Cocktailians

The Triple Crown of Cocktails

Three races comprise the Triple Crown of horse racing: the Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday in May at Churchill Downs in Louisville, followed two weeks later by the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico in Baltimore, and winding up three weeks after that with the Belmont Stakes in Long Island. And, of more interest to this website, each of these races are traditionally associated with a drink for the spectators. What better way to turn the Sport of Kings into Entertainment for Drunks than to test all of them? No thoroughbred has won the Triple Crown since Affirmed in 1978, but hopefully you can pick a winner among these six drinks.

First up: the biggest race of all, the Kentucky Derby, with the venerable mint julep. I've written about mint juleps before here, so I'll spare you the rhapsodizing and reiterate that a proper mint julep is a phenomenal drinking experience. They're some of my very favorite cocktails to make, and they're not too shabby to drink as well. However, I should note that apparently they don't serve a real julep at the Derby itself, but rather a pre-bottled concoction from Early Times. I haven't tried this, but David Wondrich, in an entertaining and learned Esquire Q&A, says that they "are notoriously bad, with that artificial-tasting mint syrup." (I had a similarly syrupy one while touring Oak Alley Plantation outside of New Orleans. They even sell their own branded mint syrup! But: a bad julep is still a mint julep, and touring an antebellum mansion with a cold drink in one's paw is still a nicely civilized experience.)

Two Gentlemen of Williamsburg

This absolutely killed me:

 

How many bartenders will nod knowingly, secure that it only applies to the other guys and not them?

(A tip o'the trilby to Audrey Saunders for passing this one along.)

Drinky Linky: M'Aidez Edition

It's not May flowers as much as May showers, if I look out the window at Cocktailians HQ -- remembering to move the bottles on the windowsill full of various infusions -- but it seems as good a time as any to check in.

 The winners of Saveur.com's Best Food Blogs Awards have been announced, and DrinkDogma takes the Best Cocktail Blog award. Huge congratulations to Bobby and the Anvil/DrinkDogma team for their good-looking, solidly-written, well-photographed site. I'm humbled and honored that Cocktailians was nominated, especially in such august company, and everyone that voted for us has my utmost thanks. All of my fellow nominees do quality work, and you should check them out -- Alcademics, Kaiser Penguin, Jeffrey Morgenthaler, and Cask Strength. (Shame on me; I hadn't been familiar with Cask Strength until his nomination. Andrew Bohrer's a hilarious, passionate writer, and I'm pleased to add him to the blogroll. (To my further shame: I need to update the blogroll one of these months.))

Here's what else has been catching my eye on my traipses around the interwebs of late:

• Are you familiar with "wiking"? The combination of wine-tasting and hiking is apparently big. (Next up, if I can figure out how to keep everything cold, is my company which will outfit and lead people on "walktails.")
• Jeremiah's Vanishing New York finds beauty in Sardi's and its swizzle sticks;
• More white dog/new make unaged whiskey is hitting the market! Yeah, it's trendy, but it's an interesting trend;
• Can cocktails improve your complexion? Frank Bruni investigates. (I'm glad he did and not me, as Provocateur sounds like a perfectly horrid place...part and parcel of why Team Cocktailians tends to avoid the meatpacking district.) One would think that if booze really makes one's skin better, Bompas & Parr's 2009 experiment with alcoholic gin mist would've tightened wrinkles all over SoHo;
• Does the "perfect bourbon" exist? Buffalo Trace thinks so, and is trying to narrow down exactly what that might be;
• Dean Martin's recipe for bourbon burgers;
• and to complete the bourbon trifecta, a look at bargain bourbons that are still worth drinking;
• Toby Cecchini's recipe for lime/ginger cordial looks really good. Your gimlets may thank you;
• If you're interested in synesthesia, how better to investigate the phenomenon than by visualizing the flavors of cocktails?
• I like me a Negroni, and it's always easy to talk most bartenders through one. Frank Bruni pronounces the Negroni Sbagliato at dell'Anima a drink for an imperfect world. I'm not sure I'd go that far -- gin is lovely, after all -- but it's good addition to the palette. I'd be remiss if I didn't note that Cocktailians visited dell'Anima a few years ago, and it appears that their current Negroni Sbagliato is an evolution of their earlier Roasted Orange Negroni, which went down very nicely indeed;
• Amor Y Amargo. A "bitters tasting room", run by the Bittermens folks. Interesting;
• "A swirl of gin, and just a hint of tonic." Anderson Cooper introduces his "white bread ripple";
• Derby Day wasn't long ago, and Saveur presented some variations on the classic mint julep that may be of interest as the summer unfurls;
• CitySip profiles five New York hotel bars;
• and Auntie Beeb names America's best cocktail bars;
• a primer on the Margarita;
• the Piri Pressure sounds really good;
• a lovely post on the Americano;
• "Do You Need to Think When You Drink?" Robert Simonson recaps a discussion on mixological historicism, in the Times;
• So last month I mentioned the various royal-wedding-themed drinks out there. (And I'm still getting them in the mail! Cunard's line of themed Bombay Sapphire cocktails looked good.) But apparently what the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge prefer is the "crack baby": the oh-so-PC mix of passion fruit, champagne, and vodka. But if Big Willie and Babykins' (see? The things you learn from Radar magazine...) favorite cocktail isn't frightening enough...then check out this amazing picture of Kathie Lee Gifford trying one out. (Previous actual royal cocktails include the Prince of Wales cocktail and the Queen's and her mother's well-documented love of gin and Dubonnet.) 

Ultimate Cocktail Challenge Judging

The Irish comedian Dylan Moran has a great routine about wine:

“There are two types of wine essentially, and everybody knows this. There’s the one where you drink it and go, "Mmmm, well that’s ok, can we get eight of those please, give us eight of those." There’s the other one, you know, where you go "Ga…bt…Jesus, WHAT is that?"

But with spirits, 'tain't always that easy. There are lots of different kinds of spirits, distilled from many different things, and the range of flavors is enormous. And there’s been an explosion in the spirits market lately, what with the renewed interest in cocktails: there are more vodkas, rums, gins, whiskeys, than ever. So how are you supposed to figure out what’s what? To separate the plonk from the good stuff? And would the same spirit work in very different cocktails?

To address these kinds of questions, there are various judging panels and organizations that have sprung up to rate spirits, kind of the modern equivalent of the gold medals awarded by expositions of yore – the Stolichnaya vodka and Angostura bitters bottles bear these medals proudly, for instance. And the Ultimate Beverage Challenge, which invited me to drop by their cocktail judging recently, is attempting to go one better. Not only are they identifying what they say are the best examples of various spirits – they’re trying each of the spirits in classic cocktails to see which one comes out on top. As David Wondrich told me, the same tequila might not work as well in a Paloma or a Tequila Sunrise as in a Margarita. So, it was the judges' task to taste them all. (Wondrich also noted, a touch wearily, that they'd tasted twenty Palomas so far that day -- the second of three days of judging -- and that they'd been going since 10am.)

And, this year brought another changeup: not only was the UCC evaluating spirits on their own, and spirits in various classic cocktails, but this year they also added signature cocktails: recipes that a liquor brand presented to showcase their own spirits. These were judged head-to-head on the basis of which recipes were most appealing and tasted best, but obviously they weren't going to try, say, Old Raj gin in a cocktail specifying Hendrick's.

When I walked into the judging room, the cocktail dork in me was impressed by the star caliber of the judges: the owners and managers of some of the best bars in the country were there, as well as spirits writers, beverage consultants, and other exponents of the mixological art. (DeGroff! Saunders! Sharpe! Bezuidenhout! Meehan! Tello! Hess! Wondrich! Reiner! Regan! Shine! Pacult! All of whom looked as fresh as daisies, and most of whom I'd seen not-terribly-long before at the Bulleit Rye launch the previous night!) Several tasting panels huddled around bars where bartenders turned out several identical drinks from standardized recipes. (Because it’s a double-blind competition, the bartenders were mixing from numbered carafes, not labeled bottles.)

Bulleit Rye Launch Party

I recently attended the launch event for Bulleit Rye in New York. This was exciting, as I've long been a fan of Bulleit bourbon -- it's a spicy, "high-rye" bourbon, with a goodly percentage of rye (28%, which is fairly high for bourbon, plus 68% corn and 4% malted barley) in the mash bill. It's balanced and very mixable. The rye whiskey is much higher in rye content at 95% rye and 5% malted barley, which is perhaps the highest-rye whiskey I can think of, with the exception of Anchor's various Old Potrero whiskeys at 100% rye.

Seven years ago, brand impresario Tom Bulleit began planning this rye offering, and I'm very glad he's brought it to market. (The whiskey is aged for four to seven years, so he apparently got started right away when he had the idea.) It's got a great spicy-fruity aroma, and far less bite than I'd have expected for a whiskey with so much rye in it. It's got a strong rye flavor -- but not quite as peppery as some other ryes -- and it's complex, dry, and balanced, with lots of toasty toffee and oak notes. It's really good for straight sipping; normally I choose bourbon's sweetness and corn mellowness for a sipping whiskey, but this rye is well-balanced enough that it goes down easily. (Or rather, it goes down easily, but lets you know it's there on the way down.) And since I love rye whiskey cocktails, I was excited to taste it in some mixed drinks. I had a very good Manhattan (made with a splash of Averna in addition to the vermouth and bitters) and a simple yet superb Old-Fashioned, where the whiskey shone.

Celebrating (with a) Manhattan

We don't really get into politics much here at Cocktailians, but the news tonight of Osama bin Laden's death did have me in an ebullient mood. I doubt bin Laden or al-Qaeda were big on things like drinks or any sort of libertine fun, so I thought a celebratory cocktail might be in order, and what more appropriate way to mark the occasion than with a Manhattan?

Two ounces of whiskey older than 9/11 (and al-Qaeda, for that matter) -- an ounce of 18-year-old Sazerac and an ounce of 23-year-old Red Hook Rye -- mixed up (in a "Barack Bock" mixing glass from DC's District Chophouse) with some vermouth, some Fee's Whiskey Barrel-Aged Old-Fashioned Aromatic Bitters, and a few homemade New York State cocktail cherries made a great way to toast a victory. (Too bad I didn't have one of those American-flag cocktail picks on hand to complete the drink.)