And for the new father...

Another small thing by me in today's Chronicle:

Father's little helper

Fatherhood is a lot of work. First you have to help make the baby, then you have to sit around and wait for nine months until it's ready to play with. After all that effort, new dads deserve a refreshing cocktail, and since there are extra hands around the house, it's about time baby started pitching in. "Baby Mix Me a Drink" ($9; McSweeney's), a 12-page board book from San Francisco resident Lisa Brown, will help Baby start to identify shapes and colors such as olives and red vermouth. Good baby!

-- C.E.

For the Father With (Almost) Everything

Small piece I have in today's Chronicle:

For the dad who has almost everything

It's a touch pricey for a Hallmark holiday gift, but consider this: Father's Day is on Sunday and National Martini Day is on Tuesday. That's two birds you can kill with one stone, and by stone we mean a $440 silver-plated cocktail shaker set packaged in baby blue Tiffany's-esque boxes. The Ercuis brand two-piece shakers and Hawthorne strainers were imported from Vienna by former Enrico's bartender David Nepove, a.k.a. Mr. Mojito, who now sells them online at MisterMojito.com. Unfortunately the shakers do not come with the magic power to transform every drink made in them to the finest cocktail in the world, so we recommend you also send Dad's butler a gift certificate for bartending school.

-- Camper English

Clean planes and dirty martinis

Delta is advertising seat-side cocktail preparation including mojitos, martinis and virgin cocktails. They put the menu online so you can make first-class cocktails at home. They have a bourbon/apple drink, a passion fruit mojito, and a vodka Fresca drink. Most are made with Stirrings drink mixers, which makes a lot of sense. Can you imagine your flight attendant trying to muddle in the middle of the aisle?

An actually good liquor website

In today's SF Chronicle, I have this short write-up:

Bay Area bartenders invade the Interweb

Most spirits Web sites are a mess of Flash animation and overly loud house music that you can't turn off, but the relaunched Roth Vodka Web site is actually kind of cool. It stars many of the Bay Area bartenders we know and love, including Greg Lindgren from Rye (pictured at right), Jonny Raglin (Absinthe), Martin Cate (Forbidden Island), and Nicole Burke (Garibaldi's), in hundreds of short videos wherein they demonstrate recipes and drink preparation techniques. Because there is a lot of overlap in topics, it's great fun to watch bartenders with contrasting opinions, such as the nine bartenders who justify their muddler of choice or Zack Morlock (Frisson) dismissing "Ice is ice" while Dominic Venegas (Range) says, "It's the backbone to a drink." Stalk your favorite bartender at www.rothvodka.com.

Check out the site- you can spend hours on there. It's great that they don't hit you over the head with product placement. And for those of us struggling to make proper drinks at home, hearing bartenders disagree with each other on techniques and recipes makes you feel a lot less stupid.

Here's a new one...

I was flipping through the current issue of GQ magazine and came across this ad for PAMA pomegranate liqueur. I almost missed that it has a scented perfume strip so you can smell what it tastes like. I haven't seen that trick before.

I have a bottle at home and can tell you that the stuff in the bottle smells different- pomegranate is syrupy and that doesn't come through on paper. The magazine smells more like pomegranate perfume.

Maybe I'll rub it on my neck before I go out tonight. Though I'm used to reeking of booze, it would be nice if that was actually a good smell.

Fun with Vodka

A poster on the DrinkBoy forum pointed out these hilarious 42 Below Vodka University ads on YouTube. They're totally not PC (and slightly not safe for work) with gay jokes, rimming jokes, strippers, and Mexican wrestlers. It's about time vodka got a sense of humor!