With The Bitter Truth Sloeberry Gin joining Plymouth Sloe Gin in the category of sloe gins that have sloes and gin in them, your Sloe Gin Fizz doesn't need to be full of false advertising.
That's basically what I talk about in my most recent post for Fine Cooking.
I've been writing for Fine Cooking magazine's website for several months now, and realized they don't have a recipe for the Caipirinha online. Shameful. So in my latest post I wrote about the drink, the base spirit cachaca, and some variations. Check it out.
In my latest post for FineCooking.com I talk a little bit about orgeat as a segue into posting the recipe for Dominic Venegas' Mi Ruca cocktail that helped him win the SF regional 42Below vodka cocktail world cup.
(Photos courtesy of 42Below Vodka.)
Most of what I know about orgeat comes from the research for a huge Mai Tai story I wrote for Mixology Magazine in Germany. And much of that information comes from Jennifer Colliau of Small Hand Foods, whose orgeat is so labor-intensive she only sells it to select clients, and Blair Reynolds, whose Trader Tiki orgeat now comes in regular almond and hazelnut versions.
Venegas' Mi Ruca cocktail is simple to make at home as long as you have the delicious 42Below Manuka Honey vodka; and you can use commercial orgeat and skip the bee pollen if you don't have any around.
The recipe for the Mi Ruca is on Fine Cooking here.
(Photos courtesy of 42Below Vodka.)
I am out of Manuka Honey so I made a rum version of this drink- dark rum, pineapple, lemon, and orgeat. It tasted like a simple rum punch and was good on its own though crying for some champagne to give it fizz.
So shopping list: champagne, manuka honey vodka, bee pollen. At least I've got orgeat in the house.
I wrote up a short ditty on the Pickle Back (A shot of whiskey- usually Jameson- with a pickle juice chaser) for the Los Angeles Times Magazine's March issue.
Read it here.
(Photo by Brian Leatart)
In Ireland a few weeks ago, I had Irish Coffee three times in as many days. Irish Coffee was invented in Ireland and is credited to a bar at the Shannon airport. Then it was recreated in San Francisco at the Buena Vista. Its popularity in the US helped it travel back to Ireland where became popular around the country.
At the Chapter One restaurant in Dublin, they have the most elaborate preparation of the Irish Coffee in town. They add Jameson Irish Whiskey and 2 tablespoons brown sugar to a pan and caramelize it for 10 minutes and grate fresh nutmeg on top. They add half the amount of coffee, then light the pan on fire for just a second and blow it out. They add the other half the coffee then pour it into the glass.
Then they add the cream on top. Unlike the other Irish Coffees I've had, the cream was fairly warm as opposed to refrigerator-cold. Most of the fuss of an Irish Coffee seems to be about the cream. I address this in last week's post on FineCooking.com.
It turns out different countries have conflicting definitions for cream, and even in the US you have to know the difference between "whipped" and "whipping" cream to get it right.
The good news is, once you buy the right cream you don't have to whip it very much yourself- just don't stir the coffee first, and pour it over the back of a spoon. More info is in the post here.
In the March issue of 7×7 Magazine, I have a story about Cocktail Snobs.
Now that customers know so much more about cocktails some us are becoming fussy about them, never ordering from the menu but insisting on on-the-spot creations, trying to stump or school the bartender with obscure drink requests, and trainspotting mixology by parking in front of the bartender's station and asking questions about every drink being made.
Note: I've been guilty of all these offenses at one time or another.
Kindly read the story first, but one aspect I didn't get room to touch on much was that snobs in bars are hardly a new thing; cocktail snobs are just a new species thereof. There are still and will always be people who get angry that a bar doesn't carry what they percieve to be the best brand of vodka/tequila, snap their fingers at the bartender and treat them like servants, and exhibit other forms of bad behavior.
At least, I hope, the new breed of snobs are cocktail snobs because they care about good cocktails.
There are no legal differences between triple sec and Curacao, only a few practical and many historical differences. In summary:
In short, today there are no hard and fast differences between curacao and triple sec (other than curacao is sometimes colored), and bartenders should use what is best for a particular drink. But the history of how orange liqueur came to be known by these different names is interesting.
From the Caribbean to the Netherlands
"Curacao" liqueur refers to a liqueur with flavoring from oranges that grow on the island of Curacao, off the coast of Venezuela. These oranges are known as bitter oranges or Laraha oranges, with the botanical name Citrus aurantium var. curassuviensis.
These are a variety of sweet Seville oranges that changed in the arid island climate and are reputed to taste awful on their own, but the sun-dried peels of them are prized in making liqueur compared with traditional sweet oranges. Today, bitter oranges are still used in many liqueurs and some gins, though these are most often sourced from other regions including Haiti and Spain.
However the Senior & Co. company, based on Curacao since 1896, still produces curacao (in a variety of colors) made on the island with the island’s oranges. It claims to be the only brand that uses the island’s oranges.
The island of Curacao has been a Dutch island since the 1600s, and was a center of trading and commerce for The Netherlands. The dried peels of the island’s oranges made their way back to Holland where they were infused, distilled, and sweetened. The Dutch Bols company, which dates back to 1575, states that their first liqueurs were cumin, cardamom, and orange, though they don’t specify that the oranges in the first liqueur came from Curacao just yet.
The base spirit for orange liqueurs changed many times over the years. According to Bols historian Ton Vermeulen, the earliest records of distillation in the Netherlands dating to the 1300s detail distilling grapes. The northerly climate isn’t conducive to grape-growing however, and by the end of the 16th century many distillers used distilled molasses (sugar from colonies was often refined back in the home countries, with distillable molasses as a secondary product). In the 1700s the Bols company has records of both grain alcohol and the molasses-based “sugar brandy” being used as base spirits. Grape brandy was seen as more refined, and according to Vermeulen, the “owner of Bols around 1820 would prefer to use [grape] brandy and if it was too expensive would use grain alcohol instead.”
Column distillation that spread after 1830 allowed for any fermentable matter to be distilled to near neutrality and make a suitable base for liqueurs. The Netherlands and most of Europe switched to using neutral sugar beet-based spirit in the second half of the 19th century, after Napoleon heavily promoted the sugar beet industry in France. Today neutral sugar beet spirit is the base of Cointreau.
France and Triple Sec
The most famous and well-respected orange liqueurs on the market today, Grand Marnier and Cointreau, don’t come from Curacao or from the Netherlands, but from France, and it seems to be in France where Curacao liqueur evolved into triple sec liqueur.
Cointreau initially produced a product called “curacao,” and then a “curacao triple sec” and then a “triple sec." According to Alfred Cointreau, the product labelling (and it seems the sweetness levels and possibly accent flavors) evolved over the years:
1859
1869
1885
Cointreau cites 1875 as the creation date of its orange liqueur, which is made with both bitter and sweet orange peels. Grand Marnier cites 1880 for its blend of cognac and orange peels. Both of these brands now shy away from the words “Curacao” and “triple sec,” on their labels.
The brand Combier claims 1835 as its creation date, with “sun-dried orange peels from the West Indies, local spices from the south of France, alcohol from France’s northwest, and secret ingredients from the Loire Valley – a formula that became the world’s first triple sec: Combier Liqueur d’Orange.”
But to what are the “triple” and “sec” referring?” The “sec” is French for “dry,” and the “triple” could point to several things.
Alexandre Gabriel, president of Cognac Ferrand, says that in conjunction with cocktail historian David Wondrich, they researched the history of triple sec and curacao and found a listing from a 1768 Dutch-French dictionary that described an infusion (without redistillation) of Curacao oranges in probably-grain spirit, but by 1808 recipes appear for redistillation of the oranges in spirit.
Gabriel’s theory is that the triple refers to three separate distillations or macerations with oranges. His Dry Curacao product is described as, “a traditional French ‘triple sec’ – three separate distillations of spices and the ‘sec’ or bitter, peels of Curacao oranges blended with brandy and Ferrand Cognac.”
By Gabriel’s definition, the ‘sec’ refers to the drier-tasting (due to bitterness) oranges from Curacao, independent of the sugar content of the liqueur. A contrary opinion comes from Andrew Willett of the blog Elemental Mixology, who makes a convincing argument that the ‘triple sec’ is a level of dryness from sugar on a scale from extra-sec, triple-sec, sec, and doux (‘sweet’).
Willett also proposes that the ‘triple’ could indicate three types of oranges: many French brands call for both bitter and sweet oranges in the recipe, plus some add an orange hydrosol (water-based orange distillate). That an early product from Grand Marnier was called Curacao Marnier Triple Orange could help support this argument. Willett concludes in another post that a “Curacao triple sec” is “Curaçao liqueur that is both triple-orange and sec.”
So “Curacao triple-sec” may refer to three distillates that include Curacao oranges, three types of oranges including Curacao in a very dry liqueur, or just a specific level of dryness from sugar of a Curacao liqueur. As mentioned, these differences and definitions are not meaningful today.
Curacao comes in many colors, but coloring of the liqueur is more traditional than one might imagine. It dates back at least to the early 1900s (when the liqueur was colored with barks) and some cocktail books including the Café Royal Cocktail Book from 1937 specify using brown, white, blue, red, and even green Curacao in various recipes.
Today, bartenders might consider each part of the liqueur in deciding which brand is appropriate for a particular cocktail: the orange flavor, the base spirit, the proof of the liqueur, and yes, the color. There’s a whole rainbow to choose from when choosing an orange liqueur.
Below Here is the Original Post that I updated with the above information. Please ignore it! It's just here for legacy purposes.
I tried to answer that question as best as I could in my recent post for FineCooking.com.
Four hundred years ago, the Dutch were some of the world’s greatest traders and, not coincidentally, great distillers. They’d preserve the spices, herbs, and fruit brought home on ships in flavored liqueurs and other spirits. Curacao was one of those liqueurs, flavored with bitter orange peels from the island of the same name. At the time, the liqueur would have had a heavy, pot-distilled brandy as its base.
Then the French came along (a couple hundred years later) and invented triple sec. The “sec” meaning “dry,” or less sweetened than the Dutch liqueur. The origin of the “triple” is still up for debate, but the two leading schools of thought are “triple distillation” versus “three times as orangey”. Triple sec was also clear, whereas curacaos were dark in color.
Today, triple secs are usually still clear (made from a base of neutral spirits), whereas curacaos may start that way and be colored orange, blue, and even red. Cointreau is probably the most recognized brand of orange liqueur in the triple sec style, and Grand Marnier, despite being French, is more in line with the Dutch curacao style as it has an aged brandy base.
Nerds: Do you think that's an accurate summation?
The full post is here, and it includes a recipe for the White Lady cocktail.
Sherry and tequila are showing up together on more and more cocktail menus. I wrote a story about that in the Sunday, February 20th San Francisco Chronicle.
(Del Rio cocktail by Josh Harris of the Bon Vivants. Photo: Craig Lee)
More drinks including Tequila and Sherry
Camper English, Special to The ChronicleSherry and Tequila are having a love affair. Bartenders are using more of each ingredient lately, but increasingly you'll see the two sneaking off in a drink together, canoodling in a corner of the cocktail menu.
One of the first outward signs of this attraction came in the form of La Perla, a drink created several years ago by beverage consultant Jacques Bezuidenhout, which is still on the menu at Bourbon & Branch. The cocktail contains reposado (lightly aged) Tequila, manzanilla Sherry and pear liqueur.
A not-too dissimilar flavor combination has popped up recently. At the Hideout at Dalva, a tiny backroom cocktail bar in the Mission District, Josh Harris serves the Del Rio. The drink is made with blanco, or unaged, Tequila, fino Sherry, St. Germain elderflower liqueur, plus a dash of orange bitters and a grapefruit zest.
At Gitane, the Sherry-centric Claude Lane restaurant, bar manager Alex Smith and two other bartenders collaborated on a drink called the Flor Delice, made with reposado, manzanilla, St. Germain and orange bitters, plus maraschino liqueur.
In New York, this combination shows up yet again on the menu at Mayahuel, a bar dedicated to Tequila and mezcal. The Suro-Mago uses blanco, manzanilla, elderflower and orange bitters, and adds a rinse of mezcal to give it a smoky touch.
Read the rest of the story and get the recipe for the Del Rio, a simple and delicious drink.
Another magazine I write for that is not usually online is Caviar Affair, for which the tagline is, "Celebrating wordly indulgences and luxury living."
That's so *me*, right? Actually it really is, except that other people indulge me in the luxury to which I've become accustomed.
Anyhoo, they did put the new issue online. Unlike much of what I write for other publications, there is a definite emphasis in my stories for this magazine on stuff that you can buy, rather than, say, ruminations on flavor combinations and the deeper meaning of cocktail culture.
The whole issue online is here.
For this issue I wrote some stuff on vodka, some on rare scotch, a bit about my trip to Guatemala, and information about some new cocktail bars.
Here's something you already know: Sparkling wine + Floral liqueur = fun drink.
I hadn't realized until I started writing my latest Fine Cooking blog entry just how many new floral liqueurs have hit the market.
In recent years several new floral liqueurs have been brought to market, including St. Germain (elderflower), Esprit de June (grape vine flowers), Rothman and Winter Crème de Violette (violet), Crème Yvette (violet and berries), Fruit Lab Theia (jasmine), J. Witty Spirits Organic Chamomile, and Loft Liqueurs Organic Lavender.
So, here is the rest of the story.