Park Avenue in a National Park

We went up to Yosemite this month for Chef's Holiday and stayed in the Ahwanee Inn. It was a marvelous experience, and perhaps the best part of the experience was sitting in front of the huge fireplace on the leather sofas with a cocktail. Now, the Ahwanee has some signature cocktails, but I went with a classic I had never tried before: the Park Avenue.

Their version is something like this:

Park Avenue
2 oz. Gin
1/2 oz. Cointreau
3/4 oz. pineapple juice
1/2 oz. sweet Vermouth
Served on the rocks with a cherry

I have found a few other recipes with slightly different proportions and some that use dry Vermouth instead of Cointreau - a "perfect" Martini, plus pineapple juice.

I've mixed myself a few of these, and they drink very easy, especially if you like a touch of the tropics in your glass. I haven't decided quite how the vermouths should work though.

In fact, I'm very weak on vermouth and amaro in general. DW recently asked my opinion about amaro and beer in cocktails (not at all random - it's about the bitter). But I'm clueless in these areas - I rarely drink beer (and prefer mild to bitter) and have almost no concept of the flavor profile of vermouths, never mind amari. I'm barely familiar with Campari - after that I'm lost.

So, grounds for future research.

The Drink that Got Away

I haven't been doing much cocktail blogging lately. I've been mostly just drinking margaritas - the craziest I get is to through in a slice of pineapple. Since the mint is finally coming in, I've had a few mojitos, but that's about it.

I had some egg whites left over, so I thought I'd make a White Lady, and maybe add some Maraschino to make a ... I don't know, Cherry Lady? As I was mixing, my stomache gave a lurch and I remembered a long ago episode from the dawn of my days as a mixologist. I had recently graduated from college and decided to invent the tequila-sake martini.

It was at a small party with college friends. They were mixing frozen watermelon margaritas. These were wholesome and delicious and I should have stuck to them. But I felt that I could replace the gin in a martini with tequila and the vermouth with sake. I tried several variations, for 1:6 dry to 1:1 equal, and even added a squeeze of honey to counteract the bitter note in the tequila. Needless to say, none were any good, although I drank them all.

The next day, we got up early, hit a diner for pancakes and went mountain climbing. I started out game, but the exertion started pushing the toxins out of my liver, and by the time we reached the hut at the ridge trail, I lay down on the ground. I heard that someone had been killed by lightning on that spot recently, and I noticed the sky getting overcast. Seeing a way out, I asked my friends to leave me there to the lightning, but to bury my boots so the wolves wouldn't eat them.

Well, we made it down without being killed by lightning or hangover, and had a big dinner in a  Chinese restaurant. But what a  cautionary lesson. Sometimes, I think I should leave bartending to the experts. I almost tossed out my Cherry Lady without tasting it.

But I didn't, and it was very nice - not quite perfect, though. Maybe needs some Creme de Violette, like an Aviation with an eggwhite fizz...

The Last Word on the Subject

The Last Word is a cocktail - from the Prohibition era, it seems. It combines oddball, rare ingredients in simple 1:1:1:1 proportions:

The Last Word
3/4 oz. Gin
3/4 oz. Maraschino
3/4 oz. Green Chartreuse
3/4 oz. fresh lime juice

Shake over ice and strain into cocktail (martini) glass.

It just happens that I have all of these ingredients handy, so I mixed one up. Here is my report: It tastes like Chartreuse. Not quite straight Chartreuse, but pretty close.

I would reduce the Chartreuse to about 1/4 oz.; maybe reduce the Maraschino the same way or keep it at 3/4 oz., since it is fairly subtle. I'd bump the gin up to a full shot, because why not. I also thought it would taste good with an egg white for the fizz and mouthfeel.

Then I realized that I was recreating the 'Treuse or Dare from One Flew South in Atlanta, with a little Maraschino. So I basically gave up on this cocktail. If you want to drink Green Chartreuse on the rocks, go ahead. If you want a great gin-and-Chartreuse cocktail, try the 'Treuse or Dare.

Lavender Skies

In another in a series of twee drinks based on the Aviation  First, this recipe calls for Tincture of Lavender:

• Steep lavender blossoms, mostly petals, in vodka to cover for 1-2 days and strain

The tincture is usually brown with only a hint of lavender color. I have been able to get a pale lavender using lime juice to extract, but not reliably. You know how vinegar turns red cabbage blue? I thought I could use that principle. The lavender taste should be quite pronounced.

Proceed to mix an Aviation, using half tincture, half gin.

Lavender Aviation

• 1 oz Gin (Junipero for ex)
• 1 oz Tincture of Lavender
• 1/2 oz Marascino
• 1/2 oz Creme de Violette
• Juice 1/2 lime

Strain into a cocktail glass, or have it on the rocks, in front of the TV.

The Lady in Chartreuse

It's been a long while since I've posted about cocktails - well, I haven't had much variety in my diet. In fact, after margaritas with tropical liqueurs, or with tequila infused with hot chilies, tangerine peel and pineapple, I had come to the conclusion that the perfect margarita was just perfect, and there was no need to experiment any longer.

Than I had a Pisco Sour with my brother and sister-in-law. It convinced me to try making a drink I'd never tasted.

The White Lady was popularized after the First World War. The recipe is something like:

2 oz. gin
Juice of 1 small lime (1 oz)
1 oz  triple sec (technically Cointreau)
1/4 white part of a raw egg

Shake without ice to froth the egg white. Then shake with ice and strain into cocktail glass.

I believe that the White Lady represents death, although the cocktail is quite sweet and toothsome: the eggwhite froth gives it a silky mouthfeel.

It also makes a great palette to adapt in various ways. Here's one I just thought up: The Elderly Lady - use Elderflower liqueur like St. Germain instead of the triple sec.

What got me started on this was a drink I may have mentioned before, the pride of the finest airport bar anywhere, One Flew South. It's called Treuse or Dare, and  it is basically a White Lady with about an oz. of Chartreuse.

The Charteuse taste of this cocktail haunted me - but the only place I could order it was the bar in The Altanta airport international terminal. And lately, I haven't been travelling as much. So now I have learned to make it myself, but not as well as Tiffany at One Flew South.

Cocktail Artist Tiffany

Tropical Punching

When we lived in Florida, I used to buy a tropical liqueur called Passoã. It's based on passion fruit and other tropical flavors, it's thick and syrupy and tastes a lot like Hawaiian Punch. In large doses, it's cloying, but add a teaspoon to a margarita, and it's delicious.

When we moved back to California, I headed out to BevMo to re-stock my bar. I couldn't find any Passoã, but did find a bottle of something called Kinky, promising a similar profile of passion fruit and clementines. Got a bottle, and found it to be even better than Passoã, not as sweet, not as bright pink.

Of course, I don't get to BevMo that often. In California, we can get our liquor in the grocery store. Our local Safeway doesn't carry Kinky, but I did find something called X-Rated. Again, passion fruit and clementines, again, less sweet, less shocking pink. More sophisticated, I'd say. Cleaner. More fruity than syrupy.

Drinking this teased my brain - it reminded me of another drink, but what was it? Then it came to me - Hpnotiq, the weird blue stuff. Now, I don't have a source for this, but I am guessing that X-Rated is an imitation of Hpnotiq, pink instead of blue. Kinky is am imitation of that, and Passoã and imitaion of that.

Or maybe it's just a coincidence, and these are all pretty much independent.

In related news, our Safeway was selling Hpnotiq for a little under $20 a bottle, a pretty good price, so I picked one up, you know, for research. My theory was:

Passoã < Kinky < X-Rated < Hpnotiq

But the Hpnotiq had an off-flavor, a little bitter or musty. Either it isn't the peak tropical juice liqueur, or Safeway was getting rid of some old or heat-damaged stock. Either way, I'm still putting it in my margaritas.

Bright and Stormy

I visited San Francisco recently, on the night of the most stunning lightning storm in recent memory. You may have seen the pictures of lightning striking local landmarks. I was visiting my friend DW, whose apartment overlooks AT&T Park - we saw multiple simultaneous strikes around and behind the park. At the time, we were drinking a cocktail that DW had created on the spot, which I have named after this rare atmospheric phenomenon.

It's based on the classic Bermudan Dark and Stormy: black rum and ginger beer, with a lime squeeze. This drink always reminds me of Boston in the winter. You see, I've never been to Bermuda. But I've been to Boston in the winter, and I guess that's when bartenders think longingly of the islands, because that's when it is always on their blackboards. DW's version starts with much more lime, a homemade ginger infusion and a hint of mezcal for a little bitter, smokey mystery.

Bright and Stormy

1/2 lime, muddled with:
2 oz. ginger-infused light rum
Dash of mezcal (Trader Joe's label)

Strain into rocks glass over ice and top with 1-2 oz. ginger beer.

Tiki - Florida style

I'm a big fan of tiki, although not hardcore enough to actually have visited to more than one or two. I keep the spirit of tiki in my heart; plus, I mix a mean Singapore Sling.

So I was pretty excited when I got to Florida and started hearing about all the tiki bars. They seem to be everywhere. But I soon found out that, around here, a tiki bar is just an outdoor bar, with maybe a palm roof for decoration. No tiki mugs, nets with glass ball floats, or wooden Moai. And the drinks tend to be Bud light rather than Mai-Tais or Singapore Slings.

But maybe I've been missing something because I just don't understand the lingo. You see, Mai-Tais and Singapore Slings are Polynesian cocktails - west-coast style. In Florida, tropical cocktails are inspired by the Caribbean - Tequila Sunrises, Pina Coladas  Bahama Mamas, Run Runners.

As it turns out, I am not well versed in this idiom. But I had a Rum Runner down in Tarpon Springs, and I loved it. Here's one recipe:

• 1 oz light rum 
• 1 oz dark rum or aged rum 
• 1 oz blackberry liqueur 
• 1 oz banana liqueur 
• 1 oz pineapple juice 
• 1 oz orange juice 
• Splash grenadine

Shake over ice. Serve in a tall glass.

 I haven't tried making one of these myself, since I haven't been able to bring myself to stock banana liqueur in my drinks cabinet (also, our local liquor store doesn't have decent looking blackberry brandy).

It actually sounds pretty weird, but tastes very nice. Anybody suggest any other east-coast tiki drinks for "research"?

Pink Drink

I have written before about my love of the French passionfruit liqueur Passoa. In large doses, it tastes like fruit punch cough syrup, but a drop can make any drink taste tropical.

Case in point, from an Indian restaurant in Shinagawa - Passoa lassi and Passoa beer. The lassi was pretty sweet, but I liked the beer a lot.

Thanks to model/cocktail tester Ms. Y.

Gen X

Genever is a mystery to many Americas, who don't even know it is pronounced, more or less, "yenay-ver". Not my gin loving friend DW. He knows that this Dutch liquor, flavored with and named after juniper, is the predecessor of English gin. He is well versed in the flavor profiles of classic and modern artisanal gins and genevers. At a recent meeting, he introduced me to the Gen-Gin, a variation on the classic 2-ingredient cocktail, the gin and ginger:

2 oz. Bols Genever
2 oz. Reeds Extra Ginger Beer

Mix over ice in an old fashioned glass.

Chin chin!

Passion in Fashion

Passion fruit was flavor of the year a few years ago - right after pomegranates, I think. It is still one of my favorites. I love the lilikoi (Hawaiian for passion fruit) jelly that it seems you can only get in Hawaii. I love passion fruit juice, and use it in cocktails whenever I can find it, which is never. I have enjoyed Alize, a French passion fruit and cognac concoction. Recently I discovered Passoã.

It's a passion fruit liqueur, made by Remy Martin (it isn't Brazilian, as the Portuguese name hints). It is very sweet and rather pink, but has a good strong passion fruit flavor. just a splash in orange juice makes a nice refreshing (nearly non-alcoholic drink. That inspired me to make a little rum punch:

Passion in Fashion
1 oz. orange juice
2 oz. rum
1/2 oz. Passoã

Shake over ice and strain into a champagne flute. Top with about an equal amount of chilled sparkling wine.

Honestly, this has a somewhat restrained flavor profile. I think it would be better with lemon instead of orange, to cut sweetness. Grounds for future research.

For Absent Friends, and Bottles

Readers who have been reading may recall that I moved recently. The town I now live in is not a complete cultural desert, but is a bit - dry. When I left the San Francisco Bay, I left my liquor cabinet with friends. I miss them, and also those bottles. You can barely get a bottle of absinthe here, nonetheless maraschino liqueur.

So, my friends, if you have some cognac or brandy around, and a bottle of bubbly in the fridge, pull out the maraschino I left with you and mix yourself a Ritz cocktail as described by the Cocktailian column of the SF Chronicle:

Ritz of New York
Shake over ice:

• 1 ounce cognac
• 1/2 ounce triple sec
• 2 dashes maraschino liqueur
• 1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice

Strain and top with chilled Champagne or other sparkling wine.
Garnish with flamed orange twist

If you don't have any cognac, why don't you try it with gin instead, and maybe blue curacao instead of triple sec? In fact, I'd like to propose the following as a hybrid of a French 75, an Aviation, and a Ritz, which I will call the:

Lafayette Espadrille
Shake over ice:

• 1 shot of gin
• 1/2 oz. blue curacao
• 2 dashes maraschino liqueur
• 1/2 oz lemon juice

Strain and top with sparkling wine. Garnish with a cherry. 

Happy New Year from Hotlanta!

We're flying home to Tally and we have a 4 hr layover in ATL. But I recently read about this restaurant on Concourse E - One Flew South. So Ms. Beveridge is having a French 75 and I've got a Smoked Manhattan:

Bacon infused rye
Allspice dram
Angostura bitters
3 housemade maraschino cherries

Neverbeen more happy to be stuck in an airport.

Theme Cocktail - Xmas 2010

So, here we are, at my sister's house for the holidays. Shortly after we arrive, she says, "Now, let's work on a theme cocktail for the holiday." Without realizing it, we had been having theme cocktails every year: pomegranate cosmos, Dark and Stormies, Bert of Paradises...

She had a recipe for a rum/brandy/cider based drink, but I'm only using it as a starting point. I picked up a bottle of Laird's Applejack (quite nice - just a whiff of apple in the fragrance) and some Allen's 100-proof ginger brandy (kind of nasty, and weak on the ginger). We also got some ginger beer for Dark and Stormies. We don't have any cider - yet.

Laird's and ginger beer is pretty good. With Allen's, it is less good.

This is a post in progress. I'll update it as we taste and try. If you have any suggestions, or fears for our sanity/sobriety, please post.

Update: Well, we didn't get far in this direction. We went to The Boston Shaker, a cocktail gear shop in Davis Square, Somerville MA. We browsed their extensive selection of bitters (including two locally made chocolate bitters - chocolate and xocolatl mole), but in the end, bought a bottle a Trader Tiki's Passion Fruit syrup. They included a recipe for Pieces of Eight:

1/2 oz. lime juice
1-1/2 oz. lemon juice
1-1/2 oz. Passion Fruit syrup
1-1/2 oz. rum

Tasty.

The Berry Cosmo

Not too many cocktail recipes lately. Sorry. Here's a quick one.

I'm moving out at some point, so I need to clean up the liquor cabinet. I have a few infusions in the freezer, including:

• Fresh strawberry
• Fresh raspberry: a good way to preserve those delicate berries
• Blueberry: made from dried blueberries, a.k.a. Maine caviar

I mixed them all together to get a dark purple-scarlet potion - vodka with berry flavors, with no water or sugar added. Very nice in a shot glass, but I feel like something else.

Berry-Infused Cosmo

1 shot berry-infused vodka
1 oz. lime juice
1 oz. triple sec.

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Yuki's Midnight Garden

Our friend Yuki lives by herself in a small house with a big garden. In the summer, she spends a lot of time there, tending her flowers, herbs and vegetables. Because we love mojitos, she once gave us a huge bunch of mint. No matter how fast we drank, we still couldn't use it all, so I dried the rest.

Now I don't have a lot of uses for dried mint, so I soaked a handful in some Whaler's Dark Rum (which, by the way, is not a good drinking rum in general. Just saying). I strained the result for a black minty concoction, with green grassy herbal overtones.

My cocktail in her honor: Yuki's Midnight Garden

1 shot of mint-infused very dark rum (see above)
1 oz. dark creme de cacao

Shake with ice and serve up or over crushed ice.

A variation is Yuki's Moonlit Garden

1 shot of mint-infused light rum
1 oz white creme de cacao
1 oz cream

Shake with ice and serve over crushed ice or up.

Hot Dog

Remember that black pepper vodka I was telling you about? The stuff that's almost too hot to drink by itself? I felt like trying something different, and had some nice mango juice in the fridge, so I invented:

Atomic Dog

1 shot pepper vodka
1 shot mango juice

Shake over ice and serve in a martini glass

I took one sip - whoa! Not just weird, but way too spicy. I was about to toss it down the drain, but decided to play a trick on Mrs. Spenser. She took a sip and loved it. It's the only cocktail I've invented so far that she likes at all.

So take this with a grain of pepper. You might like it. And if you think that black pepper and mango are a weird combination, just look at what Alton Brown is making. He even makes his own pepper vodka (much lighter on the pepper than mine).

Calamansi Smash

I ran into an interesting fruit in the farmer's market the other day - the calamansi, a.k.a. calamondin. It looks like a grape-sized orange or kumquat, but they are thin-skinned and have a sour orange juicy center. The seller told me that it's used for a marinade with soy sauce in the Philippines, so I bought a few.

Later, I saw them mentioned in a cocktail column online, and that gave me an idea. I wonder if calamansi is going to be flavor-of-the-year, like pomegranate and passionfruit each were a few years past.

Anyway, here's my idea. It's pretty arbitrary, based on what I had around. You might be able to improve it, but it came out pretty well.

Calamansi Smash
3-6 calamansi - Halve and throw them in a sturdy highball class (peel, pulp and juice) with
1 shot of tequila
Pinch of sugar

Muddle vigorously

Fill glass with ice and top with champagne

By the way, a smash is usually whiskey muddled with mint and a little water - something like a julep. So this doesn't really qualify. I just like the name.

Hot Stuff

We were on a Bloody Mary kick for a while - me mixing them and Mrs. Spenser drinking them (I can't stand tomato juice). I wanted to try some with Peppar vodka, but it appears that they aren't making it anymore. So I made some of my own.

Here's the recipe. Throw several spoonsful of cracked black pepper into an 8 oz. jar. Add a dried arbol chili, just for fun. Fill with vodka. Let steep for about a week. It will turn the color of weak tea. Strain and pop in the freezer.

My version came out spicy - as in "lips and tongue are numb after 1 or 2 sips". Before it was ready, Mrs. Spenser got tired of Bloody Marys, so now we have a half pint of pyrotechnic black pepper vodka to use somehow.

Maybe I got this idea because I was hungry, or maybe because I've been reading about bacon-infused bourbon. This cocktail is just a peppery Manhattan, and contains no meat, but I call it:

Pastrami on Rye

1 shot Rye whiskey
1/2 oz. red vermouth
1/2 oz. black pepper vodka

Shake over ice and serve up in a martini glass. Garnish with a pickle.

I'm joking about the pickle.

New Dawn

Does everybody remember the Aviation cocktail? Gin, lime juice, maraschino liqueur and creme de violette? Popular in the 1930s and later 2000s? Anyway, it's a delicious drink - it owes it's flavor mainly to the maraschino and it's color to the violet liqueur.

I recently made some blueberry infusion (1/8 cup of dried blueberries soaked in 8 oz. vodka for ~1 week), which I didn't actually like much. The blueberry flavor isn't that pronounced, and there is a woody overtone, like I'd left some of the twigs attached. Nice color though.

So I tried substituting my infusion for the creme de violette in an Aviation. You see the result at left. The blueberry infusion is a very dark purple or crimson - unfortunately not blue. It dilutes to the red or pink of a dawn sky. Thus:

Dawn of Aviation
1 shot gin
1 oz maraschino
1/2 oz lime juice
1/2 oz blueberry infusion