As the 11th annual Tales of the Cocktail conference winds to a close, we’ve learned about airport bars and the Prohibition-Era invasion of Cuba by American bartenders, slogged our way through cocktail competitions and witnessed elaborate fetes featuring fancy hats, gin cannons and a band suspended in midair.
Dallas bartenders have done us proud, too: Bar Smyth’s Omar Yeefoon took the title of “Stoli’s Most Original Bartender” at the UrbanDaddy-sponsored cocktail contest of the same name, throwing down an unlikely combo of Stoli Salted Karamel vodka, sweet vermouth, Angostura bitters and Prosecco. “I was thinking, this would never make a good cocktail,” Yeefoon said. But apparently it did, giving him the edge over four other bartenders from around the country.
The Wednesday night scene inside New Orleans’ newly revamped Civic Theater.
Bonnie Wilson of The Ranch at Las Colinas represented DFW at Anchor Distilling’s 21-Cocktail Salute competition, where drink-makers each had to fire up an original shot, punch and cocktail. Her tangy Fire and Brimstone shot featured Hirsch small-batch bourbon, lime, honey syrup and Cholula hot sauce; the winner of that contest won’t be known until well after the conference wraps up this weekend.
But hey. The Hendrick’s Gin cannon. The sight was part of the annual packed-to-the-gills William Grant and Sons party, held this year at New Orleans’ beautifully revamped Civic Theatre. It had to be seen to be believed, and let’s just you had to get your kisser up close to avoid having your entire upper torso drenched in alcohol, unless you were looking to cool off, in which case you would have been faulted by no one.
Bonnie Wilson of The Ranch at Las Colinas dishes up drinks at the 21-Cocktail Salute competition.
The fancydranks of Texas strutted their Lone Star stuff at Tuesday’s kickoff event
You could say that Texas did itself proud in New Orleans yesterday, but then again pride in Texas has never been in short supply. Anyone taking in Tuesday’s festivities in front of the venerable Hotel Monteleone would have seen a state standing as one, with two dozen bartenders and liquor promoters firing a collective bar gun of Lone Star hospitality.
The “Texas Tailgate” — among the kickoff events for the 11th annual Tales of the Cocktail conference — served up a double-digit selection of punch-cooler cocktails, plus a handful of Texas distillers and brewers offering samples of their work. Breaking a sweat in the NOLA humidity, they poured: Charlie Papaceno of Windmill Lounge, Creighten Brown of the late Private/Social, Sean Conner of Plano’s Whiskey Cake and a smattering of representatives from the Cedars Social and Bar Smyth.
Mate’ Hartai — of Dallas’ Libertine Bar and Bar Smyth — and Whiskey Cake’s Sean Conner beat a punch-cooler drum rollBrian McCullough’s tequila-fueled Garden District Punch was among the day’s highlights
There was the bourbon-fired Leather Face Mask, from Bonnie Wilson of The Ranch in Las Colinas; the tiki-ish Paradise Dream from Republic Distributing’s Chris Furtado, made with Mount Gay small-batch Black Barrel rum; and coolers of Shiner beer. Brisket was served. Austin’s Treaty Oak distillery handed out sips of two limited-release products – Red Handed Bourbon and Antique Reserve Gin – scheduled to be available by year’s end.
“Every good party needs a good kickoff before the festivities,” said Standard Pour’s Brian McCullough, president of the North Texas chapter of the U.S. Bartenders Guild. “We’re just celebrating what we do in Texas.”
And apparently, that’s good times and drinks: McCullough’s Garden District Punch was among the day’s best concoctions, a tart and refreshing burst of Dulce Vida tequila blanco, watermelon, raspberry, strawberry, lemongrass, jalapeno and red wine vinegar.
The ‘Texas Tailgate’ welcomed early conference-goers outside the Hotel Monteleone, TOTC headquarters
Suddenly, Papaceno’s voice boomed, as if over a megaphone: “WE HAVE EIGHT MINUTES UNTIL THESE COCKTAILS SHUT DOWN, SO PLEASE, DRINK HEARTILY WITHIN THOSE EIGHT MINUTES.”
The able and willing complied. After all, it was barely 4 p.m.
“Yeah!” someone shouted. “Texas!”
“Texas has four little gems,” said Juan Pablo DeLoera, the state’s rep for Milagro Tequila, referring to the cities of Dallas, Austin, Houston and San Antonio. “There’s a lot of talent and passion. It has the right to show what it’s made of.”
Brad Bowden of The People’s Last Stand was one of a dozen-plus bartenders representing Dallas
The great Dale DeGroff, at Tales of the Cocktail 2012
Here’s what you need to know about New Orleans. While it may not be at the forefront of the nation’s cocktail revival, it doesn’t need to be: The city has earned its spot in the cocktail pantheon and, as anyone who’s been to the French Quarter knows, drinking runs through its veins. The city is home to several classic drinks, including the mighty Sazerac, the venerable Ramos Gin Fizz and the luscious Vieux Carre.
In short, all you little cocktail whippersnapper scenes with your fancy infusions and dapper vests and shiny bar equipment can brag all you want to, but New Orleans is, along with New York and Chicago, one of the original cocktail gangstas that paved your way. Cocktails ain’t nothin’ but a thang here. That’s not to say there aren’t some great new cocktail bars in NOLA: Cure and Bellocq have earned much national acclaim, and Barmoire plans to visit them both. But it’s places like Arnaud’s French 75, Antoine’s Hermes Bar and the Court of Two Sisters that reflect a craft cocktail culture before its modern rejuvenation and one reason The Museum of the American Cocktail is based here.
Last year’s event featured samplings of Japanese Scotch
And that’s why, for the 11th straight year, the Tales of the Cocktail conference – the nation’s largest such event, founded by Ann Tuennerman – is now underway in New Orleans again, and Barmoire is along to bring you the action live. OK, well, not live, and maybe not even immediately, but eventually and eagerly. Over the next few days, the French Quarter will be crawling with bartenders and spirit reps and cocktail enthusiasts from all over the country – all here to drink up a lineup of informational seminars, classes, excursions, tasting rooms, dinners and, of course, parties designed to promote America’s thriving cocktail culture.
The Texas contingent is huge this year and well represented in the festivities, from bartender competitions to today’s tailgate event outside the flagship Hotel Monteleone and, as Barmoire noted earlier, Friday’s epic Bare Knuckle Bar Fight national bar vs. bar vs. bar throwdown that will feature Dallas’ own Bar Smyth.
Esquire magazine’s cocktail guru, David Wondrich, helped lead a session on Curacao at last year’s event
Barmoire was here last year when Dallas made its first-ever conference splash with a festive tasting-room event, but there was so much more, including Japanese Scotch tastings, a Brugal Rum party bus, burlesque, and even a sighting of cocktail legend Dale DeGroff, the man who essentially launched the craft cocktail revival.
This year promises to be equally eventful, and you can track my perambulation throughout the week on Twitter at @typewriterninja.
Did we mention there was burlesque? At last year’s posh William Grant & Sons party.
Little did I know this cucumber gimlet would be my last drink at Private/Social.
Sad news, homies: There is one less cocktail oasis in Dallas.
Private/Social apparently marked its last night Saturday, and the place where I enjoyed many a first cocktail experience is apparently no more. The news came in a tweet from chef Najat Kaanache Sunday morning: “Last Night At Private/Social Was The Last service We Closed ready for New Adventures within Food Thanks To My Great Team.”
Rocco Milano, among the best barmen in Dallas, confirmed the closure to me later that morning. The restaurant had struggled to reinvent itself after chef Tiffany Derry’s departure early this year, but with Rocco at the helm, P/S remained one of the more adventurous cocktail spots around: He had spirits on tap (including my beloved Hum botanical spirit, to which Rocco introduced me) soon after the restaurant opened in late 2011; his Fall Into A Glass was my favorite cocktail discovery of 2012; and most recently he’d unveiled a lineup of a half-dozen tap cocktails.
Sitting at the bar, I could always depend on a pleasant experience. It was the kind of place you could share secrets, kindle romance, celebrate birthdays and wind down even as you expanded your cocktail horizons. One mark of a great bar is its consistency, and Milano’s staff — including Matt Medling, Creighton Brown, E.J. Wall and Pro Contreras — was always a well-oiled machine. No doubt they’ll find new stages on which to showcase their craft, but it was always fun to be a guinea pig in Rocco’s lab. On Friday — not realizing it was Private/Social’s penultimate day — a friend and I took in one of his most recent and typically improbable off-menu experiments: A riot of rye whiskey, Cointreau, peach and maraschino liqueurs and Hum botanical spirit (swoon) that he called I’ll Have One Of Those.
Boulevardier’s Eddie Eakin flashes his winning smile.
I first met Eddie Eakin in July 2012 at the Libertine Bar, where he was in the habit of ordering a bun-less burger as part of his gluten-free fitness regimen. At the time, he was readying for his job at bar manager at Boulevardier, which was just about to open in the Bishop Arts area of Dallas’ Oak Cliff neighborhood.
Since then he’s headed up one of Dallas’ better bar programs with quiet aplomb, and now it’s paid off with some national recognition: Town & Country Magazine has chosen one of Eakin’s as its signature cocktail.
That’s right: Town & Country, the high-society lifestyle magazine that’s also the longest-running general-interest publication in America.
Well done, Mr. Eakin.
Eakin’s victorious cocktail, the Town & Country.
About four months ago, Eakin caught wind of a national competition the magazine — which dates to 1846 — was holding for a signature cocktail to which to lend its name. Editors ultimately chose 20 recipes from bars and restaurants nationwide and submitted them to a judging panel at Harding’s restaurant in NYC.
“The only rules were that you had to send in a picture,” Eakin said. “That’s what piqued my interest. I’m a total Instagrammer. I like it more than Facebook.”
And in the end, it was his concoction that grabbed the honors. “I was very happily surprised to hear that I had won,” he says.
His now-official Town & Country cocktail ($11) is a melting pot of bourbon, Carpano Antica sweet vermouth, dark amber syrup and apple bitters. The result is very much like an Old Fashioned with an extra smooch of sugar.
Eakin’s genius was in the concept: He just wanted to come up with something a reader could replicate at home with readily available traditional American ingredients. No fancy infusions, no juices to squeeze, no syrups to make. And since the publication goes back to the mid-1800s, he wanted his drink to echo American classics and flavors (hence the apple and maple). “If you break it down,” he says, “it is really a blend of a little Manhattan and a little Old Fashioned, two of the most quintessential classic cocktails.”
RECIPE (as published in Town & County magazine’s Aug. 2013 issue)
2 oz Bulleit Bourbon
1/2 Carpano Antica Formula vermouth
1 tsp Crown Maple dark amber syrup
3 dashes Bar Keep apple bitters
Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass and stir with ice. Strain over large ice cubes in a rocks glass and garnish with an orange peel and brandied cherry.
BOULEVARDIER, 408 N. Bishop, Ste. 108, Oak Cliff, Dallas
The August 2013 issue of Town & Country highlights the Dallas bartender’s recipe (courtesy Town & Country magazine)
Austin-bound badass Jason Kosmas, who leaves an indelible mark on Dallas’ cocktail culture. Monday, at Libertine Bar on Lower Greenville.
Bolsa, in Oak Cliff, was among the pioneers of Dallas’ early cocktail scene, and Standard Pour’s Eddie Campbell, who headed Bolsa’s bar program at the time, remembers the first Friday he ever worked there with a new guy from New York named Jason Kosmas.
It was 2011. Fridays were ridiculously busy, and that night was no different: people were shouting orders from three or four deep, and Campbell and his regular sidekick Johnny were getting killed. “Hey, should we check on the new guy?” Johnny asked.
Campbell had forgotten all about Kosmas amid the flurry, so the question threw him into a mild panic. He ran over to the other end of the bar and asked what he could do. Without an ounce of stress, Kosmas turned and said, “I think I’m okay.”
“And he was,” Campbell recalls. “Everybody on his side of the bar was happy, with a full drink — beautiful colors and garnishes…. every drink looked like a masterpiece. That’s when I realized: Jason Kosmas is a total badass.”
Kosmas is a total badass, but you would never know it from his demeanor. Co-founder and co-owner of New York City’s renowned Employees Only and one of the bartending luminaries behind new spirits line The 86 Co., Kosmas is one of the most humble, upbeat and likeable guys around. But if cocktail culture in Dallas has gone from practically zero to 60 in the last two years (and it has), it’s fair to say that Kosmas has been among those at the wheel.
Now Kosmas is taking his talents to Austin, which will no doubt benefit immensely from his arrival.
It’s difficult to fully capture the impact that Kosmas has had on Dallas since arriving here with his unflappable, affable scruffiness. You can talk about the places he worked at and helped put on the map early on (Bolsa, Windmill, Neighborhood Services Tavern) and the places he opened (Marquee) and the very many places he’s left his mark on (Malai Kitchen, The Greek, etc.), but for many in the scene, it’s his ready assistance and mentorship behind the scenes that resonate most powerfully.
“Gonna miss you J,” wrote The People’s Last Stand’s Brad Bowden on Facebook. “Thanks for all the advice and words of wisdom you have given me… meant a lot to me.”
Kosmas came to the Dallas area for both family reasons and business opportunities, and that’s what’s taking him deeper into the heart of Texas: The capital city is more centrally located, putting him in better touch with amped-up drinking cultures in Houston and San Antonio as well. Besides, he’s done what he can in Dallas, which has now eclipsed adolescence, a vibrant cocktail city ready to move forward on its own.
“What I can contribute is over,” he says. “There’s not a lot of challenges left for me here.”
Other people have helped make that happen too, and the city’s collaborative atmosphere has propelled it forward. Kosmas was instrumental in instilling that sense of teamwork. “As time went on,” says Standard Pour’s Campbell, “we all got to know him better and realized what an incredibly nice guy he is, and watched as he offered help to anyone who wanted it. I’ve constantly been amazed at how easy he makes everything look.”
Kosmas, who has already been moving back and forth between the two cities, doesn’t plan to be a stranger here once he leaves for good, by week’s end.
In his own modest way, he wrote about his departure: “I have been embraced and am grateful to have been a part of a rapidly growing restaurant community…. It is bittersweet. I feel so fortunate to have been able to watch the city change and play some small role in it.”
Are these bartenders ready to represent or what? Some of the Bar Smyth staff headed to New Orleans.
Another big coup for Dallas on the national cocktail front: Bar Smyth has been chosen to compete in this year’s bar-versus-bar-versus bar cage match at next month’s annual Tales of the Cocktail conference in New Orleans.
Smyth’s selection to the so-called Bare Knuckle Bar Fight gives the months-old lounge another dose of national publicity in the short time since it opened earlier this year in the Knox-Henderson neighborhood. In March, Vogue magazine cited the new venture from Michael Martensen and Brian Williams – co-owners of The Cedars Social – as a factor in naming Dallas one of the four “buzziest cultural capitals” in the world alongside Lisbon, Toronto and Istanbul.
Smyth will go up against six other competitors: Polite Provisions (San Diego), Sweat Leaf (Queens, NY), Broken Shaker (Miami), The Daily (New York City), Barrel House Flat (Chicago) and Citizen Pub (Boston).
This year’s bar battle royale is unusual in the sense that the establishments chosen to compete are typically seasoned entities with some mileage under their tires. It’s part of a new focus on new and upcoming bars, a philosophy espoused by the event’s new host, The 86 Co., which launched a new line of spirits earlier this year.
Surely it helped that Dallas bartender extraordinaire Jason Kosmas is among The 86 Co.’s ringleaders, putting Smyth and its smooth 1970s vibe that much closer to the national radar. “It’s usually the biggest and best that get the acclaim,” Kosmas said. “But (this year’s contestants) will be the ones that get no acclaim.”
Bar Smyth, about to prove itself on the national stage despite opening just three months ago.
But Smyth’s bartenders – including Omar Yeefoon, Josh Hendrix, Trina Nishimura and Mate Hartai – are among the best in Dallas’ come-of-age craft-cocktail culture. They’ll help Smyth represent at the annual event, which in essence is a massive wall-to-wall party of 1,000 people with competing bar staffs scattered throughout a gi-normous space, judged for character, quality, originality and speed in a frenzied atmosphere.
“They’re going up against some real talent,” Kosmas said. And this year’s focus will be riffs on the classics, daring each bar staff to not adhere too closely nor to venture too far from the original formula. “It was, like, these events have to outdo themselves every year,” he said. “We figured, let’s just go back to the basics.”
Bars are also expected to recreate in some small form the character of their actual establishment. Last year, for instance, Seattle’s Rob Roy brought along its signature deer-hoof lamp.
“We’re flattered,” said Smyth’s Martensen. “Our brains are already working. Do we show up with vinyl records?”
The team will no doubt have some tricks up its sleeve, and perhaps one surprising advantage: Bar Smyth is the only one of the seven competing bars that doesn’t have a Web site. Added Martensen: “Now that our wheels are spinning, now that we know who we’re competing against…. We can see what they do. ”
“We’re excited,” Yeefoon added. “Bring it.”
Tales of the Cocktail’s annual competition: Not for the faint of bar
At Bowl & Barrel, the Manhattans go right from the bottle into your glass.
I’m the kind of guy who goes into a place and sits at the bar. I appreciate the interaction with the bartender, seeing the way he or she practices the craft, knowing that the drink I’ve ordered is being made just for me. That personal attention, and the work that goes into it, is part of the experience.
That’s why I’ve been reluctant to embrace the idea of bottled cocktails, and Francisco Terrazas, who manages the bar program at Austin’s Fino, knows my pain. The idea of pre-made batches of drinks theoretically annoyed him, even though he knew it was a trend — one that actually dates to the early 1900s — that would come sooner or later as Austin bartenders began looking for innovations.
Terrazas grappled with the idea until one day he began to see it in a new light. He’s how he puts it: When you buy clothes, you generally don’t expect to have the fit exactly right or know who made your outfit; you just grab something off the rack. If you want it just so, you go to a tailor.
Bartenders are the tailors of the drinking world. “If someone really wants a drink tailored to their specifications, they’re going to go sit at the bar,” he says. “Meanwhile, people on the dinner floor might want a good drink, but they’re willing to sacrifice a bit of the experience.”
And though it’s not something he’s tried yet, he realizes that for bartenders, it’s a good way to produce quality drinks more efficiently.
Two of the bottled cocktails at The People’s Last Stand: A Time Bomb and a Harvey Wallbanger.
That’s the idea at The People’s Last Stand in Dallas, where bartender Chris Dempsey says the three cocktails produced daily have been selling well.
By the time I and a friend showed up late Saturday, the bottled Dark and Stormy’s were already sold out. Instead we tried the Harvey Wallbanger and something called a Time Bomb: Each was $7 and came in an old-fashioned-style soda bottle; drinking it reminded me of drinking fruity pop as a kid. Though I missed the ice shards that lusciously grace the first sips of a freshly made drink, each went down smooth, maybe too much so.
“I’m partial to this,” my friend said, indicating the Harvey Wallbanger (vodka, Galliano and OJ). “But I think it could be dangerous. It kinda reminds me of a wine cooler.”
But People’s thinks it’s on to something. “The fact that they sell out every day says something,” bartender Anthony Polo said.
I protested, citing my desire to know a bartender had made something just for me.
“But in a sense, I did,” Polo said.
The practice of bottling cocktails dates to the early 1900s.
Meanwhile, over at Bowl & Barrel, Ian Reilly is offering Manhattans and other cocktails in barrel-aged-and-bottled form.
It’s something the bar, owned by Free Range Concepts, plans to make a staple in coming months. As Reilly tells it, Josh Sepkowitz of Free Range Concepts, which owns Bowl & Barrel, called him over one day to see what he knew about barrel-aged cocktails, a practice that has gained steam over the last couple of years. (As far as I know, it was Sean Conner, of Plano’s Whiskey Cake, who first tried it around here, and since then several others have given it a whirl, pre-batching Negronis and Tridents and more.)
Barrel-aging cocktails can alter their character by infusing oak and/or other flavors into the drink; the process can also soften the sting of strong flavors; the barrel-aged Negroni I had at Whiskey Cake had a mellowness that enhanced the drink without reducing its charm.
As it turned out, Reilly did know a thing or two about barrel-aging, and he knew that not only could the practice affect taste, it could also promote efficiency on crowded bar nights. He was also able to get his hands on some stylin’ clear bottles, as well as someone able to etch them with the Bowl & Barrel logo. Everything fell into place.
He decided on the classic Manhattan as his first cocktail, one that would appease his Old-Fashioned-leaning customers with its mix of rye whiskey, bitters and sweet vermouth. (Cocktails without natural products that can go bad, like citrus, are preferable when barrel aging.) He then added two others – the white-whiskey-based Slow Hand and the Lucien Gaudin, a cocktail that Reilly named after a fencer when he himself worked at The People’s Last Stand; it features gin, Cointreau, Campari and dry vermouth. “It’s somewhere between a Boulevardier and a Martinez,” he says.
A fourth cocktail is on the way. So far Reilly has produced 31 liters worth of pre-batched cocktails, and he’s working on another 26. “We want to have the shelves lined with product ready to go,” he says.
Since launching a week ago, he’s sold nine or 10 bottles’ worth of cocktails in all. The mixtures have been bottled, sealed with wax and stored in the freezer behind the bar. Order a Manhattan and it’ll show up in a fluted martini glass. “You pour four ounces and put a maraschino cherry in there and you’re ready,” Reilly says. Speed.
Bowl and Barrel’s Manhattans. Bottled cocktails offer quick service for customers and efficiency for bartenders.
The drinks are $10 apiece, and a group can spring for a whole bottle at $75. Last week, I and some friends took the Manhattan plunge even if the hot June weather didn’t exactly make us pine for dark spirits. The verdict was largely positive, though the fluted glass took me by surprise; I also missed the feeling of knowing the bartender was behind the bar making a drink just for me.
Had I been there on a packed night, well into my evening with service markedly slowed, I would have had a much different reaction: happy to get my perfectly fine and chilled Manhattan while others around me growled and waited for their craft cocktails to be made, giving me the evil eye while I preened with Brad Pitt-celebrity satisfaction and — well, now I’m getting carried away.
Reilly, too, has gotten carried away, and for that you might be grateful. Share in the experiment: He’s got a fancy algorithm “that a much smarter friend” made for him, telling him how long each batch has to sit in each differently-sized barrel to achieve his desired result. A three-liter barrel might correctly age in a month, for instance, but a 10-liter one might take more than twice that long. He’ll test them along the way.
“It’s fun,” Reilly says. “I get to be the cellar master here. When I bottle everything, I’ll imagine I’m some guy in Cognac…. I don’t have millions of dollars for a still, so this is the next best thing.”
THE PEOPLE’S LAST STAND, 5319 E. Mockingbird Lane #210, Dallas. 214-370-8755
BOWL AND BARREL, 8084 Park Lane #145, Dallas. Phone: 214-363-2695
The Windmill’s Charlie Papaceno doing his thing — and getting a shout-out from Esquire magazine
Sometimes the little guys really do get the glory. While Dallas’ cocktail culture has gone from practically zero to 60 in a little over two years, a few enthusiastic souls were already out there revving up the engine before the whole thing even went into drive.
For the most part, those people are unsung pioneers. That’s why it was nice to see this month’s issue of Esquire packing a nice surprise for Charlie Papaceno and Louise Owens, owners of the veritable Windmill Lounge, the decidedly unfancy cocktail bar along a decidedly unfancy patch of Dallas’ Maple Avenue.
Some time earlier, someone at the magazine had asked the two to send a high-resolution photo of the place, and at most they figured (excitedly) that esteemed cocktail scribe David Wondrich was going to somehow slide in a brief mention of the Windmill in his column.
But when a patron came in and said that Wondrich had ranked the place as one of the best bars in America, Charlie and Louise were absolutely stunned.
The Esquire magazine article touts the Windmill’s “crusty regulars” and all-day $3 highballs.
Wondrich’s introductory article laments the loss of dive bars, the vanishing crop of juke joints low on pretension and high on quality drinks. The accompanying list cites bars that are, if not actually dives, at least those that Wondrich figures have a chance to become long-lasting institutions. Most are fairly new, and the two I’ve actually been to – Bellocq in New Orleans, and Cambridge’s Brick and Mortar – are far from divey; instead they’re polished and popular, with excellent drinks and food beyond your standard bar snacks. The vibe at Bellocq was sleek and effortlessly New York cool, and I especially loved Brick and Mortar’s Whale Song, a plaintive splash of Jamaican rum, Amaro Montenegro, spiced cranberry and lime..
You would never find something called a Whale Song at the Windmill. What you will find are some of the best classic cocktails in town – solid Manhattans and fabulous Negronis, dished up by a pair of bartenders who have been at it for longer than most craft-cocktailers have been in DFW. You’ll also find, as Wondrich notes, a punk-heavy jukebox, crusty regulars and all-day $3 highball specials. Nothing fancy here, as I noted in a previous post on the city’s overall lack of pretension: No fuss, no frills, no fireworks (“The idea of fire in my bar scares me,” Papaceno says): Just your basic watering hole, a place to hang with your homies and drink the classics the way they were meant to be.
This is good timing for the Windmill, which tonight marks its 8th anniversary (has it been that long? seriously?) with a bash starting at 9:30 p.m., complete with DJ. Stop by, have a little rum or somesuch, and offer Charlie and Louise the congratulations they deserve. (Note: Parking will be tight, and surrounding lots are mostly off-limits: Papaceno suggests trying the Rio Grande Supermarket parking area.) You may find yourself tilting before long.
WINDMILL LOUNGE, 5320 Maple Ave., Dallas. 214-443-7818
In case you hadn’t noticed, you have two days left to celebrate National Negroni Week — as proclaimed by none other than Imbibe magazine, which earned brownie points earlier this year by making the Lone Star State its cover story.
The other reason I’m perfectly willing to heed the publication’s call is that the classic bittersweet cocktail is among my pantheon of favorite go-to drinks, a perfect equal-parts blend of gin, sweet vermouth and, most important, the Italian aperitif Campari. It’s the Campari that provides the Negroni’s bitter undercurrent, and that undercurrent is the essence of the drink: As I’ve said before, you can switch the ingredients and keep the delicately balanced proportions the same but I balk at calling anything without Campari a Negroni. Variations on the Negroni are many (and welcome), but they are exactly that: variations on the Negroni.
The Negroni’s balance is not as nuanced, nor does it take as much skill, as, say, the equally classic Aviation, but its one-two-three punch does showcase each ingredient. “You can’t do it with Martini & Rossi and well gin,” says Private/Social’s Rocco Milano. “It’s a drink that’s greater than the sum of its parts, because they have an amplifying effect.”
With that in mind, and to give you more options, here are a few of my favorite variations.
Some time back at Private/Social, Milano crafted for me a fine mix of St. George’s aggressive Terroir gin, the vintage-style aperitif Gran Classico and the classy vermouth Carpano Antica. Then, very recently, he topped it by subbing the floral Leopold’s Navy Strength Gin for St. George’s (shown below). A third, truer version (photo above) featured Campari, Dolin Rouge and St. George’s Dry Rye gin, poured over an ice sphere.
A Negroni variation with Leopold’s Navy Strength Gin, Gran Classico and Carpano Antica.
Meanwhile, Lark on the Park is one of the bright new lights on the cocktail scene, and bar manager Matt Orth put a notable, bitter-forward spin on the Negroni by using not one but two bitter apertifs – the Italian vintage-style Gran Classico and the French, gentian-flavored Suze – along with the botanical spirit Sage, from Art in the Age. All equal proportions, naturally – and because my palate does cartwheels for bitter (and in particular Suze), completely delicious.
Matt Orth of Lark on the Park, doing one of the many things that Matt Orth can do.
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
