Category: sherry

  • Less Alcohol, More Trendy

    My new story for the San Francisco Chronicle is online. 

    Chardonnaydrink  

    Latest cocktail trend is low-alcohol drinks

    Camper English, Special to The Chronicle
     Friday, September 17, 2010

    Like a food menu, a proper cocktail list reflects a chosen theme while catering to a variety of diners. The low-alcohol drinks now showing up around San Francisco are designed to satisfy cocktail flexitarians who aren't avoiding alcohol but who don't want the calories, the rapid buzz or that full feeling.

    For some drinkers, it's like small-plates dining.

    "I like cocktails so much that sometimes I wish all booze was lower in proof because I want to drink more and not feel (the) effects as intensely," says Brooke Arthur, who placed two low-alcohol cocktails on the bar menu she developed for Prospect restaurant.

    Go here to read the whole thing and learn about the forthcoming cocktail from Comstock Saloon that sounds ins-a-a-a-ane. 

    Kevin Diedrich Makes a Low Alcohol Cocktail

    (Photos by Michael Macor / The Chronicle

  • Sharing the Sherry Shrub

    In Gary Regan's weekly cocktail newsletter, he shares with us Neyah White's recipe that won the Vinos de Jerez cocktail competition. The recipe is below. It sounds easy because it's only two ingredients, but naturally one of those two ingredients involves seven other ingredients and takes two weeks to make.

    To see the recipes for the runner-up winners by Nate Dumas of the Clover Club, Joel Baker of Bourbon and Branch, and Daniel Eun of PDT, you'll have to go to Gary's website. They're a pretty amazing variety of drinks.

    Sherry Shrub

    Adapted from a recipe by Neyah White, Nopa, San Francisco.

    Winner of the 2008 Vinos de Jerez Cocktail Competition

    22.5 ml (.75 oz) House-Made Shrub*
    60 ml (2 oz) La Gitana Manzanilla sherry
    1 lemon twist, as garnish

    Stir over ice and strain into a small sherry glass.  Add the garnish.


    *House-Made Shrub

    Adapted from a recipe by Neyah White, Nopa, San Francisco.

    1 quart fresh elderberries, trimmed from stems

    1 cup fresh huckleberries

    5 cups evaporated cane sugar

    1 quart cider vinegar

    1 oz kosher salt

    5 brown cardamon pods

    1 oz. jigger of white pepper corns

    In a large bowl, mildly press fruit with
    bottom of shaker tin till every berry is at least bruised.  Muddle
    spices in a mixing glass till all the corns are at least cracked.  Add
    sugar, cover and let sit 5 hours or until a good syrup has formed (this
    should happen in a cool place, refrigerate if not available.)  Add salt
    and vinegar and stir till salt has dissolved, cover and return to cool
    storage and let age for at least a week.  Then filter successively
    through a china cap then a cheesecloth.  Bottle in clean, sterile
    bottle leaving a few inches of air under the cap.  It is now ready to
    use, but another week of aging allows for a deeper, more lingering
    flavor.  The beauty of this cocktail is seasonality and custom
    flavors.  It must be stressed that this is a seasonal concept and it
    should be made with whatever produce is peaking the week you make it.

  • Oh, Sherry!

    Sherrysmallpage1I haven't seen the print edition yet, but the digital edition of my story in Men's Book (by San Francisco Magazine) is viewable online here.

    The story is about sherry in cocktails. The story mentions drinks on the menu at 15 Romolo, NOPA, and the forthcoming Gitane, but since I wrote it, sherry drinks have been turning up everywhere.

    One of my favorite drinks in San Francisco right now is Joel Baker's "Drink Without a Name #3". It contains Fino or Manzanilla sherry, Chartreuse, and a basil garnish, and was originally created with fresh pears but is on the menu now at Bourbon & Branch with stone fruit instead. (Or at least it was- they recently changed the menu for fall.)

    The print is too small to read these screen shots, so follow the link about to read the story online. It's on Pages 90-91. Sherrysmallpage2