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Barmoire

Cocktails of the Year 2012

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The DFW cocktail scene has come a long way in the last two years, and as many a bartender knows, I’ve been no stranger to it. Restaurants now launch with bar programs no longer a second thought, the qualities of ice and citrus oils are strongly considered, and drinkers once keen on vodka-and-Red-Bull are growing more adventurous palates.

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Some of the local drinks unveiled in 2012, these ones at Dallas’ Five Sixty. At middle left, Rolling Fog Over Mount Fuji; at middle right, Locked and Loaded.

Our craft cocktail architects have, in the last year, designed menus built on the shoulders of the past – reintroducing old classics, embellishing and remodeling, thinking up creations of their own.  Luckily, I have taken it upon myself to sample many of these libations on behalf of the greater good. I have, as they say, taken one for the team.

I can’t claim to have sampled every drink out there. I’m just one man, for god’s sakes. (Thanks to all who sacrificed themselves to join me for the effort.) And I have my own tastes and habitats: In general, my spirits of choice are gin, whiskey, tequila, rum, gasoline and vodka, in that order. Ha ha, vodka – I kid you, I kid you.

But as we say Peace Out to 2012, I leave you with my top 10 favorite local discoveries of the past year. Ah, what the heck: In the spirit of the annum, let’s just make it 12.

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12. MEXICALI BLUES, Tate’s, Dallas (J.W. Tate)

Blending the glamour of aged tequila and house-made grenadine with the smokiness of mezcal, this is Salma Hayek in a coupe, bold and feminine. The borderland babe, named for a Grateful Dead song, is garnished with a palm-tree V of thyme planted in a floating lime-slice island, with a muddle of pepper upping the Baja heat.

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11. STRIPPER SWEAT – Cosmo’s Bar & Lounge, Dallas (Jackson Tran)

“Somebody asked me to make them a drink called Stripper Sweat. I think they had just come from a strip club,” says Tran, adept with flavor even as he churns out the shots and mixed drinks usually favored by the crowd at this Lakewood dive-bar gem. Partial to pairing vodka with the elderflower sweet of St. Germain, he gave complexity to this summery play on vodka-cranberry by mixing vanilla vodka with cranberry, St. Germain and the earthy licorice punch of Fernet. Shaken with an orange wedge, the pulpy, apricot-like mixture is poured over ice, frothy as a raspberry fizz.

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10. COLONEL SANDERS – Sissy’s Southern Kitchen, Dallas (Chase Streitz)

When Streitz, the beverage director at Sissy’s, was asked to design happy-hour drinks around the Henderson Avenue restaurant’s most popular spirits, he spun simple gold from Makers 46, honeying it up with Benedictine and splash of orange bitters over crushed ice.  The drink’s initially aggression softens as the ice melts and muddles the accompanying orange slice, a pleasant pre- or post-dinner relaxer.

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9. THE PEOPLE’S OLD FASHIONED – The People’s Last Stand, Dallas (Omar Yeefoon)

Though Yeefoon no longer pours at this Mockingbird Station bar, he left his mark on the place with this luscious take on the classic whiskey cocktail that couples maple syrup with Rittenhouse rye along with a touch of Angostura bitters and flame-drawn orange oils.  The result: A strong whiskey handshake with a rush of almost tamarind-y sweetness.

8. ROLLING FOG OVER MOUNT FUJI, Five Sixty, Dallas (Lee Hefter)

This gorgeous and aptly named drink at Wolfgang Puck’s Asian-themed restaurant atop Reunion Tower also has depth – and properly made, the illusion of height. Japanese Hibiki 12 whiskey is shaken with Aperol, lemon, simple syrup and egg white, then poured into a small fishbowl of a glass. A mountainous ice slab juts out from the foamy egg-white surface, towering over the pink-hued landscape beneath and evoking the drink’s name. It has the taste and feel of sherbet, with an herbal Aperol finish.

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7. FIG MANHATTAN, Tate’s, Dallas (J.W. Tate)

This classic re-do land-rushes the prairie of your tongue with a bracing yet savory sweetness, the house-made fig syrup ably enhancing the Uptown bar’s orangey dark brown blend of Rittenhouse 100 rye, Cocchi D’Torino vermouth and Angostura bitters. It’s rich, not cloying, with a fig essence that elevates rather than just flavors this classic.

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6. TINY’S FAREWELL, The Cedars Social, Dallas (Mike Steele)

Basically, Steele wanted to make a stirred tiki drink, one without the citrus juice that calls for shaking or the mounds of crushed ice that typically characterize these Caribbean-styled cocktails. He produced this blend of Cana Brava rum, Dolin dry vermouth, Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur, Kronan Swedish punsch, pineapple syrup and tiki bitters. A diaphanous lemony yellow, it’s honey-sweet with a fruity frontal assault and minty finish underscored by the warm essence of rum. The coup de grace is a swath of grapefruit ignited to draw out the oils and citrusy aroma. The story behind the name? “I always wanted to have a tiki bar,” Steele says. “I figured I’d have this really huge guy behind the bar named Tiny with really big arms, crushing ice. But when I made this drink, it was like, `Tiny, we don’t need you anymore.’ “

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5. EMERSON, Hibiscus, Dallas (Grant Parker)

OK, nothing fancy here – just Parker’s take on a little-known classic that deserves wider recognition. The traditional Emerson is gin, sweet vermouth, maraschino liqueur and lime. Parker, the low-key force behind this Henderson Avenue restaurant’s bar, subs the sweeter and less botanical Old Tom gin and uses the spicy, herbaceous Carpano Antica as his vermouth. The result is a drink that starts fruity (especially cherry), but then U-turns with a dazzling chocolate-and-spice finish. “During the cold season, the Antica gives it a nice cinnamon flavor,” Parker says. “And when the weather turns hot, it’s a nice aperitif.”

4. LOCKED AND LOADED, Five Sixty, Dallas (Lee Hefter)

“That reminds me of breakfast, man,” says Five Sixty bartender Casey Griggs of Locked And Loaded. “That reminds me of some pancakes.” This drink created by Los Angeles-based Lee Hefter, Wolfgang Puck’s right-hand chef, is a buffet of bourbon, maple syrup, Carpano Antica sweet vermouth, lemon juice, egg white, rhubarb bitters and a sly rinse of Laphroig. Its hue is somewhere between butterscotch and Chimay Triple, and the bourbon is purposely understated, with a creamy finish marked by rhubarb candy sweetness.

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3. LINNEO’S REMEDY (Ian Reilly)

One evening when Reilly was still working at The People’s Last Stand, I asked him to concoct a drink to feed my growing fascination with mezcal. At the time, he, too, was toying with mezcal and employing his philosophy of temperance – that is, avoiding the urge to compound the agave-based spirit’s smoky Latin flavor with heat and rather using it as a player in an equal, four-part structure a la the classic Last Word. This is what he came up with: a balance of mezcal, Aperol, ginger liqueur and lime.  The result is a delicious sweet-and-sour mix caught up in an undercurrent of peaty mezcal. Reilly – since relocated to just-opened Bowl and Barrel – now opts for saffron-spiced Strega over orangey Aperol, and the name he chose recalls Spain’s medicinal use of bitters as well as Swedish naturalist (and agave’s identifier) Carl Linnaeus – or Carlos Linneo, as he would have been known in Spanish. “I guess all of those, the idea of soothing and balance, combined into Linneo’s Remedy,” Reilly says.

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2. SECRETS AND LIES, The Cedars Social, Dallas (Mike Steele)

This off-the-menu treasure, inspired by a drink Steele once served in Denver, takes premium whiskey, enhances it with port and Strega and adds strong hints of Carpano Antica, vanilla syrup and a cardamom tincture. “I think cardamom and vanilla go really well together, and it’s a good, rich flavor for the fall,” he says. “Plus it goes really well with whiskey.” Every ingredient comes through, a beautiful balance of bite, herbs and holiday warmth. “One time, somebody asked me what was in it,” says the affable Steele from behind the bar of this pioneering spot south of downtown. “I said, `Secrets and lies, man, secrets and lies. And it just went from there.”

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1. FALL INTO A GLASS, Private/Social, Dallas (Rocco Milano)

It’s really not fair when Hum is in the game, because anyone who knows me knows that I adore this liqueur dominated by flavors of ginger, cardamom and clove. It’s a feisty pit bull of an ingredient, but Milano – who introduced me to Hum about a year ago – has a knack for grabbing the leash and making it shine. The gin-hefeweizen-lemon Shandy that he’d added to the summer menu at Uptown’s Private/Social, a twist on the classic French 75, was so popular that he didn’t want to part ways with it in the fall; Hum seemed a natural autumn boost for this cleverly named drink. What you get is a mix of citrus and spritz with a frothy sheen of beer, the finish a wave of autumnal Hum. “It’s amazing how different .75 oz of Hum can make a cocktail taste,” he says. “When I presented the drink to the staff during training, everyone said the exact same thing: You nailed the flavors of fall.”

Want to make it yourself? Here’s the recipe.

FALL INTO A GLASS

2 oz light-bodied gin (such as Citadelle)

1 oz lemon juice

1½ oz simple syrup

¾ oz Hum liqueur

Combine all ingredients, shake and strain into a snifter. Top with 2-3 oz wheat beer (such as McKinney-based Franconia).

— Marc Ramirez 1/9/13 

 

Barmoire

It doesn’t take an empire to earn a five-star review

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Big news for Dallas’ Jason Kosmas and his accomplices over at The 86 Company: Spirit Journal, the respected industry newsletter, has awarded 86’s newly released Ford’s Gin a stellar five out of five stars in its latest quarterly issue.

“It’s a pretty big deal,” Kosmas said. “I’m a happy boy.”

Understandable. The gin, which has already landed on the shelves of cocktail bars around town and local retail outlets such as Sigel’s, is the result of six years of planning, research and experimentation by Kosmas and his cohorts at New York-based 86, fellow bartender Dushan Zaric and renowned spirits ambassador Simon Ford.

The three set out to make a spirit that embraced the purity of simplicity, one that was workhorse versatile, manageable and free of extra botanicals or excess flavoring.

“We wanted to make a quintessential gin,” Kosmas says. “We didn’t want some flavor hook, some gimmick. We wanted to make a well-made gin that was going to behave well in cocktails.”

Judging from the review by Spirit Journal editor and publisher F. Paul Pacult, they succeeded: “Crystalline and flawlessly pure,” is how Pacult begins, later praising its “lovely, sturdy gin bouquet” and lauding it as “easily one of the best new gins I’ve reviewed over the last two years.”

That’s some intoxicating praise.

The formula was two years in the making, produced in collaboration with 8th-generation master distiller Charles Maxwell of London. What you’re drinking out of that carefully crafted bottle is the group’s 81st recipe variation, ultimately meant to highlight gin’s distinctive juniper calling card with coriander undertones to give it structure. But there’s also cassia and orris root, both common gin botanicals, with a friendly dose of grapefruit.

“Gin is one where you second-guess yourself,” Kosmas said. “One little tweak and it’s a completely different animal.”

The bottle itself, decorated in classy luggage-stamp chic, is a nod to gin’s global character, despite its British associations, from the elephant and passport stamps on the label and cap to the decree playfully splashed across its bow: “It doesn’t take an empire to make a gin.”

Ford’s Gin is just one of four base spirits The 86 Company is rolling out. Two – Cana Brava rum and Aylesbury Duck vodka – debuted earlier this year, with a tequila yet to come.

“I love it,” said bartender Brad Bowden of The People’s Last Stand, at Dallas’ Mockingbird Station. “For mixing purposes, it has a lot of utility.”

Oddly enough, the ergonomic design of the Ford’s Gin bottle itself has also drawn praise from so-called “flair” bartenders, the ones who flip and twirl bottles as they work just for show. Kosmas, though flattered, is both surprised and amused.

“I’ve never been part of that world, and I’ve never wanted to,” he says. But since the bottle was built for speed and accuracy behind the bar, it actually sort of makes sense.

“I guess it’s like streamlining a car: if you built a car that goes fast, at some point somebody’s going to drive it really fast.”

— Marc Ramirez, 12-5-12

Barmoire

Tippling at Windmill — for a good cause

It was way too much fun for a Tuesday night. Then again, with five of the city’s best barmen joining forces at Dallas’ Windmill Lounge to raise money for victims of Hurricane Sandy, the revelry was all for a good cause.

For four-plus hours, the star lineup churned out a New York-inspired menu of cocktails including Manhattans, Brooklynites and Green Hornets. “The Penicillin was the star of the show,” said Omar Yeefoon, who did bar duty along with Jason Kosmas, Mate’ Hartai, Julian Pagan and the Windmill’s own Charlie Papaceno.

It was the final stop on the group’s All 4 1 tour of four Texas cities, benefiting bar and restaurant owners in New York’s East Village who suffered superstorm damage. 

There were T-shirts. There were toasts. There was even a bullhorn: The group auctioned off some rare and not-so-rare bottles of booze. Tuesday’s event raised about $3,000, Yeefoon said, with about $8,000 raised in all.

“We’re pretty stoked, to be honest,” Yeefoon said. No doubt those business owners will be, too.

The Libertine’s Mate’ Hartai plays auctioneer as Kosmas, Pagan and Papaceno look on.

Omar Yeefoon, of Cedars Social, takes a breather.

Happy revelers Mikki Mallow (center) and Jodi Mallow Maas.

The commemorative T.

Mr. Charlie Papaceno.

— Marc Ramirez, posted 11-24-12

Barmoire

A double-whammy of feel-good

A great cocktail: Definitely a day-brightener. Giving to a good cause: Ditto. Doing both at the same time: Awesome.

Consider it charitable multi-tasking. From 6 to 10 p.m. Tuesday, you can enjoy New York-themed cocktails AND benefit victims of Hurricane Sandy as four of the city’s best barmen do duty at Dallas’ Windmill Lounge to raise funds for bar and restaurant owners in Manhattan’s East Village.

The effort, called All 4 1, is the handiwork of four accomplished bardudes — Omar Yeefoon and Julian Pagan of Cedars Social, Libertine Bar’s Mate Hartai and Marquee Grill & Bar’s Jason Kosmas — who last week stepped behind bars in Austin, Houston and San Antonio raising money for the cause. Originally the four had been looking for a way to do guest spots around Texas, but when the largest Atlantic storm on record pummeled the East Coast last month, they suddenly had a purpose.

Kosmas, a New York transplant who still co-owns Manhattan’s Employees Only, personally knew people in the East Village whose businesses had been devastated by the superstorm. A fun idea turned into a focused one.

“We’re just trying to make sure some of these places don’t shut down, or at least not for long if they do,” Yeefoon said.

Tuesday night, the four will be at the old-school Windmill Lounge making New York-themed cocktails for a minimum $5 donation apiece. T-shirts will be available too.

“Of course we have a good time while we’re doing it, but now we’re, like, really into the charity,” Yeefoon said.

Go. Be like Omar. Have a good time while you’re doing it, and be really into the charity. It’s a double-whammy of feel-good.

The event is one of two going on around town Tuesday as the ongoing Manhattan Project moves northward to Plano’s Whiskey Cake (not Hibiscus, as originally planned). From 7 to 9 p.m., the bar will be dishing up free Manhattans in a periodic series of events designed to promote whiskeys, and the classic cocktail, throughout the colder season.

Some of the whiskeys available for sampling at ongoing Manhattan Project events.

— Marc Ramirez, posted 11/18/12

Barmoire

The Mixologists Take Manhattan

The Manhattan: It’s the drink mixologist Gary Regan says “changed the face of cocktails.”

Featuring rye whiskey with a bit of vermouth with a sprinkle or three of bitters, it was arguably the first drink to draft vermouth as a sidekick. That was, as they say, a damn game-changer. The Martinez followed, then the Martini, and eventually all manner of cocktail goodness gracing humanity today.

In case you hadn’t noticed, brown spirits are everywhere, which not only means that fall is officially here but also that if you haven’t turned back your clocks by now, you’re way behind the curve. That would make you highly unworthy to participate in the aptly named Manhattan Project, an ongoing push to promote the drink that runs through early next year.

Two or three times a month, one of six participating Dallas venues will host the free event, whipping up the voluptuous namesake cocktail using whiskeys represented by project sponsor Republic National Distribution Company, such as Buffalo Trace and W.L. Weller.

“The Manhattan is the classic bourbon cocktail,” says Chris Furtado, Republic’s craft specialist. “We really want to emphasize the drink itself, and everybody’s interpretation of it.”

With the mass market kinder to vodka and gin, Furtado says, bourbon cocktails can be overlooked. “But for us classic cocktail lovers,” he says, “it’s a great drink.”

So far, the Manhattan has been celebrated at Cedars Social, People’s Last Stand and the Black Swan Saloon. This week, the tour hit Uptown’s Private/Social. Still to come are Hibiscus and Whiskey Cake before the tour circles around and each gets another shot at the deal.

“We’re showcasing bourbon and places that do it well,” Furtado says, nursing a Manhattan at Cedars Social. “I want people who come here to go to People’s Last Stand. I want people to think of Black Swan as a cocktail destination; they’re doing great stuff.”

The classic Manhattan recipe calls for a 2:1 rye whiskey-to-vermouth ratio. I typically make mine with a 3:1 ratio using Bulleit Rye and a few dashes of Bittercube’s Cherry Bark Vanilla bitters.

Japanese cocktail legend Kazuo Uyeda makes his Manhattans 4:1 and  suggests the ratio can go up to 5:1 before the whiskey’s “brooding, complex character” body-slams everything else in the glass.

Experiment with it yourself and figure out what you like. “Quite simply,” mixologist Regan writes in his classic The Joy of Mixology, “when properly constructed, it is the finest cocktail on the face of the earth.”

The next Manhattan Project event will be Tuesday, Nov. 20, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Hibiscus, 2927 N. Henderson in Dallas.

— Marc Ramirez, Nov. 5, 2012

Barmoire

This cocktail boost is in the bag

 Three o’clock was always tea hour for chef Lisa Garza. That’s how it was growing up in Memphis. “Teas are such a big part of the South,” she says.

These days, they’re a big part of the cocktails that Garza features at Sissy’s Southern Kitchen, her restaurant on Dallas’ Henderson Avenue

As liquor-store shelves run clear with the blood of sweet-tea-flavored vodkas, odds are you’ve noticed a tea-accented cocktail or two on the menu of your local craft bar. But I’m betting you haven’t seen anyone devoting eight feet of space to them, as Sissy’s has: Two sets of glass apothecary jars dominate shelves built to accommodate their hefty dimensions.

“We built that bar around featuring the teas,” Garza said. “We gave up a lot of space to do that.”

In each, Belvedere vodka is the featured spirit. The Tipsy Arnold Palmer, infused with Japanese green and Chinese black tea, is flavored with orange, pineapple and safflower; Japan green also powers the Sencha Goji, which includes pomegranate, blueberry, lemongrass, cornflower and Goji berry.

The custom-ordered tea blends are part of Sissy’s carefully thought-out Southern identity. Orange pekoe tea even sparks the restaurant’s Kentucky Punch along with Maker’s Mark bourbon and blood orange liqueur. “This is our brand DNA,” Garza says. “This is the culture we’ve created.”

Personally, tea isn’t something I crave in my cocktails, and I tend to skip right over them on drink lists. But there’s something about a hot summer day that lets a Tipsy Arnold Palmer pull just the right lever, or a cold winter one that makes a chamomile-spiced tipple sound like a reasonable choice.

Tea’s pairing with alcohol has made long strides since the British wielded it in party-worthy punches in the 17th century. With the rise of today’s craft cocktail movement, greens, whites, blacks and herbals have been reinstated in service of bolder spirits than vodka: Here in Dallas, Salum’s High Tea blends vodka, Pama liqueur and a bit of ginger beer with cinnamon/cardamon-spiced tea, and at Tate’s, in Uptown, head barman J.W. Tate united gin with Earl Grey to create a drink called the Remedy, mixed with egg white, lemon, honey syrup and grapefruit bitters. “It’s a nice cocktail for when you’re a little under the weather,” he said.

Everyone’s doing it, and so can you. But don’t think it’s as easy as setting a jar of gin out on the porch with a handful of tea bags on a hot afternoon.

“When it comes to infusions, it’s pretty much the Wild West right now,” says Mate Hartai, the wizard behind the counter at Lower Greenville’s Libertine Bar. “Everybody’s throwing everything into anything. But it’s one of those things – like chess, it’s easy to play, but impossible to master.”

That’s because alcohol is pretty much a liquid succubus. “It draws things out much more completely,” Hartai says. “That’s why infusions work.”

It happens fast, too. Tea is an eager and delicate flower, figuratively and sometimes literally. Lose focus, and you could end up with tannic sludge. Lipton bags conquer a bottle of vodka within minutes. Hartai once left a whole box of tea bags in a liter of gin for four days. “It was black by the end, horrible,” he says. “I had to throw it away.”

So, things to consider if you’re trying this at home – the balance of spirit and tea flavors, as well as the proof of the alcohol. An 80-percent-proof rum, for example, will infuse more quickly than a 60-percent vermouth.

The makeup of the tea matters, too. A packet of shredded tea ingredients could take just hours, while a homemade blend of mostly intact items and, say, dried fruit, could take a day or two. Sissy’s tea-infused spirits are more patient concoctions, infused overnight with smaller amounts of black, white or green whole-leaf teas and aromatics like ginger and orange. “Sometimes it just pops off,” Hartai says.

He recommends finding a tea you like and using a spirit that lacks that flavor. A ginger-tea-and-peach-infused Cocchi Americano he made succeeded because the Italian aperitif wine was so bitter to begin with. And bitter teas go best with spirits or liqueurs absent bitterness.

White vermouth is a worthy vehicle. “It’s light and sweet, and it won’t extract as much because it’s not as high-proof,” Hartai says. “It’ll be a lot more delicate and light. Just drop a couple of ice cubes into it and drink it by itself.”

On the other hand, he avoids vodkas. “At that point you’re just making a really low-proof tincture,” he says. “It’s such a neutral flavor. You’re literally just going to have to throw lots of sugar in there to make it palatable…. Besides, there’s plenty of iced-tea vodkas out there already; they’ve already done all the work.”

It’s a matter of focus, adjustment and trial-and-error, taking care not to over-steep. As I write, I have a small batch of Beefeater gin in the kitchen gettin’ friendly with green tea, a sort of earthy meets botanical experiment that I’m guessing will consummate within a few hours. Or maybe not. I’ll find out.

“YOU DID WHAT WITH THAT GIN?” My resident squirrel seems to say.

Tea, Hartai says, “is going to be completely different in a spirit, because you’re not brewing, you’re extracting. It’s definitely a beast, but you can add nice complexity to everything from an Old Fashioned to a Tom Collins.” 

And infusing a sweet spirit or liqueur with something bitter is way more complex than the other way around. “Adding bitterness to anything is very difficult, because you can’t take it out once it’s in,” he says.

In an article for Readymade magazine, New York bartender Alex Day noted that tea can enrich alcohol in several modes – either steeped in the liquor itself, used as a base for syrup or simply brewed and added as an ingredient.

The delicate and clean botanicals of gin, he said, marry well with green teas and oolongs, while whiskeys, aged brandies, amari and some fortified wines couple best with aggressive flavors like black tea or herbal infusions. Chai and sweet vermouth, he said, are an especially good pairing.

Whatever you use, here’s some tips to help you through.

* Use teas you like to flavor spirits or liqueurs that lack that flavor.

* Hit up local herb shop to craft blends. For an infused vermouth, Hartai custom-ordered a blend of dried lavender, cranberry, violet and black tea.

* Simplicity is better. “It becomes very difficult to throw a bunch of things into something and expect it to come out good,” Hartai says. “That’s the problem with three-, or four-, or five-ingredient infusions. Everything’s getting lost. It’s becoming alcoholic fruit punch.”

* Experiment in small batches. “Micros,” he says. “That’s how brewers and distillers work.”

* Use good quality tea. As Day wrote for Readymade: “A cocktail can only be as good as what’s put into it.”

POSTSCRIPT

I meant to check the green-tea-and-gin mixture before I headed out for a movie, but then forgot. When I returned — more than seven hours after I first threw the bag in — the mix was a soothing shade of grassy greenish brown. I removed the bag and poured a sip. The result was a cloying smack in the mouth, an initial spritzy-sweet burn that settled into warm fireplace comfort. Not perfect, but I’m looking forward to sipping more on a cool evening sometime in the near future.

 

— Marc Ramirez, posted 10-23-12

Barmoire

A clear and pleasant danger

You know what they say about what happens in Vegas, and I’m sure there are good reasons for that. It’s not something I personally would ever have to worry –

– OK I ADMIT IT I TOTALLY GOT DOWN AND DIRTY WITH A VODKA BAR –

All right! It’s out in the open now! Me and vodka, gettin’ crazy!

Here’s the thing: I usually avoid vodka. When I scan a bar’s cocktail list, I skip right over vodka drinks like a vegetarian presented with a burger menu. And yet: Were you to look in my freezer, you’d see a vodka bottle stationed right there among the frozen tortillas and turkey patties.

Let me explain, first about Vegas: Imagine yourself wandering through the Mandalay Bay Casino, when suddenly you see a headless Lenin. Being a sucker for Soviet kitsch, you enter Red Square, a vodka bar fronted by the decapitated statue outside. Inside, the atmosphere is a dark tableau of marvelous red, awash in Russian décor.

The velvety interior of Red Square, at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay.

Suddenly you are transported to Russia, smack in the thick of winter. (Well, not really, but play along here.) The curious dark room at the end of the bar, cordoned off with stanchions, is a small, circular space kept at between zero and five degrees Fahrenheit. Inside the icy table in the middle is Lenin’s missing head.

To enter the so-called Vodka Vault, you have to buy either a full or a half bottle of premium vodka. You’ll also want to grab something off the coat rack lined with mink coats and furry hats outside. Anna, tonight’s vodka goddess – because Red Square is the kind of place that would have a “vodka goddess” – says no party lasts more than 90 minutes inside. “It’s a novelty,” she says. “Like you’re in Russia.”

The so-called vodka vault, kept at zero to five degrees Fahrenheit.

There is no right way to drink mediocre vodka. However, there is a right way to drink premium vodka, and that is straight, and cold, with fellow imbibers. The vodka vault will do just fine, and you don’t have to finish the whole bottle; do some frosty shots, the vodka goddess says, then come out and have any of Red Square’s able bartenders make cocktails out of the rest.

The site vodkaphiles.com notes that vodka has earned popularity as a “perfectly neutral” – read “generally tasteless” – base for mixed drinks: “Frankly, to us Vodkaphiles, that’s a bit like buying a car for the sunroof,” the site says. (Not the best metaphor, but you get the idea.) And on Red Square’s cocktail menu, you’ll find the typical assortment of saccharine vodka offerings – pineapple, blueberry and raspberry martinis.

That’s the reason vodka is widely known among craft bartenders as the tofu of spirits: It tends to be a lifeless vehicle whose only talent is taking on the flavor of whatever’s added to it. Basically, it’s the Kristen Stewart of liquor, primped up with fruity, sugary flavors. In other words, it’s what people who don’t want to taste alcohol drink when they want to get drunk, particularly appealing to those unaccustomed to spirits and suburban sorority girls seeking sweet paths to oblivion.

For me, though, it would be pure, honest martinis at Red Square, extremely stingy on the vermouth, olives on the side. I wanted to taste those multi-distilled and filtered vodkas: Russian Standard Platinum, crisp and clean, with a hint of sweetness; Russian ZYR, tinged with a slightly bitter finish; and my favorite, Icelandic Reyka, smooth as the surface of a glacier – which, coincidentally, is what the icy bar top (another novelty) felt like as well.

Russian Standard Platinum and ZYR, two very fine vodka distillations.

Luckily, in the – gasp – four visits I would make to Red Square over that five-day span in Vegas, I had friends David, Tom and Juliana to share the experience. Sure, you can shoot vodka, but I love it as easy-going lubricant of extended conversation: It was Reyka that fueled my long-overdue reunion with old friend David; and it was Mischief, the product of a small-batch distillery in Washington State, that played liquid Pied Piper to a stream of emotional outpouring shared among friends one recent evening in Seattle, sipped in short, patient, heart-soothing infusions.

Dushan Zaric, co-owner of the great Employees Only in New York City, notes that vodka was never meant for mixing. Instead, it was designed to complement meals the very way wine was in southern Europe. But the climes of northern Europe, or Russia, aren’t as kind to the grape; enter grains, or potatoes, or beets – and the vodkas produced by each, Zaric says, are best savored with the food of their native countries: smoked fish, caviar, pickled vegetables. “If it cuts through all that and cleanses your palate,” he writes, “then the vodka is good, very good.”

With pals like Tom and Juliana, how can a guy go wrong?

Likewise, it was vodka that underscored one of my most memorable meals, at a Jewish restaurant called Sammy’s Roumanian Steak House on New York City’s Lower East Side. It was an evening of impossible decadence: There were steaks, of course, and chopped chicken liver doused with syrup bottles full of schmaltz; there were my pals Jonathan and Harley, and a Liberace-bejeweled organ player, and before the evening was out I would be introduced to the crowd as Irving Goldberg. But mostly what I remember was that bottle of Ketel One waiting for us in an ice bath at our table, about to sacrifice itself to the appetites we found that night for food and life in general.

From what I recall, that vodka was very, very good.

— Marc Ramirez

Posted 8-24-12

Barmoire

Tales of the Cocktail 2012: Bar Room Brawl

Somewhere in the onslaught, the judges were watching. From behind their battle stations, competitors issued flurries of their very best cocktails for the never-ending crush of people who’d filled New Orleans’ Generations Hall to capacity.

This was Bar Room Brawl 2012, the annual bartenders’ faceoff at the Tales of the Cocktail festival pitting six of the nation’s best bars against each other in a sort of cage-smackdown party.

The gloves were off as six of America’s best bars squared off in New Orleans.

Boston’s Eastern Standard and LA’s Roger Room took the two top prizes last year, but now a new set of bars were vying for judges’ and people’s choice hardware — Houston’s Anvil, Kansas City’s Manifesto, New York City’s Employees Only, San Francisco’s Beretta, Seattle’s Rob Roy and The Passenger of Washington, D.C.

It was like taking a tour of America’s best bars, and as loud and messy as you might expect. The historic hall, a onetime sugar refinery dating back to the 1820s, had been transformed into one of the 10th annual festival’s most raucous events, and inside, bartenders muddled, shook, stirred and poured as fast as their bartender wizardry would allow.

DC’s The Passenger produced one of my favorite drinks of the night — Olson’s Revenge, featuring Grand Marnier, mezcal, honey and habanero bitters.

Each bar slung drinks featuring one of four sponsor spirits: Grand Marnier, Belvedere Vodka, 10 Cane Rum and Hennessey Cognac. Earlier, they’d made those same drinks for judges who now watched to see how well the six bar crews would hold up in the pressure-filled atmosphere.

A sampling of NYC’s Employees Only’s atmospheric decor.

There was Houston’s Anvil with its Antilles Julep – Grand Marnier, Jamaican rum, turbinado sugar, Angostura bitters and mint – and Kansas City’s Manifesto with a drink called Winter In The West Indies, a mix of 10 Cane rum, roasted butternut squash puree, honey-cinnamon syrup, lemon and Angostura aromatic bitters.

I had to restrain myself when I saw that New York City’s Employees Only – co-owned by Dallas’ Jason Kosmas, of Marquee Grill & Bar – was throwing down with its Ginger Smash, whose gingery aggressiveness I’d fallen in love with on a trip to New York last year. With Kosmas working the bar with his former homies, it remained my favorite drink of the night, followed by Passenger’s habanero-spiced Olson’s Revenge.

DC’s The Passenger employed napkins for a little trash-talking.

Bars had been urged to recreate some hint of their actual vibe, and Employees Only’s bar top was bookended by tatted babes in burlesque get-up, who lounged indifferently above the fray like New York City Public Library lions. Washington’s Passenger, meanwhile, handed out napkins wielding smack-talk: “Houston, You Have A Problem.” “New York City Smells Like Pee.” “Nice Mustache, San Francisco.” “Seattle: Oh Right, Like the 90’s.”

At left, Anu Apte of Seattle’s Rob Roy awaits announcement of the final results.

A band played onstage, and as Saturday turned into Sunday, the voracious throngs feasted on pretzels, wraps and maple-sausage breakfast sandwiches while tables overflowed with the debris of imbibement. By night’s end, Employees Only had been named the judges’ favorite, as if Dallas needed one more reminder that the city is lucky to have a guy like Kosmas around.

Dallas’ Kosmas, who worked the night alongside his former crewmates at Employees Only, the New York bar he co-owns, celebrates the victory.

The People’s Choice award went to Beretta of San Francisco, whose staff and fans rejoiced around the bar and beyond and – well, honestly, on a night like this, it was hard to tell where the celebrating ended and the partying began.

The bartenders of San Francisco’s Beretta celebrate their People’s Choice award.

Finally showing a little emotion after Employees Only takes the big prize.

— Marc Ramirez

Published 7-30-12

Barmoire

Dallas bartenders make a Lone Star splash at national cocktail festival

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As Private/Social’s Rocco Milano put it, things went wrong. Campari bottles broke. Ordered produce was nowhere to be seen. A batch of concentrated blackberry mix blew up in Whiskey Cake bartender Bonnie Wilson’s car.

Whatevs. Texas knows how to go big, never mind the circumstances. And given their chance in the spotlight, Dallas bartenders left their Lone Star mark on this year’s 10th annual Tales Of The Cocktail conference in New Orleans: No one who stepped into the Iberville Ballroom of the Hotel Monteleone could leave saying they didn’t have a good time. OK, maybe whoever had to clean up the blackberry juice. But on the whole. Seriously.

Drinks flowed. Multitudes appeared. Moods lifted. The Chesterfield’s Eddie “Lucky” Campbell sang a song. And this was all before noon.

The Chesterfield’s Campbell with the double-pour.

“Come And Get It! Cocktails Texas Style!” was the title of the Wednesday morning tasting event, and despite the tricky A.M. draw on the festival’s opening day, word in the stairwells was that the session was the rockingest party in its time slot. An all-star crew of Dallas barmen and women shook their stuff for a packed room of conference attendees: There was Mike Martensen of The Cedars Social, Oak’s Abe Bedell, Standard Pour’s Brian McCullough, Jay Kosmas of Marquee Grill & Bar… the list goes on.

But even before the doors opened at 10:30 a.m., things looked a little shaky, and not in the diffused citrus and disintegrating ice-crystals sort of way. A day earlier, Bonnie Wilson had arrived with bottles of blackberry puree corked and sealed by Whiskey Cake’s Sean Conner, then checked into the hotel. Sugars fermented. Pressure built. The next morning, they opened the car to find that streams of puree had burst through the box overnight. “It looked like a paintball gun had hit the roof,” Conner said.

One bottle survived. And now it was Wednesday morning and the Dallas bartenders frantically readied workstations, setting up tiny sampler glasses, organizing their mises-en-place.

Then, suddenly, Bonnie Wilson’s voice cut through the room: “Oh, Anthony!”

Then, anyone who turned to watch, which was everybody, saw a blast of burgundy spewing in a volcanic rush from Conner’s surviving bottle of berry mix, which Whiskey Cake’s Anthony Krencik had just uncorked. Before they could stanch the flow, much of the mix had doused them and the hotel carpet in a bath of goopy concentrate.

Kosmas, as always unflappable amid the chaos, walked in two minutes later. “Oh, another explosion?” he said.

Bonnie Wilson’s “Bird” was a fetching blend of Evan Williams single-barrel whiskey, black tea, blackberry puree and Benedictine topped with sweet vanilla cream and mint leaf.

Meanwhile, Bolsa’s Hilla had had to scramble when the produce he’d ordered never showed, forcing a last-minute cab ride to the market. His planned drink – the Cherry Pit – became, well, something else. “You can call it the Plum Pit,” he said.

Before long the troublesome juju was lost in an increasingly happy flow of people, who sampled drinks ranging from Abe Bedell’s Barbados Breeze – a frosty blend of Mount Gay XO rum, basil, ginger, lime, pineapple and banana-coconut sorbet – to Kosmas’ Oaxaca Sour, a deliciously smoky blend of Ilegal mezcal, Texas grapefruit, honey cordial, egg white, lime, barrel-aged bitters and a sprinkling of nutmeg.

Bolsa’s Kyle Hilla made do with a last-minute produce run.

Martensen and Cedars Social owner Brian Williams had recreated a mini version of their bar in the ballroom, propping up signature menus and a small array of books on the table to evoke Cedars’ study-like atmosphere. Martensen had gone as basic as possible. “I’m doing the original margarita,” he said. “We want to represent Texas, right?”

Martensen has been coming to Tales for years, and Williams joined him starting four years ago. But Dallas was barely represented otherwise, and today’s splash showed how far the scene has come.

“It’s good representation for Dallas,” Williams said. “We have so many chain restaurants, and people get caught up in the whole restaurants-per-capita thing It’s good to let people know we’re out there.”

The Cedars Social’s Mike Martensen made margaritas. “We’re representing Texas, right?”

Eventually, Chesterfield’s Campbell – who was flanked by New Orleans native and Dallas chef David Anthony Temple, he of the festive “underground” dinners – would make a prideful speech and belt out “Deep In The Heart Of Texas.”

You could say Private/Social’s Milano was, well, moved. “As I look around the room, this is, to me, a minor miracle,” he said. “This is awesome. We are not a backwater third-tier market.”

And Krencik, in the conference T-shirt he’d quickly bought to replace his berry-drenched top, added this: “Texas is one of those states everybody knows, but they probably don’t expect us to bring a cocktail game. But from five years ago to now, it has just skyrocketed. We’re, like, the underdogs, coming out and showing that we can shake.”

The fun showed no sign of slowing down until conference officials finally shooed everyone out of the room. As the buoyant Dallas bunch headed onto the streets of the French Quarter to celebrate at nearby Mr. B’s Bistro, a hotel staff person came up to Bolsa’s Hilla.

“Sir,” she said. “Your produce is here.”

Dallas’ Lauren Laposta was here to help the Lone Star State represent.

— Marc Ramirez

Published 7-27-12

Barmoire

D and Easy: Tales of the Cocktail opens with Dallas on menu

Lucky Campbell of The Chesterfield says hello to New Orleans.

Tales of the Cocktail, the premier party event for the nation’s bartenders, cocktail chroniclers and spirit and liqueur reps, is officially underway in the Big Easy, with one big D of difference:

For the first time, Dallas bartenders have a special seat at the table, with a tasting event called “Come and Get It! Cocktails Texas Style!”

I’m not sure what the purpose of that second exclamation point is, but suffice it to say that the sampling of local luminaries – including Jason Kosmas of Marquee Grill & Bar, Rocco Milano of Private/Social and Michael Martensen of Cedars Social – on hand to show what makes the Lone Star State so dadgum special are awfully excited.

Bartending tool seller Cocktail Kingdom represents with shakers, jiggers and coupes.

I’ll be posting dispatches from that event and some of the 10th annual festival’s other cocktail workshops, tastings, contests, industry showdogging and requisite revelry along the way.  Most of the action will be going down at the veritable Hotel Monteleone on Royal Street, home to the revolving Carousel Bar and birthplace of the Vieux Carre cocktail.

The Vieux Carre is one of several classic cocktails with roots in New Orleans, which makes this festive city an appropriate home for the yearly event founded by Ann Tuennerman and just one more reason to shower it with love.

Tales of the Cocktail has taken over New Orleans’ Hotel Monteleone. In the background, event founder and executive director Ann Tuennerman talks with a conference attendee.

This is my first year at the festival, and I’m already wowed by the offerings: tributes to rum, apertifs and cucaçao; workshops on Russian drinking culture, foraged ingredients, bartending ecology and even the health benefits of alcohol spiked with beneficial herbs. Some of us will see how bartenders have been portrayed in popular culture, make our own vermouths and bitters or experience the whisky bars of Japan.

These are marathon days, launching with Bloody Marys and oysters on the half-shell when most other people are barely pawing at bagels and drearily sipping morning coffee. Making it through the race requires a shrewd sense of pacing, indomitable endurance and a mighty constitution.

Let’s do this.

Absolut Breakfast.

– Marc Ramirez

Published 7-25-12