Bibulo.us - We plead the 21st.

St. George gins

When we heard St. George Spirits would be coming out with three new gins, we immediately called our trusty supplier of delicious boozes, Cask on 3rd St in San Francisco, and got on the waiting list. Conveniently, in addition to the usual 750ml size, these also came out in a 200ml tasting size, ideal for our upcoming trip to visit beloved fellow cocktail nerds Steve and Heather on the other side of the country.

While Raleigh graced us with a delightful bit of actual weather (as opposed to the general pleasantness we endure in San Francisco to the scorn of those with “real” seasons), we broke out tasting glasses and attentively evaluated these newcomers to the gin scene. Thunder rumbling above, we nosed our glasses of the gin by itself, debated flavor profiles, and brainstormed ideal cocktails to test each of the three varieties.

We began, perhaps unadvisedly, with the Dry Rye. St. George describes it thusly:

Dry Rye Gin has twice as much juniper in its recipe as either of the other two St. George gins, and a base of pot-distilled rye that provides structure and spice. Warm bass notes of pepper and caraway give Dry Rye Gin an intriguing depth of flavor, while the rye provides a sweet maltiness reminiscent of a genever. Try our Dry Rye Gin in your favorite cocktails that call for either gin or rye—or sip it straight for a gin experience like no other.

We found to our surprise that this has a sweeter nose than the other two, despite the less sweet grain base. The caraway notes were strong—leading us to taste some aquavit later for comparison—and it was drier on the tongue. Perhaps it’s the reduced sweetness, but you really feel the alcohol in this one. This gin definitely provides a great education in the tempering power of corn in the grain bill of a spirit.

We tried two drinks with the Dry Rye, but to our disappointment neither the Pegu Club nor the Mondays With Aalto (a great drink by Adam Bryan of Austin’s East Side Show Room) worked. In the former, it didn’t hold up to the lime and in the latter the botanicals just didn’t meld well with the other drink ingredients. Our next idea was to try it in a Ramos Gin Fizz, but dinner called and we have yet to make the experiment.

The second gin in the lineup was the Botanivore.

Botanivore Gin (our "botanical eater") earned its name because it's loaded with botanical ingredients. We distilled 19 different botanicals to compose this spirit (no small feat!) and the resulting gin is beautifully balanced and vibrant. Lance compares this gin to an orchestra where all the components are working in harmony. Deliciously herbacious and bright, Botanivore is a versatile addition to any gin cocktail.

This one seemed to call out immediately for a Martini to keep the focus on the flavors within the gin. It’s a very nice gin, a little sharp, and perhaps one note, but we like the note. It seemed to water out a bit in the drink and we thought it might work better in a dirty martini. We also tried it in a Pink Gin, which was okay, not extraordinary. Once again we did not feel we’d found a drink that really showed this one off to its best effect.

The third taste was of the Terroir and it was here that things got really exciting. Dinah, a Bay Area native and quite familiar with the environment which inspired this gin, was very impressed. St. George has absolutely hit the bullseye with this local flavor, saying “It tastes like the New Year’s Day walk in the Franklin Hills when I was a kid.”

Terroir Gin is our ode to the wild beauty of the Golden State. Distiller Lance Winters has a passion for exploring place and memory through distillation, and the aromas of the coastal forests on California's Mount Tam were what inspired him to start making gin in the first place. Terroir Gin has an intense earthy, woodsy nose and flavor derived from Douglas fir, California bay laurel, and California coastal sage—complemented by bright, citrusy top notes. This is a unique and proudly Californian gin with a sense of place and poetry.

The other three agreed that it’s “verrrry nice” and “damned nice.” We tried this in an Aviation and it worked very well indeed. Recommended!

Death's Door Spirits

Sometimes what you really need is a blaze of white.

The Classic and Vintage Roadshow bringing together a variety of distillers at Nopa in March also gave us the opportunity to sample the lovely range of clear spirits from Death's Door of Madison, Wisconsin. We've previously enjoyed their excellent gin in an Old Fashioned mixed by Kirk Estopinal at The Violet Hour – a recipe we don't normally associate with gin, but a truly fine spirit like this demonstrates exactly how that simple foundation is strong enough to hold up the whole modern edifice of cocktails.

Death's Door's vodka is a perfectly delightful example of the species, but vodka is never our first choice of ingredients, so we moved quickly on to taste their white whiskey. This chameleon spirit has been showcased for us in cocktails recently by the Nopa team, but it was fascinating to try it on it's own. White dog whiskey is young, but not too hot and brings a range of subtle notes ready to be amplified by the other ingredients in a drink. Paul Clarke has compared this spirit to Dutch genever with its rich, malty flavors.

We enjoyed spending a few minutes chatting with Death's Door president and distiller Brian Ellison and sampling his beautiful, small-batch products, all of which we recommend you seek out for your own enjoyment.

Hoffman House

"The Hoffman House Hotel maintained New York City's best bar at a time when New York had nothing but great bars... It pulled in a strictly A-list clientele until it got hauled down and replaced with an office building. That was in 1915. Their version of the Martini is one of the most suave known to science." - David Wondrich

Again we turn to Killer Cocktails for another party winner.

• 2 ounces gin, Martin Miller’s or Plymouth is encouraged
• 1 ounce Noilly Prat dry (white) vermouth
• 2 dashes orange bitters
• To finish: orange peel strip

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Squeeze peel over glass & drop in.

Delightful.

Daisy Shim and Daisy Mocktail

• .75 ounces gin
• .5 teaspoon lemon juice
• .5 teaspoon lime juice
• 1 teaspoon grenadine (ideally from Small Hand Foods or homemade)
• 1 teaspoon sugar

Fill a small collins glass with ice, add ingredients and stir until chilled.

Top with .5 oz fizz water. This may be garnished with fruits in season, if desired.

This is an adaptation of the Gin Daisy (new school) intended for those seeking a lower-alcohol alternative. It's handy for that guest who needs to slow down their intake a bit while their body catches up (and if they really need it, you don't even have to tell them it's a shim; just get a little gin on your finger and wipe it around the rim and they'll never know).

For the Daisy Mocktail, omit the gin entirely.

Note to party hosts: premix all but the gin and put it in a squeeze bottle. 3 teaspoons is 1/6 of an ounce, so call it a scant 1/4 ounce pour and then add your gin or not depending on whether you're making a Daisy, Shim, or Mocktail. For kids and those with a sweet tooth, give 'em a little extra of that mix.

Gin Daisy (new school)

"Almost always just the thing for a man or woman in the dumps or out of them." - David Wondrich

• 2 ounces gin
• .5 teaspoon lemon juice
• .5 teaspoon lime juice
• 1 teaspoon grenadine (ideally from Small Hand Foods or homemade)
• 1 teaspoon sugar

Fill a small collins glass with ice, add ingredients and stir until chilled.

Top with .5 oz fizz water. This may be garnished with fruits in season, if desired.

Yes, it's another party favorite from a Wondrich book, this time Imbibe. This is the "new school" version, which is to say the fancy grenadine-rocks Daisy of the 1910s as opposed to the original orange-liqueur-up version from the 1870s.

Bibulo.us Special Report: San Francisco Cocktail Week 2009

In mid-May San Francisco once again celebrated cocktail week in style with more events than any one person could manage to attend. We made it to a few and had a fantastic time. Here are our highlights.

Dinah attended the inaugural class in H. Ehrmann of Elixir's new event room: Batching Cocktails: How to Entertain for Many and Still Enjoy Your Party. The class covered some basic bar skills ("shake for aeration, stir for smooth") and drink principles ("many drinks are a three point balance of acid, alcohol, & sugar"), with hands-on creation of drinks to keep us cheery through the course ("Don't forget to drink your cocktails!"), as well as tips & tricks for party hosting.

Among the key things to remember is that you should squeeze your citrus as close as possible to serving; the taste begins to degrade very quickly. One fun way to achieve that is to put out pre-batched cocktails minus their citrus along with fresh fruit, glassware, juice squeezers, ice, and instructions. "Let guests feel like they made it by shaking or stirring it". You can collect beautiful bottles ahead of time for this purpose, so start evaluating your empties before they hit the recycling bin.

H. recommended assuming each drink will be 3-5 ounces, containing 1.5 ounces of the principal spirit, as you plan your purchases and glassware. Regular hosts will probably find it helpful to set up a spreadsheet for your recipes to easily calculate needed ingredients based on the entered number of guests. Regardless of what you serve, to however many people, "the important thing is that each drink comes out cold and diluted properly."

We look forward to a regular schedule of classes from cocktail ambassadors in future!

Before class was recess at the "ladies only" Gin and Gen Party at Conduit restaurant celebrating great gins and welcoming women interested in broadening their palates and understanding more about this excellent spirit.

Represented - and greatly enjoyed - were Damrak, Right, Beefeater 24, Martin Miller's (both the regular and Westbourne), Anchor Junipero, and Hendrick's gins, and Bols genever. Behind the bar were Charlotte Voisey, Brooke Arthur, and Jon Santer, serving, respectively, the Poisoned Rose, the Siren and the Green Party, and the Dragon Variation and a Westbourne Punch.

These were all excellent drinks, but straight gin tasting remained popular throughout the event. There was something for everyone from Damrak's malty, sharp, alcohol intensity to 24's thin, clean, juniper-forward, tannic finishing style to Right's peppery, thin, astringent, dry dry dry alternative.

Thanks to the team at Conduit and to Debbie Rizzo of DrinkPR for creating such a fun opportunity to introduce people to new flavors.

Friday night the weather cooperated for a great outdoor party, Bayou on the Bay, at Epic Roasthouse. This was a benefit for the Museum of the American Cocktail and it was a proper tribute to the history of convivial fun.

We saw Brooke Arthur, Duggan McDonnell, Jon Santer, Dominic Venegas, H. Joseph Ehrmann, Jeff Hollinger, Brian MacGregor and home-turf favorite Camber Lay stirring, shaking, and generally laying on the excellence behind the four bars - which were necessary to keep this thirsty crowd satisfied. As you can imagine with that much skill behind the stick, the drinks were fantastic.

The delicious concoctions included the Pineapple Pimm's Cup, Velha Sour, Doorknocker Punch, and Al Rojo Vivo. They were accompanied by a stream of waiters bearing sweet and savory bites from the Epic Roasthouse kitchen. Well hosted indeed!

Everything was fresh fresh fresh and so were the party-goers and the bartenders, despite this being day five of San Francisco Cocktail Week. We both took a turn juicing with Jeff and H. as they  kept Camber and Brian stocked with fresh squeezed lime. We were pleased we had jumped in, as it turns out you can hold quite a pleasant conversation while working away at a big box of limes. It's hard to get these two fellows free for a chat, so seize the moment when you can!

On Saturday night we had the profound pleasure of enjoying a tasting menu of cocktails and infusions by Eben Freeman at the Alembic. We began in a light mode with the Sao Paolo 75 (Sagatiba Pura, lemon, sparkling demi-sec) and then headed swiftly to the exotic with the Cantonese Caipirinha (Sagatiba Pura, kumquat, lychee, soy caramel). What proved to be one of our favorites came next, the simple and sublime Sultana Sagatiba, which Eben described as his tribute to that lunchbox favorite "Ants on a Log". It certainly won our vote for best use of celery bitters we've ever had.

At this point we could have considered our evening blessed, but we weren't even halfway through. Next up were the Marsala Mai Tai (Garam Masala rum, orgeat, orange curacao, lime) and the South Central (Guatamala rum, Nicaragua rum, crème de cacao, mole) sending us on a flavor journey around the world.

It's a good thing Eben Freeman lives today - not only so he's conveniently contemporaneous and able to ply us with good drinks - but because 500 years ago he would have been burned as a witch. It doesn't seem possible for that much of what makes bacon tasty to survive its transformation. If you ever have the opportunity to try a Bacon Old Fashioned using his infusion, you must. Ours was rum-based (Bacon rum, maple syrup, bitters) and it's quite possible if it had been whiskey (to which we confess a bias) we would have transcended to boozy bacony heaven on the spot.

The closing tastes were two infusions in Ron Zacapa: Sourdough and Cherry Tobacco. Dinah doesn't smoke and is a San Francisco bay area native who gets a bit twitchy when deprived for too long of the beloved local dough, but though she loved them both, she actually preferred the tobacco. Clearly some sort of witchcraft involved, indeed.

The finale was an absinthe gummy bear, using Kubler if we don't miss our guess - and that says something about his process if enough subtlety of ingredients is retained to let you debate the distiller.

We were so pleased to have this opportunity to enjoy Mr. Freeman's prodigious skills. Many thanks to the Alembic for hosting!

Monday the 18th was the closing night party at Jardiniere and we had another fantastic time. Lovely people, truly lovely drinks, and all so good we have neither notes nor photos as documentary evidence. Brian MacGregor created some great original cocktails and there were some very tasty revivals (Dinah's favorite was the Saratoga Cocktail). We'd feel a bit bad not having a single photo of that beautiful place with all the happy people, but it turns out Anita from Married With Dinner only took 7 pictures so it must have been distracting, right?

Our thanks to the Barbary Coast Conservancy of the American Cocktail for putting on this great program. We're looking forward to next year already!

Recommended additional reading:
SF Cocktail and Saloon History
SF Cocktails: A Recent History

Bibulo.us Special Report: Beefeater 24 San Francisco Launch Party

It's been a busy time around the Bibulo.us homestead, so we apologize to our gin-loving friends for the delay in telling you about the launch party for Beefeater's new super premium gin, 24, which was held back in April. 

Thanks to the worldwide revival in classic cocktails - particularly in cities like London, New York, and San Francisco - interest in gin is on the rise. "Gin is back and that's a great thing," said the creator of this newcomer with a prestigious pedigree.

24 is a classic London dry gin with a slight tannin sensation or taste on the finish. It's named for the 24 hours during which the botanicals steep prior to distillation. It's great in a simple Martini presentation like the one we were treated to in which it was augmented with Lillet Blanc and orange bitters.

Brand ambassador Jacques Bezuidenhout introduced master distiller Desmond Payne for some of the background on this new gin. Mr. Payne has been distilling gin for over four decades, first at Plymouth and then at Beefeater, and is arguably the most experienced gin distiller in the world. For most of his career he's been focused on maintaining consistency in traditional recipes (dating to the 1790s and 1860s respectively), so the creation of a totally new gin which honors the past but forges new ground was a special treat.

24 has three additional ingredients beyond Beefeater's usual ones (juniper, of course, plus Seville orange peel, almond, coriander seed, orris root, angelica root, liquorice, lemon peel, and angelica seed). Grapefruit peel adds additional citrus complexity, while Japanese sencha tea and Chinese green tea bring fresh aromatic notes. This range of botanicals provides the flavor of gin and, as Mr. Payne put it, "If there is an art in terms of gin, it's getting balance in terms of flavor."

He did not set out to make a flavored gin; his firm belief is that all botanicals used in making gin should be decent, honest, and needed. His views are traditional: "The bitterness in gin should come from juniper in my opinion."

He had tried green tea as a mixer with gin in the past - on a journey where good tonic water was not available - and that plus the tea merchant history of the father of Beefeater distillery founder James Burrough inspired him to experiment with tea in exploring alternative botanicals for this new gin. Green teas were the ones that really worked well to provide the fresh aromatic notes he was seeking. It took a lot of experimentation to find the perfect blend: "The moment you change one thing in a recipe, you totally change the balance." Two years of trial & error and two tasting panels of gin experts later he had it. The final addition was the Japanese sencha tea to bring more dimension on the aromatic side with its grassy, hay notes.

If you're seeking a traditional London dry gin with a bit of something extra going on, 24 will serve you well. It is understated and elegant, with a beautiful bottle. All class and just a touch of whimsy (take a peek through the swirl on the lower front of the bottle to see a raven of the Tower of London!), rather like its justifiably proud creator.

Winter Willow

New horizons beckon, new adventures await, but only the brave deserve the fair.

We journeyed into the new year and returned laden with bottles of potential. With excitement we approached the first one and found... oh dear... we don't actually like Pimm's Winter (a.k.a. Pimm's #3) all that much.

Enter the challenger, The Scribe, proposing not merely A Mixed Dram, but conquest of a whole new territory to be claimed with the flag of Mixology Monday.

We began by tasting the Pimm's Winter again. Nope. Still don't like it straight, but perhaps we can work with this.

"I'm tasting cherries..."
"Okay, yes."
"... and bitter"
"Right."
"Great! We've got cherry & bitters; we just need to put a drink around it!"
"Yes!"
"Gin. Very fucking dry gin."
"Hmm...." *paws through rather depleted gin selection* "Boodles?"
"Yes. And dry vermouth."
"We ran out, but I think there's enough wine going on. We just need something else to sweeten it."
"And cut the booziness."
"Ah! The Depaz Cane Syrup!"
"Perfect!"
"What else though? Oh! Oh my yes." *opens the strange cupboard next to the bitters cupboard [yes, we have a bitters cupboard, shut up] and pulls down arcane bottles acquired from an online Iranian grocery store (now under embargo apparently)* "Golchin Willow water!"

"Ye gods, that doesn't just work, it's really complicated and good!"
"Odd, but good though! And its got the analgesic built right into the drink!"

Winter Willow

1 oz Pimm's Winter (Pimm's #3)
1 oz dry gin
.5 oz willow water
.25 oz cane syrup

Shake with ice, serve in a chilled cocktail glass garnished with a Marasca cherry.

"You realize people are going to be furious. We've created a brand new impossible-to-find-ingredients cocktail."
"Well, I say they need something new to quest after once the Creme Yvette comes out."

Negroni

Crisp, bittersweet, refreshing. Remarkably, also a simple recipe and therefore possible to walk most any bartender through making this apertif.

1 part gin
1 part sweet vermouth
1 part Campari

It's just that simple, but sometimes it takes a firm hand to keep them on track with those equal proportions.

The bibulo.us authors particularly recommend Martin Millers gin and Carpano Antica Formula vermouth for this libation, particularly if you can get Bradley Avey of Bix in San Francisco to mix it.

Recipes:

According to the Negroni's Wikipedia entry, though it is said to have been invented around 1919, the Negroni does not appear in English cocktail books until 1947, but it neglects to mention which book(s) it then shows up in.

According to Paul Harrington in his 1998 book Cocktail: The Drinks Bible for the 21st Century, the name Negroni was given in the 1950s by the Campari company to what had previously been referred to as the Camparinete cocktail and which consisted of

1 oz gin
1 oz Campari
1 oz sweet vermouth

Harrington advocates for an orange slice garnish rather than a lemon twist, to offset the bitterness of the Campari.

David Wondrich's 2002 Esquire Drinks generally agrees with Harrington's assessment, but takes the interesting variant of calling for half-again as much gin (1.5 oz) and an orange peel garnish. Dale DeGroff's The Craft of the Cocktail, from the same year, agrees with Harrington but flames the orange.

In 2006's The Art of the Bar by Hollinger & Schwartz, the recipe is quite changed:

1.5 oz Junipero gin
.75 oz Campari
.75 oz sweet vermouth, preferably Punt e Mes
Flame a wide orange zest and then float it on top