Gin judging

Last night I helped judge the Hendrick's gin cocktail competition at Rye. Hendrick's likes to make things interesting in their events and marketing, so for this contest bartenders not only had to create a cocktail showcasing one of the botanicals in Hendrick's, they also had to recite a limerick to go along with it. The limericks were weighted heavily in the judging but luckily our top contenders were strong in both the poetic and taste categories. The winner of the contest was Sierra Zimei of the Seasons Bar at the Four Seasons with her Secret Garden cocktail consisting of grapefruit, cucumber, lime, and cilantro syrup with a healthy dose of gin mixed in. She won a round-trip air ticket anywhere in the States, which unfortunately she's not using to join us at Tales of the Cocktail but opting for a baseball game with her husband instead. I believe that marriage should not get in the way of cocktailing, but then again that may be a reason I'm still single. I'll ponder that over drinks later. After the contest, I went out to dinner with Julio Bermejo of Tommy's, Charlotte Voissey of Hendrick's, Rob Renteria of Martini House, Greg Lindgren of Rye, and some other friends of Julio. Joey and Eddie's (the former Moose's) has a short cocktail menu, from which I chose the Bronx Negroni, which is a regular Negroni with a touch of Averna. Very good.

Gin winners

Last night I stopped into Rye's cocktail competition with this month's sponsor Bluecoat Gin. Certainly the most interesting cocktail of the evening was Jonny Raglin from Absinthe's green garlic drink- there's nothing like a cocktail that gives you stink breath. Raglin said it was made to go with food, like a big plate of french fries. French fries and gin? That's my kind of meal. I later found out that it was a garlic gastrique. And you know what that means, folks: He used the magic ingredient of 2008: Vinegar! The competition's winners were Joel Baker from Bourbon & Branch in third place, H. Ehrman from Elixir as runner-up, and Carlos Yturria from Grand Puh Bah and other places taking home the first prize. His drink was my favorite of the night also- along with some fresh juices, it had pepper in it and I'm a total sucker for that. Winning drinks from Rye's competition make it onto their drink menu, so stop in and try one.

Top tequilas

The results of the Agave Spirits Challenge, a judging of tequila, mezcal, and sotol, were recently announced. Here are the tequila results:

Top Rated Tequila El Gran Jubileo Tequila Extra Añejo

Tequila 100% Blanco Arette Tequila Blanco

Tequila 100% Reposado Vida Tequila Reposado

Tequila 100% Añejo Tres Mujeres Tequila Añejo

Tequila 100% Extra Añejo El Gran Jubileo Tequila Extra Añejo

The results of the other categories, as well as judges' favorites and "top spirits families" are on the Agave.net website. I've sampled a good deal of tequila lately, yet I haven't tried any of these winning products! My work is never done...

Another contest

Here's another cocktail contest, this one sponsored by Averna and possibly ending in a trip to Italy and $1500, and as far as I can see you don't have to be a bartender to enter it. Details here.

Getting to know you, and by "you" I mean "your drinks"

Last week at the Rye cocktail competition, Dominic Venegas was one of the judges. Dominic set up the bar program at Range, bartends at Bourbon & Branch and Cantina, and has designed/revamped cocktail menus for several restaurants around town. Oh, and also he's the spirits buyer for John Walker & Sons liquor store. In other words, he gets around. The competition was to make a Campari-based cocktail. The judges are seated in a separate area so they are blind as to which bartender has prepared each drink. After the judging I asked Dominic how the cocktails were. "The problem with it," he said, "is that I know all of these guys and their styles already, so I could tell whose cocktail was whose." I'm starting to know the feeling. If the drink has a pepper plus a fresh ingredient muddled together, it was likely created by Todd Smith of Bourbon & Branch. If the cocktail has wine when it seems completely unintuitive, check with Duggan McDonnell of Cantina. If it has maple syrup, it was almost definitely made by Jacques Bezuidenhout of the Starlight Room. Today I was reading the Tablehopper newsletter and heard of a new restaurant called Laiola. I checked the website to look at the drink menu. (Am I the only person who reads food blogs for the drinks? I just don't care about food all that much.) This is the menu:

OLD WORLD Sangria de la Dia, wine, sherry & seasonal fruit 7 Tinto de Verano, Laïola tinto & Lemonaide over ice 6 NEW WORLD Colada, Sanctuary tea infused vodka, coconut cream, pineapple & bitters 8 Cuba Libre, Plantation grand reserve rum, cola & lime 8 Mojo, flor de caña limon rum, mint, apricot liquor, lime, and soda 8 Picasso Sour, Pisco, orange blossom water, lemon bitters, lime & egg whites 8 The Sun Also Rises, Orinoco rum, vanilla, grapefruit & lime 8 Toro de Fuego, Tequila, triple sec, lime and red pepper vinegar 8 Valentia, Vodka, sherry and caramelized orange 8

I hadn't heard of this restaurant or who was behind it, and the prices don't scream "celebrity mixologist," but I said to myself, I THINK THIS PERSON REALLY KNOWS WHAT THEY'RE DOING. (I always talk to myself in capslock.) Back to the Tablehopper newsletter, I found that I was right- the menu was designed by Camber Lay, formerly of Frisson and Range. The clues I should have picked up were tea-infused vodka, and lime and red pepper vinegar. While other mixologists put together ingredients in new and fascinating ways, Camber is always creating weird new ingredients and techniques. Last week I sat next to Deborah Parker-Wong, who writes for Tasting Panel Magazine (as do I now) at the El Tesoro Anniversario dinner at Slanted Door. Deborah has an amazing palate that I've witnessed at multiple tasting events. She was talking about blind tasting. "If you taste it when it's hot, when it's cold, in different glasses, when you're hungry, with food, in the morning- eventually, you just get it. So THAT's what [some brand of wine I'd never heard of] is all about." I drink enough of these guys' cocktails in enough different situations that blind tasting cocktails sounds like a really fun challenge. Of course, it will involve much more "training of the palate," but luckily it's happy hour soon.

Beer Tasting

On the House has a nice piece up on How to Host a Kick-Ass Beer Tasting. It is all great advice, geared more towards event organizers than casual party hosters. But I think the advice translates well to wine, whisky, and other tasting events too.

In defense of Bacardi

Much like Smirnoff, the well vodka so maligned that even after the NY Times blind tasted it as superior to expensive brands it still doesn't get much respect socially, Bacardi rum gets no props. I was at a barbecue yesterday at which I served my Summer Strawberry Wave cocktail of strawberry-infused rum, lemon iced tea, and ginger ale. It was well-received all around, as usual. (Honestly, it's a fricking fantastic daytime drink). Someone new came in as I was offering up another round and I described the drink. "What kind of rum is in it?" asked the person pondering it. Bacardi, I said, though this should have been obvious due to the Bacardi bottle I was holding. "Oh, well, then no thanks. Bacardi is gross." I resisted the urge to smack her. Clearly she wasn't a rum expert dissing Bacardi in comparison to better brands; she was dissing it because she had gotten too drunk on Bacardi and Whatevers in college and thinks of it as overly sweet, syrupy rum when that's the mixer she's actually remembering. "Take a sip of it then tell me it sucks," I said, but she wouldn't. Typical. A few weeks ago, a couple of friends were over for a mojito-making training session (by the way, I'm available to do mojito-making training sessions for groups and business networking events- email me). After we went through the basics of preparation, I suggested we then try different rums and make mojitos with them. My friends were hesitant when it came to sampling the Bacardi we had already been mixing with, but then they tried it. "Wow! Who knew?" they said. ("It's probably best to suggest trying it after a few drinks," one added, acknowledging her prejudices.) I think more than commonly consumed average-quality whiskies or vodkas or certainly tequilas, Bacardi is the most underrated yet popular spirit brand out there. For something that so many people buy and consume, most people think of it as a crap product. If that's you, I want you to take a sip from the bottle in your cabinet right now. It won't taste how you think it does- unless you think it tastes like more like chocolate and coffee than syrup and candy. These flavors aren't overwhelmingly intense- that's why you've never noticed them before in a soup of pineapple juice and Coke- but they're there and worth knowing about. Though I primarily use Bacardi as a mixing rum at home, like Julia Child with the cooking sherry, I'll have a little sip before I add it to the mixing glass, because it's fine and tasty on its own.

Sample Styles

The New York Times today has a piece on gin tasting, which is unique in that they sampled the gins in martinis rather than straight. I've always thought that this was a problem with a lot of comparison tastings of spirits- nobody drinks gin or cachaca or pisco or a lot of other spirits on their own. I think the juniper-forward gins that work great in martinis taste far too powerful on their own. As they point out in the Times article, some gins, mostly the newer expressions, though complex and bright and delicious, just don't mix well with vermouth. They singled out 209 Gin and G'Vine as examples that they didn't feel were right in martini form. I completely agree with G'Vine, which is a flower bomb that's really tasty but needs to be tempered with tonic water. I've also done a vodka sampling at room temperature. Yes, you can taste more nuance at room temperature, and coldness hides impurities, but name a single vodka drink served at room temperature. If the cheap yucky stuff tastes just as good as the expensive fancy stuff when it's served in a cocktail, what does it matter how good it tastes warm? Anyway, I'm glad to see that someone did a taste test in a real-world environment. Here's to more of that.

Tales of the Cocktail Recipes

In what will be a long, relentless buildup to the Tales of the Cocktail event in New Orleans this July (I'm probably going) they held a recipe contest to determine the official cocktail for the event. The winners were announced yesterday. All the winners of the event were bartenders from New Orleans, with the exception of Forbidden Island Alameda's Martin Cate, who tied for third place with a nicely simple recipe called the Crescent City Blossom. All the entrants were required to use Moet & Chandon White Star as an ingredient, so if you're looking for a new champagne cocktail, I recommend checking out the winners. Interesting to note that in Monday's Moet Rose cocktail competition in SF at least two of the entrants used the new St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur as does Martin's recipe, so I guess we can safely say it mixes well with champagne. A couple of the Tales of the Cocktail winners used Pama Pomegranate Liqueur, which also works well with bubbly.

Pink Delicious

Last night I was one of the judges at the Think Pink event at Harry Denton's Starlight Room. It was a cocktail competition to see which bartender could create the best drink using Moet & Chandon Rose champagne. Many of the usual suspects were mixing- bartenders from Range, Bourbon & Branch, Rye, and Tres Agaves, plus people from Circolo, Eastside West, and Le Colonial. They made champagne drinks using vodka, gin, fortified wines, tequila, and even scotch. They infused their own vodka, made their own simple syrups, and created wild rims and garnish. The bartenders showed great originality and range, and honestly all the drinks were excellent. In the end, the drink we chose as the winner had the worst name (Pink Cream Soda) but a truly original flavor. It was a tall rocks drink that did taste creamy, but started out with the taste of a muddled jalapeno that somehow didn't dominate the flavor. So congratulations to Todd Smith of Bourbon & Branch for winning the competition, and to all the bartenders who entered. The winning drink will go on the Starlight Room menu, and I hope to see some other of these drinks on cocktail menus around town.

Winners!

In today's Chronicle I have a small mention of the winners of the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

We'd love to list the results of the San Francisco World Spirits Competition that took place a few weeks ago, but there just isn't enough space. They awarded about 640 medals to the roughly 750 entrants. Everyone's a winner! Double Gold winners included the $2,600 Johnnie Walker Anniversary Pack blended scotch and the $10 Feeney's Irish Cream Liqueur, so chances are you can find something good from the list in your price range. (And if your price range is $2,600, call me; I'm single.)

The full list of winners is here. I was surprised at the number of winners but my editor tells me that it's similar for wine competitions. Having attended this competition, sat in on several rounds of judging, and read the winners it seems totally fair but also quite generous. It was also very cool to sit in with all those experts and people whose work I read and read about. And as a consumer, I know it's best to pay attention to just the top medals.