While Sylvan and I were at Tales of the Cocktail last year, we were lucky enough to have Chris Stanley, recently of New York’s Clover Club, make drinks for us at the Mixo House.  Of all the liquors and bar fixings at our disposal–and believe me, the amount was epic–the one ingredient that seemed to pique Chris’ interest more than any of the other ones was our sherry collection.  He said he used sherry all the time in his drinks and people love them.  After tasting his cocktails, I see why.   I like to have a little glass of it before dinner, but Chris opened my eyes to how versatile it is, drunk straight or mixed in a cocktail.  I realized that I don’t know squat about sherry as a cocktail ingredient, but would like to learn more. And I found I wasn’t alone.  Several of our friends had a hankering for a sherry tasting, so we got a group of people together who each brought a bottle or three. We also collected a number of cocktail recipes containing sherry to experiment with. Much like a wine tasting, we started with the driest finos and progressed to the sweeter amontillados, olorosos and the the dessert stylings of Pedro Ximénez. Here are my (uneducated and increasingly tipsy) notes from that fun evening.

FINOS

Alvear’s Fino—Very light in color, almost greenish. Strong aroma. Dry at first, slightly sour, with an almost salty finish. We agreed it would make a good addition to a dirty martini.

Lustau Light Fino—Light yellowy green in color. Weak aroma. Light on the palate, with a slightly lemony finish.

Williams & Humbert Dry Sack Medium—Brownish color, smells of brown sugar. Sweet, smooth, almost maple-like taste. This one really seems to be in a genre of its own since it didn’t seem to resemble the other finos. In fact, we moved it over to the amontillado table after tasting it.

AMONTILLADOS

Alvear’s Amontillado—Light brown in color. Complex aroma that is woody, citrusy and I thought almost fishy. The flavor was bright, balanced and sweet but not too sweet.

Sandeman Character Amontillado—Brown in color. Citrusy bouquet. Sweet at first, then woody and bitter. Though it has a fairly light finish, it was slightly astringent.

Hartley & Gibsons Amontillado—Dark brown in color. Alcohol fumes hit you before the sweet fragrance. This one has 19% alcohol. Sweet and strong flavored. Hints of orange and musty basement. Complex.

Valdespino Contrabandista—Cool label! Brown in color. Musty aroma. Hard to pin down this one. Bright yet woody, astringent yet slightly sweet with citrus flavors.

OLOROSO/CREAM

Alvear’s Cream Montilla—Orangish brown in color. Round and sugary, lightly orange in flavor.

El Maestro Sierra Oloroso—Dark brown with lots of body. Woody aroma. Taste was sharp and spicy, almost like witch hazel. Our least favorite sherry of the evening.

El Candado Pedro Ximénez A.R. Valedespino—Dark brown. Smells of raisins and molasses. Sweet and saturated flavor. Tastes of fruitcake and very raisiny.  Popular with everyone, especially near the end of the evening.  A good replacement for a glass of port after dinner.

Barbadillo Pedro Ximénez—Warm dark brown color. Sweet but weaker in flavor and more drinkable than El Candado. Light raisin and caramel flavors.

Sandeman Armada High Cream Oloroso—Pretty, walnut color. Velvety smell? (Okay, I was a little drunk by this time.) Balanced sweetness with a bright finish.

The surprise winners of the evening were all the Alvear’s sherries.  They are affordable, complex and tasty.  After the tasting of the sherries and the cocktails, most of us came away feeling more confident using sherry in cocktails, while also knowing what style we like to drink straight. The following cocktail was quite popular that night, and it introduced us to White Port as yet another new ingredient that we love in cocktails. Just when you think you know everything about everything in the liquor world, there’s always something more to learn.

The Robert Frost Cocktail – by Derek Brown

• ¾ oz Bourbon
• ¾ oz Amontillado Sherry (dry)
• ¾ oz White Port
• ½ oz Simple Syrup
• Dash of Orange Bitters

Combine ingredients and shake with ice. Strain into chilled cocktail glass and add thinly sliced orange and lemon wheels.

The other night at TDN: Fruit Brandy I came up with a drink that I’m quite proud of: the Rhumble. For those of you not familiar with Thursday Drink Night, it’s a weekly chat room gathering of cocktail folks inventing original drinks around a pre-chosen theme and awarding prizes to the one voted ‘best’. It’s put on collectively by the CSOWG.

I’ve always liked the apricot brandy and dry vermouth combo (ie Darb, Frankenjack from the Savoy Cocktail Book) and wanted to see if sherry could stand in if some bitters were added. Also, I really haven’t spent too much time with the Bitter Truth Celery Bitters (available here) so I fit them in there. I didn’t want to overcome the apricot fruit aroma with heavy spices, so they fit the bill quite well.

Rhumble

• 1 1/2 oz rhum agricole blanc (Saint Etienne)
• 3/4 oz dry sherry (Barbadillo Manzanilla)
• 3/4 oz apricot brandy (Rothman and Winter)
• 2 dashes celery bitters (Bitter Truth)

Stir, strain, up. Lemon twist.

I think that one really has good bones, and would be different but quite good with other bottlings. So far the Neisson blanc has proven a tasty alternative.

As a bonus recipe, I’ll leave you with my other drink that night, the Miss Haversham.

Miss Haversham

• 1 1/2 oz Irish whiskey
• 3/4 oz pear eau de vie
• 1/4 oz 2:1 demerara syrup
• 2 dashes Jerry Thomas bitters
• 1 dash Fees Barrel Aged bitters

Stir, strain, up.

This one is named after the Jasper Fforde character, who is a kind of an alter ego of Dicken’s Miss Havisham. I used Redbreast, but I’m sure something like Powers or Jameson would work as well.

Have you ever been at the end of a long meal and wanted a little something with alcohol, sugar or both, but yet you’re about to fall into a food coma? Or you just want a little extra something in your Saturday morning coffee? The French Nudge is a perfect marriage of all these desires. While I never got the exact recipe from the restaurant where I first had it years ago, the Brasserie Montmartre, this is what I re-created at home from memory after a few reconnaissance missions. One of the ingredients was creme de cacao, which I had none of. So I started playing around with ingredients and this is what I came up with. It was the first drink I ever named; I renamed it the Sylvan Nudge. You can guess why.

Sylvan Nudge

• 6-8 oz hot coffee
• 3/4 oz Grand Marnier
• 3/4 oz cognac
• 1/2 oz Kahlua

Top with fresh whipped cream or foamed milk.  Grate a little fresh nutmeg on top.

MMM, warm deliciousness. Warms you up, gives you a pleasant  feeling and a little jolt of caffeine. Whipped cream will float nicelty above the coffee (until it melts) making a crisp line between the light and the dark. The photo is of milk foamed with a Aerolatte-style milk frother.

Heck, it turns out that a lot of things are good in coffee (assuming you like coffee). I came across a recipe for Monk’s Coffee with a shot of green chartreuse in there and thought “No way.” But I tried it anyway and was amazed at how exotic and grown-up tasting it was.  Frangelico, creme de cacao, Kahlua Coffee Cream liqueur, whiskey, and brandy all have their place in hot coffee drinks. And though Kahlua may seem redundant to use in a coffee drink, it really pairs well with it and adds a certain sweetness and depth that I find welcome.

The Whiskey Sour is a true classic that has somewhat fallen out of favor because it is very difficult to get made well in a bar. Even if your bartender isn’t using commercial sour mix, he or she has to be willing and able to adjust the sweetness to your taste. Much like lemonade, everyone has a slightly different preference between mouth-puckeringly sour and syrupy sweet and so this is really a drink that you need to adjust to you or your customer’s taste, recipes aside. However, as a starting point, I humbly submit mine to be used as a starting point for your own.

Whiskey Sour

• 2 oz whiskey
• 1/2 oz lemon juice
• 1/2 oz simple syrup (1:1)

Stir all ingredients in a rocks glass to dissolve syrup; add ice and stir until cold. OR shake and strain over ice if you like it frothy. If you like it really frothy, shake ‘dry’ with about half an egg white before shaking with ice. I often serve/drink these on the rocks, but they can also be served up in a chilled glass. One popular garnish is a maraschino cherry, but I usually use a lemon twist.

While almost any blended whiskey will work for this drink, I usually go for a straight bourbon. Nothing too fancy, maybe Evan Williams black label, Elijah Craig 12 year, or Buffalo Trace.

Variations

The Sour is an eminently versatile drink for substitutions. This drink is kind of a ‘cold toddy’, and indeed, honey as the sweetener is a fine variation. To aid in dissolving the honey, pre-mix a syrup from equal parts honey and water. I also really enjoy using demerara syrup because it always seems to work well with whiskey drinks. And rum ones too, for that matter.

Other base spirits, such as rye whiskey, brandy, rum or even tequila all respond well to this basic template. A rum sour with lime is, of course, a Daiquiri, and a tequila sour with lime and a bit of orange liqueur is a Margarita, and a Cosmopolitan is not far off. Add a little grenadine to the base recipe and you’ve got a Ward 8.

To be honest, the primary reason that I make Whiskey Sours is to use up lemons that have been denuded to make garnish for other drinks! After you’ve made a number of Whiskey Cocktails, it seems a shame to throw out the lemon. However, the Whiskey Sour is a drink that anyone who wants to call themselves a bartender should have in their repertoire because it really is a template for so many drinks, as well as being quite tasty on its own.

July 14th is National  Grand Marnier Day, and in honor of that I wanted to share with you one of my favorite drinks for showcasing Grand Marnier.

A few years ago I stopped by a Portland restaurant, the late lamented Brasserie Montmartre, to visit a friend who was working a stint as a bartender there.  Asked if he could recommend a good after-dinner drink, he suggested a Beautiful, which was very popular there after the French meals they served. It became the instant go-to after dinner drink at our house, and has done serious damage to our Grand Marnier stock.

Beautiful

• 1 – 1 1/2 oz  Grand Marnier
• 1 – 1/2 oz  Cognac

Pour both into a snifter and serve.

So simple and yet so satisfying; sweet enough to be appealing when full of rich food, but spicy and complex enough to savor. After a nice dinner, I don’t usually find it necessary to measure this one. It’s a matter of taste, but I wouldn’t go more than 1/2 cognac.

This is such a basic variation that apparently there is even a bottled version available from Grand Marnier called Louis Alexandre. It was created in honor of Louis-Alexandre Marnier Lapostolle, the inventor of Grand Marnier.

I just wanted to post a quick update that I am in New Orleans at the Tales of the Cocktail and am having a fantastic time. I’ll be posting a real writeup  of both Tales and the CSOWG conference Drink.Write 2009 when I have more time  – for now you can check out my post over at the Tales Blog.

Classic balcony in the French Quarter.

For those readers that are not regular scourers of the cocktail blogs, I wanted to let you know that SeanMike over at the Scofflaw’s Den has just posted about a drink named after yours truly, the Sylvania. It’s kind of a whiskey sour with addition of cherry vanilla bitters, mint and St. Germain. I haven’t gotten around to whipping one up just yet, but I’ll be fine straining out the mint.

It’s his drink, so I’ll let him tell it:
http://scofflawsden.com/blog/2009/06/24/sylvania/

Around my house, the Knickerbocker is a regular summer favorite.  A very old drink, it was published in 1862 by Jerry Thomas and reappeared in books of the time until Harry Johnson’s 1888 manual. I have adapted the recipe here from Wondrich’s Imbibe! (Thomas) and Haigh’s Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails (Johnson). Quoting Wondrich, “With it’s rum and its lime juice, its syrups and liqueurs, the Knickerbocker is the spiritual progenitor of the Tiki drink. Think of it as an 1850’s Mai Tai–similar drink, different island.”

Knickerbocker

• 2 oz Santa Cruz rum (Virgin Islands rum, ie Cruzan)
• 3/4 oz  lime juice
• 1/2 oz raspberry syrup
• 1/2 oz Curaçoa (orange curaçao)

Build over crushed ice and stir or shake to cool thoroughly.

The combination of raspberry, curacao, lime and dark rum is a real winner. I really like the woody edge of a nice, dark Jamaica rum in this one, so I’ve been known to replace 1/2 oz of the rum with Coruba. Or float it on top of the drink for an old-fashioned touch. A recent variation with blackberry syrup also turned out well.

If you go with the recipe listed in Imbibe!, I would disregard Wondrich’s adapted amount of curaçoa in brackets. Neither the 1/2 tsp in the recipe nor the 2 tsp in the notes equal the 1 oz in brackets. However, some drinkers may prefer it with the full 1 oz, especially if the lime is extra tart.

A note on the raspberry syrup – I’ve been working my way through a commercial bottle of the stuff for quite some time, but if the berries happen to be in season, they quite readily yield their flavor to a syrup. For those of us that like recipes: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/dining/192wrex.html

Inspired by an old Alcademics post and some recent warm weather, I set about perfecting a recipe for a gin and tonic that uses fresh cinchona bark and fruit juice, rather than tonic water.

Gin and Tonic

• 1/8 tsp finely powdered cinchona bark
• 1 1/2 dry gin (Beefeater, Junipero recommended)

Mix these two and wait at least 2 minutes, but not more than 5.

• 1/2 oz fresh lime juice
• 1/2 oz fresh lemon juice
• 3/4  simple syrup
• 1 dash Angostura bitters (optional)

Stir, add ice and top with soda water ~4 oz

These “brown g and t’s” are actually quite refreshing. The taste is different than, say, Schweppes and there’s a barky character that I quite like. Feel free to up the citrus or reduce the syrup, especially when using different gins, I find there’s a bit of leeway there.

The cinchona powder? Well, I picked mine up in person at Tenzing Momo in Seattle, but other health food stores/natural medicine outlets do carry it, on and offline.

Further reading:

http://www.alcademics.com/2008/09/homemade-tonic-actually-easy.html

Cinchona (pronounced ’sin-koh-na’) is also known as Jesuit’s bark and quinine bark among other names.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinchona

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesuit’s_bark

http://www.henriettesherbal.com/eclectic/usdisp/cinchona.html

While I feel like I buy bourbon whiskey more often than other spirits, I can’t say that bourbon is my favorite spirit to mix with; I’m much more likely to drink it on the rocks or in a Whiskey Cocktail (basically an Old-Fashioned without fruit). But there are a few drinks that I make regularly using bourbon. For mixing, I recommend using an affordable bourbon like Evan Williams black label or even the Elijah Craig 12 year old. There’s really no need to go to more expensive ’single barrel’ or ’small batch’ bottlings. Unless that’s just ‘how you roll’, in which case you should invite me over for drinks sometime.

One of my favorite variations on the tried-and-true Champagne Cocktail is the Kentucky Champagne Cocktail, which is nothing more than a Champagne Cocktail with a shot of bourbon in it.

Kentucky Champagne Cocktail

• Put a sugar cube in a largish champagne glass and soak with 3-6 dashes of Angostura bitters.  Then add:
• 1 oz bourbon
• Fill with champagne or other bubbly (Segura Viuda Cava, recommended)

Other bitters will work, especially orange bitters, but the venerable Angostura is my current favorite for this drink. This one isn’t too far from the classic Seelbach Cocktail either – just up the Ango. to 7 dashes, add 7 more dashes of Peychaud’s and 1/2 oz of Cointreau and you’re there.

One thing to note when making this, or any other champagne cocktail, is to be very careful when pouring the bubbly, as it tends to foam up dramatically when poured onto the sugar cube.

Another drink that I make at home (mostly because they are almost impossible  to get made well away from home) is a Whiskey Sour. I’m most likely to make this to use up some extra lemon juice, or to use a lemon that has been thoroughly peeled for garnish. I’ve recently added a variation on the Whiskey Sour to my repertoire, the Port Light.

Port Light – from Beachbum Berry’s Grog Log

• 1 oz bourbon
• 1 oz lemon juice
• 1/2 oz passion fruit syrup
• 1 Tbsp grenadine

Blend with 1 cup crushed ice for 5 seconds and pour into a collins glass.

This is quite tasty – there is more going on in the glass than a traditional Whiskey Sour. The tartness is nicely balanced and given depth by the passion fruit and grenadine. I’m using a homemade passion fruit syrup from the clear part of a settled out Looza passion fruit nectar and sugar.

There are more bourbon drinks out there than you would think, once you start looking. Whiskey Smash, Mint Julep, Manhattan, Bourbon Crusta, Honi Honi – what’s your favorite bourbon drink?