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
6 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 »

There I was, Friday night, getting ready to mix up a drink and then, as the time crept closer to midnight, blog the hell out of it in a frenzy so I could keep up with the 30-day, daily post regimen I set for myself a couple weeks back. This being Friday, I figured I might mix a few; the East India was on my list, but there was another drink I wanted to give a spin: the Ephemeral.

I did, and it was good, and I took photos (albeit poorly lit ones) and everything, but before blogging it up, I thought, “What’s the rush? Let me take care of the East India, which I’ve been planning on getting around to, and once that’s out of the way I can mosey back over to this little number. After all, the only place I’ve seen this recipe posted is on Facebook [and yes, I feel more than a little like a 14-year-old girl while typing that], in an update from David Shenaut; it’s not like this is gonna pop up on the Internet anywhere in the next few days.”

What I didn’t count on, of course, is that Chuck Taggart would have the very same impulse to mix up this intriguing drink, and would get it online while I was still mucking about in the kitchen. But while Chuck and Wes may have scooped me on getting this drink posted first, it deserves the extra coverage.

David is a bartender at Teardrop Lounge in Portland, and when I had the bottles assembled on the table for a quick photo, I realized that this cocktail has all the hallmarks of booze-geek nirvana: Dolin Blanc, the current vermouth of the moment (and a few years ago, did anyone think that there would ever be such a thing as a vermouth of the moment?), Old Tom gin, The Bitter Truth Celery Bitters — hell, the most mainstream ingredient in the mix is St. Germain.

The Ephemeral is just that — lightly sweet, with botanicals hitting all ranges of the palate, from the lightness of elderflowers to the crisp savory flavor from the celery bitters to the deep softness of the gin. Like Chuck, I used the Hayman’s Old Tom in this as it’s what I have on hand; though having tasted the Ransom Old Tom I’d like to give it a run through the Ephemeral, as it’s on the drier, richer side of the Old Tom experience.

Anyway, nice job, Dave, and thanks a hell of a lot, Chuck, for beating me to the punch with this drink.

Ephemeral

• 1 1/2 ounces Old Tom gin
• 1 ounce Dolin blanc vermouth
• 2 teaspoons St. Germain
• 3 dashes The Bitter Truth Celery Bitters

Combine ingredients in a mixing glass and stir well with cracked ice. Strain into chilled cocktail glass, squeeze a piece of grapefruit peel over the drink and use as garnish.

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
9 Comments »

(Running into the evening with this 30/30 post, but it’s still Wednesday where I live, so all’s fair….)

A few months ago the good folks at Imbibe sent me to Las Vegas, a city that’s diametrically at odds with just about everything about me: I’m normally pretty quiet and subdued, I’m practically allergic to big party atmospheres, and gambling is one of the few vices that’s never really interested me. But I was being sent to Vegas to drink — or, to put it less dramatically, to visit a bunch of bars and restaurants and find out who was pouring some of the best stuff, from beer to booze to cocktails — and then write it up for the magazine; the May/June issue, to be specific, which is now on subscriber’s coffee tables and on newsstands all over the place.

While I did plenty of research beforehand, I was really fortunate to have a couple of volunteer tour guides accompany me on my rounds. My first night in town, Bellagio bartender and helluva nice guy Sean Bigley (who’s also behind the Ultimate Bar Chef website) took me to a number of different bars and introduced me to a number of great people, from Patricia Richards at the Wynn (who I’d met a couple of years ago when she was representing the US Bartender’s Guild at the Bacardi-Martini Grand Prix in Italy) to George Sproule at Downtown Cocktail Room, to Vegas bartending legend Bobby G, who we ran into at the bar at Nora’s Cuisine. Sean and I soaked up some excellent, some mediocre, and some downright awful drinks around town,  while Sean gave me an evening-long tutorial about bartending in Las Vegas, explaining as he went why it’s considerably different from working or drinking in any other city in the world.

My second night in town, after gawking at the extensive cognac, armagnac and calvados selection at Andre’s at the Monte Carlo (and tasting a wee bit), and at the scotch selection at Craftsteak at the MGM Grand (and ditto, along with hitting a few other bars on the way, for research purposes), I had a seat at the Fontana Bar at the Bellagio, where Sean works. While waiting for Matt Robold, aka Rum Dood, who was joining me on an excursion to Frankie’s Tiki Room, I asked Sean to make me one of his signature cocktails; this is what he came back with.

Sean’s drink, By Any Other Name, was originally created for a Hendrick’s Gin competition. Matching the gin’s notable cucumber and rose-petal characteristics with the florals found in St. Germain, and running with the floral theme through the introduction of a good dose of Sence Rose Nectar, the cocktail is elaborate yet light in flavor. When Sean broke out the Sence, I got a little nervous; I’d tried working up cocktails with rosewater and rose syrup before, only to be continually frustrated by these ingredients’ tendency to turn a complex cocktail into something that tastes like your grandmother’s soap. The rose nectar, however, is a much lighter-flavored product that manages to avoid that soap-like flavor (plus, it’s distributed at gourmet food stores and high-end supermarkets around the country; I picked mine up at Metropolitan Market in Seattle, but if you can’t find it near you, you can order it from Sean’s website). Sean uses a whole 2 ounces of Sence in this drink, but the rose flavor comes nowhere near dominating the cocktail. Overall it’s a really enjoyable drink, and if you go all out with Sean’s recommended garnish of an edible rose petal dusted with edible silver flake, it’s absolutely beautiful as well (I gave up on even trying to photograph this one; instead, check out Stuart Mullenberg’s awesome photo of the drink that appears on the article’s opening spread, pictured in the screen capture above).

You can read my article on Imbibe’s site, though you’ll need to pick up the magazine to dig deeper into other drinking destinations around Las Vegas, as well as for a couple of other recipes from some of the city’s better bars (and I’ve gotta give big kudos again to Stuart Mullenberg, who shot some really fantastic photos to accompany the story — if you don’t already have a subscription to Imbibe, be sure to pick up this issue for Stuart’s photos of Las Vegas bars if nothing else).

By Any Other Name, created by Sean Bigley
(makes enough for 2 drinks, or one really big one)

• 2 1/2 ounces Hendrick’s gin
• 1/2 ounce St. Germain
• 1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice
• 2 ounces Sence Rose Nectar
• 1 dash pomegranate syrup (I used grenadine, which is pretty much the same thing)

Combine ingredients in a shaker and fill with ice; shake well and strain into chilled cocktail glasses. Go to town with the garnish, as above.

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 »