News from Bourbon & Branch:
Labels: bars, education, SanFrancisco
Plymouth gin is the bartender’s favorite brand here in San Francisco. What’s nice is that the brand sponsors events to thank them for it. In the winter they offered a lecture on molecular mixology techniques, and earlier this week they flew in David Wondrich to lead a big group on a cocktail history tour of San Francisco. Always the hanger-on, I crashed the party.
We started at the Buena Vista Cafe for an Irish Coffee to get us warmed up. We then each took a flask filled with Sydney Ducks Punch (named after San Francisco’s most notorious gang of the Gold Rush era), and headed off to North Beach.
We stopped into Vesuvio for a Negroni and pizza. None of these things have anything to do with San Francisco cocktail history but Vesuvio is a cool old bar. Then we headed to the site of the El Dorado (where the Hilton is on Kearny now), a bar/hotel with a tent ceiling, chandelier, and all-female orchestra. It is reported that Jerry Thomas worked there, though no proof has been found. It was so posh the bartender used a solid gold muddler, which someone suggested that Mr. Mojito recreate and sell online. 
Close by at the site of the Transamerica building was the Bank Exchange where the Pisco Punch was invented. We called up pisco historian Guillermo Toro-Lira and yelled “cheers!” while he was on speakerphone.
Next up was the site of the Occidental Hotel at 130 Montgomery, where Jerry Thomas worked his second time living in San Francisco. Then we headed to the Palace Hotel where Cocktail Bill Boothby was the head bartender, and had the Palace Cocktail (gin, orange juice, pineapple syrup, egg white) while hearing about its pre-and post-quake history.
Our last stop for food, jazz, and many more drinks was the House of
Shields, which will be celebrating its 100th anniversary this April. There we learned about the history of the Gibson cocktail, which was created in SF in the late 1890’s. It was simply London dry gin and dry vermouth, without the orange bitters and garnish that defined a Martini. A Gibson with an olive was called a St. Francis Cocktail and popularized at the St. Francis Hotel. The Gibson eventually became the Martini, so to distinguish the old drink from the new martini they added a cocktail onion as in the Gibson we know today.
Luckily I wrote that down because on our sixth hour of drinking the details got fuzzy. I continued to stay and hang out with the crew until long after it was reasonable, then spent the next day reflecting quietly on the previous night’s adventures.
Big news in SF barland: Todd Smith has turned in his resignation at Bourbon & Branch. He’s been with them since long before they opened but said, “It’s time for me to move on and do another project.”
He told me he plans to take some time off and work on some consulting gigs he’s firming up now, as well as potentially opening his own space with some other bartenders down the road. And though the details are still being hammered out, he plans to remain with the Beverage Academy teaching classes there.
Speaking of the Beverage Academy, they added their first scotch whisky class on March 25th with Dominic Venegas as the instructor. The rum class will likely start in April with Thad Vogler at the helm.
Best of luck both the Bourbon & Branch and Todd Smith!
Labels: bars, news, SanFrancisco
The text of my Belgian beer bars story from San Francisco Magazine is now online here. And if you’re interested, my Aspen travel piece is here.
Labels: beer, camper_clips, travel
This past year has been busy, crazy, and wonderful. I realize it’s only been a little over a year since I started writing about cocktails and spirits full-time. That seems ludicrous, as I’ve learned so much since my first big feature in the SF Chronicle in October of 2006. And the thing is, I still don’t feel like I know anything. That’s great because I get bored easily and it will be a very long time before I am sick of this topic. Cheers to that.
This year, I went on visits to the following distilleries/breweries:
Plus additional trips to New York, Aspen, and Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans.
Wow. I’d like to thank the sponsors of those trips. Thanks! You learn so much more about products from visiting the distillery and especially talking to the distillers at each.
I hope that the next year is pretty close to this one in content and adventure, but perhaps with a little more cash and health insurance and book deals added in there somewhere. Here’s to continued good drinking in ’08!
Labels: travel, writing_life
By me, in today’s SF Chronicle:
Daytime Cocktails for New Years Brunch
Camper English, Special to the Chronicle
New Year’s Day often arrives with one pondering the previous night’s indulgences and the resulting aftereffects. On the upside, this can also be done with a cocktail in hand.
Whether consuming them to nurse the previous night’s hangover or just to pass the lazy New Year’s holiday, adults have a free pass to enjoy cocktails before noon on Tuesday.
Typical brunch cocktails include the bloody Mary, mimosa, screwdriver and Irish coffee, with fresh derivations of these standards now on morning menus throughout the Bay Area. Additionally, frothy Southern breakfast drinks like the Ramos gin fizz are coming back into vogue, though drinkers’ aversions to raw eggs and the negative associations with imbibing in the morning may be obstacles to their popularity.
In “The Joy of Drinking,” author Barbara Holland addresses the National Institutes of Health’s “pompous treatise” against readministration of alcohol (more widely known as “the hair of the dog that bit you”) to cure the hangover, for fear that it encourages alcoholism.
She writes, “I don’t know what social circles the NIH travels in, but I myself have never seen any sufferer, after shakily sipping his bloody Mary, let out a whoop, grab the vodka bottle and chug it down.”
Read the rest of the story here.
Labels: camper_clips, cocktails, SanFrancisco
By me, in today’s SF Chromicle:
Splurge on a $12,000 bottle of scotch
Though the product isn’t available until January, the whiskey lover in your life probably won’t mind the IOU for this $12,000 Macallan 55-year-old single-malt Scotch packaged in a custom Lalique crystal bottle. The spirit inside is unusual for Macallan as it has more of an earthy, peaty profile than their younger whiskies, and the funky bottle on the outside is unusual in that there are only 420 of them on the market. (To get one, inquire at Macallan55@remyusa.com.)
Labels: camper_clips, scotch, whisky
By me, in today’s SF Chronicle:
Drink Menus Explore Virgin Territory with Alcohol-Free Cocktails
Camper English, Special to the Chronicle
Bay Area restaurants and bars are increasingly devoting space on their menus to alcohol-free drinks. These concoctions are more complicated than simple sodas and juices, involving the same glassware, seasonal ingredients and fresh garnishes as drinks with the hard stuff.
This trend of enticing consumers with nonalcoholic cocktails, rather than leaving it to them to request a virgin version of another drink, owes much to the current emphasis in better cocktail bars on creating drinks with seasonal ingredients. These fresh drinks can be translated fairly easily into alcohol-free versions, whereas in other bars, a nonalcoholic Jack and Coke is just a Coke.
Josh Harris, bar manager of Palmetto on Union Street in Cow Hollow, says that in the first month or so of being open, the menu listed only drinks with alcohol, but patrons would see the fresh cocktails being made and request alcohol-free versions.
“Some of them translated (to nonalcoholic drinks) very well, and some of them not well at all,” he says.
Read the rest of the story here.
Labels: bars, camper_clips, cocktails, SanFrancisco
I contributed this round-up of new drinking venues to the San Francisco Bay Guardian. As I was taking notes on the venues that opened in the past year, I realized that there are way to many of them to list. The final article has 32 new venues listed, and it doesn’t include a third of the wine bars that opened, nor several of the venues that renovated their whole schtick, such as bacar and Jardinière, nor many of the new restaurants with good cocktail programs even though I included a bunch.
No wonder I’ve been so busy.
Labels: bars, camper_clips, SanFrancisco
By me, in today’s SF Chronicle:
Raise a Glass to Yoga Class
A sense of relaxation, the loss of calories and increased flexibility are some of the benefits that come with yoga practice, but the just-opened Cocoon Urban Day Spa and Local Kitchen and Wine Merchant have teamed up with some rewards that are a bit more tangible. On Dec. 20, from 7 to 9 p.m., they’ll be running their “Yoga, Wine, Chocolate and Cheese” workshop. (So much for that loss of calories.) It begins with a 90-minute yoga flow class lead by the spa’s yoga coordinator Danielle Marie Giovanello and attended by Local’s sommelier Mark Bright, followed by a session of decadent gluttony, or as they put it, “delve deep into your visual, auditory, kinesthetic, gustatory and olfactory senses.” Either way, it’s a tasting of two kinds of wine plus organic cheese and chocolate pairings after class. $95. 330 First St. (at Folsom), San Francisco; (415) 777-0100.
Labels: camper_clips, pairing, wine