Spoetzl’s new line of spirits. Photo courtesy of Spoetzl Brewery & Distillery
Shiner beer is a rite of passage for Texans, and it’s practically a street cred of sorts to have a bottle or three of Shiner Bock at the ready in your fridge.
Now the state’s iconic, independent brewery hopes to earn a place on your liquor shelf, too. In recent months, Spoetzl Brewery (& Distillery) has been quietly rolling out a trio of spirits bearing the Shiner name on its gleaming white campus – and this month, the fledgling Lavaca County operation is making its new vodka, gin and moonshine available exclusively throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Until this week, the only place you could find Shiner Vodka, Shiner Gin and Shiner ‘Shine was in Spoetzl’s tasting room in Shiner, just steps away from a tiny distillery area that pales in size to the massive brewery works pumping out a dozen varieties of Shiner beer per year.
Spoetzl’s brewery — and now distillery, too — in Shiner, Texas.
“We’ve been selling the spirits right here in Shiner only,” said brand director Nick Welland. “That gave us some time to work out the kinks.”
Welland said what started out as a hobby project aimed at providing brewery visitors with “a more complete experience” became more of a mission.
“Once we got into it, it was like, we’re going to do it right,” he said. “This is not a cash grab.”
As evidence, Welland points to the products’ under-the-radar launch and a still purchased from a stalwart Scottish manufacturer.
“We’re just trying to make the best product we can,” he said. “When you’re brewing beer, you’re already 70 to 80 percent of the way there.”
Tom Fiorenzi, Spoetzl’s director of brewery and distillery operations, tapped Jessica Michalec, a fourth-generation Shiner native who had been a maintenance and engineering project coordinator at the brewery, to manage the distillery.
Spoetzl’s fledgling distillery operation sits just beyond its popular tasting room.
The spirits themselves are respectable: The vodka is, well, vodka, and the gin – “a gin for non-gin drinkers,” Michalec says – is a botanical, London-dry-style blend featuring notes of pecan and citrus. My favorite of the bunch, though, is the Shiner ‘Shine, a ruggedly grassy unaged spirit distilled from corn, barley and malt that rides off into your palate like a poncho-wearing Clint Eastwood.
“It makes people want to drink more, because of that long end,” Fiorenzi says.
The three spirits will be available throughout the DFW area for a year, and after that, who knows? The distillery also has a bourbon, rye and single malt whisky in the works.
“You think about how big the Shiner name is, but we really are a small operation,” Fiorenzi says. “We want to go in and make sure we do it right, and we’ll learn from that.”
The Italian bitter liqueur known as fernet is wildly popular in Argentina, where the earthy amaro is mixed with Coca-Cola to create what’s become known as the country’s national drink, the simply named Fernet and Coke.
Fernet is also wildly popular with Dallas bartender James Slater, who over the years has made a habit of incorporating the unabashedly bitter amaro into some of his more memorable cocktails. “It’s kind of my taste,” the Panamanian-born barman says.
Guardian Angel, Dallas’ James Slater’s tribute to fernet, an Italian bitter liqueur.
So maybe it was destiny that Slater would be tapped to run the bar at Chimichurri, the Argentinian bistro that Jesus Carmona opened last fall in Dallas’ Bishop Arts District, where images of legendary Argentinian figures preside over bustling tables flowing with grilled meats and breaded milanesa — and where Slater serves up the requisite Fernet-and-Coke in a hollowed-out Coca-Cola can.
But Slater, who has helmed the bar at Dallas places such as Oak, Knife and the late Five Sixty, has taken his fernet fandom even further: Presented with the proper atmosphere, he’s now started making his own. The small-batch run he calls Guardian Angel can now be enjoyed at Chimichurri or taken home in sample 2-ounce bottles, each of which bears the image of an winged angel watching over a pair of innocents.
“Living in a pandemic in this world, many people have felt alone and forget that we have a guardian angel who, without our realizing it, has helped us many times,” he says. “We sometimes forget that, so that’s how I was inspired to name this amaro.”
Slater, at Chimichurri, which opened last fall in Dallas’ Bishop Arts District. Argentina is the world’s largest consumer of fernet.
If you’ve never tried fernet, you might be hard pressed to associate its taste with anything spiritual: It belongs to a family of Italian bitter liqueurs, or amari, whose levels of sweetness span a spectrum that can range from friendly to non-existent. Montenegro leans toward the former, with boldly red Campari somewhere in between; fernet — the mostly popular brand of which is the ubiquitous Fernet-Branca — embraces the latter.
A digestif traditionally served neat, it’s made by macerating and then aging a wide-ranging mix of herbs, spices and roots that typically includes saffron, cardamom and myrrh. One’s baptism into the fold is like meeting someone you never forget — the eccentric who announces her presence at the party, the nonconformist whose swagger carries no whiff of diplomacy. Fernet definitely makes an impression.
It’s said that Argentina consumes 75 percent of the world’s fernet, but a good portion of the rest likely goes to craft bartenders, who have been known to trade shots of it with each other so often that the drink became known as “the bartender’s handshake.”
At Chimichurri, the Fernet and Coke — Argentina’s unofficial national drink — is served in a hollowed Coca-Cola can.
Slater has a knack for crafting drinks that temper fernet’s earthy bitterness with adroit hints of sweetness: At now-defunct Spoon, his Blue Moon cocktail blended it with blueberry preserves and a second Italian bitter, Averna; at Network Bar in Trinity Groves, he’d subbed blackberries for blue and replaced Averna with a ginger liqueur to create the bodacious Malta.
He loves the feat of taking an ingredient that people find challenging and countering it with others that both complement and build on it.
“People who taste it for the first time say it tastes like medicine, or they try to figure out the flavors,” he says. “That’s the cool thing, to watch people’s faces when they try it, then to make something unique and different. And making fernet is like — a process, like science. You build it and see it develop until you get the profile you want.”
Just before the restaurant’s fall opening, Slater took inventory of some of the 28 ingredients — from saffron to South American cedron — that he would use to craft his fernet blend.
A few days before Chimichurri opened in November, Slater unloaded from his vehicle a box loaded with herbs, spices and roots that would comprise his 28-ingredient recipe. They ranged from rosemary, thyme, turmeric, dried galangal and orris root to South American influences such as purple corn, yerba mate and the herbs cedron and carqueja powder, both known for aiding digestion.
“I had to get some of these on Amazon,” he said. “But I wanted to make something really unique, something with Latin roots.”
The finished product, which had to sit for a couple of months before being unveiled, starts out like Averna with hints of sweet caramel before descending into fernet’s characteristically spice-and-root-soaked depths. The two-ounce bottles sell for $12 apiece.
Slater is pleased with his first run but is already pondering the sequel.
Not surprisingly, he says: “I think it needs to be more bitter.”
Slater, who always makes sure to include a cocktail featuring fernet on his menus, pours a taste of his bitter elixir at Chimichurri’s bar.
Updated Jan. 21: Revised to add Goodfriend as site where Malort is available.
The Chicago-based curiosity known as Malort can be described in many ways, some of them actually printable: “I grew up on that stuff,” says Chicago-bred bartender Joe Mendoza of Cosmo’s in Lakewood. “It’s like gasoline mixed with turpentine — and the screams of Guatemalan orphans.”
Jonathan Maslyk, of soon-to-open Greenville Avenue bar Swizzle, compares its flavor to “pencil eraser” or “hangover mouth,” while Chicago native Susie Geissler, who writes for Fort Worth Weekly, says: “It tastes like falling off a bike feels.”
Jeppson’s Malort: Try it if you dare.
It may never be known whether the makers of Malort (rhymes with “cavort”) truly enjoy its bitter, piney, aggressively earthy taste, or whether it’s simply the cruelest prank ever perpetrated in the history of liquor production. But improbably, the Swedish-style liqueur is growing in popularity in Texas, with last year’s sales 29 percent higher than in 2018.
Its taste has been likened to grapefruit rind, red cabbage, tree bark, sweaty socks, even the drippings from a set of peeled-out tires or, as one scarred Fort Worth resident put it, “the ghost of an 18th-century whore.”
And yet, the number of places you can now find Malort throughout DFW is at least 17 and growing. Most are casual spots like LG Taps on Greenville, O.E. Penguin downtown and Eastbound and Down on Ross. But you’ll also find it at fancier digs like Origin in Knox-Henderson, Local Traveler in East Dallas and The Usual in Fort Worth, where bartenders have sought to craft palatable cocktails from the stuff.
“What it does to your palate is shocking and interesting,” Local Traveler’s Tommy Fogle says. Yes, in the same at-first-intriguing-then-utterly-horrific manner of Jack Nicholson’s Room 237 kiss in The Shining.
It’s not just that Malort is, well…. challenging. It’s that the taste lingers like an unwelcome guest who won’t go away. “It’s feisty,” says veteran Dallas barman Charlie Papaceno. “And it hangs around.”
**
OK, by now you’re probably wondering: What the heck is Malort? Technically speaking, it’s a besk brannvin, a bitter version of Swedish-style liquor distilled from potatoes or grain – but Malort (the Swedish word for wormwood) ups the ante by adding dandelion to its namesake ingredient.
It’s unlikely anyone in DFW has experimented with more Malort cocktails than Tommy Fogle, here pouring his bubbles-based All That Jazz cocktail at Local Traveler.
An article last year in The Ringer detailed how Carl Jeppson, who’d left Sweden for Chicago in the late 1800s, created Malort in the fashion of his native country’s bitter spirits, which often used wormwood for the stomach-soothing qualities the herb purportedly had. (Supposedly, Jeppson’s tongue was so thrashed by his beloved cigars that Malort was one of the few things he could actually taste.)
George Brode, a Chicago lawyer, purchased Jeppson’s distillery in 1945 and ultimately formed Carl Jeppson Co. to produce it. Eventually, Brode’s secretary would take over the business after he died in 1999, continuing to make Malort even though it was barely profitable.
Then came the ongoing craft-cocktail renaissance.
Palates broadened, and tastes grew for more exotic and interesting spirits and liqueurs. Suddenly, Malort sales went from 1600 cases in 1999 to twice that in 2012 – and more than 10,000 in 2017.
Two years ago, the business was sold to CH Distillery in Chicago, where Malort has been a sort of initiation for years. Ask for a “Chicago handshake” at divey bars like Sportsman’s Club (cash only!) and you’ll get a shot of the stuff along with a cheap Midwestern lager.
“Malort is the quintessential Chicago spirit,” says Sportsman’s Club bartender Joe Schmeling. “Maybe there’s an element of self-hate, because of the weather.”
Chicago resident Matt Herlihy goes so far to say Malort is “kind of a joke.”
At Sportsman’s Club in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village, the so-called ‘Chicago Handshake:’ Cheap Midwestern beer and a shot of Malort.
“I mean, nobody legitimately likes it,” he says over a burger at Chicago’s classic Au Cheval. “But sometimes when you’re feeling really Chicago, somebody will order a round, and you just kind of suck it up.”
The company thrives on that reputation, with ad posters bearing catchphrases like “Malort: When you want to unfriend someone… in person” or “Malort: Tonight’s the night you fight your dad.”
A famously un-aired Malort commercial features an increasingly tipsy Carl Jeppson IV shooting a devolving succession of takes in which he swallows a grimacing shot of Malort and attempts to deliver the company spiel; by ad’s end he no longer seems to mind. He is also barely standing.
The company’s approach seems to be working, with national sales trending upward. Meanwhile, Milwaukee held its first Malort festival in July, while in North Texas, Wade Sanders of Virtuoso Wine & Spirits reports that the regional rise in sales matched those of Texas overall.
**
If a culprit you seek for all this local madness, then Zach Anderson of Lee Harvey’s in The Cedars is your man. First introduced to the stuff during a Chicago visit, the longtime barman, then working at Parker & Barrows in Bishop Arts, was eventually able to convince his Dallas distributor to order some for him.
Of the taste, he says: “It’s like a yeast infection got drunk on an IPA and threw up in my mouth.”
At Scofflaw in Chicago, The Morty cocktail cleverly tempers Malort with plum sake, creme de cacao and Manzanillo sherry.
Among those excited about Malort’s arrival was bartender Torre Beaurline, who’d briefly lived in Chicago some years ago. “As soon as someone found out I was from Texas, they would buy me a shot of Malort,” she says. “I had to get that thick skin, to where I would take it and just dead-eye ‘em.”
Now, she says: “Malort’s the best.” Having worked alongside Anderson at Parker Barrow’s, Beaurline has become one of Malort’s most fervent Dallas-area disciples, pushing it at the bars where she currently works, LG Taps in Lower Greenville and Mike’s Gemini Twin south of downtown.
“She guilts people into it,” says Gemini Twin bartender Chase Burns. “Like, one person will try it and she’ll be, like, ‘Hey! Are you gonna let him do that alone?’ ”
At Lee Harvey’s, Anderson says he loves to save Malort for those who approach him with requests like, “It’s my birthday! Can I have a free shot?” “And I’ll be, like, ‘Oh, have I got a shot for you.’ ”
A shot is the purest way to experience Malort, but for those fearful of going all-in or ready to move on to something different, here are four cocktails around the DFW area that utilize it with success.
River Runs Backward (Jason Pollard, The Usual)
At The Usual in Fort Worth, bar manager Jason Pollard punches gin with a quarter-ounce of Malort, offset by an equally potent splash of Green Chartreuse and a bit of dry vermouth. The result is dry and floral before it dips into the essence of worn boot, leathery and earthy with hints of caraway. The name refers to Chicago’s feat of engineering more than a century ago that reversed the Illinois River’s flow to keep waste and sewage from collecting in Lake Michigan.
Oh Ma’Lort! (Chris Heinen, Origin)
With its stylish, seasonal cuisine, Knox-Henderson’s Origin might seem improbable habitat for Malort, but manager Chris Heinen succumbed to the challenge of putting lipstick on this liquid swine. His bourbon-based cocktail spices Malort with a ginger-infusion, then adds pineapple liqueur to subdue the beast; the drink’s sweetness collapses under a current of wood chips. “It was a challenge,” he says. “This stuff is a bit of a dragon, so I thought taming it would be good. It’s like a Manhattan.”
All That Jazz (Tommy Fogle, Local Traveler)
It’s doubtful that any bartender in DFW has experimented with more Malort cocktails than Local Traveler’s Fogle, who has produced Malort variations on the Margarita and various tiki classics at places like Industry Alley, Small Brewpub, The Usual and now Local Traveler. “It’s slightly masochistic, but I like it,” he says. His latest, All That Jazz, drops Malort into a sparkling wine base with a wise dose of strawberry-hibiscus sweetness.
Chicago Negroni (Zach Anderson, Parker & Barrow’s)
Zach Anderson’s Chicago Negroni.
Zach Anderson, now at Lee Harvey’s, may have left this Bishop Arts joint but his legacy remains with this twist on the classic Negroni – typically a mix of gin, sweet vermouth and bitter Campari.
His Chicago Negroni subs Malort for half the Campari to surprisingly good effect.
That’s not all Anderson left behind, either: Look up Parker & Barrow’s web site and you’ll find… a bottle of Malort.
With the proper skull set, you can do most anything.
My brother Michael, for all of his unreadable stoicism, has a knack for giving Christmas gifts with staying power. So when he gave me a set of skull-shaped ice molds this last holiday season, I was pretty sure they’d be conscripted into duty eventually.
Not that I really needed ice molds – as a longtime cocktail enthusiast, my freezer is well stocked with cube molds large and small, including a set of Buffalo Trace-branded ones with protruding buffalo images on one side. But ice in the actual shape of skulls – that was a fresh addition to the collection. And since I had also given Michael a skull-shaped shot glass at the same Christmas exchange, it turned out to be a heady coincidence. I let them the ice molds sit until the right idea took hold.
I’m nine years older than Michael, who we called changuito – Spanish for “little monkey” – when he was little for his boundless, off-the-wall energy, cheery smile and his love for Curious George, the famous cartoon monkey. (No doubt he would be mortified to know I was sharing this fact.) He and I were also both into monster movies and science fiction, and I remember taking him to see Star Wars for the first time when it was re-released for the premiere of The Empire Strikes Back. That was on my mind when I recently realized that I had never actually gotten around to seeing Kong: Skull Island, the lauded 2017 semi-reboot of the classic giant gorilla franchise.
Inspired, I searched for it in my Netflix and Amazon Primate – I mean, Prime – libraries, but the cheapskate in me was put off by the rental price when there were so many free movies awaiting in my watch queue. I picked one of those for the time being, but still let the inspiration ride: If I couldn’t actually watch Skull Island, I figured, I would come up with a drink using one of those skull ice cubes instead.
My Skull Island cocktail is basically a tropical Old Fashioned, packed with nods to the whole Kong vibe – gorillas, jungles, exotic islands. Naturally, I built it on Monkey Shoulder blended malt Scotch – not just for its fruity, buttery notes but its malt brawn, which would go toe-to-toe with the tropical sweetness that would come: First, a roar of banana liqueur, then a dash of tiki bitters. And finally, I poured the whole mixture over that toothsome skull ice cube… which offered one last creepy grin before tilting wayward in the Scotchy surf.
Skulls are spineless and cannot stay upright in liquid. Otherwise, the Skull Island is not monkeying around.
While I haven’t yet gotten around to seeing that movie, here’s a drink in the meantime that, while deliciously tropical sweet, will still put hair on your chest.
Combine ingredients in a mixing glass, add ice and stir. Pour into an Old Fashioned or short rocks glass over one large ice cube, ideally one shaped like a skull. Sip and periodically pound chest.
In the south of Mexico, people have been making mezcal – the smoky, agave-based forebear of tequila – for generations. But only on special occasions, like weddings or quinceaneras, would a mezcalero break out one of his rare pechuga mezcals – which unlike traditionally twice-distilled mezcal are distilled a third time, with a protein, typically a chicken or turkey breast, suspended within the heated still. (“Pechuga” means breast in Spanish.)
The pechuga mezcal made by Gracias a Dios for Dallas’ Las Almas Rotas using Texas smoked brisket. Both the bar and spirits purveyor Bar & Garden will hold launch events Saturday.
As the mix cooks, the meat drippings impart more of a savory quality to the finished product than actual meat flavor. “People get this idea that you’re going to taste the meat, and you really don’t,” says Shad Kvetko, co-owner of Dallas mezcaleria Las Almas Rotas. “It’s more of an umami mouthfeel. The flavors that come through are more the fruits and spices you put into it; I’ve had some made with green mole, and that you can really taste.”
With mezcal’s popularity booming, more pechugas are on the market than ever before. Late last spring, as Kvetko and his bar staff chatted with mezcal producer Xaime Niembro about the idea of visiting Oaxaca to see the production process firsthand, Niembro suggested making a pechuga while the group was there. Naturally, the conversation turned to what meat to use.
The brisket pechuga-style mezcal made by Gracias a Dios for Dallas’ Las Almas Rotas was flavored with Texas smoked brisket, prickly pear, chilies, corn and other local ingredients. (Photo by Emmy Hernandez Jimenez)
“We said, let’s do a smoked brisket,” Kvetko said. “You know, make it kind of a statement.”
OK, this is the kind of Tex-Mex I can get behind.
Has a more Texas-style pechuga ever hit the market before? Doubtful. And from 6 p.m. until close Saturday, Las Almas Rotas will celebrate its one-of-a-kind creation, made in collaboration with label Gracias a Dios, at a launch party featuring Niembro and brisket tacos by Oak Cliff’s Brandon Mohon.
It was Mohon who smoked the brisket used to flavor the small, 80-liter batch, and the special-edition bottle’s stylish design, featuring a Dia-de-los-Muertos-style cow head, belies the effort it took to bring it to life: Before it could happen, the brisket first had to be smuggled into Mexico.
Gracias a Dios mezcalero Oscar Hernandez hands the medley of ingredients, including smoked brisket, that will flavor the pechuga mezcal to Las Almas Rotas co-owner Shad Kvetko to place inside the still. (Photo taken October 2018 by Emmy Hernandez Jimenez)
Mohon used a smaller-than-normal cut rubbed simply with salt and pepper, making it slightly underdone knowing it would be further cooked in the still. “I wanted to give it some nice color so it would look like Texas brisket when it arrived,” he said.
Mohon vacuum-sealed the brisket, froze it and delivered it to Kvetko, who packed it in ice and squirreled it away in his Mexico-bound luggage. Luckily, he said, no one made a fuss about it.
Once in Oaxaca, Kvetko hit a local mercado and loaded up on other ingredients like prickly pear, corn, squash blossoms, Mexican stone fruit and a bunch of chilies. In they went, along with the brisket, into a cognac-style Charentais still – it looks a bit like a giant onion – that Gracias a Dios was using for the first time.
Kvetko got a tattoo of an agave plant to commemorate the making of the brisket pechuga mezcal. (Photo taken October 2018 by Emmy Hernandez Jimenez)
The initial release of barely 75 or so bottles – a little more than two-thirds of the batch – was snatched up by spirits purveyor Bar & Garden on Ross Avenue, which sold out of nearly all of its supply through pre-orders within 24 hours. This weekend, the store will raffle off chances to buy the remaining few bottles at an event featuring Niembro from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday.
The $80 price tag is well worth it: The finished product, sweet and citrus-y on the nose, is complex and robust, best taken in small sips that deliver smoky spice and citrusy sweetness with a dark, warm undercurrent of savoriness.
“The nose I get is salt-water taffy,” says Bar & Garden’s Victoria Garcia. “It’s candy-esque, incredibly smooth.”
The rest of the batch will be stored in glass vessels for a while, to be released later this year or early next, and while Kvetko is excited to showcase the one-of-a-kind product, it’s the larger context represented in the bottle that warms his heart.
“It’s a symbol of cooperation and friendship between two nations,” Kvetko says. “And any show of friendship right now is great. We love these people. We love Mexico.”
Saturday, Feb. 2
Brisket pechuga launch at Bar & Garden, 3314 Ross Ave., Ste. 150, 1 to 3 p.m.
Pechuga Pachanga at Las Almas Rotas, 3615 Parry Ave. 6 p.m. until 2 a.m.
Dante Loquercio displays the whiskey he’s just unwrapped to other attendees at Saturday’s 8th annual Whiskey Exchange. The private event raised $12,000 for charity.
The way Nico Martini remembers it, one day his wife told him she and the girls were going to hold a White Elephant exchange, and he said, “OK, what do I need to bring?” And she said, “No, no, no – this is just for the girls.”
“So I said, `Oh, OK. Well, me and the guys are gonna do a whiskey exchange, and I don’t even know what that means, but I’m gonna do it,” says Martini, co-founder of Dallas-based Bar Draught, a mobile cocktail business.
Eight years later, Martini’s annual Whiskey Exchange has grown so much that at Saturday’s now-annual event, held at Bar Draught’s Design District offices, he split the gathering into two groups to facilitate the actual exchange, with dozens of attendees picking in pre-ordained random order from a table topped with discreetly wrapped bottles.
Like any good White Elephant party, there was plenty of pilfering and plundering and a handful of premium prizes to be had, and everybody went home with a quality bottle of whiskey. And because the event is now done with charity in mind, the rules were simple: Participants – who each paid $20 admission – had to bring a whiskey worth at least $50 and were urged to bid for a host of donated spirits, concert tickets and tasting and travel opportunities via a raffle, silent auction and live auction.
Bags of whiskeys, just waiting to be unwrapped.
But before all that happened, guests heard from Tonya Stafford, director of It’s Going To Be Okay, the anti-human-trafficking organization that would benefit from this year’s festivities. A former victim of trafficking herself, Stafford shared her emotional story with the group.
“Hearing that was harrowing,” one attendee said afterward. “I immediately went and bought a bunch more raffle tickets.”
What began as what Martini described as “basically just this little dudes’ Christmas party” is now a serious source of holiday giving – a commitment that began in 2013 after Martini had dinner at the house of a friend with roots in the Philippines. That dinner took place not long after Super Typhoon Yolanda had ravaged the archipelagic nation, and the man’s village had been badly hit. In particular, the roof of a local elementary school had been torn away, so he asked those gathered around the table for any donations that could help, since his brother still lived in the area.
Martini thought: Hmmm. The whiskey exchange was coming up. Maybe there was a way to help. “I said I’d see what I could do,” he says.
He asked his buddies if they’d mind chipping in $20 apiece to take part, to benefit the cause. Everyone was eager to help. Martini also got a few donated items to raffle off, and the event would ultimately raise $800 toward the school’s reconstruction.
Event organizer Nico Martini reminds the crowd what the night’s event is really all about.
Since then, the event has benefited organizations such as The Birthday Party Project and Hurricane Harvey relief efforts. Saturday’s 8thannual whiskey exchange raised $12,000 for It’s Going To Be OK. And this year, for the first time, the gathering shed its males-only origins – because, as Martini put it, while he might have felt he had reason at first, that reason no longer made sense. “I’m so glad I saw so many whiskey loving ladies enojying this event,” Martini would say later. “It made the whole thing feel a little more … I don’t know… real? I guess? Regardless, it’s great to no longer be exclusionary in any way.”
As the night wore on and a DJ laid down tracks, participants shared whiskey stories and knowledge while sipping from a collection of donated bottles – including Whistle Pig, High West, Glenlivet and Jameson and locally made standouts like Balcones and Ironroot. The giving of spirits had bred a spirit of giving, which, in addition to a bottle of whiskey, was maybe the best thing anyone could take home.
“I’m glad we raised so much for charity,” Martini would say in a Facebook post, “but I know that the biggest recipent is me. This gives me hope. This event, this group of people, these causes we support. There are so many things in this world we can’t control… but once we come together and set our minds to it, we can change our world. One good cause at a time.”
Partida’s Sofia Partida enjoying a flight of the eponymous brand’s various expressions at Ruins, in Dallas’ Deep Ellum neighborhood.
On Friday, not long after she returns home to Northern California, Sofia Partida will make one last run to the store to pick up some roses and Mexican sweet bread.
Those were among the items cherished by her late mother and father, who were among the farming families who settled the agricultural region around Yuba City, Calif. The items will be placed alongside candles, photos and other items in honor of them and other passed-on loved ones for Dia De Los Muertos, the Mexican holiday celebrating the dead, which Partida has celebrated as long as she can remember.
“All the things they loved go on the altar,” says Partida, national brand ambassador for Partida Tequila, who visited the Dallas area this week. The items are meant to both guide and welcome their spirits back to the land of the living, a tradition that dates back to Aztec times. Naturally, a bottle of tequila adorns Partida’s altar, too, in honor of both her father, who loved the spirit, and her uncle Enrique, whose time-honored agave production gave rise to what would become one of the category’s most beloved brands.
Growing up, Partida recalled her uncle traveling up from his home in Amatitan, Jalisco, to help during her family farm’s busy season. As an adult, after her father had passed away, she wanted to get to know Enrique better, so she traveled to Amatitan, where he introduced her to the rich culture of the Tequila Valley.
“It’s a living, breathing tequila lifestyle,” Partida says. “Like a step back in time. The whole region is based on that.”
Amatitan is just down the road from the town of Tequila, from which the agave-based spirit gets its name. The entire valley thrives with tequila distilleries and fields of blue agave, the variety from which all tequila is derived. Partida was entranced. Together with a marketing guru who wanted to get into the spirits business, she co-founded the Partida Tequila brand, which launched in 2005-06 and whose blanco, reposado and anejo expressions have gone on to earn numerous awards.
The brand is rooted in the agave growing methods practiced by Partida’s uncle, among the loved ones she honors on Dia de los Muertos. Here she holds the brand’s premium expression, Elegante.
She knows she wouldn’t be here without Enrique, which is why she still honors him every year on the Mexican holiday. It heartens her to see that the joyful celebration has entered the American mainstream, overcoming its morbid associations with the help of major cultural landmarks like Disney-Pixar’s Coco.
The yearly celebration, which adopted elements of Catholicism with the Spanish conquest of Mexico, starts Oct. 31 and continues through Nov. 2. Along with her parents, Partida’s home altar also commemorates a niece who died of cancer, “and my husband’s mom, even though she was Mormon. I hope she doesn’t get mad at me.”
Like her mother did years before, she’ll share her memories of those who have passed on. And then probably sip some tequila.
“Death is not sterile in Mexico,” Partida says. “People in Amatitan really do mourn and wear black for 30 days. And then” – she gestures, as if quickly dusting off her hands – “it’s done. They grieve – and then they honor the person’s life.”
Gin and oysters are besties, and on Wednesday, you can experience it firsthand. (Photo by Rebecca Peplinski)
Those people who love gin know that two of the most pleasing ways to enjoy it are 1) straight up, in a martini or one of its classic variations; and 2) paired with oysters.
Those people are in luck this week, with two events in downtown Dallas set to showcase the juniper-accented botanical spirit, both sponsored by Ford’s Gin.
Gin geeks would do well to get their tushies to Monday’s happy hour at the Adolphus Hotel, where Simon Ford – whose very name his gin bears – will be in attendance. Ford, co-founder of spirits brand The 86 Co., which produces Ford’s Gin, is one of the world’s authorities on gin and will share his knowledge over $6 Ford’s Gin martinis from 5 to 7 p.m. at the hotel bar, at 1321 Commerce St.
Can’t make it Monday? Well, there’s always Wednesday in Victory Park, where you may not find Simon Ford, but you’ll find bivalves – 300 of them, to be exact, and all of them on the shucking house. The oyster boisterousness goes down at 5 p.m. at Billy Can Can, 2386 Victory Park Lane. Three gin martini variations will be available for $6 apiece and the special prices will run until the oysters are gone. A portion of martini sales will benefit Youth With Faces, an organization assisting Dallas County youths who’ve been through the juvenile justice system.
Shochu, once a spirit of the Japanese working class, is becoming increasingly available as the craft-cocktail renaissance prompts interest in global spirits.
A man and woman sitting at the bar eye the glass curiously at Jettison, in West Dallas, not sure what to make of this liquid they’ve barely heard of, which has been poured over ice. The man picks it up and brings it to his nose. “I can smell the sweet potato,” he says.
The vegetal sweetness is evident on the tongue, too – that’s the beauty of shochu, the centuries-old, national spirit of Japan, which is slowly gaining a steady, if still uncertain, foothold in Dallas-Fort Worth as a casual Japanese food scene blossoms throughout the area.
“Because it’s only one-time distilled, you really taste the base ingredient,” says Jettison’s bar manager, George Kaiho, who grew up in Japan until he was 18. “And potato and rice shochu will taste totally different.”
In Uptown, Bowen House’s Do, Re, Miso cocktail supplements delicate rice shochu with fennel flavor and white miso paste
Shochu’s single distillation keeps its alcohol level between 20 and 25 percent, not as strong as most spirits but still heftier than wine, making it a great accompaniment to yakitori and other small dishes over convivial, leisurely dinners at Japanese izakayas.
“I enjoy the nuance and complexity,” says Justin Holt, sous chef at Lucia in Bishop Arts, who plans to feature shochu at his upcoming restaurant, Salaryman. Shochu’s low-proof nature, he says, means more of them can be sampled in a single sitting – typically as a mix of shochu and soda (or juice, or occasionally iced tea) called a chu-hai, basically a shochu highball (hence the abbreviated name).
Besides rice and sweet potato, the spirit is made from things like soba, sugarcane and, most commonly, roasted barley, giving the category a broad range of flavor profiles, from mild to aggressively earthy.
Barley-based shochu is typically dry and spicy, while sweet potato is at the root of many premium shochus prized for their natural sweetness. Some rice shochus have a mild sweetness similar to sake, though some, Kaiho says, can seem nearly flavorless. The types of yeast used in the fermentation process also play a role in flavor profiles.
At since-closed Yayoi in Plano, bartender Lyndsy Rausch featured shochu in its traditionally popular highball form, mixed with tea or soda.
While shochu began as a working-class spirit, the global craft spirits trend has ushered in higher quality versions fit for drinking on the rocks, or with water. One brand, a sherry-cask-aged sweet potato shochu called Angel’s Temptation, can sell for as much as a fine whiskey.
In addition to Jettison, you’ll find shochu at Niwa Japanese BBQ in Deep Ellum, Plano’s Yama Izakaya and Irving’s Mr. Max. This being America, its rising availability means bartenders are exploring its use in cocktails: In Uptown, Bowen House features the spirit in its delicious Do, Re, Miso, served in a small bowl, while Oak Lawn’s Izakaya RoMan (at which Kaiho consulted) spins several shochu variations of classics like the Negroni and Martini.
At since-closed Yayoi in Plano, in addition to a number of traditional chu-hai combinations, bartender Lyndsy Rausch blended shochu with matcha, yuzu and soda in her Meet Your Matcha cocktail as well as in a wasabi-spiced Bloody Mary.
“It’s a wonderful liquor that unfortunately is still a little hard to find in Dallas,” Rausch says. “Adding matcha to it was really the first thing that came to mind, because I wanted something earthy to match its complex flavors.”
At Jettison, in West Dallas, George Kaiho’s Earth Wind and Fire is a fine example of how shochu’s delicate flavor can be used effectively in a cocktail.
One reason shochu hasn’t yet found popular footing in the U.S., Kaiho believes, is because there’s no definitive shochu-based cocktail. He sees shochu following a path similar to pisco, the national spirit of Peru, in that it’s easily subbed in cocktails for spirits like vodka or gin – except that it offers the added benefit of being low-proof, a slower-paced option that’s trending around the country.
“In order to popularize shochu, there needs to be a cocktail,” Kaiho says. “If you can make a good cocktail with potato shochu, you’ve got yourself a good cocktail.”
Kaito’s latest shochu cocktail wouldn’t be a bad place to start: His Earth Wind & Fire supplements Shiranami’s sweet potato shochu with a harmony of smoky mezcal, the sweetly vegetal backbeat of Green Chartreuse and a citrusy yuzu tincture. The mezcal and Chartreuse boost the drink’s alcohol content while still allowing the earthy shochu to take the lead.
Thankfully, the sweet potato flavor is strong enough to meet the task, since, as bartender Tommy Fogle of Industry Alley in the Cedars notes, many shochus are so subtle that they’re better off being consumed straight.
“I feel like shochu is so light and delicate, it gets lost really easily,” Fogle says as he pours a sample. “Why put it in a cocktail? The point of this is to buy a bottle with a buddy and just take shots until the bottle is gone.”
Viva the West End: YO Steakhouse’s Tex Mex is a fiesta in a glass.
If you’re looking for somewhere to mark Cinco de Mayo, you could do worse than Dallas’ West End, where the day happens to coincide with Dallas Fest, the neighborhood’s annual showcase of artists, musicians, brew masters and chefs.
You’ll find plenty to drink at the outdoor extravaganza, but you aren’t likely to guzzle anything more guapo than the Tex Mex at Y.O. Ranch Steakhouse, a nod to a holiday that isn’t authentically feted much anywhere in Mexico except in Puebla, the site of the battle it commemorates.
Here in the U.S., though, Cinco de Mayo has become a convenient excuse to swill, even if nobody knows why – and to market drinks to said imbibers, which explains how, when Y.O.’s s front-of-the-house manager Nicole Hester realized the double dose of action going on in the area, suddenly had the idea for a drink with a red, white and green ice cube.
Hester’s inspiration came from a Pride Day cocktail she’d seen at a bar in New York City, where she worked before returning to Dallas. That drink, she explained to her fellow Y.O. managers, featured an ice cube layered in the colors of the LGBT movement’s rainbow flag. “I said, this should be easier because it’s only three colors instead of seven,” Hester explained.
Given the owner’s go-ahead, Hester set to work developing the tri-color Cinco de Mayo cube as well as a Margarita-like drink to put it in. Her first version, using pureed jalapeno and water for the green and Godiva white chocolate liqueur for the white, was too spicy – and as the cube melted, white flakes developed in the drink. Not a good look. “I had to start all over,” she said.
She tried a new version, again freezing the bottom layer before adding the middle one, and again before adding the top. This time, she infused the tequila with jalapeno for heat, crafting the cube with strata of pureed mint, coconut milk and a strawberry/prickly pear mixer boosted with pomegranate.
The finishing touch to the drink – a mix of house tequila, Cointreau, lemon, agave and soda – is a Mexican flag and a rim of red, white and green colored sugars. Its orange-y charm is drinkable enough, and it’s best swigged through the straw; consider the rim purely decorative, since the drink is already sweet.
It’s a fiesta in a glass – and while the $10 drink will be served only on the patio during Saturday’s Dallas Fest, it’s also Y.O. Ranch Steakhouse’s cocktail of the month, meaning you can throw this Tex-Mex party in your mouth all May long.
Y.O. Ranch Steakhouse, 702 Ross Ave., Dallas. 214-744-3287.
Booze news and adventures in cocktailing, based In Dallas, Texas, USA. By Marc Ramirez, your humble scribe and boulevardier. All content and photos mine unless otherwise indicated. http://typewriterninja.com
