Technical difficulties

Blogger went crazy on me last week, so if you received no posts then a gazillion in your feed readers I apologize but won't accept responsibility for your heartache- and mine was worse. Not being able to blog was like someone cutting off my mouth. Things seem fixed for now, and just in time for Tales of the Cocktail this week. Phew!

Items of Interest for Wednesday

Just when you think they've run out of flavors: sweet tea vodka. Also, Smirnoff is testing lime and green apple vodka in the UK. (Note: ick.) Matt Rowley reports on the 150th anniversary of the Mason jar. Yumsugar suggests making a Ti Punch with a rock candy swizzle stick. Liqurious suggests pairing cinderblock sugar cubes with absinthe. Philadelphia offers a Colonial drinking history tour.

London and Plymouth pics

Are now online. Get 'em all here.

Getting kinda tired packing and unpacking...

Oh, the day before travel. It's always the same- stuffing bubblewrap into your suitcase so you can bring bottles home, watering the houseplants, and muddling all the leftover produce into cocktails. (I no longer muddle the houseplants.) I've got the routine down by now. Last night I enjoyed a lemon gin cucanectartini that was a delicious send-off to my next destination: London. Wahoo!

Gin on the vine

Immediately after my press trip to Jerez to study sherry, I flew to Bordeaux to learn about G'Vine gin. As far as I know, G'Vine is the only gin made from grape spirit instead of grain spirit, which gives it a round, soft texture and a touch of sweetness. It also has a huge burst of floral aroma coming from distilled vine flowers. This press trip was centered around seeing the vine flower harvest, but unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate and the flowers weren't yet in bloom. I flew in to Bordeaux and got a hotel room for the night, skipped dinner and slept from 8PM until 8AM recovering sleep and liver function from the last trip. The next morning I met the group- there were just five of us in total- and we headed to our hotel half-way between Bordeaux and Cognac. Our hotel, Chateau de Rimbaud, was more of a castle (which is always nice) that was filled with antiques and wallpaper that matched the curtains, bedspreads, and everything else in the room. Busy, but beautiful. That afternoon we had a short mixology session with G'vine. Because the gin is so floral, I find it overwhelming served in a martini and don't think it mixes as well as other gins with tonic water. I learned on this trip that champagne works better than tonic with this product (grape with grape, after all), and that the Spanish make their tonic water go flat before drinking it- we didn't try that but I could see it working. After a lazy afternoon we had a lazy dinner at the castle, and a good night's sleep. Then we were off to Cognac. We visited the distillery where G'Vine is made, which is a cognac distillery that produces one percent of all Cognac in France, in addition to several other products. It was the first time I've seen Cognac stills, so I was a bit overexcited, but soon we were off to the traditional pot and column stills actually used for G'Vine. We drove out to a vineyard and fondled a vine, as the founder of EuroWineGate showed us where the blossoms would be if only they were blossoming. We all offered to stay two more weeks in the castle waiting for this to happen, but apparently G'vine's generosity doesn't extend quite that far. We had lunch at the funky and delicious La Ribaudiere restaurant near Cognac (you can pull up to it by boat if that's how you roll), where they made gelato in different flavors that are found in the gin. (gin-lato?) Then we spent about an hour wandering through the city of Cognac. I found it nice and full of very old buildings, but smaller than I had imagined. The same is not true of Bordeaux, where we stayed the night. Bordeaux is huge and cosmopolitan and appears magnificent in the evening we spent there. We went out for dinner on one of the many pedestrian streets, had a beer later, and called it a trip. Now I have to make the next trip home. It's gonna be a doozy. See you in a few days. In the meantime, feel free to look at all my trip photos here.

Sherry, now we're cooking

On the final day of my press trip to Jerez we started with a trip to the central market, where they have all kinds of fresh fish and fancy vegetables that look like I couldn't afford them, kind of like the Ferry Building in San Francisco but probably hundreds of years old. We picked up some ingredients and headed to a hospitality school for a cooking lesson. All of our dishes had sherry in them, this being a sherry press trip and all. They also all had meat, so I made pretend food while everyone else made real food. The most amazing part of the experience is that I neither cut nor burned myself. Others were not so lucky during the flambe session. I focussed on my particular skill set, which is drinking alcohol rather than eating it. Afterwards I took a walking tour of Jerez, which is a city with layers. Jerez has been conquered by the Romans, Goths, and Christians, and has had so many turnovers that there are classical, Arabic, and Gothic elements together on some buildings. There is the ancient, walled city, the old city, and the newer residential part. The outlying areas of Jerez are not so pretty but the downtown is a bunch of interconnected walking streets, public squares, and narrow streets. That night was our grand finale dinner. It was held in the Palace of Time, a huge museum with clocks from the 17th-19th centuries. After a walk around to check out the clocks, we sat down for a great dinner followed by a flamenco performance. We stayed up until 3 in the morning afterwards talking and drinking sherry and brandy back at the hotel. Visiting Jerez made me want to come back and see the other two cities that make up the central triangle of the sherry region. According to the book I've been reading each has its own traditions, even in the style of making sherry. This trip was enlightening, as sherry isn't an easy spirit to understand. (I'll try to share my info a little later.) But when I start nerding out on something, I really want to get up in there and learn everything. So I guess I'll have to visit the region again asap. And then it was off to France...

Liquid travel

Peru is advertising its cultural assets in travel magazines: ancient ruins, vibrant and colorful ethnic traditions, and pisco. Mmm, Peru.

Sherry shaking

Last night Simon Difford demonstrated some sherry cocktails. This is good because I came on this trip thinking of sherry as a fortified wine and cocktail ingredient, whereas most of the other writers specialize in wine and have never worked a shaker before. We made many drinks from the Savoy and other classic books, most of which are in the style of Dry Sherry (fino) + Dry vermouth + sweetening agent. The formula works pretty well and we were able to create some new drinks using modern sweeteners/liqueurs such as St. Germain. We also hung out with George Sandeman, who works for the company of his forefathers and is Alcademics-Rated Awesome. He has a weakness for tequila that I admire and we stayed up late talking and laughing when we should have been getting beauty rest. Now I've got to go to a sherry cooking demo, which is kind of weird since all they eat here is meat and Camper don't play that game. (Game, get it?) I guess I'll just drink the ingredients.

Sherry trip pics

Are located in my Flickr set here. I'll add more as I keep going.

Sherry, baby!

I'm in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain to learn about sherry. Last night we visited a vineyard at sunset and had a dinner. Today we went to the sherry control board for a long lecture on sherry, then walked to the Sandeman bodega for a barrel tasting, product tasting, and lunch. I've learned so much about sherry that I don't have time to type 1/10th of it in right now. I'll try to fill in some fun facts later. I'm about to head off to a sherry mixology lecture with Simon Difford who's joined us on the trip. Heck, yeah!

Glossy Booze: Mostly June edition

Everywhere Magazine (Issue 3) has a story about the The Hedgehog Distillery located in Auvergne, France. San Francisco Magazine has a story on the death of happy hour discounts in the city, written by the one and only Camper English. Elite Traveler magazine (March/April) has a story by Nick Passmore on getting the most out of wine auctions. Playboy lists some vodka picks for brands to drink on the rocks, in mixed drinks, in martinis, and a new product, with a few recipes. Lawrence Osbourne has a story in Men's Vogue about the return of Riunite. Gourmet has a short piece on a Berlin beer brand Berliner Weisse bottling 1809. 7X7 Magazine (May) has a story on sipping blanco tequilas. Another original topic by Jordan Mackay. In the June issue, he talks about ice and the infamous Kold-Draft machine. Delta's Sky Magazine (May) lists a signature cocktail called Le Starcky from Le Meurice in Paris, some wine pics from Paul Pacult, and an interview with a beer sommelier in Santa Monica. It's Esquire's annual Best Bars in America round-up, though I think this year it may have jumped the shark. New York Magazine agrees. Some of the choices seem more like writers' personal favorites more than David Wondrich's curated selection. Oh well, at least San Francisco's Cantina, Elixir, Rye, Toronado, and Tosca got mentions. There are also a few good sidebars on drinking alone, having a "safety drink," and bad hotel bar names.

Boozy movies: Sugar

While trying to find the History Channel's Modern Marvels episode on whiskey on Netflix and iTunes (no luck), I stumbled across their sugar episode. I figured it would include some information on rum, which it did. Molasses is a byproduct of sugar production that can be fermented and distilled into rum. The show did not touch on rhum agricole. I realize that I never posted about my trip to Martinique over a month ago. On Martinique, like many Caribbean islands, European settlers first planted tobacco, then switched to sugarcane when the market collapsed. On Martinique the sugar market also collapsed, so Homere Clement and other sugar producers turned their giant sugar factories into giant rum distilleries. They just skipped the middle step of making granular sugar. Rum distilled from sugar cane juice instead of molasses on Martinique is called rhum agricole (they refer to other rums as "industrial"). The agricole distilleries take in sugarcane, smash it and shred it to get all the juice out, then ferment the juice and distill it into rhum. The leftover cane fibers are burned to generate steam, which in turn powers the distilleries. The steam engines are enormous machines at the front and center of each agricole distillery, which makes them some of the coolest to visit- they're loud with big spinning parts. Here's a video I took in Martinique: The Modern Marvels video didn't touch on rhum agricole, but did mention sugar production in other areas. Hawaii produces a large amount of sugar from cane, but as far as I know no brands of American cane sugar rum are on the market. In Brazil, not only do they make cachaca from sugar cane, they fuel their cars with the distillate. Something like 40% (I could be wrong on the number) of sugar now comes from sugar beets from colder climates instead of sugar cane from the tropics. But according to this discussion on the Ministry of Rum website, sugar beet molasses is high in salt and doesn't produce good spirit. A lot of the sweetener used in the US since the 1980's is from corn, in the form of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). I think that with the corn ethanol poor government planning and HFCS/obesity epidemic bad press, the (mostly corn-based) bourbon industry had better start using organic corn if they're going to come out of this retaining their "traditional American heritage" image. But corn is a different story. For that, you can watch the documentary King Corn, or the History Channel also has a Modern Marvels on that crop.

Scotland Day Eight: Edinburgh and the castle

We had a nearly four hour drive from Speyside to Edinburgh for our last day on the trip, but it wasn't drama-free by any means. Once again, the back door of the van popped open while we were going down the highway and two peoples' luggage fell out. I watched as one tumbled behind our bus and was run over by the truck behind us. The suitcase was ruined and the guy's laptop's screen was cracked, but the bottle of Pimm's No. 3 and the Linn House bottling of 35 year-old scotch survived intact. Hooray! We stayed at the huge and impressive Balmoral hotel in Edinburgh, but I didn't spend more than 20 minutes awake in the room. I had bars to see! My drinking pal for the day was Bill Dowd, and we stopped into about 7 venues in three hours. Not bad. I'll have to reserve the write-up on those for a future story, but I loved Oloroso and Tonic most of all. Back in the room for a quick change into the first suit jacket I've owned since First Communion (50 bucks at H&M), I was ready for a private dinner in Edinburgh Castle. Several of the distillers and blenders from earlier in the week joined us, and it was like everything else in the week: ultra-fancy. The people at Old Pulteney were kind enough to contribute some 31 year-old scotch for us to drink at dinner and at the after-party at the Balmoral Hotel. It was almost a beautiful ending to a fantastic (and educational) trip, but alas, the trip home was not-so-fab. The combination of Delta and JFK airport caused delays, a missed connection, a night in New York, sleeping on a friend's floor, and an early next-day flight 15 hours later than I was supposed to be home. Luckily when I arrived there, there was a bottle of scotch that had been delivered waiting for me.

Scotland Day Seven: The real post

This was our final distillery day in Scotland, but it was a double-header. We started off the morning with a tour of the Glenlivet distillery. By this time distillery tours were old hat, so we just stopped off at the points that deviate from other brands. The we had lunch and a demo of an old still that they set up on the driveway. It produced some pretty good new make spirit, as far as I can tell. After a tasting, we headed off on one of the new Smuggler's Trails. These were set up as nature walks meant to be historically accurate trails that smugglers would take to get the whisky out in the days when distilling was illegal (without paying taxes, anyway). And due to our three hour walk, I actually came home from Scotland with a sunburn! We drove over to our hotel for the night, the Linn House. It's the property of Pernod-Ricard, owners of Chivas, and it's pretty darn fabulous. After a quick walk around the grounds and building, it was time for dinner. We walked over to the Strathisla Distillery, where the Chivas visitor center is. The distillery itself is gorgeous with the double pagoda roof and stone front. Inside, the visitor's center is themed like an old grocery store, which is how the Chivas brothers started off. We were treated to access to the Chivas archives, where there were some great old product catalogs, then treated to dinner in a modern part of the distillery where they hold corporate meetings. For the afterparty, we returned to the Linn House's Garden Bar, which is like a little club house in the gardens behind the house equipped with a pool table, jukebox, and a fully stocked bar. I stayed up to a sensible 2AM, unlike some of the less responsible writers who tried to re-rouse me for the after-after party in the living room.

Scotland Day Six: Macallan and no bagpipes

I was on a roll there with two bagpipe days back to back, but alas, the trend didn't continue. On our sixth distillery day, we drove from Inverness to Craigellachie. On the way there, we stopped in Elgin to visit Johnston's cashmere center, a huge wool and cashmere factory where they sew scarves for Burberry, Chanel, and other brands, in addition to their own. The tour was surprisingly cool and I even found things to purchase in the large gift shop- books. Then we popped in to a supermarket and I headed straight for the liquor aisle. I found Pimm's Winter, a.k.a. Pimm's No. 3 Cup with the brandy base. Wahoo! Off we went to Macallan for a tour. At each distillery, there is a combination of old and new technology present since most of them have been around for at least a hundred years. Much of the equipment lasts for up to five decades, so what's been replaced lately is rather variable. I was surprised to find Macallan a very modern distillery. I guess I believed the brand messaging story a bit too much. Macallan has an incredible "wood expreience" exhibit as part of the tour. It's not like a museum where there is a lot of text and you lead yourself through it, but rather the tour guide takes you through and tells you what you're about to learn at each point. There is information on types of wood, sizes of barrels, color in whisky, a smell area with different substances in jars to identify, and other stuff. Interestingly, despite this nice big exhibit they try to keep the number of tour visitors down, not accepting large busses, and only doing about 6, 10-person tours a day in the high season. For dinner and overnight, we stayed at the Easter Elchies house. It's the house on the Macallan label, built in 1700. I stayed in the room on the top right on the label, so now every time I drink Macallan it will be like looking at a postcard from my trip. Score. We have just one distillery left to visit, and I'm already feeling separation anxiety from Scotland. I freaking love this place.

Scotland Day Five: Glenmorangie and the fancy hotel

Pipercount: 3! On the fifth day of our trip, we headed to the Glenmorangie distillery. They use the tallest stills in Scotland, as the original one was a former gin still. The taller the stills, the lighter the particles have to be to reach the top during distillation, and the resulting scotch has a lighter, more floral character than the heavier, oilier ones from lower stills. We had a lovely barrel tasting of some Glenmorangie that was first aged ten years in an ex-bourbon cask, then an additional seven in a sherry cask. (The finished whisky line by Glenmorangie is ten years in bourbon plus two extra in a sherry, port, etc. cask.) The stuff came out a dark vermouth color, and tastes like pecan walnut maple ice cream-yummers. After that we headed to the Culloden Battlefield Visitor's Center, a new museum on the site of Bonnie Prince Charlie's last stand. It was built in the modern museum style, with high-tech displays interspersed with historical photographs, maps, and artifacts from the time. Cool stuff. Then it was off to the Culloden House Hotel, where I am currently typing this. They have a bag pipe player wander around the front lawn of the estate before dinner time, so that brings our Pipercount up to three! As you can see from the picture, the place is incredible. I tried to convince the trip's sponsors that I "didn't get the right material for my story" so I'd need to stay on a few extra days here, but it didn't work. Usually when people say that their hotel room is bigger than their apartment they're exaggerating, but in this case it's true. Walking back and forth between the rooms to pack is wearing me out. But then again, I'm still tired from the midnight croquet game on the front lawn of the estate. Ahh, country life.

Scotland Day Four: Pipercount- Two!

I started the morning at 5AM catching up on live blogging Scotland. Then I had a walk past Huntly castle and the adorable town of Huntly. It reminded me of towns in Napa and Sonoma in a way, in that it's all cute all-too clean small-town goodness, except in this case it's 400 or so years old and not created by some entrepreneurial developer. We drove to the Ardmore distillery, which has a relatively new single malt on the market despite folks distilling whisky there for many years. It's one of the primary single-malts in Teacher's Highland Cream, which is a blended whisky once popular in the US and still popular in the UK and other markets. The distillery isn't open to the public for tours, yet is all shiny and new-looking despite its age. They do a good job keeping things clean. We then headed off to a local estate now owned by the Scottish trust, had a tour, then a great tasting session of Ardmore and Laphroaig (also owned by Jim Beam). We were lucky enough to sample a Laphroaig 27-year-old whisky that was just terrific. I highly recommend buying a bottle if you've got a thousand bucks laying around. We hopped back onto the bus, our second home, and drive for a few hours to the Glenmorangie House, an incredible hotel on the sea owned by the distillery. For dinner that night we were greeted by a bagpiper (Hooray! Finally!) who announced the meal, then later recited the traditional Robert Burns haggis poem. The cook even made veggie haggis for little old me so I could finally try some. While I passed out early, the rest of the crew stayed up to three in the morning. I'm uncomfortable in my new role of party pooper.

Scotland photos

By the way, the photos from my trip can be seen on my Flickr page here, organized by day and distillery. I'll be adding more pictures as I go along.

Scotland Day Three: Death defying

This morning I feel much better after having suffered from near-fatal jetlag the whole trip. I was averaging four hours of sleep or less since the day before the trip began, but last night I finally caught up and had nearly ten hours' worth. It was easier here, as we're staying in the hotel adjacent to a castle in Huntly. Yesterday we rushed out of the not-as-fancy hotel to drive across the mountain towards the Spey river and the famous Speyside whisky region. Most of the group then had their own death-defying experience canoeing down the Spey river. Almost all of them tipped over, up to three times, in the freezing water. One writer said, "Just minutes ago I was curled up in fetal position on the riverbank." When the four of us smarter folks who declined the experience showed up at the end point, everyone else was shaking like wet chihuahuas and had in their eyes the crazed stares of people who just survived something awful and had a new appreciation for life. What I was doing instead was visiting Ballindalloch castle, where we were greeted by the family who lives there and owns it. They had the affected accents and mannerisms of the moneyed gentry that you couldn't pay a character actor to imitate better. They were awesome. Afterwards, the river people dried off and we went to the Speyburn distillery. The place doesn't have a visitor's center, so we were given the close-up tour. What I never realized about scotch production is that there are two different steps to prepare the barley. First you soak it so that the barley germinates, then you dry it out at just the right moment. This is now mostly done at centralized malting houses rather than onsite at distilleries as it was in the past. (The pagoda shaped buildings many scotch distilleries have are the old roofs of the drying rooms.) After you (now) buy your malted and dried barley, you have to grind it up, then soak it again several times to release the sugars. Only then does it go to the fermentation tanks, then on to be distilled twice. We tasted the products of the distillation in the barrel room, sampling the entire range of Speyburn and Old Pulteney. We headed off afterwards to Dufftown where we were given a cooking lesson by the chef at A Taste of Speyside restaurant. It was tasty stuff -even my veggie version was delightful. Then we checked into our lovely hotel where I skipped dinner and slept through the night. Ahh. I"m up at 5AM but after 10 hours of sleep that doesn't bother me at all. That's right folks- two days in a row without bagpipes! My whole theory about this trip has so far proven wrong.

Scotland Day Two: Pipe-free

Yesterday we visited the Royal Lochnagar distillery, a very small, pristine place located next to the summer residence of the Queen of England. (The distillery was there first.) On the drive here the landscape turned from lush and green to tall rocky hills covered in heather- which looks like an ugly brown bush when it's not blooming. Also on the way here, the back door of the shuttle bus popped open and someone's luggage fell out onto the street. We turned around and went back a few miles to find a lady holding it by the side of the street waving us down. Nice people, the Scots. But here's what's not nice: no bagpipes all day! Can I get a piper up in here?

Piperwatch

Scotland Day One- Bagpipe count: 1 I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of bagpipes involved on this press trip. When I went to Mexico on a tequila trip we had one to three different mariachi groups per day. I think it's gonna be like that with bagpipes, which are just as loud, but at least there's no singing. Whoops- scratch that. We had a singing Scotch harpist at dinner. But she was soft and gentle, like the rolling heathered hills of Dunkeld. The folks at the Aberfeldy distillery (Aberfeldy single malt is the main flavor component of Dewar's blended scotch whisky) claim that the soft and gentle countryside is reflected in their spirit, which has a heather-honey aspect to it, no real burn to speak of, and a dry, sandalwood with a touch of peat finish. Does whisky reflect terroir, or is this just convenient? We'll see.

Live from Scotland!

After 24 hours of traveling (some of it in economy class- the horrors!) I have arrived in Scotland. Bill Dowd is here, as is St. John Frizell. We're currently in Dunkeld and about to visit the Aberfeldy distillery. Driving the hour from Edinburgh, everything is big and green and currently blossoming. All the trees look very... healthy. We passed little baby lambs, Shetland ponies, and fuzzy highland cattle in the fields. I didn't have a clear mental picture of what Scotland looked like before I got here- it's actually quite Medieval, with big stone castles and tons of smaller stone houses alongside the rivers, every 10 minutes or so in the car. Gorgeous! Come to think of it, I've been in Scotland for three hours and I haven't had a scotch yet- I better get to it.

Off to the highlands

I'm heading off to Scotland tomorrow morning for 10 glorious days of work (read: drinking scotch). I'm going to attempt to post from the road, and I have some blog posts scheduled to appear on Alcademics while I'm gone, so I hope you won't get too lonely. In the meantime, I could really use some recommendations for places in Edinburgh to get good cocktails. Anyone?

World whiskies, then world travel

Posting will be infrequent if not non-existent over the next week and a half. I'm headed to the Whiskies of the World tasting event tonight in San Francisco, then to Vail early in the morning for the Navan/Grand Marnier Mixology Summit, then to Martinique with Rhum Clement to drink rhum agricole right from the source. Work, work, work.

Belgian text

The text of my Belgian beer bars story from San Francisco Magazine is now online here. And if you're interested, my Aspen travel piece is here.

Orson and onward

Last night was the grand opening party for Orson, likely to be the only restaurant opening party this year to feature both a fashion show and a sword fight. But I was there to joust with the cocktails, so that's what I did. I had three drinks: a celery gimlet that tastes exactly how you think it would, a bourbon-based drink with many other ingredients that I do not remember (it was fantastic), and a drink with cocoa bean-infused something, sherry, Batavia arrak, and a flamed orange peel, which was also layered and delicious. Why don't I take better notes? Afterward I hit the very end of Rye's cocktail competition featuring Charbay's green tea vodka, and had a tasty sweet drink with just the vodka and lemonade. After that, I headed over to NOPA for some food and drinks, because lord knows I hadn't had enough drinks. NOPA has been doing something cool with their menu for a while now that I haven't seen other places. They have a section of the menu devoted to a class of spirits, such as calvados or cachaca, in addition to the regular cocktails. This time its rhum agricole from Rhum Clement (check out the menu here), with five cocktails featuring expressions from the brand. It's a nice way to get acquainted with a category of spirits- and I especially need to get familiar with Clement, because I'm going to Martinique in April to drink it from the tap. Wahoo!

Tiki in the Tarheel State

Last week I went to visit family in Asheville, NC. Coincidentally, the one and only Beachbum Berry moved there recently as well. So that was reason enough to throw a tiki party at my brother's new house. We planned our drinks in advance and bought all the equipment to make them in bulk, but the guests showed up early and really thirsty. I got them started with the Bum original (and easy to make) Restless Native cocktail until he arrived. When he did, we were squeezing and measuring and sweating to crank out drinks for everybody for the first hour or so before they all realized that the mai tais were pretty darn strong. Phew. Then we had enough of a break to prepare another simple Bum original, the Castaway. Next time I do a party with drinks unfamiliar to the crowd I'll have to remember to thwart the most common question asked ("What's in this?") by typing up a description of each drink being served. That would make like easier on the amateur bartenders working the party. My friends Stephen and Abigail brought the most incredible bean dip volcano, which is unfortunately the only picture I took of the party. (So as far as you know, I could be making the whole thing up.) I forgot to get Bum's autograph on my copy of his books, but he's threating to visit the Bay Area to check out Forbidden Island so I'll have a second chance, and a third at Tales of the Cocktail. Another treat was locally made mead called Jay's Honeywine that my brother's friend brought to the party. I tried one with honey and blueberry juice, and another grainy one- I think barley. I have a lot to learn about mead still, but I think I dig it.

Video Bartender: Great Scotch Whisky (2006)

This DVD introduces Scottish and scotch history, then takes a tour of some scotch and Irish whiskey distilleries. The majority of the video is a visual tour of whisky distilleries, yet it's not quite as educational as going on the actual tours. In other words, I didn't learn anything from watching it. The DVD visited the distilleries of Glenfiddich, Glenlivet, Glenfarclas, and Bushmills, and maybe a few others that I didn't write down, with lots of countryside scenery images thrown in for good measure. Overall, it's a fine Sunday afternoon PBS-while-cleaning-the-house video, but nothing that will blow your mind. Later I watched Rick Steves' Ireland and Scotland 2000-2007. Steves only visited one distillery, plus the Scotch Whisky Experience in Edinburgh. He spent a large amount of time touring Scotland and driving on country roads, as well as hanging in pubs in Edinburgh. While not a whisky video, it was a nice introduction or warm-up for those going on a whisky tour of Scotland. And on that note: I'm going to Scotland!!! I just signed on for a seven distillery tour with DISCUS in May, and I'm very, very happy about it. But the more I look at these video tours, the more it feels like I won't be seeing as much of the country as I want. We're just hitting Highland/Speyside distilleries (Only seven? But there are 40! What about Islay? Can we spend more time in Edinburgh?) and I'm trying to resist the temptation to go nuts and extend the trip for too much longer. Damn that Rick Steves for making it all look so cool.

What a wild, wonderful year

This past year has been busy, crazy, and wonderful. I realize it's only been a little over a year since I started writing about cocktails and spirits full-time. That seems ludicrous, as I've learned so much since my first big feature in the SF Chronicle in October of 2006. And the thing is, I still don't feel like I know anything. That's great because I get bored easily and it will be a very long time before I am sick of this topic. Cheers to that. This year, I went on visits to the following distilleries/breweries:

• Canadian Mist (near Toronto)
• Blue Ice Vodka (Idaho)
• 209 Gin (San Francisco)
• Genevieve/Junipero/Old Potrero (San Francisco)
• Mount Gay Rum (Barbados)
• Chopin Vodka (Warsaw, Poland)
• Finlandia Vodka (near Helsinki, Finland)
• Don Julio Tequila (Jalisco, Mexico)
• 4 Copas Tequila (Jalisco, Mexico)
• Partida Tequila (Jalisco, Mexico)
• El Tesoro Tequila (Jalisco, Mexico)
• Herradura Tequila (Jalisco, Mexico)
• Cazadores Tequila (Jalisco, Mexico)
• Sake One Sake (near Portland, Oregon)
• Takara Sake (Berkeley, California)

Plus additional trips to New York, Aspen, and Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans. Wow. I'd like to thank the sponsors of those trips. Thanks! You learn so much more about products from visiting the distillery and especially talking to the distillers at each. I hope that the next year is pretty close to this one in content and adventure, but perhaps with a little more cash and health insurance and book deals added in there somewhere. Here's to continued good drinking in '08!

Really!

I was going through my receipts from my Aspen trip (write-offs, don't ya know) when I discovered that I had been charged for ice in a bar. (A bar that had de-iced its sidewalks that day, no less.) I guess it's a good thing I didn't need a straw or garnish!

Alpine Cocktails

I'm back from a press trip to Aspen. This one wasn't drink-related but I did some drinking while I was there. (Not as much as I wanted to- the altitude turned me into a lightweight.) Here are some observations. - Classic cocktails are nowhere to be found. I'm sure bartenders can mix a traditional martini or Manhattan, but they're not usually listed on cocktail menus. A sazerac is not gonna happen. - Most cocktail menus in Aspen are filled with drinks lead by flavored vodkas and other flavored spirits. This is usually a bad sign. - Several bars have decent collections of scotch and cognac. - Considering the audience, though, these last three trends make sense. Aspen is full of young people working and partying after work or apres-ski. I was surprised at how much the workforce makes up the social scene in town. Events seemed to have a mix of young locals with visiting older people, sometimes mixed together in crowds. Young people tend toward fruity sweet drinks, so bars are serving what most people want. The moneyed crowd drink single-malt scotch and wine. - However, not every fruity drink is a lemon/grape/jolly rancher/pop rocks-flavored cosmopolitan. I stayed at the Sky Hotel, where the 39 Degrees Lounge has cocktails that contain flavored vodkas, but also include items like ginger syrup, fresh lemongrass, bitters, cilantro, and serano (sp?) peppers. I also spoke with the assistant food and beverage director for the adjacent Little Nell hotel, where the guy was specifically revamping their cocktail program. He told me he was making real grenadine and fresh sweet and sour mix instead of bottled, as well as instituting other improvements. I talked to him endlessly about tonic water, as I tend to do. I also saw one venue (I can't remember which one) that had a list of hot cocktails for apres-ski. - I told a couple of beverage directors they could stand out with a local drinks section. I found two organic vodkas while I was there- Vodka 14 and CapRock Organic Vodka, both made in Colorado. Peak Spirits, who make CapRock, also make an organic gin, organic grappa, and organic eau de vie. Colorado has wine and plenty of microbrew producers as well, so this would be a cinch to implement. - Regional shots are fascinating to me, perhaps because in SF people drink shots of Fernet, which doesn't make any sense. Anyway, in Aspen a few people told me they drink shots of Pearl pomegranate vodka there. - Also, three different people told me their favorite tequila was the Don Julio 1942. Overall, I think Apsen has quite a way to go in the fine drinking department. Everything in Aspen is expensive anyway, so charging an extra buck or two for drinks at the high end spots probably wouldn't scare away customers, and that money could go towards better mixers, fresh ingredients, and supporting local producers. And none of that requires that they serve drinks that aren't fruity or sweet. But this is not to say I was disappointed in my visit. Aspen is a gorgeous town and I want to come back. Maybe I'll do a follow-up visit sometime next summer when there isn't that inconvenient snow everywhere.

Mexicoh!

I'm back from a week in Mexico, where we toured 5 distilleries 5 days in a row. Between them- 4 Copas, Partida, Cazadores, El Tesoro, and Herradura- I endured at least 9 mariachi bands, 1 bout of Montezuma's revenge, 1 venue in which you can pee in a trough beneath the bar, very few hours of sleep, 1 missed flight, more than 60 pages of notes, 684 photos, 30ish great co-travelers, 1 two-story pour of tequila into my mouth, 6 bottles smuggled home in my luggage, and so much information that I could write tequila stories for the next six months with the information gleaned on this trip alone (editors: e-mail me, okay?). I'm unlikely to have time to describe the trip in detail now (I'm still three trips behind in that) so instead here are the pictures.

Here today, gone tomorrow

The problem with traveling so much is that I haven't had time to report on the travel. (I need to get better at working on planes.) I'm back from New York as of this afternoon and heading off to Mexico (again) Saturday night. And in the meantime I have a ton of stories due. Anyway, while in New York I hit David Wondrich's book launch party, where it turns out I knew about 15 people I'd met either out here, on press trips, or at Tales of the Cocktail. It was great. The party was at Flatiron Lounge, then we went to an after-party at Passerby. Then I hit Death & Company and PDT. Both bars were wonderful once we were in and had a seat. I think it's the same at Bourbon & Branch out here as it is there: the bars put in roadblocks to keep them from getting too crowded and uncomfortable, but then it makes the experience of getting in a little uncomfortable. Personally I don't mind the rigmarole to earn great cocktails in a comfortable space. (And the door at PDT is far more awesome than I imagined.) The next night I went back to PDT and Passerby, despite the fact I had a car coming to take me to the airport at 5:45 AM. (It's Jordan's fault.) So instead of the work I needed to do on the plane I napped, thus repeating the cycle of hurrying to finish stories from one trip while packing for the next. I don't mind the rigmarole to earn great trips to fun places. Hooray!

I.O.U.

...several blog posts, including: -A trip to Barbados with Mount Gay Rum, or, Quest for Falernum -Molecular mixology seminar in San Francisco, or, Chemistry for Drunks -Dinner with Joy Spence of Appleton rum, or, the Master Blender who has her own handler to keep her from giving away all the booze -WhiskyFest San Francisco report, or, I don't know yet because I'm about to go there Watch this space for exciting updates, or, this is a blog post about not posting

Around the world in 80 press trips

It may sound like I'm complaining about this schedule and the resulting jet-lag, but really I'm just bragging and explaining my lack of posts. October 8-14 Paris and Warsaw (vodka) October 18-21 Barbados (rum) October 22-23 San Francisco (WhiskyFest and related events) October 24-27 Mexico (tequila) November 7ish New York (scotch) November 11-17 Mexico (tequila again) November 18-December 31 (sleeping)

Back from Poland

I'm back from Poland and jet lagged as all get-out. I was there and in Paris on a press trip for Chopin vodka. While I'll save many of the details for a later exposition on the trip and for stories I need to write, I'll hit the highlights of the distillery tour. We were there during the potato harvest, which happens just once each year. Unlike grain distilleries and other potato vodkas like Blue Ice from Idaho, Chopin distills all their potatoes into vodka (and other alcohol products) over a two-month period at harvest time, kicked off with a VIP party at the distillery. I'm not sure yet why they need to process everything all at once whereas other distilleries can spread this throughout the year (the pesticide-free potatoes spoil fast, they say, but do American potatoes last that much longer? Is it the type of potatoes or the pesticides?) (update: see answer in comments). They process 10 million pounds of potatoes during this period, running the distillery 24 hours a day. It's rare on visits like this to see actual product coming into the distillery, so I was thrilled to see the potatoes move from the yard, into the distillery, and down the wash chute into the boiler. We had little time to see everything, so I was running behind Tad Dorda, president of Chopin, asking three questions for every sentence he spit out. I am a drink nerd, after all. The potatoes are a special variety unlike what we get at the grocery store, of high starch content that turns to liquid mush quickly. They're then cooled and fermented for three days before hitting the still to turn them from potato beer into potato vodka. Of the four column still, the first one is made of copper and the other three of steel. As is usually the case, the first column separates out the solids, which are then sold as animal feed afterwards. (I think, but am not sure, that it's unusual for them to be placed into the top of the column and making their way to the bottom of it, rather than bottom-up.) They're particularly proud of the first-distillation vodka produced, and we were supposed to do a taste test of others one-time distilled but didn't have time. That was a bummer. They store some of this distillate for future scientific study at the nearby potato institute to see how the makeup of each year's potato crops effects the outcome of the vodka. Then it's shipped to the bottling facility where it's diluted with demineralized well water and we get to drink it. Na Zdrowie!

One night in NYC

I'm going to be in New York for one evening. What bars do you think I should visit? Pegu? Little Branch? PDT?

Putting on the Ritz, putting Camper in the poorhouse

I'll be in Paris next week and have an entire afternoon free. As all my travel revolves around booze as well as my free time, I decided I should probably check out one of the world's most famous cocktail bars while I'm there, the Hemingway Bar in the Ritz Paris. A quick look at the menu tells me that I won't be visiting for more than one drink. The cocktails cost 23 Euros, which is more than 32 bucks American. Damn! I'll have to have a t-shirt made that says, "I went to Paris and all I ate was garnish."

Moto-Tails

Last night I hung out with Cameron Bogue, who was in San Francisco on part of his road trip. He's visiting small distilleries from Vancouver down into South America, seeing how they fit into the local community, inventing cocktails that blend the spirits with what he learns about the region, possibly using local ingredients, and sharing advice on some of the better bars he discovers along the way. All of this is part of a year-long motorcycle trip with some friends, you know, just for fun. He's in town for another day, but is using it to catch up on blogging, as he's barely started the trip and is already a month behind. In the Bay Area he visited Charbay, Hangar One, 209 Gin, and Osocalis. This should be a fun blog to follow, and I've already decided not to be filled with jealousy when I read it, but live vicariously through it. It's much easier that way. Check out MotoTails.com. Have fun Cameron!

Alcomotive

Amtrak is offering $100 worth of free booze on certain train trips. The bad news is those are the really expensive trips.

The offer of free drinks comes on top of the dinner wine that is already included in the cost of a ticket for GrandLuxe trips on the California Zephyr — chugging between Chicago and San Francisco — the Southwest Chief between Chicago and Los Angeles, or the Silver Meteor between Washington, D.C., and Miami or Orlando, Fla. GrandLuxe offers separate cars, with their own private dining and lounge sections, attached to regular Amtrak trains. Tickets for such trips range from $789 per person for a two-day, one night trip on the East Coast to $1,599 or higher for three days and two nights for travel to or from the West Coast.

Finland recap

I filed my write-up of my trip to Finland with Finlandia Vodka in my personal blog, as there isn't too much information about vodka in it beyond the ridiculous amounts of it that were consumed while there. But if you're interested, you can read part 1, part 2, and part 3.

Land of the Hangover

Hey y'all- I'm in Finland right now courtesy of the people at Finlandia vodka and Brown-Forman, whose products I drank way too much of last night. I'll post a more complete entry later, but here are my thoughts so far:

• If the luggage loader breaks and they can't load half the luggage on the plane, why not wait until it's fixed before sending the plane off? My comfy airplane t-shirt did not make a great urban exploration t-shirt for the additional 24 hours I was forced to wear it (so far).
• Finn Air's wine and spirits selection in business class was delightful. The veggie meals? Not so much.
• Monday night and we went bar-hopping to four venues. I think we got back sometime after 3:30AM. I like this place.

Thursday update-I'm back from a night of partying in Lapland, where the sun is shining 24 hours a day now. I am absolutely polluted with vodka that at some point of the night we stopped drinking in cocktails and began chugging out of the bottle. Boy do I ever need a shower. Sunday update- I'm back in SF now. Pictures are here. More details after I'm back from my next trip.

Booze Cruise News

Here's a story on the rules of bringing aboard wine and spirits onto cruise lines from ports of call. Most cruises prohibit bringing anything aboard (so you have to buy it from their bars), and though you can buy bottles in the onboard gift shops, most of them still won't let you drink it in your cabin, but hold it for you until the end of the cruise like an airport duty-free shop. The article lists the rules for various cruise lines.

Where to Drink in London

The New York Times runs a nice long piece on where to drink in London. (Print and save it before they make you pay!) There's not a whole lot of new information there as to why it's better than New York (or SF)- bartenders tend to be career bartenders rather than people passing through the profession so there is more consistency in the quality of drinks. The drinks themselves are what you might find in better bars everywhere, with fresh ingredients and bartenders trying to outdo each other by incorporating obscure liqueurs into their cocktails. There is, however, a nice list of bars in which to drink, that includes more than the ones I've always heard about: Trailer Happiness, Milk and Honey, Lonsdale. I wonder, though, if the drinks are better overall, or just more consistently good. How good can a cocktail get? Have I tasted perfection already, or is there further to go? I guess I'll have to wait for someone to fly me to London to investigate in person.