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
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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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Time is fickle in its tastes. Consider the dishes that were once common, but now seem old-timey or downright gross to many contemporary eaters: tongue sandwiches, liver and onions, pickled pig’s feet. Each has, at one time, enjoyed a certain degree of appeal in America’s culinary history, and in some circles today they still seem pretty tasty, but at some point each of these dishes devolved from commonplace food item to relative oddity, due to nothing more than the constant shift of popular taste (in particular the “ick” factor).

Punch has a role in here somewhere, but unlike things like head cheese or grilled kidneys, there’s little “ick” factor that comes into play. The precursor to the cocktail and the relic of a time when drinks were typically mixed for a crowd, punch – and by this of course I mean real, true, boozy punch – mostly fell off the cultural radar at some point in the mid- to late-1800s. This onetime champion of the sideboard became relegated to the status of a party clown, trotted out on holidays and special occasions to entertain the easily amused and to distract from the host’s meltdown over a dozen party-planning catastrophes.

But today is Mixology Monday, and our host at Hobson’s Choice has chosen “Punch” as the theme. This is fortunate, as punch is on something of an upswing, due in no small part to the efforts of David Wondrich, whose upcoming book drinks deep of the flowing bowl. Since Dr. Wondrich has played such a significant role in turning a new generation onto the wonders of punch, I thought I’d nab a recipe he wrote up recently for my entry for this month’s MxMo.

I really wish I had more details about the Gowanus Club Gin Punch, but sadly I cribbed the recipe from the now-defunct Gourmet magazine (the August 2009 issue, to be exact), and Conde Nast apparently hasn’t seen the value in putting Wondrich’s original article on one of their related websites. (Sad, also, is the fact that I’m heavily jet-lagged right now so there’s no way in hell I have the energy to start digging through every drink book on my shelf in pursuit of details on the Gowanus Club).

So, let’s skip the history and get right down to it: based on Plymouth gin and lent a delicate, ethereal character through the use of green tea, yellow Chartreuse, pineapple syrup and muddled lemon zest, the Gowanus Club Gin Punch is light and lively enough for an early Spring party (or a late Summer bash, for that matter), but has enough pizzoom to keep it from being mistaken for one of those 7-Up and orange sherbet concoctions that used to be considered punch back when my parents hosted faculty parties in the ‘70s. I mixed a bowl of this not too long ago for a party where I was tending bar, and the richness of flavor was enough to inspire tolerance, if not love, in the hearts of dedicated gin-haters.

The Gowanus Club Gin Punch is kind of a pain to make, but this should be true for anything you serve by the bowl. Take note of the recipe and break it out the next time you have a group coming by; there’s a little something in there for every drinker in your orbit.

Gowanus Club Gin Punch

Pineapple syrup:

Combine 2 pounds demerara sugar in one pint of water in a saucepan over medium heat. Whisk until completely dissolved and syrup just comes to a boil. Let cool, then pour into a bowl with the flesh from one cleaned, cored and chopped fresh pineapple. Let soak for around 24 hours, then strain through cheesecloth, squeezing gently to extract the bits of pineapple-ey goodness.

Punch base:

Prepare a weak green tea by covering three tea bags with one quart near-boiling water. Let steep for three minutes, then remove tea bags.

In a non-reactive mixing bowl, place the thin-cut peels of three lemons with two ounces superfine sugar. Muddle vigorously with a wooden muddler until the mixture forms a fragrant yellow paste; let sit for one hour.

Add one cup of fresh lemon juice to the bowl and whisk to dissolve the sugar. Add:

• 1/2 cup pineapple syrup (as above)
• One ounce yellow Chartreuse
• One liter Plymouth gin
• One quart weak green tea

Stir well and remove lemon peels; place in refrigerator and let cool for at least one hour.

To serve, fill a large punch bowl halfway with ice (or use decorative ice mold). Add punch base, along with one liter chilled club soda. Garnish with fresh mint.

Unfortunately I neglected to take a photo of this punch the last time I prepared a bowl; hopefully this month’s other Mixology Monday participants are less lame than I am. Head over to Hobson’s Choice to see all the entries for this month.

Tags: Drinks, Gin, Mixology Monday by Paul
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‘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
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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
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