EMBURY COCKTAILS

Wednesday's Cocktail: Alejandro De La Parra's "City of Gold"

A very much half-full City of Gold, presented by Alejandro's handsome hands.

I tried this luminous, cultural history-inspired drink after a leisurely afternoon spent wandering around the Old Town District of Portland with Alejandro De La Parra of Teardrop Lounge. It was an exceptional capper to an uncommonly groovy day. We started with a press walk-through of the soon-to-open Society Hotel (open now), Mexican food at Mi Mero Mole, and a visit to Alejandro's friends at Orox Leather Co., where I picked up a sweet money clip. By then it was time for a proper drink,  and we ducked into Low Brow Lounge,  the much-storied "clean dive" I'd heard bout but never experienced (rock solid, and yes, both clean and a dive), then a quick stop at Teardrop Lounge for my traditional last drink in PDX before hitting PDX Airport itself.  A classically grey day, brightened considerably by the company and the exploration.

But the highlight was Alejandro busting out the high concept City of Gold. He'd been talking about it for a few days, and with all the complicated components it wasn't the easiest one to deliver at at a moment's notice. But this afternoon all the elements were on hand at Teardrop.  I'll let Alejandro explain the thinking behind this ambitious, golden elixir.

“It's really an attempt to capture the flavors of pre-Columbian Mexican cuisine. There is so much more to food cultures than what appears obvious to us. Just like Italian food isn't all tomato sauce and cheese. Or Thai food isn't all fish sauce and Thai chilies.  Mexican food isn't just sour and spicy. There is an inherent earthiness and roundness. Smoke and savor, subtly present amidst sweetness The flavors that sustained the warriors of the Aztecs and the priests of the Maya.”

CITY OF GOLD

2 oz. tequila
.5 oz. aperol
.5 oz. agave
2 dash sarsaparilla root tincture,
1 dash angostura

Stir, large ice cube (rocks)
Grapefruit zest.

Achiote and Roasted corn infused tequila:

Cut kernels off of one large corn cobb and spread on baking sheet. Roast in the oven at 500 for approximately 15 minutes or until slightly charred. Lightly toast in pan a tablespoon of whole achiote seeds, roughly cracked with a mortar and pestle. Combine all ingredients in a large container and add 750ml of Reposado Tequila. Let infusion sit for 12 hours, agitating periodically.  Press through cheese cloth.

Sarsparilla Root Tincture:

Add 6oz of sarparilla root into a mason jar. Fill jar with Wild Turkey 101 rye whiskey. Seal tightly and let sit for 2 weeks. Agitate Daily.

Literary Cocktails '12: Chocotopia

Another drink we made at the Key West Literary Seminar this year was essentially just a really, really good Mexican hot chocolate, leaded. We took Dagoba Xocolatl Drinking Chocolate with good milk, added Don Julio Reposado and topped with 365 lite whipped cream. Ordinarliy using the canned stuff would be considered cheating but when making a couple hundred of these I absolved us of shame over this corner-cutting. Then a little drizzle of dark agave on top of the whipped cream, and a couple healthy dashes of Bittermen's Xoacatl Mole Bitters, giving it that heady, spicy nose and the massive complexity of mole. We shaved some dark chocolate with chiles on top to finish it off, and watched the chocolate fiends go nuts. We had folk coming back for thirds, and grabbing four at a time.

There was a lot of discussion at the "Yet Another World" themed Seminar of utopian vs. dystopian visions of the future. Guest speaker Margaret Atwood posited something a little less definitively cheerful or gloomy with her word "ustopia", which posited that a post-apocalyptic futureworld would merely be defined by us, by society, or its remnants. When KWLS Board Member Nancy Klingener was polling guests and players at the Seminar on what their essential skills might be in a post-apoco society (read here) Atwood's response was, "You're assuming there will be a society." So in fact maybe it is rather gloomy. At any rate we took her term as an inspiration to posit a world where chocolate, and tequila, flows freely for all, the the "Chocotopia" was born.

CHOCOTOPIA

1 1/2 oz Don Julio Reposado

 1 1/2 oz Dagoba Xocolatl Drinking Chocolate

Add the tequila to the chocolate, top with whipped cream. Drizzle some dark agave on the cream and a couple dashes of Bittermens Xocolatl Mole Bitters. Finish with shaving some chile dark chocolate on top of it all, and enjoy while dodging zombies, mutants and extreme survivalists.

Key West Literary Seminar

Bittermens Bitters

 

Key West Literary Seminar Cocktails 2011: Avocado Jalapeno Margarita

 
This one sprang from the fecund mind of Mark Buettler, but I revamped and refined a bit for the purposes of serving 300 at a pop, rather than just one. I made some other aethetic shifts as well. Where Mark added a dash of kosher salt to the top of the drink, I went with Murray River Pink Flake Salt, which brings a certain exotic flavor that's hard to describe--this Australian salt tastes like, well, this salt. I purchased mine at The Filling Station in New York's Chelsea Market, an excellent resource for salts and olive oils.  Mark's technique (see his video where he walks you through the process) involves muddling and straining; I opted to get the infusion of avocado and jalapeno going by throwing it all in a big blender and hitting "puree", then straining out the remaining bits of fruit. Very important to remove the seeds and the pith, or white stuff, in the jalapeno, leaving you with only the flavor and the suggestion, the evocation of heat, rather than the fire itself. And where Mark went with Anejo, I opted for  the more supple, almost honey-kissed Don Julio Reposado, for a softer, sweeter experience.

AVOCADO JALAPENO MARGARITA

8 Parts avocado & jalapeno infused Don Julio Reposado Tequila

(-) 4 Parts Lime Juice (to taste)

1 1/2 Part Dark Agave Nectar

1 1/2 Part Grand Marnier

Shake, Strain into a double rocks glass add fresh ice

Garnish with a lime wheel dropped into the glass. and
Finish with a healthy pinch of Murray River Pink Flake Salt on top.

AVO-JALA TEQUILA

The Avo-Jala Tequila is simply avocado & jalapeno infused and strained tequila. Use not-too ripe avocado, taking care to cut out any brown spots, cut up slices. Puree, let sit for a couple hours. For the Seminar I opted for a less spicy approach and removed seeds altogether, and let the peppers macerate for only a short while. To make hotter, leave seeds in and let the potion sit for 12-24 hours before straining. 
   

Team Embury at the Audubon House in Key West. Far right is Patrick Symmes who was recounting his unsusessful attempt to make whiskey. Courage, Symmes! Don't give up! Trial and error is the name of this game.

Further New Traditionalists & The Debut of the Indian Summer

 

Last Thursday while twin tornadoes ripped across Brooklyn knocking down over 1,000 trees, Team Embury was setting up for its first event of the fall at ne0-retro furniture outfitters The New Traditionalists, in their cozy--and safe--showroom in Soho. Despite a late start due to city-wide apprehension over the intense storm the faithful still made the trek and by 7 p.m. the party was in full swing. I had the chance to demo a new cocktail I'd come up with called "Indian Summer", using Cynar, Beefeater Summer Edition and a puree of equal parts fresh red peppers and pickled sweet and sour mixed peppers--pretty damn tasty, if I do say so myself, and several guests declared its potent foodiness to make it a great alternative to a Bloody Mary. Huge respect to Nic Hirsch of Cellar Bar at Andaz 5th Avenue for his recipe Cynar Rosso (see our post here) that's the source of my original inspiration, and to John Byrd for suggesting the addition of the sweet and sour peppers. Hirch's original recipe calls for Martin Miller's Gin and the crisp, almost biting citrus notes partnered beautifully with the red pepper he muddled it with. But the elderflower, hibiscus flower and blackcurrant notes of the Summer Edition give the sweet and sour vinegared peppers something complex and earthy to work with, and the Indian Summer feels like a great late harvest drink.

 
INDIAN SUMMER

3/4 ounce Cynar
2 ounce Beefeater Summer Edition Gin
1.5 ounce puree of fresh red peppers and sweet & sour peppers*
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice
1/4 ounce turbinado syrup

I made a punch with the recipe and shook individual servings. As a combination garnish and ice cube I froze some colorful habaneros in a take-out container.
*I used "Peperoni in Agrodolce" from Il Mongetto-can be purchased at BuonItalia in Chelsea Market--they don't seem to be on the website yet but can be ordered by phone at 212-633-9717, and they're about $12.

Amy McNally of Brooklyn's Camp bar and Embury's main man Mark Buettler were on hand. Mark was mixing up something we'd worked on together, a spicy riff on a Paloma, using our still-in-development sriracha bitters.

Clicking on the recipe cards below should give you a nice big printable file.

 
Jaime Salas of Milagro manned a station, serving up the Mora y Sylvia  with blackberries and Fee Brothers Whiskey Barrel Aged Bitters.

  

New Brand Forecast: Milagro Blend

 
Dateline: New Orleans. At the 2010 Tales Of The Cocktail gathering Milagro Bartender Competition which showcased 14 bartenders from around the country, another sort of cocktail was on offering. Months earlier Gaston Martinez and Jaime Salas of William Grant & Sons had asked Milagr0 co-founder Danny Schneeweiss to create a special offering for all the competitors. Danny concocted a special blend of 3 of 
Milagro's main offerings, the Barrel Reserve, the Silver and the Anejo. At a dinner the night before the big competition (and, this being  Tales Of The Cocktail, the obligatory blow-out party) Danny talked about creating the blend, and how he'd hand numbered all the bottles. Competitors all  received bottles, and the blend would be served to guests at the next evening's competition & party as a one-night-only, ephemeral  tequila meritage. Like the apocryphal flash of green that is said to appear some evenings over the Gulf of Mexico, it would exist merely for that one moment. "I love it so much I don't want to give it away," he said wistfully to the table of bartenders participating in the competition from all over: Dallas, Boulder, San Francisco, St. Louis.  I was reminded of a sort of mien that's come up recently when discussing really great cocktails--that quality a drink can have of being so amazing and irresistibly delicious that you just want to get as much of it in you as quickly as possible. It sounds like a binge, and it is, but a binge on a fine taste arc and perfect balance as much as just the power of mood altering spirits, if not more. "I love it because I can taste all the different tequilas coming through--I can taste everything we do," Danny said with unfettered enthusiasm.  There was a clear glow of pride in his face as he shared the ratio he finally arrived at after a month of trials: 50% Milagro Silver, 30% Select Barrel Reserve Reposado and 20% Milagro Anejo. The result was, in fact, a super tequila, in the same sense that a tuscan can be super: flavors elevated from their standard pitch to a heroic intensity, a rigorous riff on existing flavors and just some damn fine drinkable stuff. Like a meritage it pulls from each of its elements' flavor profiles and pushes them somehow farther, bigger, grander. Why haven't artisanal blended tequilas existed before?  There's the Joven category, where one tequila is used to offset another's weakness(es) and "soften" it, but in this case all the tequilas were great from jump, so it's a bit different. Like Maker's 46, this blend took a page from the viniculture playbook in its technique and basic concept, delivered something rooted firmly in the brand's trademark flavors and pushed it into a new, compellingly drinkable realm. Smashing good stuff.

The next evening, at the competition, William Grant's Charlotte Voisey was pouring the blend into snifters, neat.  Charlotte's pretty measured in her compliments, and so her clear enthusiasm for the blend was persuasive. "I thought I'd be pretty quiet at this station just pouring a blended tequila, no ice or mixer, but it was incredibly busy--and people kept coming back." At the end of the evening she was positively beaming over the blend's reception. "It was almost a Hendrick's moment, where people would drink it and say, I don't like gin but I like this. People were drinking it who said they would never drink tequila but they loved this and they came back."

By the end of the evening the conversation was already happening about putting the blend out commercially. "It has to be done," said Charlotte, shaking her head, clearly certain that this was something crucial for Milagro to put out there. I commented that it could take the young brand that was still finding its identity in the marketing space and move it to another level. Her look seemed to imply that it was already happening, as we spoke. Perhaps it was.
 

It would be silly to resist Voisey's inception* of how great this blend is. It helps that the blend is actually astonishingly spot on, not too oaky, not too smokey, not too buttery, just very just right. Very Goldilocks perfect. You want to drink it fast because it's so good, but its so complex and interesting you are compelled to nurse and savor it.

Charlotte and Milagro's Jaime Salas

She was doing tastings as workers were clearing away tables. The party was over, but she was on point with this stuff. Again, very persuasive. I'm calling it now. Milagro Special Reserve Blend on shelves by Christmas.

"Ten out of ten," she said on the response from those who sampled the blend, with return visits. I'd have to say of all the cocktails I had that night (10 out of the 14 entries, perhaps, some good ones to be sure, but all batched and not in their ideal state) this cocktail of tequilas alone was actually the best.

*See: Inception.

Tanner's Punch

The newest member of Team Embury, Tanner Sarff, taking a testing whiff of a punch he worked up for Justin Violinis' party for the launch of his Fearless Project. Milagro gave us some bottles of Silver to work with,requesting that we do one batch of their signature Milagro Freshest Margarita (2 parts Silver, 1 part lime juice, 3/4 part of their own branded and really quite good amber agave-makes a foolproof, perfectly sweet margarita) and left us to come up with one of our own. While kicking around ideas I was reminded of a classic soda pop-y Mexican approach to margaritas using Squirt instead of fresh citrus, and when I mentioned it to Tanner he perked up--being from Arizona where Squirt is quite popular and had some ideas right off the bat. In New York, as events would prove, it is quite hard to find. (Eventually I found litre bottles at a D'Agastino on Christopher Street.) We had a batch of Mark Buettler's one-of-a-kind home made Sriracha bitters that we really wanted to take out for a spin, and Tanner set out to create something working with these elements.

 

Muddling up some strawberries was a brainwave that proved successful.

When trying out ideas that will eventually be made into a punch it's extremely useful to make individual serving sized drinks first, and to use a jigger to keep track of your ratios. This makes fine tuning far simpler, and allows you to easily replicate the recipe on a large scale by simply recreating that ratio, using a measuring cup instead of a jigger. Using a 1 ounce/2 ounce jigger works well when your bigger measuring cup is a 2 cupper.

 

Pouring little amuse bouche size servings in shot glasses is a very civilized way to taste each iteration as it evolves, and you're not stuck with a full cocktail that sort of demands to be consumed--when trying recipes there's no need to drink the whole thing, as you may easily lose track of your results after a few. This method keeps your consumption at a more moderate, manageable pace. Until you give in and go all Cookie Monster when you hit the winning combination. Which is okay too.

 
Again, the ace in the hole here (aside from the hard-to-find Squirt) were the most-likely unique sriracha bitters.

 

Tanner added a little extra citrus to sort of freshen up the Squirt's tangy grapefruit flavor profile, just a bit of lemon and lime. Sometimes you get it right in just a couple tries and this time it happened-the second batch was pretty much spot on and rather than further mess with it we just went ahead and built a punch size batch in a Montana Jar.

 

2 cups.

Smelling and tasting as you build the punch is key--while you follow a ratio, you still adjust and tweak as you go.

Naming a drink can be incredibly easy or incredibly hard--and often I find really good drinks that you'd like to share can be quite tricky--stakes are high, as you think this one might actually become popular in some small way. This time we got a great drink but a safe fallback name.

TANNER'S PUNCH

2 Parts Milagro Silver
1 Part Squirt
1/4 Part Lime
1/4 Part Lemon
Muddled Strawberries
Sriracha Bitters
1 slice of Jalapeno per serving

You get this great pink punch, with a layer of slightly ominous strawberry protoplasm. The slice of jalapeno mans up what could otherwise be a bit pretty, and a pinch of Murray River Pink Salt on top of the drink makes it pretty bad ass. So we packed up our punches and headed down to the party-photos in the second half of the post.

Wednesday's Cocktail: The Lovely Rita

Embury Cocktails Presents: The Lovely Rita from Embury Cocktails on Vimeo.

iPhone & iPad friendly version here.

Literary Cocktails: Molé Margarita Punch

For the final party at the Key West Literary Seminar we decided to pull out the stops and make a really dazzling, seemingly improbable cocktail as the grand finale. Over the 3 days of the Seminar our little cocktail table had gained something of a faithful following, with repeat visitors who sought us out and even one group that referred to themselves as our "groupies", which was flattering. I was struck by how this sophisticated, literate crowd of (as I like to refer to them) lifetime New Yorker subscription holders found the notion of specialty cocktails to be quite novel. It's easy living in New York and being within this whole cocktail scene to forget that this boozy renaissance has not quite hit outside of urban centers--there are certainly exceptions around the country, little bars and restaurants that take the craft of the cocktail seriously, but there's plenty of room for education and better libations.

So when we began serving the molé margarita minds were promptly blown.

It's gone by different names since Mark Buettler created it in the fall at Dressler, after challenging himself to find a way to use Ovaltine in a cocktail. When German bitters outfit Bittermans came out with their Xocolatl Molé Bitters, he saw a way to crack the code. The resulting neo-margarita was called Puebla on the Dressler menu, but I called it Y Tu Molé Tambien when I first wrote about it. We re-dubbed it the  Tarnished Halo at a party for James Rosenquist where Mark did the cocktail catering and renamed the drink after one of the artist's pieces. But for for the purposes of the party I simply referred to it as a "molé margarita"....and the crowd went wild. I'd batched it by sense rather than measurements---I had the luxury of having had many, many of the originals from Mark's hands. And in lieu of using store bought Orgeat Chris Otten of Bad Boy Burrito made a batch from scratch, toasting almonds for a couple hours, then cooking them down with a quite a lot of dark agave nectar--he did it using his considerable cuisine kung fu, dispensing with anything resembling a recipe, so I can't tell you what he did. But Torani makes a perfectly fine Orgeat (here). Like with the Bennett punch we made a big batch, shook individual drinks with ice and strained into glasses, topping with the bitters as a final touch. These glasses were rimmed with the crowning touch--a combination of Ovaltine, almond flour and Murray River Flake Salt. I'd recommend starting small and making individual drinks before jumping up to the punch version--get to know the flavor and you'll be able to tweak the big version to your taste. Here is the original recipe:

Y TU MOLE TAMBIEN/TARNISHED HALO

1 1/2 oz blanco tequila

1/2 oz fresh lime juice

1/3 oz dark agave nectar

1/3 oz Orgeat

Shake Strain into a Double Rocks Glass rimmed with Ovaltine/Almond Flour/Sea Salt

Add Fresh Ice

Top with 4 Dashes of Bittermans Xocolatl Molé Bitters

Give a Slight Stir to Incorporate the Bitters and Serve....

Rim Mixture:

2 parts Ovaltine
2 parts almond flour
1 part sea salt (Mark used  Fleur de Sel de Guerande, we used Murray River Pink Flake Salt)

Happy literati, suffused in a molé and tequila glow.

Torani Orgeat

Bittermans Bitters

All Mark Buettler posts and videos 

Literary Cocktails: The Beautiful Toddies

Photo: Curt Richter

When the Director of the Key West Literary Seminar, Miles Frieden, asked me to come down to do a little specialty cocktail table for the various parties that follow the days' more sober proceedings I simply reviewed Embury and pulled some of the best recipes we've run over the years (yes, years!) and batched them up. But for the first night's party I pulled a last minute substitution. The same cold snap that descended over the rest of the continent did in fact reach Key West and nighttime temperatures in the low 40s meant that an outdoor partygoers could really use something warm. 

A last minute experimentation with my crack drinking & concocting team from Bad Boy Burrito yielded the below version of a hot toddie. My one bit of advice for serving 300 people a cocktail with hot water as an integral part: make sure you've got working hot water source. And if you get percolators, make sure they don't have a residual coffee aftertaste. My assistant Zeph Allen and I worked with the one acceptable percolator and made it work, shuttling hot water across the garden in air pots. A bank of 3 or 4  instantly heating tea pots would have been nice. I'd named the Toddie after Seminar honoree Richard Wilbur's poem "The Beautiful Changes"

THE BEAUTIFUL TODDIE

(We used 8 ounce paper cups)

1 good slug of dark agave nectar, just enough to fill the bottom of the cup (to about 1/3 inch.)

1 1/2 ounces Maker's Mark

Hot water--fill to about an 3/4 inch from the rim, and stir about 5 times

Squeeze and drop in a substantial lemon wedge

Top with a couple healthy dashes of Fee Bros. Grapefruit Bitters.

The Grapefruit Bitters push the whole flavor equation into a zestier zone, bringing up the citrus and offsetting the sweetness of the agave and the Maker's Mark perfectly. By all accounts this was a home run, warming guests so sucessfully that many were able to brave the chilly night for a couple hours, and a couple rounds.

Helper monkey Zeph Allen taking the wheel. (One uses "helper monkey" in the most affectionate sense, and of course it comes from a Simpsons episode where Homer gets one as a sort of drinking & slacking buddy.) It was cool to watch a non-bartender start to get the whole key notion of balance in cocktails, and play with levels and tweak ingredients, an innate sensibility that probably is rooted in his musicianship. Towards the end of the evening Zeph made a few alternate iterations, subbing some light agave for the dark to refreshing, less knock-out drops effect

 

Jolly Benson, Lighting Director for the KWLS and too-infrequent Embury contributor (here) and myself.

Check out Littoral, the blog for the Seminar, here, and look for podcasts of readings and talks from the Seminar at the Audio Archives.

Tomorrow: The Bennet for 200.

Photos: Ian Rowan