My July column at Culinate takes a look at three summer gin cocktails, giving background and recipes for two easy classics and one that will take a little more preparation.
Permalink - Share/Save - Comments (0)
If you’re in Portland today, consider stopping by the inaugural Northwest Spirits and Mixology Show at the Jupiter Hotel. Admission is free with proof of hospitality industry affiliation, otherwise $10 with registration here. The show is industry only from 12-4 and open to everyone from 4-7.
The Oregon Bartenders Guild is contributing to the show with a few mixology demos. I’m working the “classic to contemporary” slot, tweaking a classic cocktail. I’ll be making and serving a Bols Boulevardier:
1.5 oz Bols Genever
1 oz Campari
1 oz sweet vermouth
Stir, serve up with a cherry or orange twist. This drink is traditionally made with bourbon, so I’ll be using Bols to tie it into the trend toward white whiskeys (Bols is made from about 50% malt wine, an unaged grain distillate). This has been one of my favorite genever cocktails to order when I’m out at bars that are still developing their own drinks; the ingredients are widely available, it’s easy to make, and it’s really tasty. My demo is slated at 5:25 and I’ll be sampling the cocktail from the OBG booth for sometime before.
Permalink - Share/Save - Comments (0)From an op/ed by an Oregon liquor store agent on why we shouldn’t privatize liquor sales:
A net revenue of $163.5 million (fiscal 2008-2009) just from liquor sales was returned to the citizens of Oregon. What retail business can generate net profit revenues of 40 percent of sales? I’d sure like to invest in such a company. Even a wildly successful company like Apple posted only a 19.9 percent net profit margin for 2009, which is far less than what OLCC liquor revenue generated for Oregonians.
And in the same article:
If the citizens of Oregon think that getting the state out of liquor distribution and retailing will reduce the price of alcohol at the checkout counter, think again. I’ve compared retail prices in California and Arizona to ours in Oregon, and except for the best-sellers (less than 10 percent of the inventory) the prices are the same or higher in those states.
So his arguments are that 1) monopoly liquor distribution yields enormous excess profits for the state and 2) introducing competition will increase prices for consumers. If this is the best the anti-privatization side can come up with, I think it’s safe to say the pro-privatization side wins the economic argument.
Permalink - Share/Save - Comments (3)OK, one quick post from Tales with a couple links. I’m at the Washington Examiner today with a post about why the FDA’s menthol hearings are asking the wrong questions. Then at the Portland Examiner, Hoke Harden has a great (and way too flattering!) write-up of the Brewing Up Cocktails event. If you’re curious about the drinks we served, go check it out.
Permalink - Share/Save - Comments (0)I’m headed out to New Orleans this morning for a return trip to Tales of the Cocktail along with the rest of the Bols team. Obviously this isn’t the most conducive environment to blogging — not the sort of blogging for which I’d to be remembered anyway — so this may be the last post of the week. I’ll be twittering while there though, and if you’re also in town for Tales let’s be sure to grab a drink at the Carousel bar.
Permalink - Share/Save - Comments (0)
Two of the most recent spirits to arrive here for sampling are the Floraison and Nouaison gins from G’Vine. These are distilled in France from Ugni Blanc grapes, the same grape commonly in use for distilling Cognac. The spirit is infused with grape flowers and other traditional gin botanicals before undergoing a final distillation. My preference is for the Nouaison, which is flavored with lime. However this post isn’t so much about the gins as it is about an unusual cocktail I came across while experimenting with them.
Credit for pointing me toward this drink goes to my friend Paul Willenberg. While tasting the G’Vine gins with me he remembered a drink he enjoyed in France called a Rouge Gorge, possibly named after the little bird pictured up top. Paul says he had it as an aperitif at Levernois. One of the only mentions of it I can find online is this:
Rouge Gorge: You Know You Want One
The place to drink this in Paris is the wonderful Alsatian restaurant “Aux Deux Canards” – try it with the pan fried fois gras.
Rouge Gorge – The recipe:
8 parts Cotes du Rhone, 5 parts good quality gin – Tanqueray or Hendricks, 3 parts Crème de Mure. Mix well, and serve slightly chilled in a brandy glass.
The combination sounds strange, but the perfume of the gin combines with the violet aromas of the Rhone wine and the fruitiness of the Crème de Mure to create an absolutely bewitching – and lethal – cocktail.
OK, this does sound strange. And it is strange. But it’s not totally off the wall. The original Martinez featured a 2:1 ratio of sweet vermouth and gin, further sweetened with a little maraschino liqueur. Though contemporary palates tend toward a flipped ratio, this isn’t that far removed from drinks served in the Golden Age of cocktails.
Still, the recipe above is a little sweet. Cutting down the blackberry liqueur brings out more of the gin. Here are the proportions I’ve settled into:
2 oz chilled Côtes du Rhône (Domaine “La Garrique” at Paul’s suggestion)
1 oz gin (G’Vine Nouaison)
.5 oz blackberry liqueur (Clear Creek)
I think the best word to describe this drink is “beguiling.” You take a sip, and you’re not quite sure what to make of it, and so you sip again. It’s better than you think it would be, and difficult to wrap your head around the flavors.
It’s a weird drink; I’m still trying to figure it out myself. Should it be enjoyed before dinner as an aperitif? After with cheese and bread? Where did it come from, and can I order one at a French bar with any reasonable expectation of the bartender knowing what I’m talking about? Googling has yet to reveal the answers, but if anyone else has experience with this unusual drink I would love to hear about it.
Permalink - Share/Save - Comments (0)Indiana governor Mitch Daniels is getting some favorable attention from libertarians, perhaps with some justification given his reading habits. However he has nothing kind to say about the atheists among us:
People who reject the idea of a God -who think that we’re just accidental protoplasm- have always been with us. What bothers me is the implications -which not all such folks have thought through- because really, if we are just accidental, if this life is all there is, if there is no eternal standard of right and wrong, then all that matters is power.
And atheism leads to brutality. All the horrific crimes of the last century were committed by atheists -Stalin and Hitler and Mao and so forth- because it flows very naturally from an idea that there is no judgment and there is nothing other than the brief time we spend on this Earth.
Everyone’s certainly entitled in our country to equal treatment regardless of their opinion. But yes, I think that folks who believe they’ve come to that opinion ought to think very carefully, first of all, about how different it is from the American tradition; how it leads to a very different set of outcomes in the real world.
I was going to write a longer post about this until I realized the quote is from a December interview. That’s remarkable in itself, given that I just recently came across it. An American governor saying that any religion “leads to brutality” would surely have made bigger headlines, but disparage atheists and hardly anyone takes notice until months later.
Atheists have polled as the least trusted group in the US and a majority of respondents say they would not vote for an atheist candidate. Statements from politicians like Daniels are part of the reason. Since atheists are an invisible minority we have the option of letting such comments slide. As I’ve written before, I think this is a mistake:
Respondents to the survey call atheists elitist and in one sense they are right. Academia and the sciences are wide open to us. Educated Americans on the coasts are more tolerant of atheism. Unless we’re running for public office, no ceiling blocks our ambitions. Unlike other minorities, we have the luxury of not caring what other people think. And so we don’t.
So maybe we ought to be speaking up more. I don’t mean by forming advocacy groups or adopting pretentious new words like “brights,” but by being forthright when people inquire about our religious beliefs. I’m as guilty as anyone of equivocating by saying I’m “not religious” when asked rather than matter of factly admitting to atheism. This polite ambiguity prevents some awkwardness, but keeps atheism outside the boundaries of what is publicly acceptable and, ultimately, shows a lack of respect for ourselves and the people we interact with. Enough of that. We’ve got catching up to do.
To their credit, the Center for Inquiry Indiana has taken Daniels to task for his comments, and Jonathan Turley was on it immediately.
Permalink - Share/Save - Comments (4)Last night I was tending bar with my friend Dave Shenaut and we had the pleasure of mixing drinks for the folks behind Ilegal Mezcal. It’s not every night one is asked to come up with a variety of mezcal cocktails on the spot, but it was a fun challenge. This was one of the crowd-pleasers and an ideal drink for summer:
1.25 oz Ilegal Joven Mezcal
.75 oz honey-lavender syrup*
.75 oz Cocchi Americano
.5 oz lemon
Shake and serve up in a cocktail glass.
*Recipe here.
Permalink - Share/Save - Comments (0)UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg made a lot of favorable headlines recently by launching the Your Freedom website, allowing citizens to suggest laws that should be repealed. In a new video he reveals that there are at least two suggestions that will “of course” not be taken seriously:
1) Reintroducing the death penalty; and
2) Allowing people to smoke in private businesses
Because clearly, these ideas are equally at odds with liberalism!
Dick Puddlecote has more, via Chris Snowdon.
Permalink - Share/Save - Comments (0)Ron Rosenbaum’s “Agnostic Manifesto” at Slate has been making the rounds lately. He makes a few arguments against atheism, the central one being this:
Atheists display a credulous and childlike faith, worship a certainty as yet unsupported by evidence—the certainty that they can or will be able to explain how and why the universe came into existence. [...]
Faced with the fundamental question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” atheists have faith that science will tell us eventually. Most seem never to consider that it may well be a philosophic, logical impossibility for something to create itself from nothing. But the question presents a fundamental mystery that has bedeviled (so to speak) philosophers and theologians from Aristotle to Aquinas. Recently scientists have tried to answer it with theories of “multiverses” and “vacuums filled with quantum potentialities,” none of which strikes me as persuasive. [...]
Agnosticism doesn’t fear uncertainty. It doesn’t cling like a child in the dark to the dogmas of orthodox religion or atheism. Agnosticism respects and celebrates uncertainty and has been doing so since before quantum physics revealed the uncertainty that lies at the very groundwork of being.
I don’t think this criticism hits the mark. For starters, as Rosenbaum quotes approvingly from John Wilkins, we are all atheists about something: “Christians are Vishnu-atheists, I am a Thor-atheist, and so on.” This is the lay meaning of the word “atheism,” and it’s a useful meaning. When I tell people I am an atheist they understand that this means I don’t believe in any of the gods imagined by (or revealed to, if you disagree) human beings, and their understanding is correct.
Does this mean I am 100% certain that no gods exist? No, but certainty is a mug’s game. In real life we are faced with countless hypotheses about the nature of the world and we must use our best judgments about which of them to take seriously. I will concede that there is a non-zero probability that God once made a covenant with my ancestors, or sent down his son to offer us eternal life, or even that we are all headed toward Ragnarök. However I’m not going to spend much time investigating these possibilities.
On this I think Rosenbaum agrees, which leaves us with the less exciting kinds of gods that only philosophers bother talking about. It’s true that I cannot explain “why there is something rather than nothing.” But I don’t see why it should be my job to explain it, or how positing a god does any better. To this question the philosophers’ god is not a solution, but rather the placeholder to a solution. As Julian Sanchez writes, this is merely “gesturing at the realm of mystery and calling the question mark that lives there God.” Without giving the word meaning there’s nothing for me to be agnostic about.
Will advanced physics explain why there is something rather than nothing, if that question makes sense? I don’t know, but I also don’t know where else one would reasonably look. Perhaps the answer will turn out to be something we might call a god, or maybe someday I’ll be presented with a definition of god that plausibly and meaningfully answers the question. Until then I think it most honest to call myself an atheist, at least in regard to all the gods that matter.
Permalink - Share/Save - Comments (3)Scotch and cigars are a classic pairing, but lately I’ve been turning more and more toward rum as my spirit of choice when enjoying a cigar. One of my favorite rums for smoking is the incredibly rich Ron Zacapa Centenario, a Guatemalan rum distilled from sugar cane “honey” and aged for 23 years via the solera method. In short, this means that rum lost to evaporation one year is replaced with rum from the next, meaning that each barrel contains a blend of rums from each year. The rum is smooth, sweet, and very cooling, which can be an agreeable feature when having a cigar. For people who haven’t paired rum and cigars before, Zacapa is an eye-opening experience.
On Tuesday, July 13, my friend Ed Ryan from the Portland Cigar Club and I putting together an event at Alu Wine Bar and Lounge to bring together Ron Zacapa and cigars on the Alu patio. Ed’s bringing in two cigars, the Honduras Caribbean Honduran Puro Maduro and the Kinky Friedman Kinkycristo, which is a blend of Honduran & Nicaraguan tobaccos wrapped in a Costa Rican binder and a Honduran wrapper. These will be matched with Ron Zacapa served neat and in two cocktails. This is a fantastic deal, but space is limited, so buy your ticket on PayPal to reserve your seat.
Permalink - Share/Save - Comments (2)
I have a new cocktail up at Imbibe this weekend featuring the limited edition Beefeater Summer Gin, hibiscus syrup, lemon, and cucumber. If you’re looking for a refreshing summer drink, give the Tiberius Fizz a try.
Why Tiberius? The emperor was reportedly extremely fond of cucumbers:
According to The Natural History of Pliny, by Pliny the Elder (Book XIX, Chapter 23), the Roman Emperor Tiberius had the cucumber on his table daily during summer and winter. The Romans reportedly used artificial methods (similar to the greenhouse system) of growing to have it available for his table every day of the year. To quote Pliny; “Indeed, he was never without it; for he had raised beds made in frames upon wheels, by means of which the cucumbers were moved and exposed to the full heat of the sun; while, in winter, they were withdrawn, and placed under the protection of frames glazed with mirrorstone. Reportedly, they were also cultivated in cucumber houses glazed with oiled cloth known as “specularia”.
He was also a dark, somber, and sometimes tyrannical ruler, described by Pliny as “the gloomiest of men.” Perhaps a few cucumber fizzes would have cheered him up.
Permalink - Share/Save - Comments (1)
A while back Ezra from the New School blog and I started talking about writing a post about beer cocktails. Then the drinks sounded so good that we decided they deserved more than a blog post, they needed a whole event! So in collaboration with Yetta Vorobik of the Hop and Vine we’re “Brewing Up Cocktails” to celebrate Oregon Craft Beer Month, creating drinks featuring some fantastic beers. Mark your calendars for July 17 and head over to The New School for all the details.
Permalink - Share/Save - Comments (0)Though the previous post mentions one relic of Prohibition falling away in Oregon, plenty of others live on. Here’s the latest asinine ruling from the Oregon DOJ and OLCC:
Law enforcement officials are putting a stop to the home-brew and home-wine-making competitions at this year’s Oregon State Fair.
KATU reported on the glitch in state law that at the time put the home-brewing competition in jeopardy. Late Friday, Oregon State Fair Manager Connie Bradley learned from the Department of Justice that the law requires both its beer and wine competitions to be shut down.
“The issue has to do with the judging,” Bradley said Monday. “Judges are considered the public, and we cannot have the public tasting amateur wine or beer.”
The competitions have been going on for 30 years under existing law. The agencies have just now decided to interpret the rule to mean that allowing judges to taste homemade beers and wine counts as serving to the public.
People actually get paid with tax dollars to enforce these stupid rules. With the state budget in a mess and OLCC privatization an issue in upcoming elections, hopefully this will be one more nail in the coffin of one of our least useful agencies.
[Via Beervana.]
Permalink - Share/Save - Comments (1)One more relic of Prohibition fell away in Oregon last month as our state’s last remaining dry town served its first shot of liquor since 1859:
It was just after quitting time on June 18, and many of the people who had crowded around the bar inside Rookies Sports Pub had a shot of whiskey, tequila or cocktail staring back at them.
But they held off downing them — some needing more restraint than others — until about 5:15 p.m., as Trina Trevino rang the bell hanging above the back bar.
At that moment, business owner and husband, Alex, poured himself a drink, thanked his patrons and called out “cheers.”
“Here’s the pour heard around Polk County,” he hollered, followed quickly by, “The bar is open!”
Monmouth’s nearly 150-year prohibition on hard alcohol sales officially ended on June 17, exactly 30 days after residents voted down the law during the May primary election.
The law in Monmouth passed eight years after campaigners brought beer and wine to the formerly dry area:
The first mixed drink went to Salem attorney David Sherman, who lives in rural Monmouth. Sherman helped Koontz in architecting the campaign. He was also on board eight years earlier when current Mayor John Oberst spirited a campaign to get beer and wine into Monmouth.
“Did you ever think you would see this?” Oberst posed, sharing a scotch and a smile. “We knew if we went for the whole hog back then it would have been voted down. It took people a little while to see that the whole town is not going to fall apart if we allow the sale of alcohol.”
[Via Blue Oregon.]
Permalink - Share/Save - Comments (1)Today I was invited to a media preview of the North American Organic Brewers Festival. This is a fun festival to kick off the summer drinking good beer in Portland’s Overlook Park. If you’re heading there this weekend, here are my picks from the 18 beers I sampled:
Ambacht Golden Rye Ale — Though located nearby in Hillsboro, Ambacht is a new brewery for me. I liked both of their ales, with this rye standing out for its unique, dry taste.
Bison Belgian-style Scotch Ale — A Scotch ale brewed with Belgian yeasts. Malty with strong roast notes.
Elliot Bay Vanilla Bean Organic Stout — Big vanillla flavor and aroma, yet very well balanced. One of my favorite beers of the day.
Fort George Spruce Ale — Huge spruce nose and taste. Not for everyone, but very interesting beer. I really liked it.
Laurelwood Organic Green Elephant IPA– I thought the name derived from its green aroma, but the true story is more colorful than that. Big, citrusy hops, but very drinkable balanced with sweetness from the malt.
MateVeza Yerba Mate Black Lager — This beer’s many competing flavors didn’t quite come together for me, but it was the most unique beer I tried today. Notes of coffee, not too bitter, with a green taste from the yerba mate.
Santa Cruz People’s Porter — A good coffee porter flavored with Guatemalan coffee.
Uncommon Brewers Bacon Brown Ale — Yes, bacon ale. Surprisingly good, with the bacon coming through as a smokiness on the finish. It reminds me of a good bacon-washed bourbon.
Upright Rose City Seven — Someday Upright will release a beer I don’t like. Today is not that day. This is a limited edition of their Seven aged in Pinot Noir Barrels and flavored with hibiscus, rose hips, and rose petals. Fans of sour ales will enjoy this.
Food Cart Bonus — I finally tried Violetta. Their Oregon corn dog with sweet potato fries were just what I needed after a couple hours imbibing.
Permalink - Share/Save - Comments (2)
Jacob Grier is a freelance writer, barista, mixologist, and magician in Portland, OR. He writes, eats, and drinks a lot. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Reason Online, The Oregonian, and other publications.
Follow me on Twitter