Author: Camper English

It’s day two of Tales of the Cocktail and I’m still going strong. Currently I’m skipping the “spirited dinners” drinks-and-food pairing dinners happening all over town because as a vegetarian they don’t make these things for me. (“Can you pair this vermouth with a salad?”) So I had my own beer and pizza pairing at a microbrewery chain. It was good until they brought the “pizza,” which was like a salty Boboli bread with sweet pasta sauce and uncooked tomatoes on top. Yeah, not so great.

So far I’ve attended seminars on:

• Cocktail history (“I didn’t bring any ice tools because they’re really sharp and really hard to get on airplanes” – David Wondrich),
• The history of the Napoleon House cocktail bar (“It’s like a New Orleans day spa” – David Wondrich)
• Ice (“An honest ice cube became impossible to find.”- Sasha Petraske, speaking about ice machines up until a few years ago)
• Rum (so much good information it’s hard to put it down)
• Forgotten and lost cocktail ingredients (Much like the Imbibe article by Paul Clarke of the same name)
• Pisco (my favorite seminar so far- great info and great swag too.)

Pisco is the new gin. I’m just going to call it out. (Take note of the date.)

And I’ve hung out with Paul Clarke, Tony Abou–Ganim, Jamie Boudreau, the Liquid Muse, Stephen Beaumont, Robert Hess, Ted Haigh, Beachbum Berry, and more other people than I can name. And tomorrow at the Cocktails and the Blogosphere event it should be an even more ridiculous clusterf**k. I’m in heaven.

Labels: events, tales_of_the_cocktail

Yes, that’s four shirts, 5 muddlers, several pieces of glassware, uncountable pens, and more. Good thing I brought an extra bag to carry it all home.

Labels: tales_of_the_cocktail

Finally my tonic water story came out in today’s SF Chronicle:

The Evolution of Tonic Water

In the quest to make better cocktails, today’s bartenders rethink each ingredient in a drink and try to improve it — from the cheap, mass-produced version, to a higher-quality version, to the artisan version, to the locally made artisan version, and finally to the homemade version.

We’ve seen this with spirits (from Tanqueray to 209 Gin) and juices (from bottled juice to locally grown fruit). But until a few years ago, nobody had given too much thought to tonic water.

This bitter, sweetened, carbonated quinine-based beverage is an odd mixer. Unlike soda it’s rarely consumed alone, and unlike juices and seltzer water it’s rarely an ingredient in more complex cocktail recipes. Most of the time, tonic is served only with gin or vodka and a wedge of lemon or lime as garnish.

In the average bar, tonic comes spitting out of the “gun,” the squirter that mixes flavored syrup with seltzer water as it shoots into your glass. But now many venues pour boutique-brand tonic and other sodas from bottles. One venue even makes it in-house.

Read the full article here.

Labels: camper_clips, tonic

Another piece by me in today’s Chronicle:

Bourbon with a Chardonnay chaser

Over in Scotland, wood-finished whiskies are all the rage. Most Scotch ages for years in barrels that previously held bourbon or sherry, and recently several distillers have been transferring the whisky in its final years to barrels that held Port, Madeira or Burgundy, where it picks up additional flavors. Now American whiskey producers are giving it a try.

Jim Beam released Port and Cognac-finished whiskies several years ago as part of their Distillers’ Masterpiece collection. This month, Woodford Reserve bourbon is rolling out a limited-edition Master’s Collection Sonoma-Cutrer finished whiskey that first aged for five years in new charred American oak barrels, then four more months in used Sonoma-Cutrer French oak Chardonnay wine barrels from which it picks up more fruit and citrus notes. It’s available in California stores for $89.99.

— Camper English

Labels: bourbon, camper_clips, whisky