In September’s San Francisco Magazine I have a story on Cantina, a bar I may have mentioned here once or two hundred times already, as part of the Latin cocktail trend. The story isn’t online, so run screaming to your local newsstand to pick up the new issue.
Labels: bars, camper_clips, SanFrancisco
Bay Area home distillers make modern-day moonshine
Camper English, Special to The Chronicle
Friday, August 24, 2007
Moonshiners live among us. By day they appear to be respectable members of society, perhaps writing software to make your Internet experience run smoothly. But at night and on weekends, after a visit to the farmers’ market or a nice brunch, they work in secret, sterilizing equipment, taking specific gravity and temperature measurements, and waiting impatiently as their illegal hooch drip, drip, drips out of tiny stills.
” ‘Illegal’ is such a judgmental word,” jokes Doug (not his real name), who makes moonshine along with his friend Ron (also not his real name) at Ron’s house in the Upper Haight.
The two have been distilling for less than a year. “We started home brewing, then we got into ‘advanced brewing,’ as we like to say to the neighbors,” Ron says.
The book I refer to in the story is this one- Moonshine! by Matthew Rowley. It combines moonshine lore and history with tons of practical advice for building your own still and making your own booze.
Labels: books, camper_clips, homemade
By me, in today’s SF Chronicle:
Help celebrate Speakeasy Ales and Lagers’ 10-year anniversary Saturday with a “rousing, riveting, and spine-tingling blowout hullabaloo” party at the Bayview brewery. The free admission event features live music by Brittany Shane, Crosstops and other bands, a barbecue, and of course, beer. They’ll be debuting White Lightning Wheat Beer on tap, made with wheat, oats, orange peel and spices, that you can try in the 10-year commemorative tasting glass. The family-friendly (but 21 to drink) event runs from 2 to 7 p.m. at 1195 Evans Ave. (at Keith), San Francisco; (415) 642-3371.
Labels: beer, events, SanFrancisco
Last week at the Rye cocktail competition, Dominic Venegas was one of the judges. Dominic set up the bar program at Range, bartends at Bourbon & Branch and Cantina, and has designed/revamped cocktail menus for several restaurants around town. Oh, and also he’s the spirits buyer for John Walker & Sons liquor store. In other words, he gets around.
The competition was to make a Campari-based cocktail. The judges are seated in a separate area so they are blind as to which bartender has prepared each drink. After the judging I asked Dominic how the cocktails were. “The problem with it,” he said, “is that I know all of these guys and their styles already, so I could tell whose cocktail was whose.”
I’m starting to know the feeling. If the drink has a pepper plus a fresh ingredient muddled together, it was likely created by Todd Smith of Bourbon & Branch. If the cocktail has wine when it seems completely unintuitive, check with Duggan McDonnell of Cantina. If it has maple syrup, it was almost definitely made by Jacques Bezuidenhout of the Starlight Room.
Today I was reading the Tablehopper newsletter and heard of a new restaurant called Laiola. I checked the website to look at the drink menu. (Am I the only person who reads food blogs for the drinks? I just don’t care about food all that much.) This is the menu:
OLD WORLD
Sangria de la Dia, wine, sherry & seasonal fruit 7
Tinto de Verano, Laïola tinto & Lemonaide over ice 6
NEW WORLD
Colada, Sanctuary tea infused vodka, coconut cream, pineapple & bitters 8
Cuba Libre, Plantation grand reserve rum, cola & lime 8
Mojo, flor de caña limon rum, mint, apricot liquor, lime, and soda 8
Picasso Sour, Pisco, orange blossom water, lemon bitters, lime & egg whites 8
The Sun Also Rises, Orinoco rum, vanilla, grapefruit & lime 8
Toro de Fuego, Tequila, triple sec, lime and red pepper vinegar 8
Valentia, Vodka, sherry and caramelized orange 8
I hadn’t heard of this restaurant or who was behind it, and the prices don’t scream “celebrity mixologist,” but I said to myself, I THINK THIS PERSON REALLY KNOWS WHAT THEY’RE DOING. (I always talk to myself in capslock.)
Back to the Tablehopper newsletter, I found that I was right- the menu was designed by Camber Lay, formerly of Frisson and Range. The clues I should have picked up were tea-infused vodka, and lime and red pepper vinegar. While other mixologists put together ingredients in new and fascinating ways, Camber is always creating weird new ingredients and techniques.
Last week I sat next to Deborah Parker-Wong, who writes for Tasting Panel Magazine (as do I now) at the El Tesoro Anniversario dinner at Slanted Door. Deborah has an amazing palate that I’ve witnessed at multiple tasting events. She was talking about blind tasting. “If you taste it when it’s hot, when it’s cold, in different glasses, when you’re hungry, with food, in the morning- eventually, you just get it. So THAT’s what [some brand of wine I’d never heard of] is all about.”
I drink enough of these guys’ cocktails in enough different situations that blind tasting cocktails sounds like a really fun challenge. Of course, it will involve much more “training of the palate,” but luckily it’s happy hour soon.
Labels: cocktails, judging, menus, SanFrancisco
If you have anything to do with the booze industry, you’re probably drowning in muddlers right now. I brought home seven from Tales of the Cocktail, and over the past month I’ve been averaging one new muddler every week. Not on purpose.
With so many muddlers (and so few friends to give them to) one needs to find other uses for them. Here are some suggestions:
I posted the story I wrote in 2001 about how to get your daily nutritional requirements in San Francisco from only free bar snacks.
Page 1 is here.
Page 2 is here.
Labels: funny, SanFrancisco
Leblon is a cachaca (Brazilian sugar-cane-based rum) that’s aged 3-6 months in used cognac barrels in France. The last part has always been a confusing point to cachaca consumers. Or at least to me. If it’s aged in France, how can it be called cachaca?
Last night I had dinner at Jardiniere with Gerry Schweitzer, COO of Leblon. He explained that the regulations on cachaca state that in order to be called cachaca it must be grown and distilled in Brazil, but can then be bottled elsewhere. (Among other rules.) This is also the case with many French wines, but in contrast to tequila for example, which in order to be called 100% de agave must be produced and bottled in the region of origin.
Finally, an answer to that nagging question. But why?
Schweitzer explained that it was less expensive to do it this way than to age and bottle it in Brazil, due (largely) to taxes on importing the empty bottles into the country to be filled. Brazil wants Brazilian bottles used and these are protective tariffs.
That said, Leblon is now moving over to aging some of the product in Brazil as well as in France, and I believe they’ll eventually be doing it all in Brazil.
Labels: cachaca
By me, in today’s San Francisco Chronicle:
Jammin’ cocktails
Camper English
Friday, August 3, 2007
With mixologists around town focusing on farmers’ market fruits and fresh herbs, we wouldn’t have guessed the hot new cocktail ingredients would be marmalade and jam. But we don’t make the trends, just report on them.
— Bar Drake, the new lobby bar in the Sir Francis Drake hotel that opened last month, serves the Tommy Gun with Tullamore Dew Irish whiskey, Grand Marnier, apricot jam, lemon juice and fresh ginger, and the Breakfast at Tiffany’s cocktail with Ketel One Citroen, orange marmalade, orange bitters, fresh lime juice and ginger beer. And since the bar opens at 11 a.m., you can actually have it for breakfast. 450 Powell St. (at Sutter), San Francisco; (415) 392-7755, Ext. 226, bardrake.com.
— Cantina serves a Marmalade Cooler that sounds like a Latin version of the Breakfast at Tiffany’s, with Appleton rum, Bonne Maman orange marmalade, lemon and California ginger brew. Since these venues are close to each other, it only makes sense to visit both and compare. 580 Sutter St. (at Mason), San Francisco; (415) 398-0195, cantinasf.com.
— The Marmalade Whiskey Sour has been on the menu at Bourbon & Branch since it opened last year, and the bar is only a few blocks from these other two venues should you feel motivated to go on a marmalade bar crawl. The drink is made with bourbon, lemon, orange marmalade and orange bitters. 501 Jones St. (at O’Farrell), San Francisco; bourbonandbranch.com.
— Sino Restaurant at Santana Row currently offers two unusual drinks with their house ginger marmalade in the mix. One is Seduction, with Smirnoff vodka, Vermeer chocolate liqueur and ginger marmalade, and the other is the Sinodriver, with Wasabe vodka, orange juice and ginger marmalade. The drink menu is scheduled to change soon and we don’t know if these drinks will still be on the new list, so get them while they’re hot. 377 Santana Row, Suite 1000, San Jose; (408) 247-8880, www.sinorestaurant.com.
Labels: camper_clips, cocktails, SanFrancisco, trends
It’s hard for me to leave downtown without stopping into one of my favorite watering holes. And it’s hard for me to leave one of my favorite downtown watering holes without stumbling into one of my other favorite watering holes nearby.
Yesterday I hit Bourbon & Branch for some investigative drinking. (The management is not so good at returning email or phone calls so I had to go to the source. ) The Rouge No. 10 (black pepper-infused gin and strawberries) is still on the menu temporarily, as is another farmer’s market drink with peaches and the pepper gin. I’m all about the pepper so I had the peach drink as a change, which was good but the Rouge is better. I’m going back on Monday and they better still have it or I’m going to voice a strong objection. Fear my wrath!
I left with good intentions of going to the library afterwards but somehow I never made it there and stopped into Cantina instead. I’d missed the pisco party they held the previous Saturday, but Aaron was nice enough to make me one of the drinks from the special menu they served. Okay, two drinks. The Galapagos had peppercorn-infused syrup in it so you know I wanted that. The Blushing Lima had Cherry Heering in it, which I never knew actually tasted like cherries as it’s usually used in small amount in classic cocktails. But in this drink it was alive. Alive!
Labels: cocktails, SanFrancisco
I received the latest copy of San Francisco Magazine in the mail today, in which I have a story on the latest trend in nightlife- retro-opulent design bars with demoted dancefloors. In San Francisco, some of the hot new spots opened recently are:
Another interesting note is venues that are more crowded and clubby, such as Harlot and Etiquette, have a specialty cocktail menu at happy hour that they then hide at night when there isn’t time for muddling and squeezing fresh juice.
Labels: bars, camper_clips, SanFrancisco
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