Popular, but not pretty

According to this report on Wine & Spirits Daily, the top three cocktails ordered in metro areas New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, and Dallas/Ft. Worth are:

1. "Martinis"- "The “traditional” martini is most commonly ordered, followed by apple martinis, miscellaneous fruit martinis, dirty martinis and chocolate martinis."
2. Mojitos
3. Red Bull and vodka

Also, the most popular shot in bars and clubs is a Jager bomb- Jagermeister and Red Bull. I suppose the good news is that the most-ordered drink is a "traditional" martini, though I have a feeling it's a vodka-based one given the rest of the list. But it's too bad that even in these large cities, people are still drinking apple martinis. Mojito- a fine drink, but it's time to move on. The big news to me is how popular Red Bull is as a mixer, both in cocktails and in shots. This is interesting not only because it makes drinks taste far worse than without it, but also because it's a premium mixer that raises the price of the drinks. You get soda, tonic, and juices for free but they charge extra for Red Bull, even with bottle service. Given that, the caffeinated and energy vodkas on the market make a little more sense- they can be cost-savings products that cut-out the horrid taste of Red Bull. People can now enjoy energy apple martinis, energy mojitos, and energy margaritas. (If you hadn't heard, P.I.N.K. has expanded its line to include energy rum, tequila, sake, gin, and white whiskey.) I can see that as the up-sell in nightclubs from now on: "Would you like that with energy for an extra two dollars?"

Absolut History

I didn't realize that Absolut vodka had a real history. From a story in the Telegraph:

Swedish vodka has its roots in the 15th century when the country's inhabitants first started distilling spirits called "bränvin", which literally translated means "burnt wine".

Originally used in medicine and for making gunpowder, the Swedes soon cottoned on to vodka's other powers and by the 17th century the spirit had established itself at the national drink of choice.

The birth of Absolut Vodka came 200-odd years later when Lars Olsson Smith - known as "The King of Vodka" - introduced a drink in 1879 called Absolut Rent Bränvin or Absolute Pure Vodka.

A keen entrepreneur, Smith got round Stockholm's monopoly on distilled spirits by offering the City's inhabitants a free shuttle boat service to a neighbouring island where he set up a shop to sell Absolut Vodka.

The brand was eventually nationalised in 1917 following a clampdown in the prohibition era and is today owned by Vin & Sprit which produces around 9m cases of the drink each year. V&S also owns a slew of other global and local brands including Plymouth gin, Cruzan rum and Luksusova vodka.

If you don't pay attention to industry news (it's kinda boring, so don't feel bad), you might not know that Absolut's parent company Vin & Sprit (V&S) is for sale. Because the company is pretty ginormous, only the big players like Diageo and Bacardi can bid for it, though there was talk about some smaller companies selling off part of their business in order to buy it. Another issue is that the purchaser must take Absolut as well as the other brands, and they want to ensure that the other brands don't get dumped afterwards. V&S owns several regional brands of aquavit, bitters, a Finnish peppermint liqueur, and some wines. I think there's a justified fear that a major international spirits company based in England wouldn't be interested in selling a product that is only big in Finland, but I'm not sure how they can guarantee that these brands won't be orphaned after purchase. Though this may not have much of an effect on American consumers I think it's an important study on the danger of too few huge spirit companies dominating the international market and homogenizing offerings to the lowest common denominator (vodka), possibly folding small regional brands that are insignificant to their bottom line. What would be cool instead would be if these huge companies used their international distribution systems to make those little brands only sold in Finland available in other parts of the world. Wishful thinking, I guess.

The Zagat guide to Diageo-approved restaurants

By me, in today's SF Chronicle: (yes, I wrote most of the Wine Section today)

Zagat Survey launched the iDrinkWell.com Web site this week as a "guide to finding restaurants that not only serve great food but are also dedicated to serving you the highest quality drinks." Though not currently advertised on the site (iDrinkWell forwards to a Zagat microsite), iDrinkWell is a collaboration between Zagat Survey and international liquor company Diageo. The venues chosen for the site (61 in the entire Bay Area) must be Zagat-rated and must have participated in a Diageo-sponsored training program.

No cocktail bars make the list yet, though Zagat publishes a separate nightlife guide. So the venues on the site (ranging from Absinthe to Yosemite's Ahwahnee Dining Room) are all restaurants listed alongside ratings by a company associated with objectivity.

A Zagat representative said, "There are completely different criteria for this program versus the traditional Zagat recognition program." No kidding.

For more information on this ludicrous collaboration that should make you swear to never use a Zagat guide again, read this industry story on Diageo's future plans for the program.

Wine vs. Beer

Great story on Slate.com today about the dominance of wine over beer in America. Must of it the author attributes to an easier and less class-based language about wine, along with the idyllic pastoral image of wine as opposed to the industrial image and mass-production of beer. He doesn't mention, and I don't have the numbers to back this up but pretty sure I've seen them, that the sales of microbrews are way up while the overall sales of beer are flat. He does point to an example of Bistro 8, an upscale beer produced by Budweiser that was a total flop- and implies that quality beer just doesn't sell to the American public. These two things seem contradictory. I think people just don't believe in quality beer from Budweiser and maybe the company should not have branded it as such. Maybe part of the problem isn't that beer is industrial and wine is agricultural, but that when you think of wine, all the brands seem small- even Gallo and Two-Buck Chuck. Beer, on the other hand, seems nearly monolithic: Your choices are Bud or Miller, a cheap variation thereof (Milwaukee's Best, Genesee Cream Ale), or a microbrew at twice the price. In comparison to beer, all wine seems snooty and hand-made and that's what's selling. Maybe beer companies, many of which own a lot of smaller brands, should put their marketing push towards those smaller brands and brews and the overall industry would benefit from connoisseurship of the consumers like wine. Because when it comes time to grab a 12-pack for the tailgate party, you're still going to buy Bud.

On Writing (About Drinking)

Last night I was speaking with Duggan McDonnell of Cantina, where I was drinking for the third time before it officially opens on Thursday. It turns out that in addition to opening a culinary cocktail bar, Duggan is also getting his MFA in creative writing in his spare time. He was asking me about the world of booze writing, as it would make sense to combine his two passions. Though I had no practical advice, what I should have said is, "Don't quit your night job." Writing is a terrible way to pay the rent, and even dive bar bartenders make twice the salary in half the time that I do. But it did stimulate some thinking: What are the ways that people write about cocktails and drinking?

• Recipe writing. Some people, many of them coming from the bartending world, write recipes and fill in the space around them with information. I do this for Frontiers Magazine, and Gary Regan does this in his column in the SF Chronicle.
• Technique writing. Shake or stir? Proper muddling, not-so simple syrups. There is more and more of this writing as people become interested in home mixology. Imbibe Magazine specializes in it, and many magazines have DIY advice as part of stories.
• History. People like Ted Haigh and Eric Felten of the Wall Street Journal will track every reference of a drink to find its origin, creator, and cultural popularity. This makes great bar conversation topics for the rest of us after they do all the hard work.
• Industry. Both the liquor industry and the service industry have trade publications following them and educating one another on what the competition is doing. Magazines like Bartender, Sante, and formerly Patterson's Beverage Journal cover these topics.
• Reviews. In the Web 2.0 world, bar reviews aren't as important as they once were, but the public still needs to know which bars are where and what they're like.
• Trends. A combination of industry news (three more organic vodkas launched) and reviews (three more bars serving flavored mojitos launched), trend writing is really my bread and butter.

Anything I missed?

Casho for Cabo

Sammy Hagar sold 80 percent interest in his Cabo Wabo tequila to Campari, which owns or is owned by Skyy Spirits out of SF (I've heard it either way), for $80 million. I guess he wasn't exaggerating when he said he's made way more money in the liquor business than he ever did in rock and roll.