Cocktails, Spirits and Mixology Thread

I tried Sinfire Cinnamon Whiskey the other night.

Holy Shit.

Very cinnamony, but not too much. Packs a whallop too.

By some miracle are my remaining appendages still attached.

 

Pomelo & Basil Cocktail



1.5 oz. Gin
1 oz. Pomelo Juice
0.75 oz. Basil Simple Syrup

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/02/drinking-in-season-pomelo-basil-cocktail-recipe.html

 

Time Magazine on Bourbon:

I knew that bourbon had reached a different place in America when I went to a bar in my neighborhood the other week and tried to order my favorite kind. They didn’t have it. So, spotting a bottle of George Dickel, I said I would take that. “Sure,” the bartender said somewhat dismissively. “But Dickel isn’t bourbon. It’s sour-mash whiskey.”

Bourbon, you see, has come of age, and not in the barrel so much as the marketplace. It’s a strange thing to say about a product that is hundreds of years old and hardwired into the American mind, but that’s exactly what’s been the problem all along. We have all pretty much taken it for granted. Now, as my pedantic server helped show me, that’s no longer the case. Every well-informed drinker is expected to know what is and isn’t bourbon. (Short version: the drink, which takes its name from the county in Kentucky where it was first produced, has to be 51% corn and aged a long time in charred oak barrels.) Drinkers ought to know one brand from another too. Top bars like Seven Grand in L.A. and restaurants like Miami’s Yardbird feature immense, imposing bourbon menus like the one at Chicago’s Longman & Eagle, which includes many bottlings from obscure distillers no one outside the Bluegrass State has ever heard of. Bourbon, in a relatively brief and recent span, has become one of the world’s elite spirits and is given the attention and respect typically accorded European imports like XO cognac, premium rums and single-malt Scotch.

Part of this rise owes to just how good bourbon is: the best bourbons have an amazingly complex amalgam of smoke and oak and sweetness and heat. And part of the fascination comes from some long-overdue marketing efforts. “If you take top-quality product,” says cocktail historian Dave Wondrich, “and add the magic combination of clever, we’re-not-marketing-this marketing, high price and limited supply, American whiskey can stand on the same shelf as the world’s other great luxury spirits. The only wonder is that it took this long.” The limited supply is key: a first-rate bourbon typically has to be aged for at least eight to 10 years, the very best ones 18 years or more. That’s a long time to make a bottle that can get emptied in a night if you’re not careful. And most of the stuff that old was put into oak casks back when demand was relatively small. According to one Kentucky news source, the number of bourbon barrels in stock has grown 115% since 1990, when inventories reached a record low.

“We are trying to play catch-up now,” says Julian Van Winkle, whose grandfather launched the Pappy Van Winkle brand in a Kentucky distillery; its influential connoisseurs, like chef Sean Brock, have helped make it today’s most sought-after bourbon. (A 23-year-old bottle is being offered on Craigslist for $695 and eBay for $699.) “Over the last few years, we have increased sales by 200 to 300 cases,” he says, adding, “[but] only because we had those barrels available.”

Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2013/01/25/is-the-bourbon-boom-for-real/#ixzz2JI6oilnD

 

Bourbon also must be aged in new, charred oak barrels.
At least, it does if you're going to sell it as bourbon in the US.

 

And, once they're used, many of the barrels get shipped to Scotland, where they're used again to age Scotch whiskey.

 

I was discussing this with a friend a few weeks ago.
What was the original impetus behind the 'new' barrels? Were people using pitch barrels? Stuff was leaching from the wood and making people sick?
According to a distiller, using new wood actually leaches a lot of the character out of the liquor, so using aged barrels seems like it would be better.

 

I'm not sure why "new" is required, but at some point the barrel isn't going to add any flavor.

I went to a Glenmorangie tasting that their head distiller hosted. He said that some lesser Scotches will use barrels over and over again. They will also add coloring to the finished product.

He was against allowing the use of any artificial coloring. He said some Scotches would be nearly clear without it.

If I recall, they buy old Jack Daniels barrels.

 

I'd agree that no dyes or coloring should be allowed.
Sounds like there are two possible issues with barrel age.
Used barrels can impart extra character, but at a certain point they stop contributing to the character of the spirit.
New barrels not only don't contribute to the character, they pull flavor out of the spirit.

I'm really curious about the 'new' requirement.

 

Tanqueray Brings Back Malacca Gin for a Spell

In 1997, Tanqueray introduced a new gin called Malacca. It was softer, “wetter” and less juniper-forward than its London Dry counterpart, and bottled at a lower proof. But by 2001 it was pulled from the market as the company focused on other products. From there, the legend grew. Mixologists who tasted it said it was as close as you could get today to Old Tom Gin, a sweeter, 19th-century style of gin essential to recreating certain pre-Prohibition cocktails. The thirsty hunted for stray bottles.

Tanqueray, finally responding to the growing interest, is now bringing Malacca back for a limited run. Priced at $33, it will hit shelves in February. It works beautifully in a Tom Collins or a Turf Cocktail (equal parts Malacca and sweet vermouth).

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/tanqueray-brings-back-malacca-gin-for-a-spell/

 

A whiskey lover's rum:

On a recent trip to the Dominican Republic, I tried as much rum as I could find and, as a whiskey drinker, was left bored. Even some of the recommended labels seemed thin and one-dimensional. But then, on my last night, I wandered into a hotel bar and started drinking the fancy stuff. Success.

One of those successes is available on shelves in the United States, and it's little wonder that it appealed to a dedicated whiskey lover.

Brugal 1888 is the company's first rum to be aged twice — first in white American oak, then in used sherry casks. The result is more than just a spirit distilled from molasses or sugar cane (Brugal uses molasses). It creates something close to a rum-whiskey hybrid.

At $50, Brugal 1888 is also one of the more expensive rums on American shelves, and a member of the growing premium rum market.

"The big challenge was using a different kind of wood," said Juan Campos, the company's brand development manager in the Americas.

Brugal 1888, named for the year the company was founded, is the same base spirit as Brugal's other rums. The difference is simply the wood where it is double-distilled and double-matured. As opposed to younger rums, all that exposure to wood lets 1888 take on multiple layers: vanilla, maple, molasses (of course) and light oak. Smooth and lacking the burn of many younger rums, 1888 is worth sipping as you would whiskey — neat, with a little water or an ice cube — even if it has a thicker body than most whiskeys.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/food/sc-food-0201-drink-brugal-rum-20130203,0,822033.story

 

American craft vermouth:


At one time it shared equal billing with gin in the martini. But when that cocktail went dry, vermouth was relegated to the back of the bar. Worse than uncool, it became irrelevant.

Now, in the current craze for craft spirits, the drink is in resurrection mode. Restaurants like Rouge Tomate and Franny’s, in New York, are featuring it with greater frequency in cocktails. Vermouth is creeping back into the glass in its original form, as an aperitif sipper on its own.

The recent availability in this country of some superior vermouths from Europe, like the spectacular Mauro Vergano and Carpano Antica from Italy, has inspired American enthusiasts to try concocting this ancient drink in small batches. Vya, in California, started distributing nationally in 1999. Since 2009, four more vermouths have arrived in the domestic market, two of them from the New York area.

One of the more unconventional of the new varieties is the work of Bianca Miraglia, 29, who lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Dressed one night in suspenders attached to cutoffs over patterned stockings, she looked like a hipster Eloise. Last month, Ms. Miraglia introduced her brand, Uncouth Vermouth; the label bears the silhouette of a woman from the Empire period, uncouthly sticking a finger up her nose.

What drew someone so young to such an old spirit? “It’s truly a magical potion that starts out as wine and then it gets resurrected as an erotic aperitif,” she said.

Vermouth is made by steeping wine with a huge assortment of herbs, barks, roots and fruits; the length of time varies. Some producers, like Mauro Vergano, an Italian master of the art, keep this maceration going for up to a month. The wine is fortified with brandy and sweeteners, often sugar or honey. Because there’s no single recipe, the taste is difficult to summarize, but many vermouths evoke a marmalade, with its balance of bitter and sweet. Some conjure up Christmas cake; others, a forest walk through pines and ferns.

Where vermouth parts ways from other aromatic wines (like the esoteric Barolo Chinatos or the commercial Suze) is in its inclusion of wormwood, a practice with deep roots in medicine. Hippocrates is said to have prescribed wormwood-based wines for an array of ailments, including anemia and menstrual cramps. Alcohol was added for the first time in 1786 by Benedetto Carpano of Turin, Italy. If we are to believe vintage posters, his Carpano Antica was the Coca-Cola of its day.

The big vermouth makers — Noilly Prat, Martini & Rossi, Dolin and others — muscled in on his success. All used wormwood. Although European law still requires it today (the wine’s name derives from “wermut,” the German word for the herb), the United States does not. “In America we are free from the rules,” said Adam Ford, a New York lawyer who brought his powerfully flavored Atsby vermouths to market, without wormwood, in October. “If it looks like vermouth, smells like vermouth and acts like vermouth, it is vermouth.”

Carl Sutton, founder of Sutton Cellars, a San Francisco winemaker that produces a wormwood-free vermouth, defended the omission. “I find it overwhelmingly bitter,” he said.

Unlike her fellow artisans, though, Ms. Miraglia fears no bitter, and uses the very Harry Potter-sounding herb, mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), a relative of wormwood (Artemisia absinthium). She finds most vermouths far too syrupy, so she sweetens hers solely with fruits or wines, like riesling. A few of her vermouths are bracingly dry.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/dining/american-made-vermouths-anything-goes.html?_r=0