On Christmas day this year I had the great good fortune to find myself on a boat off of Key West with about 30 friends and extended family members. The weather was perfect: slightly overcast and breezy, and we sailed around the island for about 3 hours. I'd brought some bottles of proseco along and used the opportunity to try out some Brooklyn Hemispherical Bitters Meyer Lemon Bitters. Mark Buettler and I recently launched the bitters line (we're at brooklynbitters.com) and this was the first time I'd trotted out the Meyer batch.
Surreptitiously busting out the bitters.
It was a pretty simple recipe--proseco, a few drops of the Meyer Lemon Bitters on top, and a lemon twist. It transformed average proseco into a proper cocktail and it was--and I think I can say this without any false modesty--fantastic. A couple days later I revisited the recipe, adding a demerara cube soaked in the bitters and still hitting the top of with a couple drops for the nose. But on this day on this boat the simple approach was all that was needed.
Future ister-in-law Lauren cut the lemon twists.
The only knife on board had a colorful past, but it passed the nose test.
Prep area.
Satifisfied customers. What I love about bitters is how you can instantly transform something simple and merely pleasant into something complex and special.
Crew.
Shit, I'm sorry I missed this one. Though in keeping with my Embury wine persona, I spent Christmas in Mexico roasting two ribs of beef and washing them down with Chateauneuf-de-Pape.
Posted by: Krimko | January 08, 2011 at 01:13 PM