I have been traveling around too much to be in Mixology Monday mode recently.  Unfortunately I missed the last one on 19th Century cocktails.  How did I manage to miss that?  It sounded great.  Ahh. . .the travails of travel.

Anyway, this time round the theme is Guilty Pleasures, hosted by Two at the Most.  The main idea behind the theme seems to be ‘comfort cocktails’, similar to ‘comfort food’. There is also a suggestion that it could include drinks that appeal a poorly educated palate.  Hmm. . .

Forgive me if I randomly muse rather than picking a single drink.

OK, what I’m really going to do is smack you in the face with a Bunnyhug.  However, I’ll soften the blow by first musing on cream, creme de menthe, and other inoffensive things.

The White Russian immediately came to mind when I thought about ‘comfort cocktails’, but I see Dr. Bamboo has already covered it.  There is nothing too special about a White Russian though.  When you are in the mood for a White Russian just about any sweet and creamy drink might do equally well.  Perhaps the ideal time for these drinks is when watching a DVD at home on a winter evening.  A Brandy Alexander is great, and so is the original Alexander Cocktail (simply substitute gin for the brandy).  Tossing aside any pretense of sophistication, I also have to admit possessing a soft spot for a Grasshopper (creme de cacao, creme de menthe and cream).  My incredibly discerning palate means I find a mixture of two liqueurs and cream slightly sweet.  This is where vodka becomes my friend.  A slosh of vodka cuts the sweetness and boosts the octane.  The ideal proportions for these drinks depend on how you are feeling and how heavy your cream is, but equal parts is a good place to start.

I have a weakness for creme de menthe.  The taste might be sweet and one dimensional, but there is a pleasant simplicity about it, plus a gratifyingly lurid greenness.  Creme de menthe harks back to a simpler age.  Just possibly the whole concept also worked better pre-toothpaste.  Part of the appeal for me is probably that creme de menthe was the first liqueur I was ever properly served (stealing a bottle of Chartreuse as a toddler doesn’t count since I forgot to nick glassware).  I was maybe seven or eight years old or so at the time, and watching Murder on the Orient Express on television.  Hercule Poirot was sitting in the train dining car drinking a glass of green stuff.  Clearly this was something I needed to do myself at some stage.  I asked my father what the famous Belgian detective was drinking and within seconds I had a matching drink, right down to the glass.  I have trouble thinking of a really great cocktail that requires creme de menthe, but how can a bar be complete without a bottle of the green stuff?  It has to be there, even if you just pick it up and admire the color occasionally.

Anyway, before I got sidetracked by creme de menthe I was going to give a shout for the Bunnyhug.  For some reason everybody hates this drink.  I admit the Bunnyhug has a rough edge or two, and perhaps my palate could be more refined, but really, for pure abrasive flavorsomeness the Bunnyhug has few equals.  Another drink that comes close is the Asylum Cocktail.

I no longer drink the Bunnyhug often, but I think both it and the Asylum have a place.  The Bunnyhug is more of a flavorsome pick-me-up, an ill-advised strategy for grappling with a major life crisis, or something to order in a bar that can’t mix drinks.  I am less sure about the Asylum.  Given the visual effect I guess you could consider it an alcoholic’s Tequila Sunrise, save it as  shock therapy for a friend whose addiction to colorful umbrella drinks is annoying you, or treat it as an entry level Bunnyhug.

The theme for this Mixology Monday (hosted at Save the Drinkers) is Local Flavor.  The idea is to make a drink featuring local ingredients.  I will treat New Zealand as my locality.  During my temporary sojourn in the Dominican Republic I have no bar besides a couple of bottles of rum.  I think I should blog on a drink I invented a few years ago and had the foresight to photograph.

Sensitive readers should be aware that this drink contains vodka.

Those open-minded and inquisitive readers that are still with me will be wondering the circumstances that led me to invent a vodka drink.  You can blame the arrival in China of 42 Below vodka.  An Australian friend of mine with a bar in Shanghai was impressed with 42 Below.  I think he was impressed with the marketing more than the product, and you have to admit that some of it is hilarious.  Anyway, my friend asked me to invent some house cocktails, featuring New Zealand’s very own 42 Below. My reward was free alcohol and the chance to strike at the French via creative cocktail nomenclature.

Even the cocktail inventing was not entirely joyless.  Vodka may be the most boring spirit in the world, but occasionally you find a flavored vodka that offers you a taste you would otherwise have trouble getting in a drink.  Poland’s Zubrovka (flavored with bison grass) is one example.  New Zealand’s 42 Below Feijoa is another.

The kiwifruit flavor may not have been such a good idea.  In New Zealand we seem to suffer a compulsion to produce kiwifruit everything (candy, liqueurs, soap, juices, facial scrubs, and much more), then plead with tourists to take the crap off our hands.

Feijoa is a different story.  While the fruit is native to Brazil, it is oddly popular in New Zealand.  While efforts have been made to cultivate it in quite a few countries, I do not know of anywhere else it is taken on in quite the same way.  Visitors to New Zealand are often unfamiliar with it so I am guessing not many places grow it on any scale.  Even in New Zealand it only began to be sold in supermarkets fairly recently.  It was popular long before the supermarkets took it up, but was the type of fruit people either had in their gardens, acquired from neighbors, or bought at the side of the road.  Feijoa is an under-appreciated fruit with an interesting flavor (something like a weird twist on a guava), and seeing it show up as a vodka flavor was good.  Finally, an interesting flavored vodka, and with a local flavor to boot!

You could do all kinds of things with this stuff.  It should be great in Tiki drinks.  However, I went for a simple riff on a classic French high-ball, a cognac and tonic.  Then, in recognition of my debt to the French, I named the drink in a manner calculated to cause them embarrassment and offense.  Really though, what kind of nation sends their special forces to blow up a Greenpeace protest vessel?  What kind of secret agents get caught because of a neighborhood watch group?  The French are truly special.

The Rainbow Warrior

1 oz Cognac (or other decent Armagnac or brandy – since it gets cut with vodka a robust Armagnac is not a bad choice)

1 oz 42 Below Feijoa

1 lime wedge (lemon will do in a pinch)

Tonic water

Build over ice in a collins glass, squeezing the lime wedge to extract the juice.  Serve with a straw.  Show your angry side by garnishing with a burning French flag, or be humorous and use a mechanical bath toy in the shape of a frog or a scuba diver.  It all depends how you are feeling about the French that day.

The above makes for a pleasant, fruity, and slightly exotic twist on a cognac and tonic.  Recommended if you have 42 Below Feijoa lying around.

Needless to say the Chinese barmen soon began ‘improving’ the recipe.  The drink morphed into vodka, peach schnapps, and soda, and subsequently died a deserved death.  Here you have the drink in its original version.

This month’s Mixology Monday sees me without ready access to a bar to mix a drink.  On well, I’m going to go ahead and post something anyway.  The theme this month is New Orleans cocktails, so I thought I could post a couple of tips related to making drinks containing egg white, with particular reference to that venerable old New Orleans drink – the Ramos Gin Fizz.

I had made it something of a mission to get a decent Ramos Gin Fizz while in New Orleans for Tales of the Cocktail.  What I really wanted was a Ramos Gin Fizz made by Chris McMillan (check out a video of him mixing one here).  Before leaving for New Orleans I rang the bar he now works at (in the Renaissance Pere Marquette Hotel) and was told by that the great man would be behind the bar on the Friday and Saturday during Tales of the Cocktail from 4pm onwards.  I dropped past the hotel late on Friday afternoon.  The bar was deserted.  There was no queue out onto the street for Ramos Gin Fizzes.  The lobby was not filled with a couple of dozen drinks bloggers, passing a shaker or two around as they shook a couple of fizzes up.  I had lucked out!  Then I got a little closer and realized Chris McMillan was nowhere to be seen.  On asking if he was around I found he was not going to be back at work until the 25th.  Alas it was not to be.

Although the Chris McMillan Ramos Gin Fizz never happened, after the session on New Orleans Drinks I got the chance to ask Chris where I would get a Ramos Gin Fizz in New Orleans given that he wasn’t working his own bar that week.  He told me not to even try at his own bar unless he was there – which made me feel better about slinking out on the poor young guy tending bar there.  Chris suggested The Swizzle Stick Bar at Cafe Adelaide.  I graciously thanked Mr. McMillan before thrusting him out of my way and rushing to Cafe Adelaide.

Once again, it was not to be.  On a better day Chris McMillan’s suggestion may have been a good one.  I should have done well given that I believe my drink was mixed up by Lu Brow – the ‘bar chef’ at Cafe Adelaide.  Unfortunately I have little  good to say about the Ramos Gin Fizz I drank at Cafe Adelaide.  OK, I guess the ingredients and proportions were about right.  Unfortunately the execution was abysmal.  I shake a Daiquiri longer than Lu Brow shook this Ramos Gin Fizz.  I wasn’t expecting the bar to lower its shutters for quarter of an hour while everybody in the room took turns shaking my drink.  Indeed I was half expecting to be tossed out into the street for daring to ask for a Ramos Gin Fizz.  However, given that the place was as near empty as I saw it during Tales of the Cocktail, a shake lasting longer than 15 seconds would have been nice.  The drink tasted OK, but it was rather diluted (the crushed ice they seem to favor for all drinks in The Swizzle Stick Bar is not always the way to go), and texturally it was way off.  That said, at least I was able to go into a bar and order a Ramos Gin Fizz without throwing the barstaff into a fit of confusion.  You couldn’t do that in most places.

The Swizzle Stick Bar Ramos Gin Fizz was a sorry contrast to the exceptionally frothy Pisco Sour I enjoyed in The Alembic in San Francisco.  The Alembic pisco sour was probably the stand out drink from my U.S. trip.  The difference between the two drinks was the level of care taken with the execution.

So where am I going with all this?

I thought for this Mixology Monday I would throw a couple of Ramos Gin Fizz making tips out there.  I have not tried the third of these myself, since it is something I learned from a bartender/blogger while attending Tales.  I’ve now forgotten who told me this, so give a shout if you happen to be reading.  I haven’t tried the fourth either, but professional bartenders seem to like it.

Tip number 1 – Dry shake the mixture before adding any ice.  This shouldn’t need to be said, but many people skip this essential step.

Tip number 2 -Add the coil from your Hawthorne Strainer to the shaker while dry shaking (removing it when you add the ice).  The coil will act like a whisk and aerate the egg faster than if you shook without the coil in there.  So far as I know this technique is not traditional.  I have never seen it in a recipe.  However, my experiments have found it to work well.  The pisco sour at The Alembic was made this way.  The Alembic was the first bar where I have seen a dry shake done this way.  Congratulations to the Alembic for taking that extra little bit of trouble.

Tip number 3 – Add the sugar after your dry shake.  The theory behind this is that sugar acts as a stabilizer for existing foam, but actually inhibits foam formation.  I have not experimented with this yet.  However, I was surprised a few weeks back when a batch of pisco sours I made up turned out to have an exceptionally good foam.  Being a batch drink I got a little confused with the proportions and undersweetened to begin with, adjusting the sweetness later.  Perhaps the batch of drinks turned out well because I added about half of the sugar at the end.  While a Ramos Gin Fizz is not a Pisco Sour, I think you want both drinks to be as foamy as possible.  Therefore I suggest trying this technique.

Tip number 4 – You could always cheat and use one of those little battery operated blending sticks, which are small enough to fit into a cocktail shaker.  These seem popular in bars.  The Barsol Pisco brand rep thought they did a good job, as did numerous other people I spoke with.  I don’t have one but will pick one up at some stage.

The Ramos Gin Fizz recipe I use these days is below.  Some recipes leave out the lime, but I think the mix of lemon and lime is essential to the flavor.  I also like the vanilla essence, even if it may not be traditional.

2 oz gin

1/2 oz of lime juice

1/2 oz of lemon juice

1 egg white

2 oz cream

several drops of orange flower water (more if using the weak tasting middle eastern stuff)

a drop or two of vanilla essence

1 tsp sugar (add this after the dry shake)

A spash of soda water

Dry shake everything except the sugar and soda for at least a minute.  Add the sugar and give it another long shake over ice to chill and dilute a little. Strain into a fizz glass (or an undersized Collins glass) and top with soda, stirring as you do so to build a frothy head that rises above the glass and begins to run down the sides.  Watch the video above to see what I mean.  In fact why am I even bothering with a recipe here?  Just watch the video.

I did not attend the session on eggs in drinks at Tales of the Cocktail.  Does anyone who attended have more tips on getting better results out of drinks containing egg white?

I thought I should post a quick something to just round off the Tales of the Cocktail thing. I may still post more on individual sessions later of course. A few random thoughts and observations follow:

- The best thing was probably getting to put faces to so many names. It seemed like almost everybody who blogs about cocktails was there, as was everyone who runs online communities with a cocktail or spirits focus. Everybody turned out to be very sociable and I had some great times chatting with people. Knowing who people are is also going to make it so much more interesting reading what everybody writes in future.

- Thanks to Paul of Cocktail Chronicles for organizing us bloggers. Somebody likened the task to herding cats, an apt comparison if ever there was one.

- Thanks also to Ann Tuennerman for letting us descend on the event like a plague of booze fueled locusts, then saying how everybody loved us being there.

- While I saw, heard and tasted an awful lot of good stuff, I also missed out on so many amazing sessions. How could I have missed Juniperlooza, where they sampled all the major styles of gin – including things like Old Tom and Spanish gin that I have yet to try? Some of the presenters organized simply fantastic sessions. How did I miss the American Whiskey and Rye sessions? It was just a case of too much happening in too little time.

- I was easier than I thought to stay reasonably sober and thus get a lot out of the various sessions.

- New Orleans needs to do some work to lift the quality of its drinks. Highlights were the Absinthe Suise at Luke, the Calvados Cocktail at the Swizzle Stick Bar at Cafe Adelaide (most of it ended up on the floor, but it was tasting great until I knocked it over), and the Brandy Milk Punch at the Carousel Bar (just seeing a worked-off-his-feet barman throwing together something as obscure as a Brandy Milk Punch without complaining was a treat). Low points were the lack of a truly good Sazerac anywhere, and the barely shaken Ramos Gin Fizz at Cafe Adelaide. Cafe Adelaide was a weird place, a mix of very good and very bad.

- While New Orleans may not make the greatest cocktails in the world it has an awful lot of beautiful old bars. Some, like Lafitte’s Blacksmith’s Shop are amazing venues that have fallen on hard times. My pick would probably be the French 75 Cafe at Arnaud’s. You have a beautiful old wooden bar, a marble counter, a scattering of rattan furniture, an absence of crowds despite the close proximity to Bourbon Street, and a barman that makes good drinks. I am not a fan of a French 75 made with Cognac - I prefer it with gin. However, I gave the drink a try and they make it well. They looked to be making good Sazeracs though I didn’t have time to have one.

- Tales of the Cocktail really needs to issue everyone with a schedule that gives the locations of events. Between sessions everybody was running around asking each other which room their next session was in. The fact that people had to mill around the hotel simply to find out where they were supposed to be added enormously to the congestion and chaos – especially in the lifts. Some people were walking from the 15^th floor down to street level via the fire escape, then reentering the building through the lobby just to dodge the crowds. Lack of organization was part of the problem here, but maybe the event has just become too big for the venue. That is sad though, since the Hotel Monteleone is a great old hotel that oozes character.

- I thought I had bid a temporary goodbye to my bottle collection when I left New Zealand. However, what with all the stuff the sponsors threw at us I now once again possess a respectable sized bar – albeit in miniaturized form. The Asian inspired ‘liqueur’ called something like “Ty-Kyu” was unimaginably dreadful. It wasn’t even a liqueur as such, more a ready to drink cocktail – though drinking it is not really advisable. Everything else was pretty good. Being in the Caribbean I will use my numerous Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur miniatures to spice up my rum and coke.

- Getting to see, meet and chat with so many well known drinks writers was amazing.

- Martin Cate of Forbidden Island gets my award for best presenter at Tales.  His presentation on cocktail garnishes was very entertaining. The guy’s timing and level of preparation were amazing.  The Tiki drink experts might have found it covered familiar ground, but much of it was new to me.

- There was so much happening at Tales of the Cocktail that I barely got to see New Orleans. That was a shame since it seems an amazing city full of fun and friendly people. I pretty much covered the French Quarter, ate enough beignet from different places to begin getting a grip on why they are the ideal breakfast, and tried some of the local restaurants on my to do list. There was an awful lot that I did not get to see though. Perhaps I need to visit New Orleans again at some stage.

One of the highlights was the discussion of a product called Vin Mariani, a cocoa leaf infused aromatic wine (perhaps something like a quinquina) that was popular in the later 19th century.  This stuff was consumed widely in Europe and the United States before cocaine was made illegal.  Apparently it later morphed into coca-cola under pressure from prohibitionists.

Another interesting point was the lack of citrus juices in early 20th century French cocktails.  France only got into citrus juice containing drinks in the 1920s.  The popularity of gin as a base spirit in early French drinks was also surprising.  Apparently gin appears in the majority of the early drinks.

We also got an insight into what the disappeared liqueur Cordial Medoc was.  Supposedly it was a coffee and citrus liqueur.

Interesting stuff anyway.

I got out of bed early enough to make the media breakfast at Brennan’s. To start we had a tasty Bloody Mary with a splash of red wine in it, then more wine to follow during breakfast – baked apple with cream, two types of eggs (French conversant eggs that arrived on beds of spinach and the like), and Bananas Foster. They take breakfast seriously in New Orleans.  The Bananas Foster was pretty good, but then Brenan’s was where it was invented so no surprises there.  We didn’t quite get table-side service, but the chef came out to demonstrate how the dish was made.  He came damn near burning down the old dining room while doing so.

At 10.30 I caught the session on the life and times of Jerry Thomas. A ton of people were there to hear David Woodrich and Ted Haigh discourse on how cocktails got started. It was covering pretty familiar ground if you have read their books and know a bit about 19^th and early 20^th century social history. However, it was great to see them speak in person and some interesting ideas were bounced around. There was a lot of talk of bartenders other than Jerry Thomas.  I had nearly gone to the session on bitters and apparently I missed out on some good stuff here, with real samples of discontinued early 20^th century products being passed around. There was a third guy on the panel in this session as well. I arrived a little late and missed the introductions but found out after the event that he was Brian Rea.

Next up I headed to Rum, Ron, Rhum with Wayne Curtis. I was hoping to learn more about rum, but sadly this turned out to be a quite average session. Wayne Curtis gave a good talk introducing rum. Unfortunately the brand sponsors took over the rest of the session, introducing their products, talking us through a very brief tasting (a basic white and aged product from each distillery), and serving a cocktail. I can’t say I got much out of the session itself besides tasting Rhum Clement. The Rhum Clement was nice but I think I have had better rhum agricoles. However, while the session itself did not exactly enthuse me, I got a chance to chat with Wayne Curtis afterwards. He had some interesting things to say about Havana Club rum and travel in Cuba. Apparently there are a lot of rum scams going on there, and even Havana Club themselves seem to have picked up a reputation for sometimes adulterating their own product (adding leather and the like to simulate aging). Jeff Berry stopped by to say hello while we waited for the session to start, so I got to talk rum with him for a while. I also had a chat about Tiki bars with Martin Cate from Forbidden Island – I really should have got to his place while I was in San Francisco.

During the next slot I ducked into Grape Expectations, a session on grappa. It was happening close by, seemed a better idea than fighting the crowds in the lift, and I find the whole grappa-pisco-marc category interesting. The session was chaotic in the traditional Italian manner, with numerous delays to start with, then a race to sample eight or so grappa in the final 20 minutes. The aged grappa were very interesting. There was a 50% vol 12 year old from the Marolo distillery with some great dry scented wood aromas. There was another aged product from Poli that was also really interesting, but we were literally tossing these final products back as we had to make way for the next session. There was also a great chamomile liqueur. The good thing about the session was getting a better handle on the differences between grappa and pisco, a question I have tried to resolve before with little success. They presented a product called Uga Viva, which they presented as being – more a pisco than a grappa on account of being distilled from a fermentation based on the whole grapes (i.e. juice, skins etc.). This stuff had great aroma by the way – almost like a hoppy pale ale. Anyhow, Diego Loret de Mola of Barsol Pisco was there at the end of the session and proved to be a great source of information on exactly how pisco is produced. According to him it had been a little misleading to present the Uga Viva as “pisco-like”, since Peruvian Pisco is distilled from fermented grape juice only (i.e. there is no solid matter in there whatsoever). So really Peruvian pisco is simply an unaged brandy, with the unique taste coming entirely from grape variety and distillation techniques.

Afterwards I went to Sensory Perception in Mixology where Darcy O’Niel conducted a scientific experiment that proved me to be a non-taster. Needless to say, this session completely sucked.

I grabbed some jambalaya and headed to Preservation Hall for Rum and All That Jazz. There were a bunch of cocktails made with product from the New Orleans Rum Company. To call this event incredible would be to do it a huge disservice. The rum drinks were great and the band was unbelievable.

Words can’t really describe the amazing old style jazz that was being played so I’ll just focus on the drinks. We started with a spiced rum punch. There was a little chili in the mix, but it was at that level where it was accentuating the other tastes rather than taking over the drink. Next up was a rum sour with egg white and a lemongrass and melon puree. The melon seemed to contribute to an enjoyably rich texture. At first I was wondering whether there was some yolk in there too. There were a couple more drinks as well, a daiquiri type thing and a creamy smoothie.

Back at the hotel I dropped by the St. Germain party and had a cocktail made from St. Germain, Sazerac Rye, and a pear brandy from the exceptionally good Shladerer firm. Some guy called Jamie Bourdeau mixed the thing up. Well, at least it was free booze.

OK. . . it was great, and Jamie is a really nice guy.

I just got back from the Tiki Dinner with cocktails designed and mixed by Jeff ‘Beachbum’ Berry and Wayne Curtis.  A last minute and little advertised change of venue almost saw me miss the thing completely, but after a little running around I eventually got there only slightly late, and just in time for an excellent meal.  I meant to pinch a copy of the menu for reference, but since it somehow got lost in the last minute confusion of leaving, this account is a little cursory.

We had four tiki drinks and a succession of tiki inspired dishes.  The stand-out drink was the  ’Luau Coconut’.  This was served in a coconut shell, and the combination of rum, lime, coconut water and coconut milk made for something ‘more coconut than coconut’.  This was a totally exceptional drink, and as luck would have it The Bum himself came past to give us a refill.  Generally I find coconut water drinks a little austere and coconut milk drinks a little creamy.  The mixture of  coconut water and coconut milk in this drink struck just the right balance.

The second high point of the meal was the desert, a massive rum-soaked merangue, served in a ring of flaming rum.  A common weakness of booze inspired deserts is a light hand with the actual booze.  This desert suffered no such issue.

Besides those two highlights there was Kahlua flavored pork belly, a subtle and interesting fish, bitters, maraschino liqueur and mashed parsnip dish (weird sounding but really good), poison cru, sashimi, and a bunch of other delicious things.  At the end we also tried some 10 year old rum from the New Orleans rum company.  This stuff was very enjoyable – a little rough around the edges but packed with intense flavors.  You could almost have mistaken it for a scotch there was so much going on.  I could have sworn it was overproof, but it turned out to be just 40%.  Great stuff.

After dinner I had a bit more of a chat with a few bloggers – from Gumbo Pages, Kaiser Penguin and Trader Tiki – then headed back to the Carousel Bar at the Hotel Monteleone where I ran into Edward Hamilton.  We headed up to to a party in one of the hotel suites where there was some dutch Genever on offer from an obscure company I had never heard of.  After all the Tiki drinks it was a little hard to give a comprehensive assessment of the genever but no doubting it was interesting stuff.  The weird thing to me was that their ‘XO’ genever was aged jongue style genever (i.e. a light style with a high ratio of ‘vodka’ type spirit), while their more heavily malted oude styles seemed less aged.

Tales has been an enjoyably chaotic mess. The Internet refused to work for me before and time was short so this first round up of Tales Stuff has to cover a fair bit of territory.

Tuesday Night:

Got to the hotel on schedule and hit the bar where I caught up with a bunch of fellow cocktail bloggers. The bar was mayhem, and with everybody drinking Sazeracs was pretty soon drunk dry of rye whiskey. We headed out to Coop’s Place for some food. Coop’s Place is a kind of hole in the wall joint, but we had some great gumbo and jamblayna (spelling?). No cocktails there, I just stuck to beer. Then we hit Bar French 75 where I actually didn’t have a French 75, instead electing to try the regular Bombay gin in a gin and tonic. Regular Bombay is a great gin, much more versatile than the Sapphire. Why is regular Bombay not available in New Zealand and China? It has the light spiciness of the Sapphire, but unlike the Sapphire it still has a juniper taste. After the French 75 bar we dropped by Pat O’Brians for Hurricanes, which were awful beyond words. . . I had expected a sort of cheap and alcoholic punch made of low end rum and juices. What I got was grain alcohol and cordial – lots of it mind you. Anyway, it was an experience.

Wednesday:

I took off sightseeing around the French Quarter for most of the day. I did Beignet and coffee at Cafe du Monde. The Beignet are seriously great – super crispy and fried, just drenched in sugar, but you can still taste the yeastiness.  The ultimate doughnut. I checked out a few museums: museum of the American cocktail (just a one room collection, but if you are into it you can browse surprisingly long there), a little voodoo museum, and the Louisiana State Museum (great Civil War display). By that stage it was time to head back to the Hotel Monteleone to pick up a Tales registration pack and start getting serious.

I dropped by the welcome reception for bloggers where I met more people, then I hit the Plymouth Sloe gin tasting. Plymouth is better than Gordons – way more bitter and intense. After the Plymouth tasting I tagged along with a group going to check out the Beefeater welcome reception. It was massively crowded and nearly impossible to get a drink so after a quick drink we left and headed to a French-German place called Luke for dinner. The special thing here was the absinthe/anise/pastis cocktails. I had an Ojen Frappe: a Spanish anisette brand called Ojen and Peychauld’s Bitters over ice. Then I had an Absinthe Suisse: Herbisant, the local New Orleans pastis, egg white, cream, orange bitters, creme de menthe, and ice. The Absinthe Suisse was really special. The mussels and chips were great too. The local mussels are way smaller than the New Zealand variety and I think they have a sweeter and superior taste. Mind you, visitors to New Zealand seem to rave about the New Zealand ones. I guess it depends what you like.

From there we headed to the Save the Daiquiri Party where I managed to quickly get a drink despite the hordes. It was a weird Daiquiri, containing 10 Cane rum, Lillet, pastis, and probably some other stuff. From what I could tell the 10 Cane was good stuff, but with all that pastis in there it was hard to really get a handle on it. We gave up on the Save the Daiquiri Party and dropped by the Absinthe Bar for an absinthe frappe. Mine was with Kubler and anisette and was kind of average. They topped it off with some soda water which seemed unnecessary to me. Finally we had a last drink at the Carousel Bar in the hotel. I had a Herbisant and really enjoyed it. It is less sweet and Pernod and kind of rough-in-a-good-way.

Thursday:

Headed to the Hemingway session with Phil Green. He covered a lot of ground so things were kind of rushed – something that was getting to be a theme with Tales of the Cocktail.

The interesting points that came out of it for me were some more insights into what Hemingway liked in a drink (besides lots of booze). He was obsessed with drink temperature and went to big lengths to keep his drinks cold. For example, he would freeze cocktail onions so as to have a garnish that simultaneously helped keep the drink chilled. He also made giant ice cubes in tennis ball cans – another way of getting a cold drink in the tropics. Admirable innovations. His vermouth obsession was something I couldn’t understand so well. He seems to have been very vermouth averse, drinking his 15:1 Montgomery Martinis etc., and quipping that stories about him carrying two canteens, of gin and vermouth respectively, while fighting in Spain were false since he would never have carried a whole canteen of vermouth. Vermouth seems good to me. Oh well. . .

The interesting drink from this session was the Green Isaac’s Special, basically a gin highball made with coconut water and angostura bitters. This was a very interesting drink – kind of dry and austere.

Next up I headed to the Molecular Mixology session. Jamie Boudreau gave a great talk, just too short. He could have kept speaking for the whole hour and half and I’m sure it would have been fantastic. Of course the other speakers were also interesting, but Jamie really did have the most to say and it was a shame he wasn’t allotted a little more time. There were a ton of people there so it was kind of chaotic and hard to take notes.

After that it was time for a grape brandy tasting, covering cognac, armangnac, and jerez brandy. This session was very educational, though again sadly rushed since we got into the room late, and then there were some delays getting bottles up to the room and pouring samples. The good thing was that the delay gave me a chance to chat with Chuck Taggart of The Gumbo Pages.

I should try and post on the tasting in a little more detail at some other stage since it was a good one. We tried eight different brandies, plus B&B liqueur and three brandy cocktails. The stand out product for me was Castarede Blanche, an unaged armagnac. This reminded me so much of pisco and yet was different. It was thinner than most piscos, and yet had far more smoothness than any thin-bodied pisco I have had. I guess the main differences in taste were coming from different grape varietals, since the armagnac and Peruvian pisco production techniques seem pretty similar – i.e. single distillation in a pot still. A pisco sour with this stuff would be interesting. The cocktail they served it in was a sort of ice-coffee style concoction with a little caramel. It was a tasty drink but this product probably deserved a drink that brought out its unique characteristics a little more.

Next up I stayed on for Latin Libations. The session led by Tony Abou-Ganim from the Bellagio in Las Vegas. He was a very entertaining and fun speaker and took us through some basic Latin drinks and spirits, including the pisco sour, caipirinha and so on. I scored a free Barsol pisco t-shirt, which was cool since I drank a fair bit of the stuff in San Francisco and am starting to like it.

Next up is a Tiki Dinner at The Delichaise with Beachbum Berry. Given The Bum’s reputation this could be the last anyone hears for me for a while. I will update as soon as I get discharged from hospital.

Down at the Fishermen’s Wharf I followed a friend’s suggestion and tried an In’n'Out burger, served by a very pretty black girl called Ebony. It was some of the least greasy fast food I have ever had. I should have tried the clam chowder in a bread shell but I wanted to save room for something from Chinatown. I wandered back via Chinatown and had some BBQ pork on rice, which was decent but not exceptional. The seasoning was unusually heavy on the white pepper and the texture was a little dried out. I probably didn’t get the right shop, but Hong Kong and Auckland both have better in my opinion. In Chinatown I found a boarded up restaurant with a notice hanging in the window that read “Dear Customers, we will return in March 2007″. I guess there is some kind of story there.

Next I swung past Cantina for a drink. There were no free seats at the bar and they were playing really loud techno/trance type dance music so I didn’t stay, heading on to Bourbon and Branch instead. Call me old fashioned but who wants to drink quality cocktails in that type of environment? I may try again tomorrow, perhaps hitting the place a little earlier.

Bourbon and Branch was everything you could want in a cocktail bar. They have the whole speakeasy, password-entry, exclusive-drinking-den thing going on, but they don’t push it to the point of silliness. I piggy-backed in behind some other guy, was challenged for the password, and of course didn’t know it. As soon as the hostess knew I was from out of town she took me on a tour of the place, showing me the front bar, the library bar, and some other bar whose distinguishing characteristic I forget. The front bar seemed the liveliest and most hospitable so I took a seat there. I watched the bartenders making drinks for a couple of hours and didn’t notice them do anything weird or cut any corners. The top shelf spirits selection was massive, the well liquors were quality, the execution was good, the ice was cold, interesting drinks were made from Martinique rum and apricot brandy, and the decor was great.

To start I had a Plymouth Gin Martini with Vya vermouth and orange bitters. I had never tried Vya before. It was very good, giving the drink a soft herbal edge. I was distracted by the decor, specifically the hammered metal ceiling, and didn’t notice how much vermouth they put in. I had asked for a lot, and I’m guessing they really did pour a fair slug because the vermouth taste was clearly evident and totally different to Noilly Prat or Martini and Rossi. I didn’t see them doing anything silly like a swirl and dump. Anyway, this was perhaps the smoothest Martini I have ever had. Nothing to fault here. I wasn’t asked if I wanted an olive and nor did I get an olive. We just had a quiet understanding that olives were not part of the picture. Nice. I am guessing Vya was the key to this superb drink.

Next I had a Pisco Sour, made with some Peruvian Pisco I had never heard of – Don Ceasar or something. It was a good drink. Not too sweet. The garnish of bitters on the foam was very restrained –  literally just two drops. Personally I might have added a little more, but if you add too much it ends up pooling in the bottom of the drink. Anyway, it was a good pisco sour, and the pisco used had that aromatic and rough-around-the-edges quality that lends itself to sours.

To finish I had a Manhattan, made with the bonded Rittenhouse (I think it was the bonded one – it was the overproof version anyway), Vya vermouth (I think), aromatic bitters, and a tasty little liquor-soaked cherry. The cherry was easily the best cherry garnish I have ever had. My only criticism here would be that the cherry should have been on the end of a metal pick, letting the drinker lift it out and enjoy it whenever the mood struck them rather than being forced to leave it till their last swallow. The influence of the Vya was less obvious in the Manhattan than it had been in the Martini, though possibly that was the effect of a very long day and a couple of drinks dulling my discriminative powers. No question the bonded Rittenhouse was great stuff though. It was far superior to the regular version (the only one I had previously tried), and made an ideal Manhattan whiskey.

I noticed a lot of people drinking Sazaracs, many drinks being topped off with champagne, and some intriguing and generously sized whiskey and rum sampler trays. I may revisit and try one of these trays. What with me being from New Zealand, the sampler trays mostly contained brands I had heard good things about but never tried. New Zealand does not have the greatest bourbon and rum selection, though it offers a pretty good range of Scotch. The menu even listed the hard-to-find Chartreuse Elixer!

To sum up, Bourbon and Branch is absolutely a place to visit if like cocktails and find yourself in San Francisco.

Mixology Monday (hosted at Scofflaw’s Den) has suddenly sprung on me, bringing the theme of bourbon. I feel a bit inadequate about my effort this time round. Recently I have hardly been drinking bourbon. Mostly it has all been gin, with occasional detours to explore French aperitifs. This state of affairs is a bit odd now I come to think about it. When I first got into cocktails I drank plenty of bourbon drinks (mostly Manhattans and Old Fashioneds), with rum thrown in for variety. Things seem to have changed, and consequently I am low on creative ideas for bourbon. Mind you, when it comes to bourbon I sometimes wonder how creative you need to be. Isn’t an Old Fashioned about as good as it gets? Posting about the Old Fashioned seems redundant though, so I am going to throw together a new (to me) bourbon cocktail from Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails.

My original plan had been to do something out of Charles H. Baker’s “Jigger, Beaker and Glass: Drinking Around the World”. Amazon delivered a copy a couple of days ago and I had thought I would take a leisurely flick through and select whatever unusual and tasty bourbon concoction happened to catch my eye. Alas my plan was torpedoed by the near absence of bourbon drinks from Baker’s wonderful book. Why couldn’t the theme this month have been rum or gin? Or maybe even kummel? Baker seems to be heavily in to that sort of thing. Oh well, never mind.

So off to pick up Ted Haigh’s book it is. I have had this book for about a year but for some reason I have never got around to making the Derby. On paper it looks a perfectly fine drink. Somehow though it has never excited me enough to get shaking. I blame the absence of exotic ingredients.

The Derby

1 oz bourbon (Bulleit)

1/2 oz sweet vermouth (Martini & Rossi)

1/2 oz orange curacao (Marie Brizard)

3/4 oz lime juice

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a mint leaf.

A tasty concoction, even if it does not quite blow me away. Being a cross between a Manhattan and a whiskey sour, the vermouth provides the interest. I think I remember complaining that vermouth does not always mix well with sour things. It works fine here.

Using a more robust or higher proof bourbon might help the bourbon assert itself a little more. The other solution could be to increase the quantity a notch. That said, it is pretty tasty as is.

I won’t be rushing to make this one again. But if anyone was offering I wouldn’t say no.