Cocktailians

Old-Fashioned

Old-Fashioned, originally uploaded by Vidiot.

An Old-Fashioned, at Angel's Share.  Just because I'm editing some pictures and thought this was purty.

Drinky Linky, aka Catching Up On My Blogroll

Some linky goodness for your Monday morning perusal:

• single malt....English?
• African-inspired cocktails (the Kinka sounds worth trying, though the Larakaraka sounds like a perfect storm of liqueur trendiness, incorporating both St. Germain and Canton) at New York's new Merkato 55;
• how (not) to make a Daiquiri -- now with extra-special secret ingredient!  (As my mother always told me, you should put a little of yourself in everything you make.)  And wanna know something scary?  Dude has 80 YouTube videos;
• Cocktail Nerd limns cachaça;
• Check out how your taste buds do on the Budometer (I'm apparently a "Hyper-Sensitive Taster")...but that's certainly a dubious selection of mixed drinks that you're asked to choose among;
• Explore the Pour does some Campari detective work; and
• Sparkling vodka?  Brought to you by Dr. Dre?

HOWTO: Infuse Vodka

Wired's How-To Wiki has published a guide to infusing your own vodka.

dell'anima

A couple days ago, some friends and I went to dell'anima, a new-ish Italian place in the West Village.  It's primarily a wine bar and restaurant, but they're trying to introduce New Yorkers to the Italian custom of the aperitivo:  a sort of Continental happy hour with cocktails, wine, and munchies like olives, pickled artichoke hearts, and other antipasti-type things to nibble on.

GM and partner Joe Campanale is quite the wine guy (he was formerly a sommelier at Babbo -- a pretty impressive accomplishment for anyone, but especially amazing considering that he's 23), but his restaurant has an interesting collection of house cocktails.  He says that he and the bar staff enjoy the spicier, more bitter flavors out there (the bar has quite a collection of amari), and he credits Clinton Addison, dell'Anima's head bartender, for putting the cocktail list together. 

When we walked into the restaurant, the first thing I spotted behind the bar were king-sized bottles of Regans' Orange and Angostura bitters, so I knew the bartenders would know their trade...and then when my eye ran across the shelves and saw things like Luxardo and Punt E Mes, I figured I was in for an enjoyable afternoon.

Fortunately, I was there for long enough, and with generous enough friends, that I was able to taste everything on the list.  I started with a Roasted Orange Negroni.  The Negroni works well with orange -- see the wonderful variation that is the Cinnabar Negroni, which doubles the Campari (!) and adds some orange bitters -- so I figured this would come together nicely.  The bartender muddled a roasted orange, and added Miller's Gin, Campari, and Carpano Antica Formula, and served it up with an orange twist for an amazingly rich, spicy, elegant drink -- the Carpano Antica vermouth played very well with the Campari.

But there were a bunch more cocktails on the list to try.

Paid Programming: Absinthe

I got an e-mail this morning asking me if I'd be interested in "an unbiased paid review" of Buy-Absinthe-Alcohol.com, a site selling absinthe and related accessories.

I declined; for the record, we don't do advertorials here at Cocktailians.  We'll do reviews, sure, but they're the honest reactions of our correspondents to the ingredients, drinking establishments, recipes, accessories, and whatever else we've set our sights on.  Will we accept free samples for review?  Sure (bring 'em on!) but don't expect that to mean that you've bought our opinions, and do expect those discounts to be prominently disclosed here.

Now, all of the above is meant as a policy statement, and is neither a dart nor a laurel directed toward Buy-Absinthe-Alcohol:  for instance, I don't think that I can give a website that sells things a fair review unless I buy something from them...and I'm not going to pay shipping from Europe when I can get absinthe (relatively) easily here in New York.   To their credit, they asked for an "unbiased" review.  I'm assuming this means that they'd pay me regardless of what I said about the site, whether it's positive or negative.  Their FAQ acknowledges that the site started as a distributor for Rodniks absinthe, and (again, I've no personal experience with buying from them) they seem like a perfectly above-board way to buy absinthe.  (There are other suppliers, such as Liqueurs de France, which carries the Jade Liqueurs line of absinthe.  There's also Viridian Spirits' Lucid, which is probably the absinthe that's most readily available in the U.S.)  The site includes an absinthe blog, which I'm linking to here because it has some useful and interesting information tucked in among the expected promotional content.

Want more information on absinthe?  A good first step is to check my estimable co-author Chuck Taggart's article on the subject.  And here's a nice article on absinthe's history, as well as an interview with chemist and absinthe distiller T.A. Breaux.  Breaux is the man behind both the Jade Liqueurs line of reproduction absinthes and the more widely-available Lucid absinthe, and there's a fascinating profile of him in Wired, which was followed by an excellent profile in the New Yorker.  And, you can find bunches more information at the Absinthe Buyer's Guide and the Virtual Absinthe Museum.

Bahamas Cocktail Report

I love New York, but sometimes you gotta get out of town every now and then.  So I just got back from a week in the Bahamas with my girlfriend -- and while I was there, I was anxious to check out the Nassau cocktail scene.

Our resort had an open bar (several, in fact) with top-shelf liquor, but the bartenders weren't too into the classics; one bartender I talked to said the most-ordered cocktails were the tropical ones:  Sex on the Beach, and the two main Bahamian specialties of the Bahama Mama and the Goombay Smash.  (I'm not a coconut fan, so I skipped both of those.)  I had a Tom Collins that was about one part gin, one part club soda, and half sour mix...and my attempts with other drinks fared no better.  The bar had Cognac and Cointreau, so I tried to talk a bartender through a Sidecar, but he cut me off, saying "Just tell me what goes in it, and I'll do the rest."  I got a tumbler that had equal parts Courvoisier, Cointreau, and sour mix on the rocks, complete with a lime wedge.  At a different, quieter bar, I tried to get a Daiquiri, but the bartender said that they "don't do frozen drinks here."

Most of the week, I contented myself with gin and tonics (not to mention the local Bahamian beer Kalik, which is light, crisp, and eminently quaffable in hot weather.) Outside the highball realm, I did have a surprisingly well-made Rusty Nail.  The bar also had a row of self-service frozen-drink machines, serving up smoothies in pina colada, mango, banana, and strawberry flavors.  They were virgin, but the bar tended to leave a bottle of Appleton Rum within easy reach for do-it-yourself spiking.

We got outside of the resort bubble a few times, though, for some trips into Nassau proper.  At the "Fish Fry", a strip of seafood joints on Arawak Cay just west of downtown Nassau, we had some fine conch salad and some excellent fried grouper.  All the places there (as well as some other hole-in-the-wall places around town) served Sky Juice (also known in some places as "Shuttle Juice"), a mixture of gin and coconut juice.  I didn't try it -- again, I'm not terribly big on coconut -- but it certainly seemed to be popular among the locals, and I can see how it'd be a refreshing tipple.