Here are three new product releases. Information below comes from the press materials.
Herradura Colección de la Casa, Reserva 2012, Port Cask Finish
Tequila Herradura, today announced the release of the first of a series of small-batch tequilas, Colección de la Casa, Reserva 2012, Port Cask Finish. Each year, a new tequila will be released that will offer consumers a one-of-a-kind experience.
The inaugural product, Colección de la Casa, Reserva 2012 is a port cask finished reposado tequila. Crafted by Master Distiller Maria Teresa Lara, Casa Herradura uses blue agave, traditional production methods and a proprietary fermentation from naturally occurring wild yeast to create the tequila. The tequila is then rested in medium-char American oak casks for eleven months and then transferred to vintage port casks from the Duoro Valley in Portugal for an additional two months of aging.
Colección de la Casa-Port Cask Finish will be available at fine wine and spirits stores in April. A limited quantity will be available in Mexico. Each 750 ml. Only 2,000 cases are available with a suggested retail price of $89.99.
Marteau Absinthe Master's Reserve and Marteau Belle Époque
Marteau Master's Reserve is a gold-labeled elixir that will sell at the same price as the current product. Then, there's a new version of Marteau Belle Époque (the familiar blue and white label) made with grain spirits and which should retail at around 40% less than the price of the current product. This will replace the current product and go into production in May.
• The currently-sold product has a grape spirits base and a blend of the proprietary and wildcrafted absinthium wormwoods. • The new Master's Reserve has a grape spirits base, and only the proprietary wormwood. I'll be growing other botanicals myself this year as well, such as the petite wormwood and the lemon balm. • The new Belle Époque will have a grain spirits base, which is the industry standard for liqueurs. It will also use botanicals sourced from both the USA and Europe, but not the costly proprietary wormwood.
In addition, by late summer or before, both labels will be available in 357ml half-size bottles.
Blue Chair Bay Rum
Fishbowl Spirits is an independent spirits supplier based in Nashville, TN. It is wholly owned by country music star Kenney Chesney and its first release is Blue Chair Bay, a collection of premium-blended rums inspired by Chesney’s love of the island lifestyle.
Each Blue Chair Bay variety, including White, Coconut and Coconut Spiced, is produced at one of the most respected distilleries in the Caribbean. The Blue Chair Bay collection rolls out nationwide in May of 2013 and is available in 750ml and 1.75L bottles.
Imported and bottled by Fishbowl Spirits, Rochester, NY. Blue Chair Bay White Rum 40% ABV, Blue Chair Bay Coconut & Coconut Spiced Rum, 26.5% ABV. SRP $18.99 750ml.
Someone wrote on Facebook that a trend they'd like to see is smaller cocktails so they could enjoy a larger range of drinks over an evening. I also think that would be pretty cool, so I asked PR folks and Facebook folks if they knew of any.
If your bar is doing mini cocktails, feel free to add them in the comments!
Pic from Vessel in Seattle. They don't really serve them this small.
Canon in Seattle The Negroni Experiment is three Negronis: Original, Boulvardier, Right Hand
L2O in Chicago Mixologist: Allison Frey L2O’s Sazerac, served in a 4 ounce Bourbon Glass, is portioned by a bartender and then concocted tableside by the server.
Levant in Portland, OR Chamomile Whiskey or Black Lime Rum "At this point the Chamomile Whiskey is a fully developed mini cocktail. It contains house infused chamomile whiskey, honey lavender syrup and orange zest. The Black Lime Rum is just basically just a shot of appleton estate rum infused with black limes." Each cocktail is 2 ounces.
Served in antique glassware that the team has sourced, the cocktails come in at about 3 ounces. Libations include: o Bee Sting – gin, lemon, honey, peach bitters o Little Waffle – bourbon, lemon, maple syrup (the restaurant serves a larger version called the Kentucky Waffle) o Primrose – house-infused berry vodka, lemon, orgeat o Diablito – tequila, cherry, lime o Daiquirita – rum, lime, simple syrup
Saison’s cocktail menu features smaller libations in hand-etched Japanese glassware coming in at about 4 oz each.
Carry Nation, Marseilles, France "la verticale" = 4 mini-cocktails, in 2 cl (about 2/3 ounce) mini martini glasses. La verticale is made of : Sazerac , Jack Rose, Last Word, Hanky Panky.
Brasserie S&P, Mandarin Oriental, San Francisco Gin & Tonic Tasting Flight - four gins with one tonic
Tavernita, Chicago "Little Twins" = your choice of small pours of two of their cocktails on tap
One of the most popular pages on Alcademics is the Airline Liquor Regulations page. It rounds up the rules of what liquor you can pack in your luggage according to various airlines.
But no matter what the airlines say, you can't neccesarily transport the maximum amount of booze into every state in the US: your final destination matters.
Travel + Leisure magazine took to the 'what you can pack' rules in their April 2013 issue. Here's what they had to say about it.
Anything less than a liter is generally permitted duty-free. Thanks to the 21rst Amendment, it's up to each state to determine how much alcohol you can carry. Most states limit you to a "reasonable" amount for personal use. If you're from a control state, however, check with the local alcohol board to see if there are restrictions. Utah, for example, sets a two-liter limit. For the record: absinthe (anything bearing the brand name Absinthe, containing thujone, or decorated with artwork "project[ing] images of hallucinogenic, psychotropic, or mind-altering effects") is not allowed in the States.
They don't say it in the above description, but the absinthe for sale in the US is perfectly valid and can contain thujone, up to a legal limit (that they deem legally negligible).
Most airlines allow you to pack unlimited wine/beer in your luggage, and up to 5 liters of hard alcohol. That said, anything over a certain proof is not permitted. Check out the Airline Liquor Regulations page to see what you can pack in your luggage, at least according to the airlines.
In the Water Project I'm studying water in spirits in cocktails, from the source water for fermentation through to the sparkling water we use to dilute drinks. As part of the latter research, I'm looking into deconstructing and reconstructing mineral water.
Much of the work on this has been done by other people and I'll just be reproducing it here. In short, the mineral content of mineral waters is publicly available, so you can add minerals to your own water to recreate your favorite brand.
You can either start with your tap water, taking into account its mineral content, and add more minerals to it (as done on the Khymos blog), or you can start with completely mineral-free water and add to that (as done in the Craft Cocktails at Home book).
What's in My Water?
I decided to look at San Francisco tap water to see what it contains. From the annual Water Quality Report we can see the standard minerals that we look at in bottled water including calcium, magnesium, and sodium. My local water also contains metals like copper, lead, and aluminum. Then it has added chloramine and fluoride for disinfectant and dental health.
I know my water tastes good even without filtering it, but is it appropriate for use to make mineral water? Most of the numbers in the water report are given in ranges, and some of those ranges are pretty wide. They also give average levels of minerals and contaminants. Some averages from the report are:
The average amount of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) in my water 132 ppm. The TDS is an important number as we use it to measure mineral waters. Water sold as mineral water in the US has to have TDS of 250 at minimum.
Intrigued by the fact that my water seems to be halfway to mineral water, I decided to test the TDS of my tap water.
Testing Total Dissolved Solids (TDS)
TDS is super easy and cheap to test - a TDS meter costs about $15 on Amazon.com, or you can get one for free when you buy a Zero Water pitcher for $33. The pitcher is designed to get reduce the TDS in tap water to zero, so I bought one.
Using the enclosed TDS meter, I found that my tap water has super low TDS in the first place - only 32 ppm, compared with the San Francisco average of 132! I then compared it with filtered water:
San Francisco Tap Water, Average = 132 ppm Camper's Tap Water = 32 ppm Camper's Tap Water, after filtering with Mavea water pitcher = 28 ppm Camper's Tap Water, after filtering with Zero Water pitcher = 0 ppm Distilled Water (purchased), no minerals added = 0 ppm
I also tested Carbonated water, just to see how it reads, as most mineral waters that I'll be looking at later will be sparkling. It turns out that this is harder to read - the meter jumps around quite a bit and then settles around a number range. When I carbonated TDS 0 water it settled to 17 - 22 ppm. Interesting.
But what about the rest of the stuff in the water?
So even if I get the solids down to zero, what about the chloramine and fluoride? Are they still there and can you taste them? It turns out that the Zero Water pitcher gets rid of fluoride and some chloramine. From the FAQ:
Q. Does the ZeroWater filter remove Fluoride? A. ZeroWater filters are not certified for the reduction of fluoride however fluoride is an inorganic compound. The TDS meter is designed to detect inorganic compounds. Fluoride levels in water are usually around 2 to 4 ppm, which will show up on the meter as 002 to 004. So when filtered water reads 000 it is not likely that fluoride is present in water.
Q. Does the filter remove Chloramine? A. We have done internal lab testing that shows our filters can reduce chloramine. However, the presence of chloramine can reduce the expected life of the filter, so if you have chloramine in your water, you may need to change your filter more often than normal.
I then looked about getting rid of chloramine on the SF Water website:
Chloramine is not a persistent disinfectant and decomposes easily from a chemistry point of view but for water supply purposes chloramine is stable and it takes days to dissipate in the absence of substances exerting chloramine demand. Therefore, it is not practical to remove chloramine by letting an open container of water stand because it may take days for chloramine to dissipate.
However, chloramine is very easily and almost instantaneously removed by preparing a cup of tea or coffee, preparing food (e.g., making a soup with a chicken stock). Adding fruit to a water pitcher (e.g., slicing peeled orange into a 1-gal water pitcher) will neutralize chloramine within 30 minutes. If desired, chloramine and ammonia can be completely removed from the water by boiling; however, it will take 20 minutes of gentle boil to do that. Just a short boil of water to prepare tea or coffee removed about 30% of chloramine.
If desired, both chlorine and chloramine can be removed for drinking water purposes by an activated carbon filter point of use device that can be installed on a kitchen faucet.
Can you taste chloramine in drinking water? Several sites say that chloramine tastes better than chlorine in drinking water, but can you taste it at all?
"Chloramines do not give off any taste or smell and are relatively safe." [link]
The Water Quality Association, says [pdf]: "While chloramines are not a drinking water health concern to humans generally, their removal improves the taste and odor of drinking water. " They do not mention boiling but activated carbon filtration.
So maybe you can taste chloramine, and better safe than sorry.
My guess is that if I boil water for 20 minutes to remove chloramine, then cool and filter it in the Zero Water filter, I could get pretty good quality water, with which to begin mineral water experiments.
Or, you know, just buy distilled water by the gallon at the store.
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The Water Project on Alcademics is research into water in spirits and in cocktails, from the streams that feed distilleries to the soda water that dilutes your highball. The research for the project is supported by Bowmore Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky. For all posts in the project, visit the project index page.
During Hawaii Cocktail Week I attended a seminar called Designing Bars that Make Money at the cafe/gallery Loft in Space. The seminar was lead by Tobin Ellis of consultancy Bar Magic, Kate Gerwin of the bar Imbibe in Albuquerque (and also of Bar Magic), and Julian Cox of Rivera and several other bars in Los Angeles.
Here are some notes on what I thought was interesting - with some of my thoughts at the end.
Design and Philosophy
Tobin Ellis says, "Everyone is saying 'I love craft cocktails but my next bar will be a sports bar that makes money.' You will never pay your bills on cocktail aficionados. You gotta get the Cosmo drinkers, and you gotta get the Bud Light drinkers."
Most people talk about the menus and cocktail program first, but Bar Magic believes in business plan first - market analysis, concept, feasibility, and then design the cocktails.
A lot of clever bar designs have the bartenders turn their back to the customers when making the drink - which is the opposite of what you want; the interaction.
For cocktail bars Julian Cox recommends batching, cocktails on tap, bottled cocktails to speed up service. Note that these techniques aren't legal in many states.
If you're a small bar opening, the one place you can save a lot of money is by not buying an expensive POS system.
Don't share all your recipes: having specialty cocktails/ingredients gives people a reason to come to your bar versus one down the street.
Customers who follow drink specials aren't loyal customers. Have drink specials if you want, but don't expect that to increase business over all.
Working with food trucks can save all the effort of having a food program.
Equipment
For cocktail bars, some time/space-saving equipment can include approved open-ingredient refrigerators (a new thing, apparently), and refrigerated garnish/ingredient drawers.
Spindle mixers can make your Ramos Gin Fizzes a lot faster than you can shake them.
The reason Hoshizaki doesn't sell the freezers that make 2"x2" cubes in the US is because they are not energy-compliant, not because they don't exist.
Ingredients
According to an experiment by the French Culinary Institute, the best time for citrus juice is 4-8 hours after squeezing, so there is no need to squeeze to order.
If the menu supports it, consider making lemon and lime sour mixes in advance of shifts - the sugar extends the life of the citrus juice by a few hours,plus it's like mini-batching.
Use shitty vodka in your well as it makes the most profit. "If your crowd doesn't care, you shouldn't care," says Gerwin. She also said they don't make much effort to up-sell to premium vodka brands, because they make more profit on the well vodka than they do on the premium brands.
Staffing
Let bartenders bartend (read: sell). Hire bar backs and janitors for everything else and let bartenders just focus on making drinks and talking to customers, not cleaning things.
Consider having a back-of-house service bar for seated/served guests, as they don't need to see the bartenders.
Kate Gerwin says that having consistent drinks between all bartenders is more important than having one person who makes "the best" version of some drink. All drinks should be made to the same standard unless it's an up-sell.
That said, at Imbibe most of the bartenders are pros at speed and accuracy, not at arcane cocktail knowledge. Thus when a cocktail nerd asks for a drink, the bartender may ask Kate or the other expert; likewise when it comes to bachelorette drinks Kate may hand the order to another bartender.
Consider having a chart of what each bartender rings nightly and how much they collect in tips - this encourages healthy competition and reduces employee theft.
Give every bartender working that night a bonus on any night where a sales record is broken.
My Opinions on All This
First I should note that the speakers for the most part were talking about building bars from the perspective of profit. As a consumer, I don't care about the bar's profit, so these are my opinions from the cocktail nerd consumer perspective.
High-volume bars cater to the lowest common denominator of customer.
If your well liquor is crap, I don't care if your mint is fresh. Your bar serves crap drinks.
If every bartender isn't of the same quality at a venue, then I'm not a fan of a bar, I'm a fan of a bartender and will follow them to the next place when they leave for a better job.
A bar is as good as its worst bartender.
Fast bartenders are concerned with speed and profit, not with quality. Cocktails at high-volume bars, even ones that claim to be perfect with their speed pouring, are never as good as they are at craft bars.
I'd rather pay extra for the luxury of time for bartenders to do it right, and for the space in which to enjoy it.
I think this would make a fun debate at a cocktail convention....
I attended Whiskies of the World in San Francisco this April and made a few discoveries. Here are some notes.
Tasting Highlights:
Exclusive Malts (and independent bottler new to the US) Littlemill 1988 24 year old was terrific.
Mezcalero mezcal batch #7, which will be out soon, uses three different agaves. It is delicious.
Gordon and MacPhail Old Puteney 21 Year Old was terrific, and Old Pulteney's own 21 and 30 year old expressions were a treat as always.
Samaroli is an Italian independent bottler of both rare rums and scotch whiskies. I tied a Bunnahabhain and a Caol Ila that were both excellent. They brought some rums to sample but someone stole the box!
Willett Rye - I've had this before and like it a lot but didn't realize that it's the only rye on the market that is charcoal-filtered in the Tennessee whiskey style.
Other notes:
Kavalan Single Malt is made in Taiwan and aged in various full-sized casks. They have one aged in an ex-fino sherry cask that I didn't get to try, unfortunately, but I did try another aged in a wine barrel that was really juicy. I also tried a bourbon cask-aged whisky. While it's not the greatest whisky I've tried by a long shot, it is really impressive as t is only four years old but it tastes far superior to most products of its age. Dr. Jim Swan, who helped develop the product, said that they get all the barrel interaction they need after about three years, but then keep it in wood (somehow sealed to have no more angel's share and no more wood interaction) for another year for labeling reasons. I think he said the angel's share was above 10% and despite the hot weather they don't temperature control their warehouses; they just distill it differently to accommodate its fast aging. Fascinating.
Lost Spirits Distillery is doing some crazy shiz. They are making American single malts in Monterey and peating it up to 110 ppm phenol with Canadian forest peat, and then aging in various wine casks. They taste pretty young but the peat is wild- I'd call it swampy, even. The distiller said, "We get as much hate mail as fan mail."
Tomatin is a Highland single-malt that made a big impression and ended up being a topic of discussion for a bunch of us. It's tasty scotch on its own, but what impressed us more is that it is very reasonably priced - the 30 year old can be found for $250. This is definitely a brand to watch.
Manager/owner Chris Keil sent me the Spring 2013 cocktail list for 1022 South in Tacoma Washington. I see: absinthe and beets, habanero/apple shrub, nettles, horny goat weed.
During Hawaii Cocktail Week at the bar The Manifest I attended a seminar lead by Takayuki Suzuki, in which Suzuki demonstrated several cocktails. It was terrific and I'll do my best to explain how so.
I think I've observed modern Japanese bartending enough now to make a few observations about their style and philosophy:
Four ingredients is a lot.
They're not afraid of artificially-colored liqueurs as we are in other countries. Green and blue liqueurs are common in high-end cocktail bars
Drink-making technique can reflect the philosophical goal of the cocktail, whereas in the US it's always just about what's in the glass at the end
Every drink has a story
But Suzuki really drove home some of these points. Let's start with ice.
Hand Carved Ice Ball and Wabi-Sabi
Ice is treated entirely differently in Japan than in other countries. In the olden days, ice was frozen in the winter in man-made ponds, then stored all year (as it was in America, except the ponds were already there). But in Japan, the ice was sometimes given as a gift in the summers, so it's still valued as something special. Bars in Japan (at least the 20 or so that I've been to) do not have their own ice machines. They have ice delivery service. And Suzuki says that even people at home don't use freezer ice - they buy it at the convenience store. So I guess ice is treated like produce.
Though wabi-sabi is an aesthetic and philosophy with a lot of parts, the one we're concerned with here is making human things that reflect the beauty of nature. (Those green and blue liqueurs tend to represent leaves and water in cocktails.)
Suzuki says that when he carves an ice cube into an ice ball, it is with the wabi-sabi concept: the round ice ball is meant to resemble a river rock worn smooth by the water passing over it, representing the concept of 'floating time.'
And here we just thought it looked cool.
Bamboo Leaf Martini
Japan has 24 mini-seasons, and many of Suzuki's cocktails are meant to reflect particular ones. The Bamboo Leaf Martini is set between the end of winter and the beginning of spring. First he seasons a cocktail glass with creme de menthe- adds some then shakes it out. The he makes a cup out of a bamboo leaf, which rests inside the cocktail glass.
Inside the bamboo leaf cup, he pours Hakushu whisky with a bamboo leaf syrup. Then outside of the leaf but inside the cocktail glass he adds the flavor of yuzu peel. Thus the drink has the ending of summer inside the bamboo leaf, and the whisper of approaching winter citrus subtly beneath it.
Green Breeze
This cocktail represents the beginning of summer, which is signified with soft breezes. Suzuki adds a mint leaf and mint liqueur to a tall glass, then gently crushes the mint and discards the liqueur - this infuses the leaves with more mint flavor. Next he adds an ice ball to the glass, which seals it and traps the mint and its flavor beneath it.
On top of the ice ball, he adds Hakushu whisky, plus tonic and soda water at the very top with mint leaves as garnish. Thus when you first sip it, it just has the scent of mint and soda water. You don't taste the mint at first but you sense it, then as you consume the drink, eventually the mint at the bottom of the glass will mix with the liquids above it and you'll taste the mint. This represents the movement of breezes.
Tatami Cocktail
This cocktail is built around Yamazaki 12 year whisky. Suzuki says this whisky gives him tasting notes of apricot, tropical chewing gum, then a cacao flavor, and the essence of dried plants. When he tastes the whisky, it reminds him of taking the train to his wife's family's house near where Yamazaki is distilled; seeing the traditional Japanese houses, and thinking of the sun hitting the tatami mats inside those houses.
To recreate that, he mixes pineapple juice, apricto brandy, a touch of lemon juice, Yamazaki 12, and simple syrup in a shaker. He shakes and strains this into a cocktail glass then adds a float of dark cacao liqueur. To represent the tatami mat, he burns some dried lemongrass then adds this to the drink as garnish.
Developing Cocktails the Japanese Way
Suzuki says that when he teaches students to create cocktails, they begin with a blank sheet of paper and a base spirit. He asks them to smell and taste the spirit and draw or write the image of what the spirit reminds them of. Then he asks them in which season the image is taking place, and/or who is there or what time of day and where it is. Only then do they start to think about the other ingredients that will go into the cocktail; only after the cocktail has a story is it manifested.
Takayuki Suzuki says, "The action of mixing has to have a reason."
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For some cool videos of Takayuki Suzuki demonstrating ice carving, the Mizuwai cocktail, and to learn more about wabi-sabi, check out this page.
If you'd like to learn more about cocktails and bars in Japan, here are some other blog posts I wrote about my trip last year.
Camper English is a cocktails and spirits writer for publications including the SF Chronicle, Details.com, Fine Cooking, CLASS Magazine, and many more. Learn about Camper and Alcademics, or read clips of his published work.
Tequila Herradura, today announced the release of the first of a series of small-batch tequilas, Colección de la Casa, Reserva 2012, Port Cask Finish. Each year, a new tequila will be released that will offer consumers a one-of-a-kind experience.
Marteau Master's Reserve is a gold-labeled elixir that will sell at the same price as the current product. Then, there's a new version of Marteau Belle Époque (the familiar blue and white label) made with grain spirits and which should retail at around 40% less than the price of the current product. This will replace the current product and go into production in May.
Fishbowl Spirits is an independent spirits supplier based in Nashville, TN. It is wholly owned by country music star Kenney Chesney and its first release is Blue Chair Bay, a collection of premium-blended rums inspired by Chesney’s love of the island lifestyle.
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