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3 words that bring music to my ears…. We are talking serious cocktails here kiddies!!
For those of you who are not familiar, Mixology Monday is a monthly online cocktail party. The process is quite simple: each month, a host, working with the moderator, selects a theme for the upcoming event; past themes have included Rum, Winter Warmers, Fizz, and Aperitifs. The event is announced on various blogs, and on or before the event date (a Monday — hence the name), participating bloggers join the party by posting a drink recipe or other post related to the theme. Each participant notifies the host that they’ve joined in, and soon after the event, the host posts a roundup, listing each participant.
This will be the Citizens first post for a Mixology Monday event but definitely not our last!
With a theme of Brown, Bitter, and Stirred, I took off to the drawing board. I have a strong affinity for Rye Whiskey in cocktails and this was the perfect chance to use the beautiful brown spirit. Now for the Bitter? There are so many avenues you can go here, and I wanted to try and express them all. Picking up a bottle of Bonal Gentiane-Quina recently, I really wanted wanted to work it into the cocktail. It had a unique complexity that played really well the the Rye Whiskey. The drink felt a little thin though. Enter my old friend, Punt e Mes. 
Perfect for giving the drink a little more body with a touch of sweetness. Since this is a bitter drink I went ahead and added a dash each of both Angostura Bitters and Peychauds Bitters. I was a little nervous at this point that the drink may be too bitter but it really came together nicely. It was however lacking a little dimension. I decided to work in a little smoke by way of a Laphroig 10 year glass rinse. PERFECT!! A small spritz of orange oil over the top and the drink was done…. It was brown, it was definitely bitter, and it was stirred!!!!
“I’ve Seen Bitter Days”
1.5 oz Old Overholt Rye Whiskey
.5 oz. Bonal Gentiane-Quina
.5 oz. Punt e Mes
1 dash Angostura Bitters
1 Dash Peychauds Bitters
Laphroig Rinse
Garnish: Orange Oil
Add all ingredients except Laphroig into mixing glass. Add ice, stir for 20-30 seconds and strain into Pre-chilled, Laphroig rinsed cocktail glass. Spritz with oil from orange peel and garnish with peel.
CHEERS!!!!
It’s that time of year again when beautiful sweet cherries are in abundance. Unfortunately this season is relatively short. If your anything like me and are not a big fan of your typical neon maraschino cherry then you will need to find a tasty and creative way to enjoy fresh cherries all year round. Below, I have written 2 recipes for brandied cherries. One for instant gratification that can be enjoyed next day, and also one that can be used to can cherries for those cold winter months.
Making brandied cherries is not a very difficult task and definitely worth the time to add that extra bit of flavor and dimension to your favorite desserts or cocktails.
1 1/2 lbs. dark sweet cherries (pitted)
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice
1 small cinnamon stick
2 small cloves
2 green cardamom pods
4 1/2 oz. Cognac (I used Martell VS)
Add Sugar, Water, Lemon, and spices to pot and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and add cherries. Simmer cherries for 5-7 minutes stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, remove cinnamon stick, add cognac and allow to cool before placing in a jar.
For a more complex flavor you can leave the pits in the cherries, just be careful when serving them to people. You can also remove the pits but save some of them to simmer in with the cherries.
The original recipe I found also called for allspice, which I seemed to be out of at the time. Remembering a recent purchase of St. Elizabeths Allspice Dram, I went ahead and added about 1/2 oz. along with my cognac for a little extra flavor.
Now, so we can still enjoy the flavor of these sweet, tangy cherries over the winter, here is a recipe for canning.
1/2 lbs. cherries (pitted)
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup water
2 Tbs. fresh lemon juice
4 green cardamom pods
2 whole cloves
1 cinnamon stick
1 cup of Cognac (I used Martelll VS)
1 Canning Jar w/ Lid
Add sugar, water, lemon, and spices to a medium pot and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer for about 10 minutes until it begins to reduce and thicken. Turn off heat and add Cherries and Cognac. (Once again I chose to add a little Allspice Dram along with my Cognac).
Transfer Cherries into canning jars and pour liquid over cherries to cover. Twist on Lid.
Process jar in boiling water for 10 minutes, allow to cool and store in cool dark place. Cherries will be ready in about 6 weeks. You can forego the hot water process and just store in refrigerator if it’s easier. Once opened keep cherries refrigerated.
NOTE: Brandying Cherries leaves a lot of room for creativity and improvisation. In the past I have substituted Rye Whiskey in place of the Brandy and it came out wonderful. I’ve also done a combination of Bourbon and Amaretto which were really nice as well. Feel free to add some of your favorite flavors by way of fresh spices or liqueurs.
Now the fun part, enjoy your cherries in your favorite cocktail. Here is a new one of mine.
Vida Manhattan
1.5 oz. Del Maguey Vida
.75 oz. Carpano Antica Sweet Vermouth
.5 oz. Cocchi Americano
2 dashes Angostura Orange Bitters
1 Brandied Cherry
Combine ingredients in a mixing glass, add ice and stir for approximately 20 seconds. Strain into chilled cocktail glass and garnish with orange peel and homemade brandied cherry!!!
CHEERS!!!!
After 15 hours of flights delays, and multiple sessions of airport garbage food, I am back in the Woo. Please stay tuned in to the blog. I have more to post once I get my head straight and go through all the materials, notes, and Business Cards I brought home
When entering any one of the countless drinking establishments on Bourbon Street, ALWAYS make friends with the bouncers. Luis (on the left) and Antoine (on the right) were bad ass dude that keep the peace at The Ye Ole Absinthe House. Good dudes. Homeboy Luis used to play for the Saints.
Where else but at Tales of the Cocktail, is someone going to be able to sit a bar and have a completely normal conversation with two of the industry’s biggest stars. Me and Dale DeGroff on the top, and me and David Wondrich on the bottom. Both, extremely cool.
Funny story. After sitting at the bar talking with Wondrich for an hour or so, he and his wife went to retire for the evening. They were replaced with a couple out of Cali that make vermouth(www.quadywinery.com). VYA is one that we sell at the Citizen. And by the way, it won vermouth of the year the past two years. Anyway, she wanted a ‘White Lady’. Which is like a ‘French 75′ without champagne. The bartender, who was very good and must of make a grand yesterday, didn’t know what was in it. So I looked it up online from my phone. The first site that the search brought me to was written by none other than David Wondrich. I looked at the lady and was like, “The guy who wrote this was just sitting where you are now”. I thought that was cool.
This is a picture of Dave with his competition, on the Red Carpet for Cointreau, at the House of Blues. Cointreau’s brand spoke person is Dita Von Teese and she put on the show for about 300 of us bar peeps. It was a good time. www.saveur.com/cointreau will take you to a site that has all the competitors’ bio’s and videos of their drinks. You should check it out. We’ve been hanging out with these guys the past couple of days, so it’s hard not to root for everyone. But there can be only one. Good luck to Dave, and all our new friends.
Check out this video Dave shot for his chance to go to France.
http://votecointreau.com/video/2.html
If he wins, he goes to the Cointreau distillery
How pleeping awesome is this? Dave and I are stumbling around the hotel this after noon, and walk into the middle of the coolest thing I’ve seen down here so far. Yamazaki has a seminar at the hotel, and when it was over, they allowed the attendees to blend their own whisky using any one of their marques, from 12 year old single malts to 40 year old single malts. AND when you were done, they bottled it and autographed it. AND whoever’s blend they like the most, gets sent a case of it for nadda. Not bad.
In an effort to kick off the Citizen’s Assembly blog, I would like to celebrate the fact that two of our own, Dave Delaney and Kevin Ludy, are currently down in New Orleans at the Tales of the Cocktail Festival representing The Citizen and the good ‘ol City of Worcester. For those of you that aren’t familiar, The Tales of The Cocktail is an international festival held every year in New Orleans that is everything cocktail, from seminars to competitions. It’s an honor for Dave to have qualified for a trip down by winning two competitions for his cocktail craftsmanship. If he wins at the Tales of The Cocktail, he could be going on to Paris, to compete. We wish you well Dave!
Speaking of New Orleans, there are a couple of my favorite cocktails that were born down in NOLA that are worth mentioning – the Sazerac and the Vieux Carre. These two drinks are classics, and are certainly worthy of being discussed in the Assembly blog.
The Sazerac, like many other great cocktails, has a great story behind it. A gentleman by the name of Antoine Peychaud operated an apothecary down in New Orleans in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Peychaud was a Freemason, and would serve the drink at the Freemason meetings held at his pharmacy. Being a pharmacist, Peychaud would serve his own formulation of bitters in the drink. At the time, cognac was used in the drink (as opposed to Rye whiskey today) made by Sazerac de Forge et Fils, in France. And so the legendary drink was born.
The Sazerac is an incredibly delicate drink. In order to make it, one should chill a rocks glass on the side, build the drink in a mixing glass, stirred with ice, and then strain into the empty chilled glass. In other words, it is served neat, in a chilled rocks glass. The reason it is served this way, as the drink warms up, the botanicals open up, and the imbiber is introduced to several different layers of flavor. These days, the drink is served with Rye, simple syrup, Peychaud’s bitters, and an absinthe rinse. As you bring the glass to your mouth, you get a hint of the anise from the absinthe rinse. Upon first sip, you taste sweetness from the simple syrup, citrus from the lemon peel, and some body and structure from that rye. One of my favorites!
A second cocktail of note is the Vieux Carre cocktail. Loosely translated in Old French, the name of the cocktail means “the old square”. In New Orleans, the old square is the French Quarter. While I don’t have as interesting a story for this cocktail, as I did the Sazerac, it is still an interesting drink indeed. In fact, this drink also uses Rye Whiskey and Peychaud’s bitters, like the Sazerac, but the similarities stop there. Other ingredients are cognac, sweet vermouth, Benedictine, and Angostura bitters. While the Sazerac is stirred, this cocktail calls for a good shake, in order to incorporate the ingredients, and get some water into the drink, from the ice cubes.
The 3 main ingredients of this cocktail (Rye, cognac, sweet vermouth) are made with equal parts, for a well balanced drink. Add a spoonful of the Benedictine for some spice, and a couple dashes of both kinds of bitters. Classic recipes call for a lemon peel as a garnish, but I like to add a flamed orange peel for some depth to compliment the dark liqueurs.
Cheers!
- Chris
This is the Carousel Bar. A rotating bar in the lobby of the hotel we’re staying, The Hotel Monteleone on Royal Street. Royal Street runs parallel to Bourbon Street. After a glass of champange, a shot of B&B, and a beer, the rotating started playing with my head.
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