It has a few trends – stuff like fresh ginger and sherry/port in place of vermouth along with some ice cube tricks (recognize that rainbow ice?).
Also it has four recipes I developed- a spirit-interchangeble mint buck, a Grapefruit Vesper, a Sparkling Cinnamon Punch, and a port/espresso dessert drink. Nothing ground-breaking but they're all pretty tasty.
Run screaming to your local newsstand and pick it up!
This October I visited the Cointreau distillery in Angers, France. Angers is located southwest of Paris, about equidistant from Paris and Bordeaux.
I hadn't realized, but Cointreau was not originally famous for orange liqueur, but for Guignolet, a cherry liqueur. Cherries were brought the region by King Rene', who lived at the Chateau D'Angers.
We visited this castle and its tapestry called The Apocalypse; the world's longest.
(This way to the Apocalypse!)
The original Cointreau distillery was located in downtown Angers, but has since relocated. We drove to the distillery.
There, Alfred Cointreau explained the process.
The Distillation of Cointreau
Bitter and sweet orange peels are purchased from Brazil, Africa, and Spain. The dried peels at a certain ratio, along with some fresh peels, 96 percent neutral sugar beet alcohol, and water, are placed into the stills. The peels sit on a plate in the stills to make them easier to remove after distillation. They macerate this mixture overnight before distilling.
The stills for the first distillation are shaped like water tanks, made of copper.
After the first distillation, the alcohol passes up and over the tall, curved lyne arm to the second still.
The second still is a column.
(The straight pipes going back to the first stills are a type of reflux.)
In this one room they make the world's supply of Cointreau- 15 million bottles annually.
Due to local restrictions, the Cointreau for Brazil and Argentina is distilled here as usual to make a concentrated Cointreau, but then diluted and sweetened with sugar cane alcohol and sugar cane sugar, while the rest of the world gets beet alcohol/sugar. It would be fun to compare the two to see if one could detect any differences.
Production Parameters
We were then given a talk by Cointreau's Master Distiller Bernadette Langlais. Some information learned:
The sweet oranges lend the orangey taste; the bitter peels bring a fresh, zesty lemon/lime notes
Bitter oranges are harvested when still green
The peels are either dried in the sun or in ovens
There are 220 different essential oils in orange peels
The bitter molecules from orange pith don't carry over during distillation. Thus they don't worry about the thickness of the peels. However, when something is just macerated (for example, limoncello) and not distilled then it is important to not get pith on the peels.
When they add water to reduce Cointreau to proof, the essential oils in the peels cause the liqueur to louche; to get cloudy like when you add water to absinthe. They centrifuge the Cointreau to make it clear again. [*Update* This isn't quite true – see this post for clarification on the centrifuge process.]
Of competing brands, they say that Cointreau has the highest amount of essential oils and the lowest amount of added sugar.
The used orange peels go for cattle feed after distillation.
Because of the volatility of the essential oils in Cointreau, bartenders should not leave a pour spout on the bottle overnight- some of the flavor will evaporate.
History
As mentioned previously, Cointreau originally produced cherry and many other liqueurs. (Today they still produce other products at the distillery but not under their name.)
As mentioned in this post, the Dutch were the first to make Curacao using bitter oranges from that island. When the French became famous for their liqueurs, curacao evolved into triple sec.
Cointreau initially produced a product called curacao, and then a 'curacao triple sec' and then a 'triple sec."
Eventually many brands of triple sec came on the market. Cointreau's label used to have a big "Triple Sec" and a small "Cointreau" but later reversed their relative size. Today Cointreau doesn't even use 'triplesec' in its descriptor.
As we know, the 'sec' refers to the dry, or less sweetened style of liqueur. Their opinion about the word 'triple' (the two arguments being either triple distillation/triple refined, or three times as orangey) is three times as concentrated orange flavor. The company had also produced a 'triple creme de menthe' and other 'triple' products, which I think backs up this argument.
You dip the lemon in dehydrated Midori, bite into the Midori-coated lemon, and then do the shot of vodka.
With people who do the lime-salt-tequila shot, they use the lime to and salt to hide the taste of bad tequila. In this case, the lemons were so tart that the sugar in the Midori wasn't enough to balance it out, so you need to vodka to chase the lemon rather than the other way around.
Poor Red's BBQ in the California gold country is famous for the Golden Cadillac, a cocktail created in 1952. Next year will be the drink's 60th birthday.
It's a combination of Galliano, creme de cacao, and cream, thrown into a blender.
Poor Red's sells them by the thousands.
(They don't look this fancy at Poor Red's. Image courtesy of Galliano.)
As you might imagine, it's not the most… nuanced drink in the world but should you find yourself in El Dorado (located between Sacramento and South Lake Tahoe) it's one of those when-in-Rome cocktails.
Here's some history of the drink.
Poor Reds
In El Dorado, California exists a bar known as Poor Red’s. Originally constructed as a weigh station for Wells Fargo, it previously operated under the name Kelly’s Bar from 1927 until 1945. Poor Red won the bar in a game of dice, and he and his wife and bookkeeper Rich Opal took it over then.
The murals currently on the walls of Poor Red’s were installed in the 40s. They are all former employees and patrons, including the dog which used to sit out front. It is rumored his dog ran for office, but he lost.
People come from all over California to enjoy 2 things at Poor Red’s: great barbeque and their famous Golden Cadillac cocktails.
The Golden Cadillac
Sometime in 1951 or 52, a woman and her new fiancé came into Poor Red’s. To celebrate their engagement they decided their very own cocktail should be created in their honor. The couple and long-time bartender Frank Klein decided it should be created to match their newly purchased golden Cadillac. Several recipes were tried, butt he final concoction is still known worldwide as the Golden Cadillac: a cocktail whose success has been credited to the unmatched quality of Bols Crème de Cacao, the clean mountain water that makes up the ice, decades old metal blenders, the perfect measure of half and half, and of course – the unique flavors and golden color of Galliano L’Autentico.
Since this was written the bar has narrowed its creation date to 1952.
Galliano recently gave Poor Red's a Golden Cadillac to display indefinitely outside the bar.
And if you're not in the area any time soon, here is the recipe.
Golden Cadillac by Frank Klein of Poor Red's BBQ
1 oz Galliano L’Autentico 1 oz Bols White Crème de Cacao liqueur 1 oz cream Dark chocolate shavings
Shake the ingredients and double strain through a sieve into a small wine glass. Place on a white tray and grate with dark chocolate.
In the Solid Liquids Project I've experimented with various methods to dehydrate liqueurs into solids. I've found that not every liqueur does crystallize through conventional heating methods to boil off the alcohol and water. Ones that do not crystallize usually leave a thick, sticky, gummy glob at the bottom of their container.
I have not figured out why some liqueurs don't crystallize, though I've had some theories.
Here is my list of liqueurs I've tried to crystallize (most of them in silicone cupcake cups in the oven) and whether or not it worked.
Liqueur Crystallization
Liqueur
Crystallizes?
Notes
Campari
Yes
Midori
Yes
Amaretto
Yes
Luxardo Maraschino
Yes
Green Chartreuse
Yes
Rhum Clement Creole Shrub
Yes
Emmett's Irish Cream
Yes
Dairy
Aperol
Yes
Tuaca
Yes
Hiram Walker Triple Sec
Yes
Licor 43
Yes
Creme de Violette
Yes
DeKuyper Peppermint Schnapps
Yes
Pallini Limoncello
Yes
Beet sugar
Disaronno
Yes
Luxardo Bitter
Yes
Cointreau
Yes
Beet Sugar
Mandarin Napoleon
Yes
The King's Ginger
Yes
Wild Turkey American Honey
No
Honey
X-Rated Fusion Liqueur
No
Fruit Juice
Hypnotiq
No
Fruit Juice
Irish Mist
No
Honey
Courvoisier Rose
No
Fruit Juice
Velvet Falernum
No- Squishy, thick
Hiram Walker Gingerbread Liqueur
No- Mostly Solid
Combier Roi Rene Rouge
No- Mostly Solid
Cherry Juice?
Firelit
No- Hard puck
Potters Creme de Cacao
No-Thick, Squishy
Hiram Walker Blueberry Schnapps
No- Soft Squishy
Patron Citronge
No-Soft, squishy
Barenjager
No- Crusty top gel beneath
Honey
Drambuie
No- Crusty top gel beneath
Honey
St.Germain
No- Crusty top gel beneath
Cynar
No- Crusty top gel beneath
Solerno
No- Gel
J. Witty Chamomile
No- Crusty top thick gel beneath
Agave?
Benedictine
No- Crusty top gel beneath
Honey
Cherry Heering
No- Dense Gel
Root
No- Solid Puck
Kahlua
No- Full volume gel
Domaine de Canton
No- Gel
VEEV
No- Crisp, glassy puck
Ancho Reyes
No- Crisp, glassy puck
Creme Yvette
No- soft gel puck
Bols Yogurt
No- brown, crisp
Allspice Dram
No- thick gel
Rothman & Winter Apricot
brittle clump
Drambuie 15
No- Crisp, sticky clear candy
Pimm's
No- glassy shattering candy
It is possible that your results may differ for some of these, or that you have tried other liqueurs with successes and failures to share. If so, please let me know in the comments.
In the Solid Liquids Project I found that liqueurs sweetened with honey do not crystallize. (At least the honey-sweetened liqueurs that I tried.) I theorized on why and how we might over come this in this post.
However, in reading an unrelated book, I think I found the real reason these liqueurs are not crystallizing.
Honey is a super-saturated solution, which means it has a tendency to crystallize (come out of solution) and turn solid over time. Because of this, most producers filter and pasteurize their honey to prevent crystallization and create a more uniform product.
Eureka! If it's one thing alcohol producers want, it is products that are consistent and don't spoil or separate in the bottle. My guess is liqueur producers who use honey use pasteurized honey, and that this is why liqueurs sweetened with honey have not crystallized in my experiments.
It's nice when other people do experiments for you. Reader Jonathan Faircloth started a blog called The Zymologic Table to record the trials and tribulations of making orange liqueur dust.
Though it's not my experiment, this is a continuing part of the Solid Liquids project, in which I am searching for ways to dehydrate liqueurs and find creative uses for them. The index page of all the experiments is here.
After a failed attempt at dehydration through standard means, Faircloth picked up some tapioca maltodextrin and used it to dehydrate a liqueur into a sugary form. After a few trials of his own, it worked.
He found that it worked at a 2:7 ratio of liqueur to tapioca maltodextrin. This might be a method to make dusts out of liqueurs and other alcohol to be used for rimming and other purposes when regular heat-based dehydrating doesn't work. (And as an added bonus, supposedly the alcohol is not removed in this method.)
As he was attempting to use an orange liqueur to rim a glass, he was dissappointed to find that when you do this, the orangeyness of orange liqueur goes away. So he added some orange zest into the tapioca malodextrin to get it back.
I have similarly found that the essential oils evaporate (they are very volatile even at room temperature after all) when you dehydrate with heat, and you can put them back with citrus zests. I even temporarily forgot about that and dehydrated nearly a bottle of Cointreau only to be reminded that orange liqueur when the orange goes away just tastes like sugar. Very expensive sugar.
Looks like I'll be adding some orange zest back into the mix as well.
Keep checking Faircloth's site for his further experiments.
I am one lucky son-of-a-gun. This September I visited Rome and the Amalfi Coast with PalliniLimoncello. Though we began the trip in Rome and went to the Amalfi Coast later, I'll explain the process of making limoncello in the proper order.
The Lemons of the Amalfi Coast
The lemons for Pallini are sfusato ("elongated") lemons, so-named for their tapered shape. They are also sometimes called feminine lemons because each side looks like a nipple. These are slightly different from Sorrento lemons that are more football-shaped.
These lemons are low in acid; very sweet. In fact we had an unsweetened lemonade made with them. It was tart, but still drinkable. Even the pith isn't that bitter- we had a 'salad' made with these lemons soaked in balsamic vinegar and salt – and you could eat the whole thing – fruit, pith, and rind.
But for limoncello purposes, they're interested in the skin of the lemons only. The skins of sfusato lemons are highly aromatic and rich in essential oils.
These lemons grow along the Amalfi Coast in a most improbable way. Actually, the whole coast doesn't make much sense – it is all incredibly steep and rocky, with sharp inclines from the mountains down to the ocean. Picture the drive along Highway 1 in California if people had build houses all the way down to the ocean.
Carved into the cliffs are terraced gardens on which they grow lemons, along with eggplants, grapes, tomatoes, olives, and everything else you can think of. It's a surprisingly productive area given that the base is just rocks.
But the cliff-side growing arrangement means lots and lots of sunshine for these plants. The lemons grow so big and so productively that if these were just normal trees growing on their own, the branches would almost surely snap beneath the weight of the fruit.
Thus the farmers have developed a system to support the lemon tree branches, a pergola made of chestnut wood. This forms a lemon tree umbrella of sorts, with hundreds of huge lemons dangling from above.
(Bonus cat picture!)
The terraced lemon groves present some difficulties in harvesting, as you'd imagine. The lemons are all picked by hand as they ripen, then must be carried uphill to the next road that can be pretty far when you've got a heavy crate of lemons on your back.
Processing Lemons
After the lemons are harvested, they're transported by truck along the windy (and terrifying to those of us scared of heights) road to the processing center. We visited the one Pallini uses: CastierAgrumi De Riso.
When the lemons come in to the factory, they are first washed and then sorted. The very best lemons are sold in crates to stores and restaurants. The rest are peeled to make limoncello.
To do this, they use a machine that peels two lemons at a time. It is hand-loaded and seems to frequently jam – no wonder with sticky, oily peels involved. In this video, you can see the machine working.
The peels that come out are then vacuum-sealed into bags and sent to Pallini to use.
Making Limoncello
Pallini's distillery (it's not actually a distillery as they don't distill there but a rectification plant; still I'll call it a distillery for the sake of clarity) is where they make limoncello from the lemon peels.
Though once there were 30 distilleries in Rome, Pallini is the only one left. Originally, the distillery was located a few hundred yards from the Pantheon in central Rome but now it is in an industrial park-type area a good 30-40 minutes drive from the city center.
To make the limoncello, first they soak the peels in high-proof alcohol (I think around 96%) to extract their flavor. Though they didn't tell us the exact time, I inferred the extraction takes less than a couple of days.
Then they blend this concentrated lemon alcohol with more neutral alcohol (that is distilled from Italian sugar beet molasses), water, and a sugar syrup (made from crystallized sugar beet sugar). To make the flavor pop, they also add essential oils from the same lemons.
Somewhere in the process, they homogenize the ingredients so they retain a fresh flavor and do not separate or oxidize. We tasted several other brands of limoncello and most had a slightly musty flavor of oxidation compared to Pallini.
Other Products
Pallini also makes a Raspicello (useful as a Chambord substitute, or perhaps in a Bramble?) and a Peachcello (for the Bellini). These are actually made by distilling the berries and peaches, and adding fruit juice or fresh berries back in at bottling time. The production seemed pretty interesting but we didn't go into it in detail.
Pallini makes around 150 products, which you'd never guess given the size of the distillery. The most famous one, however, is SambucaRomana. They created this brand but sold it to Diageo in the 1980s. They still produce it for Diageo though. It's actually a pretty interesting product on its own; a blend of distillates from three kinds of anise, elderflower, angelica, and other herbs and spices.
Anyway, that's it for my Pallini trip. Limoncello is an incredibly straight-forward liqueur made from very special lemons grown in an absolutely stunning place.
This summer I went to Sweden (twice this year!) with Purity vodka. Purity is located not far from Malmo, across the water from Copenhagen, in a building on the estate of Ellinge Castle.
Now, Ellinge doesn't look like a typical castle, but there has been one in some form here since the early 14th century when the area belonged to Denmark. The building changed a lot over the years, but it still has a moat.
Currently the castle owners live in a big house also on the property, but rent out the castle itself for weddings and other events. I got to sleep there one night. I've never slept somewhere with a moat before, so that was awesome.
The castle is beautifully furnished with antiques and paintings, including one of Jesus turning water into wine at a dinner party. That's not the only connection the castle has to alchemy: there has always been a distillery on the property, as was commonplace in farming areas. (The farmlands around the castle grow things like wheat, barley, and rye, but they are not used in Purity because they're not certified organic.)
Making Vodka
Purity is made in this little building just across the moat from the castle. It's a tiny building, but they only do one part of the process here. Purity is a blend of a neutral, column-distilled spirit with a flavorful house-distilled spirit, brought down to proof with a blend of natural mineral water and deionized water. At the distillery, they produce the custom distillate.
The distillate made at the castle is a blend of wheat and barley, which is combined and fermented at a brewery near Copenhagen that is certified organic. Once that mash is brought here, the work begins.
The still has a pot still base with two columns attached. The distillate passes through the pot, then continues through the columns in a batch process. Each column has eight plates in it. At each plate the spirit passing through touches it and condenses.
If my understanding of this still is correct, what makes it different from others is that 95 percent of the spirit that condenses at each plate doesn't drop down to the plate beneath it, but all the way down to the bottom of the column. They consider each plate a full distillation, so the pot, plus eight plates in each of the two columns is 17 distillations. They run this process twice, so they figure it as 34 distillations before they get the final spirit.
I don't place a lot of importance on advertised number of distillations (as opposed to the taste), but the math makes sense.
Speaking of taste, we tasted the core spirit that comes out of the still. It is incredibly flavorful, tasting of strawberry jam, bread dough, blueberry figs, and a finish that's all herbal and wintergreen. In the mouth, a spiciness leaps out. It's quite an amazing distillate, and once I tasted it on its own I can now taste all of that in the finished bottle of Purity.
It takes them 10 hours for the first distillation, and because their cuts are so small, it takes 7 of the first distillations to get enough low wines to do the second distillation, which takes 6 hours. So that means to get one 'batch' of the flavorful spirit for Purity, it takes 76 hours.
Purity also tastes and smells of minerals, and I suspect that is from the mineral water used to dilute it to proof. Blender Thomas Kuuttanen says that it reminds him of rain falling on brackish water, and I can totally see that.
In the process of developing Purity Kuuttanen tried to use all mineral water, but found some minerals came out of solution after bottling, and left a white ring around the neck of the bottle. His task was finding the right balance between mineral and de-ionized water so that this didn't happen.
We were talking at the distillery about how rare it is to have more than one ingredient used in the mash of a vodka. Purity uses wheat and barely. Reyka uses the same two ingredients. Hangar One blends grape distillate with neutral distillate (wheat I think).
Anyway, I'll be writing a lot more about Purity for the Tasting Panel magazine, so I'll be sure to link to those in the future.
and found the following in the section on honey:
