up the other flavors without making its presence known.

There’s some club soda in there, too, which I’m not counting as an ingredient change since you get dilution anyway when you stir a basic Negroni, but between this dilution and the powerful chill that accompanies a swizzle, the drink’s intensity of flavor is softened — it still has everything you’re looking for in terms of Negroni flavor, but it’s not as heavy on the palate and the strong flavors aren’t as much in your face.

One other mixing note, however: the whole swizzle technique is used a lot when you have really powerfully flavored ingredients (like demerara rum) and/or high-proof ingredients (ditto). It’s worth keeping this tradition in mind when mixing a Negroni swizzle; if you have a higher-proof gin like Martin Miller’s Westbourne or, better yet, Plymouth Navy Strength, then go for it.

Okay, back to the vermouth: for anybody with bruised feelings over my dismissal of Carpano Antica for this drink (seriously, I know I’m gonna get comments and maybe a snide e-mail or two), here’s an exception: swap out the base spirit, and the Carpano may have its place.

I first came across the Agavoni in Robert Hess’ The Essential Bartender’s Guide, and wrote about this for Serious Eats in early 2009; since then the drink has made the rounds, popping up in the Washington Post and in Jason Wilson’s excellent new book, Boozehound, among other places. Created by German bartender / Traveling Mixologist / drinks writer Bastian Heuser, the Agavoni swaps out the gin for a silver tequila, which gives the drink a bright, peppery spark, against which a more lush vermouth such as the Carpano Antica works well. When Jason Wilson wrote this up for the Post, he suggested blancos such as Siete Leguas or El Tesoro; I couldn’t agree more on those recommendations.

Agavoni
by Bastian Heuser

• 3/4 ounce blanco tequila
• 3/4 ounce sweet vermouth – Heuser recommends Carpano Antica
• 3/4 ounce Campari
• 2 dashes orange bitters
• – grapefruit twist, for garnish

Build in a rocks or old-fashioned glass filled with ice. Stir briefly to mix and to chill; garnish with a grapefruit twist.

And if you’re into the whole Negroni variation thing, don’t forget the Boulevardier. Enough said.

Tags: Drinks, Gin, Sixty in 30, Tequila, Vermouth by Paul
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I try to range around the country when searching for good new drinks, hitting up bartenders in Boston, San Francisco and New Orleans to get an idea of how things are working in other cities.

This means, though, that I’ve sometimes been guilty of ignoring what’s happening closer to home, with Seattle bartenders, and part of what I’m trying to do with this short-term obsessive blog project is to highlight drinks from a few folks around town who are doing wonderful things. I’ve already mentioned Jim Romdall and his take-no-prisoners approach to mixology; here’s a drink (a not incredibly recent one, though that’s my fault) from another excellent Seattle bartender whose work I don’t cover anywhere near enough: Zane Harris, from Rob Roy.

The last time I interviewed Zane for anything, it was about a year and a half ago, for a gin article I was writing for Imbibe. At the time, Zane was working at Vessel, and he gave me a couple of drink recipes that were dramatically different, but that were both incredibly engaging.

One of the drinks was the Stone Fruit Sour, a recipe that ran online but not in the pages of the magazine. A simple modification of a Corpse Reviver #2, the Stone Fruit Sour starts with the same model of equal parts gin, Lillet and fresh lemon, but in place of Cointreau Zane goes for the richness of apricot liqueur, and in place of the heady absinthe, a couple of dashes of peach bitters.

Stone Fruit Sour
by Zane Harris, Rob Roy

• 3/4 ounce dry gin
• 3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice
• 3/4 ounce apricot liqueur
• 3/4 ounce Lillet
• 2 dashes Fee Brothers Peach Bitters

Combine everything in a cocktail shaker and fill with ice. Shake well about 10 seconds; strain into chilled sour glass or cocktail glass.

Before I go any further, I should note that today is Mixology Monday, hosted by Chris Amirault at eGullet, and Chris’s chosen theme is “Like That? You’ll Love This!” — in other words, sharing gateway drinks that can help usher the non-cocktail people in your life into your way of thinking. The last time an event with a similar theme came up, the drink I suggested was the Corpse Reviver #2, a flavorful and, in my mind, very approachable drink for beginners and committed cocktail enthusiasts alike.

If anything, the Stone Fruit Sour is even more easy to love; richer and fruitier where the CR2 can be lean and rangy, the Stone Fruit Sour seems tailor-made for drinkers accustomed to sweeter, fruitier, juicier drinks without a strong taste of alcohol, while itself avoiding (mostly) all of those descriptors. Sweet? Not really, but the liqueur provides enough richness that it’s sweet enough to get you there. Fruity? Hell, yes, but not in a cloying way. Ultimately, it’s just a perfectly balanced drink that touches on the peach / apricot / lemon comfort notes, but doesn’t sag into sticky insipidity like so many other drinks that venture down similar avenues.

Zane gave me another drink recipe to run with the gin story in 2009, one which actually did appear in print: the Don Bruno. Made with dry gin (Martin Miller’s Westbourne Strength is what you really want here), St. Germain and Don Bruno Sherry Vinegar, the drink has a complex, deep, eye-piercingly sharp flavor that doesn’t seem like it should work, but the combination really comes through.

The drink also has a problem — or, more accurately, I have a problem. A few months after the story came out, a bunch of us were at a dinner at Elemental in Seattle, a meal that featured pairings in which each course was matched with a drink made with Dolin vermouth. The drinks were created by various Seattle bartenders, along with non-bartenders including A.J. Rathbun and myself, and kicking everything off was an aperitif cocktail from Zane. I can’t recall the name that was stuck on the drink, but it was absolutely fantastic, and incredibly simple: nothing more than a splash of Don Bruno Sherry Vinegar tossed into an ice-filled mixing glass, swirled around and then poured off, followed by Dolin Blanc vermouth, stirred and strained into chilled glasses. Something about the sherry vinegar / blanc vermouth combo made it perhaps my favorite drink of the night.

And the problem? Last spring and summer I found myself with a hankering for these drinks, but I got lazy about checking the recipe. In my thinking, every time I thought of Zane’s Don Bruno cocktail, I forgot about the St. Germain and instead substituted Dolin Blanc, inadvertently mashing the two drink recipes together. An error on my part, I admit — but as I found out as this drink made it into occasional rotation in my house, it was a tasty, tasty error.

Don Bruno (mistake version)

• 2 ounces gin (Martin Miller’s Westbourne – really, it makes a difference, but substitute Plymouth or another savory dry gin if you just can’t get it)
• 1/2 ounce Dolin Blanc vermouth
• 1/4 ounce Don Bruno Sherry Vinegar
• – lemon twist, for garnish

Fill mixing glass with ice, and add vinegar. Stir a few seconds to splash the vinegar all over the ice; strain and discard excess vinegar. Add the gin and vermouth, and stir well until chilled, about 30 seconds. Strain into chilled cocktail glass; squeeze lemon peel over the drink and use as garnish.

The mistake version lacks the extra sweetness of the original, which is a better foil for the vinegar, but Dolin blanc has its own grape-ey sweetness, and just enough heaviness on the palate to counter the vinegar’s crisp bite. You really need to employ a light hand with the vinegar (or be vigilant about shaking out the excess), as it can easily screw everything up, but with its inimitable accent in the glass, it’s like a whole other class of bitters that lends depth and roundness to the finished drink.

Anyway, there’s one beginner-friendly cocktail for Mixology Monday, and one resolutely not a starter drink, both gathered (very long ago) from Zane Harris. While you’re online, go check out the other drinks from this month’s Mixology Monday, and once you’ve stepped away from the computer, go visit Rob Roy to see what else they’ve been up to.

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