EMBURY COCKTAILS

Bill Bash 75, Fords Gin Officers' Reserve & The Brandied Orange Breakfast Martini

Bill Rowan on the weekend-long occasion of his 75th birthday and Betsy Lindell, proprietor of Seasoned. Photo: Ian Rowan

I was first introduced to the breakfast martini at the 42 Below Cocktail World Cup in Queenstown in 2011, at a morning seminar led by the creator of this breakfast of champions himself, Salvatore Calabrese. It was a totally new concept to me, and Salvatore talked us through the process of his inspiration and oversaw the preparation of flights of the highly crushable cocktail for thirsty (and doubtless hungover) bartenders, esteemed guests and a couple of lucky writers.  I've had and made the drink many times since, but it's never been quite as perfect an experience as that first time at 10:00 in the morning at a sports lodge overlooking Lake Wakatipu. Flash forward 8 years, to a couple Fridays ago, when my dad and all 3 of my brothers came to New Orleans to celebrate our Dad's 75th birthday. When I came home that morning from running around New Orleans picking up things like extra plates, forks and knives (I've never had 5 people to dinner at my apartment before-glassware I have a lot of, thanks to the "experienced cookware" shop Seasoned, found a FedEx package on my doorstep, and opened it to find a bottle of Fords Gin Officers' Reserve inside (and a very nifty little team flag).

I immediately flashed on Jamboree Jams, a one woman local jam maker (small but growing) and thought, I should do some breakfast martinis with this bottle. The next day brother Josh and I strolled the 7 or 8 blocks from my apartment to Seasoned, where Jamboree is always well-stocked. Proprietor Betsy Lindell had kindly kept the shop open a few minutes past closing for us as we were running a bit behind (you try moving 5 Rowans across New Orleans on schedule)  and I explained the mission we were on--the closest she had in stock to orange marmalade per se was Brandied Orange, which were both pretty sure it was a marmalade, meaning made with peel--and texts with the jam maker herself Sara Lavasseur confirmed that it was), which I reckoned would work nicely; I said we'd bring a little sample by for her to try.

The next morning the experimenting and tinkering began as my dad and brothers hung out and had breakfast.

Pa and Brother Josh.

Brother Noah.

I followed Salvatore's recipe closely in terms of proportions, although I did not use Cointreau as he does--instead, I used a rich strawberry simple syrup I'd made a couple weeks prior with some almost embarrassingly ripe & sweet berries from Johndale's Strawberry Farm in Pontchatoula that I'd picked up at Crescent City Farmer's Market. Wanting to preserve them somehow, I'd made a small batch of syrup, without any real plans for it--it was sweeter than something I'd typically go for, but as I put this version of Salvatore's recipe together, and with the plummy, almost Antica Formula-esque richnessof the brandied orange marmalde, it just worked. And that intense sweetness of the syrup was offset by the bracing 54.4% ABV of the Officers' Reserve--an instance where that higher proof works to your advantage (Good intro to the virtues of Navy strength gins at VinePair). That proof also allowed me to fudge Salvatore's recipe a bit (well, a lot, really) and to forego the Cointreau (which was good, as I didn't have any.) And the slightly supple quality that comes from aging the gin for a couple weeks in sherry casks connected the dots here, somehow. I did add some orange zest in the shaker to bring that enzyme-y zing you want in a marmalade. Result was pretty delicious, according to brothers and dad.

Littlest brother Ian, the little minx.

Brandied Orange Breakfast Martini

 

1 1/2 oz. Fords Gin Officers' Reserve

1/2 oz. lemon juice

1/2 oz. 2:1 strawberry simple syrup

1 generous bar spoon of Jamboree Jams Brandied Orange

Zested orange peel to zing up the mixture, to  be discarded. 

 

Combine ingredients in shaker over ice, shake vigorously, strain into coupe.

We had reservations at Arnaud's at 1:15 PM, and when I finished my extended R & D is was getting close to 12:30. I requisitioned Josh to help me transport the cocktail to Seasoned, about 8 blocks from my house;. We used a Coleman thermos that was branded for Verve Coffee that my friend Andy Salzer of Hiro Clark had given to me years earlier, and I'd never once used--glad I carted it around all this time.

Josh chilled the inside with ice water, then added the drink--I took a sterling silver cocktail pourer I'd gotten (at Seasoned, of course) out of the freezer where I'd had it since Friday rallied the troops, and we all trekked over to Seasoned, passing around a couple cocktails as we went.

Man of the hour, and the entire weekend, on the St Charles Streetcar line with his breakfast martini in tow.

We pretty much ambushed Betsy, 5 of us swarming into the shop with cameras and cocktails.

I'd really wanted my dad and brothers to meet Betsy and to see the place.

Brother Josh, captain of the Schooner Hindu. At this point I was just pimping my brothers out for Fords. I should have given him the flag for The Hindu...but frankly, I wanted it for myself.

Quick round of breakfast martinis and we were off to Arnaud's, feeling rather gay after our breakfast martinis. It truly is an occasion cocktail, and while that occasion could certainly be a random Tuesday, it's best to enjoy in the morning-which may lead you to enjoy the rest of the day just a little bit more.

Spirited Pride Players: Alex Negranza of Anvil Bar & Refuge

Editor's note: I'm working with Campari America to interview and feature some very cool, very talented LGBTQ players in the cocktail and spirits world in celebration of Pride Month.  JR

 Bartender Alex Negranza has a fairly outsized passion for Negronis--his Instagram handle and nickname is A_Negroni, and he spearheads Negroni Week in Houston where he works at Anvil Bar & Refuge. He's also the Global Brand Ambassador for Scrappy's Bitters. The guy doesn't seem to need to sleep. I spoke with Alex via Skype as a late afternoon storm system moved into Houston. Alex sipped an Americano as we chatted, while back in Long Island City I had a nice lean rye & soda. Alex took me through his journey from barista to bartender and broke down his obsession with negronis, his go-to airport bar order, and a recent tattoo of one of his favorite drinks.

Photo: Sam Landrum

JR: So you're ramping up for Negroni Week?

AN: Yes, I've actually just been on the phone with our distributor and our local Campari rep and working on a really cool shirt design we're doing just for the Houston market as well as some limited edition screen prints. I've been working with a local artist/designer Matthew Tabor on commissioning a piece of art. It’ll be a hand pulled, screen printed homage to the Negroni- each of the 25 will be hand signed and numbered by the artist, they’re gorgeous. We've got the launch party coming up, and the Houston United States Bartender's Guild  June meeting is being hosted by Campari here at Anvil, so we've got a lot going on.

JR: So you're like the ringleader for Negroni Week there?
AN: Ringleader, cat herder, whatever you want to call it!

JR: It's funny, I always say about emailing for recipes or quotes from bartenders is like herding cats—drunk cats. Speaking of: what are you drinking

AN: An Americano. The Americano has been my go-to drink recently—as I've been visiting all these venues gearing up for Negroni Week, it’s a little easier to have a lower ABV Americano—can't always have a Negroni at each stop, this kind of limits my actual alcohol intake. And it's an appropriate cocktail—since it kind of started off the Negroni.

JR: I was on an epic travel bender last year, and I made a point of ordering Americanos as the first drink every time I got to a new town. And it's interesting the subtle variations you'll see from bar to bar, around the world.

AN: Did you have more people saying that they don't have coffee?

JR: It's about 30% of the time, if you don't specify “cocktail” you get a coffee.

Photo: Sam Landrum

JR: So where did you start your career in hospitality?

AN: I worked at a bunch of specialty coffee bars around Seattle.

JR: Isn't that compulsory in Seattle, doing a stint in a coffee shop?

AN: Exactly! It's actually what got me up to Seattle in the first place, and it definitely set me on a course for the bar world—I started working in bars while on a sabbatical from coffee industry and the sabbatical continues about six years later.

 

Customized Tonic Program from Bittercube and Bombay Sapphire East. Also, father gets married.

 Photos: Mark Hedden.

A couple months ago I was invited to sit in on a customized tonic project that the Bombay Sapphire EAST team was working on with the good folks at Bittercube. At BSE's request, the Bittercube boys--Nick Kosevich and Ira Koplowitz-had devised an ingenious segmented tonic mix & match toolkit--with about a dozen botanicals bottled separately to be used to create an individualized base for a tailor-made tonic for select bars across the country. With the wave of really good tonics out there the BSE team cannily is seeking to insert themselves into the equation and servicing bars like this may work out well for them.  At the session I attended there was some encouragement to employ some of the predominant botanicals in the BSE--namely  Thai Lemongrass and Vietnamese Black Peppercorn--but one was mainly left to one's own devices to tinker and tweak.

Photo: amny.com

Sat at a table in the back of  at my new neighborhood bar Sekend Sun (above) in Astoria with chef Gary Tackett, funnyman Kosevich and Raj Nagra (best dressed man in the spirits game-he was in full Cary Grant mode that day) and we fooled around with combos. I was told that I was the only journalist to be invited to participate in the process--seems that Camper English got in on the action on the West Coast, and his typically in-depth analysis of the project and the process is packed with valuable geekery. My personal lament with the process was that 2 or 3 trial and errors was nowhere near enough--I would have liked to have had a couple hours to keep working on the mix. Zach Patterson, of my favorite bar in Los Angeles, Melrose Umbrella Co., pretty much insisted on that--I think he sort of muscled his way into a several hour R & D session through his typical unbridled enthusiasm for the project. My resulting formulation was pleasant but too minty after it all came together--I'd like to think a few more trial & errors might have fixed that. But my yuzu and mint forward tonic was interesting, and the personalized bottle was pretty sweet.

I threw the tonic extract in my luggage and took it with me to Key West, where I shared it with my friends at The Other Side, pretty much the only place in the Keys where you can get a proper craft cocktail. Head Bartender Tim Rabior was kind enough to assemble the tonic for me, which involves making a simple syrup and mixing with charged water.  Owners Chris Schultz and Keith St. Peter let me host some friends and family for a tasting one Thursday evening in April. It also happened to be two days before my dad was to be married, so the gathering served double duty as a tasting and de facto welcome party.

Soon-to-be stepbrother Arlo Haskell, Director of the Key West Literary Seminar and G & T enthusiast.

Poppa Bear Rowan holding court.

Brother Ian who is currently working on a doc on narwhal preservation efforts in Canada. And soon-to-be step sister-in-law Ashley who's currently working on a step niece was the one person not drinking that night.

Ever the wry observer, Nancy Klingener surveys the crowd. Nan is the voice and vision of NPR for the Keys.

Me with photographer to the stars Nick Doll.  The other photographer in the room, Mark Hedden, was busy taking these photos.

Trout Creek Negroni at Nostrana (w/ Clear Creek Douglas Fir Eau de Vie)

 PHOTO: Michael Ernsting Photography

I've somehow managed to get a negroni recipe I came up with (with some heavy duty help) onto the March menu at Nostrana in Portland as part of their monthly Pro Series. I'm sandwiched between Jeff Morgenthaler (Clyde Common, Pépe le Moko) and Kenta Goto (Pegu Club, and his own soon-to-open spot), two bartenders whose palates and sensibilities I really admire, so it's pretty heady company. And Nostrana chef's Cathey Whims' gorgeous Italian cuisine and superior, seamless service team has always been pretty damn enchanting the few times I've gotten to dine there. That Negroni Week started with them also adds to the luster.

When I wrote about Nostrana's annual Negroni Social and the accompanying booklet with the recipes that had been featured throughout the year I got to know Peter Carpenter, bar manager, first by email and then later at Portland Cocktail Week, and somehow I made a good enough impressions that he asked me to contribute. Which was flattering. And scary. What did I have to bring to the negroni party that all the other heavy hitter chefs and bartenders perhaps hadn't? I kept coming back to the fact that I grew up in the area and had a strong affinity for the terroir.

Trout Creek

Having spent most of my childhood in the foothills of the Cascades, 60 miles south of Portland, I'm quite intimate with the forest and the aromas and the generally pine-y, evergreen pitch-rich atmosphere of Oregon.  I think the juniper of gin always felt familiar to me. That very first time I got drunk at a park in downtown Portland (that I now pass constantly during PDXCW) on smuggled gin & tonics in a thermos, missed buses and my exclaiming that "drunk is fun", words I've lived by, for sometimes worse but mostly for better, ever since. That illicit G & T tasted like a walk in the woods up the creek next to the cabin I where I grew up in Dickie Prairie, a very, very small town  populated with loggers, stray hippie bohemian types like my parents, 60s burnouts and just some serious farming community rednecks. It was a tight community and sparsely populated--there were 8 kids in my graduating class at the end of 8th grade. Our cabin was built where the Molalla River and the much smaller Trout Creek met, and the largest swimming hole on the river was situated. It was called The Punchbowl, due to its nearly perfectly circular shape. The landscape of the steep hills-beginnings of mountains, really-was moss covered and shady, with sturdy evergreens growing along the slopes. We got a narrow swath of unobstructed sky and sunshine where the river and the creek carved a winding hole in the dense, Shire-esque canopy that filtered out sunlight on that mossy fecund floor.

I played in those woods, and chopped wood there, and wandered for a decade. When musing over what a Negroni in Portland, in the Pacific Northwest, could be,  I connected that smell of those towering Doug Firs that lined the river and the creek with that pine-y, gin aspect that is in a way totally amplified in a Negroni--it felt like same-same. And the Clear Creek Douglas Fir Eau de Vie has always struck me as one of the most successful of the far flung Eau de Vies out there, a pure distillation of a tree's essence. And Stephen McCarthy is just a pioneer in West Coast distilling and a real gentleman. The Clear Creek Distillery is located in Industrial Northwest, a formerly desolate part of town I used to roam in the early 90s, with very Repo Man/Outsiders stylings. It was such an obvious and simple fit and so appropriate all around. It wrote itself, as they say.

 PHOTO: Michael Enrsting Photography

I must give credit and thanks to a high-powered little tasting panel that took me through part of the R & D. I brought a bottle of the Doug Fir Eau de Vie over to Jacob Briars of Bacardi's apartment on his birthday, on a night when New York was blanketed by big, cinematic snowflakes-Hollywood snow. The other guests were   Charlotte Voisey of William Grant & Sons and and bartender/chef/writer Naren Young. After dinner I pulled the Doug Fir Eau de Vie out and shared my negroni concept. Bottles came down from the wall and we ran through several iterations of the ratios and ingredients. In the end I followed the formulation we'd arrived at pretty closely. 1 oz Gordon's, 1 oz Noilly Pratt Rouge, 1 oz Campari, 1/2 oz Clear Creek Eau de Vie, on the rocks, with a Douglas Fir sprig as a garnish.

Procuring the actual Doug Fir sprigs for the garnish I'd imagined proved a bit of a challenge--I'd tried to bribe a friend to drive out to Trout Creek and cut some tips from the many trees around the property, but a back injury got him out of the task. I then went to my go-to cocktail guys in Portland (possibly the world) from the Teardop Lounge (Sean Hoard of The Commissary being a permanent honored alma mater Teardropper) and Tyler Stevens referred me to Jeanine Racht of--wait for it--Clear Creek Distillery. Through a stroke of luck she was going to their property on Hood River the very next day (March 1, the day the drink was set to debut).  I was reminded of the moment in Almost Famous when Frances McDormand is talking to Billy Crudup on the phone and tells him, "Aspire to greatness and great forces will come to your aid. Goethe said that." I certainly could not have realized this drink so fully without serious aid from all mentioned. I am glad to have been able to put together this homage to the forest of my childhood in this small way.

Special thanks to Nancy Klingener for her always reliable copy editing.

The Golden Cocktail Mile or: 12 Drinks Inspired by "The World's End" from Alastair Walker of The Everleigh

[Download full 11x17 GOLDENCOCKTAILMILE]When I met Alastair Walker at The Everleigh in the Fitzroy District of Melbourne this past November, I couldn't have predicted that a week later he'd have come up with 12 cocktails inspired by the 12 pubs in Edgar Wright's "The World's End". As I sat at the bar chatting with him the film came up--he recounted going with a friend who'd gotten tickets for "This Is The End"--somehow the two guys had been talking about the two different, similarly named films, something I'd speculated must have happened at some point. Apparently it wasn't the ideal set-up for enjoying Franco, Rogen & Baruchel when you were primed for Pegg, Frost & Freeman. That led us to talking about the Edgar Wrightini and the stunt shot "The World's End" we'd done with Jacob Briars. I sat at the bar, enjoying my first-ever Woolworth after the longest series of flights I'd ever endured,  I mentioned that  I thought there was still room to create homage drinks for "The World's End", 12 possibilities, in fact--the pubs, and the pub names, all totally sounded like drinks already. Alastair said he'd look over the list and after just a couple emails back and forth he'd come up with 12. All recipes are below and there's a rather nice 11x17 downloadable poster we've made: Download GOLDENCOCKTAILMILE. We were definitely inspired by Wright making available a downloadable poster of the Golden Mile map (2 sided!) for anyone who fancyed being Gary King for Halloween.

The pub names do indeed work remarkably well for cocktails. In some cases these are drinks Alastair was working on and  was kicking about for names already, some started with the pub name, and one or two are pre-existing cocktails that just work too well with the name not to be borrowed. A case in point is "The World's End" (A.K.A. Better Then A.K.A. Jayne Fonder) as its both fiery (to the palate) and blue which just fits the bill too perfectly. There are a number of cocktails utilizing ale, naturally. I think the thematic resonances of all the drinks are clear when you read through them. I'm sure Alastair would be more than happy to make any (or all) of them for you at The Everleigh, but if you're not lucky enough to be in Melbourne in the near future your friendly neighborhood bartender should be able to easily recreate them with these recipes. Properly outfittted of course, one could make them at home. And one hopes one is and one does.

We wanted throw a little spotlight on the artwork of the signs themselves in this project. One thing I hadn't known that came out of a little research was that Wright's brother Oscar was involved in their develoment and is a frequent collaborator. That was neat to discover both because brothers working together is obviously cool; then there's the fact that parents naming their kids "Edgar" and "Oscar" is quite rad.  There are meanings to both the pub names and the details in the artwork; forums on Wright's site go into some elaborate theorizing about the significance of the names and the signs. Like a chinese box the film just seems to have more and more layers as you revisit it and delve deeper. As far as who is responsible for the signs themselves, Marcus Rowland, the inspired production designer for the film explained, "Like all film making it's a collaborative venture, starting with Edgar then me, followed by ideas from Oscar and our graphics person Georgina Millett, & finally scenic painter Barnaby Gorton pulls it all together." 

Many thanks to Alastair Walker for the creativity, and Michael Madrusan of The Everleigh, for participating in this rather extravagant liquid homage. And a huge thank you to Greg Needham who put the poster together  with considerable inspiration and patience  And for anyone who may wonder why the tagline for the poster is " A Liquid Repast for The World's End", please refer to the clip below, which also serves as a neat summary of the 12 stops along the Golden Mile. Jason Rowan

THE FIRST POST

 1 1/2 oz. Gin 

1/2 oz. Suze

1 oz. Lime 

3/4 oz. Simple 

2 dashes of absinthe

Soda top 

Light shake, served tall over ice with a lime wedge garnish

THE OLD FAMILIAR

 1 1/2 oz. Aged Rum 

1/2 oz. Jamaican Rum

Brown sugar cube

Pinch of salt

2 dashes of angostura bitters

Served on the rocks, with a orange twist

(A.K.A The S.C.O.F. (Salted Caramel Old Fashioned))

 

THE FAMOUS COCK

1 oz. Gin 

1/2 oz. lemon

1/2 oz. simple 

Egg white 

Amber ale top 

 Dry shake, wet shake, served in a fizz glass with the beer top

(A.K.A. Andy Shandy)

THE CROSS HANDS

2 oz. Scotch 

1 oz. Cocchi Americano Rosa 

3 dashes of orange bitters

Stirred down and served in a coupe, lemon twist garnish

THE GOOD COMPANION

1 oz. Irish whiskey 

1 oz. Cognac 

Brown sugar cube

2 dashes of orange bitters

Served on the rocks, lemon twist

(A.K.A 4/3rds)

THE TRUSTY SERVANT

 2 oz. oz. Aged Rum 

1/2 oz. oz. Dry vermouth

1/2 oz. oz. Cynar 

Stirred down and served in a coupe, orange twist

(A.K.A The Right Hand Man)

THE TWO HEADED DOG

1 1/2 oz. Aged Rum

3/4 oz. White Cacao 

3/4 oz. Kola tonic 

3/4 oz. Cream 

Egg yolk

Dry shake, wet shake, served in a flip glass and garnished with nutmeg

 THE MERMAID 

 2 oz. Genever

3/4 oz. Lime

3/4 oz. Pomegranate molasses (cut with simple)

Cucumber 

Shaken, and served in a coupe, garnished with black pepper on top

(A.K.A The Intrepid Fox-We threw in this teaser poster to the mix because A. "Intrepid Fox" is just great and B. Can't ever hurt to have some Rosamund Pike in the mix.))

 

THE BEE HIVE

1 oz. Bourbon

3/4 oz. lemon

3/4 oz. Honey

Pale ale top

Light shake, served tall over ice, topped with the pale ale

(A.K.A The Beerhive)

 THE KING'S HEAD

 2 oz. Irish whiskey

3/4 oz. Lime

3/8 oz. Pomegranate molasses (cut with simple)

3/8 oz. Campari

Shaken, served in a coupe, garnished with a lime wedge 

(A.K.A Crazy Eyes)

THE HOLE IN THE WALL

2 oz. Scotch 

3/4 oz. Suze

1/4 oz. Grand Marnier 

Stirred down, served in a coupe, orange twist garnish. 

THE WORLD'S END

2 oz. Tequila 

1 oz. Lime 

3/8 oz. Curaçao

3/8 oz. Agave

3 Dashes of hot sauce (Cholula)

Light shake, served on the rocks, garnished with a lime wedge

(A.K.A Better than (Jayne Fonder))

THE WORLD'S END PUB SIGNS & THE GOLDEN COCKTAIL  MILE

Director: Edgar Wright Written by: Edgar Wright & Simon Pegg Production Designer: Marcus Rowland Concept Art: Oscar Wright Graphic Designer: Georgina Millett Scenic Painter: Barnaby Gorton    Cocktails: Alastair Walker, The Everleigh Golden Cocktail Mile Poster Design: Greg Needham Project Coordination: Embury Cocktails

 

Beefeater Burrough's Reserve: Get Some

Wrote up Master Distiller Desmond Payne's ingenious barrel aged Burrough's Reserve for T Style. One very cool thing I discovered from talking to Desmond was that Clyde Common's Jeff Morgenthaler's barrel aged sparkling Negroni had been one of the inspirations for this beguiling new liquid. Linking London to Portland (my hometown) made me rather chuffed.

Above, Morgenthaler. Below, the custom made glassware for tasting Burrough's Reserve both chilled and closer to room temperature, like a whiskey.

"The World's End" Cocktail

  

MILD SPOILER ALERTS THROUGHOUT. Jacob Briars of Bacardi (when I texted him about his full title he responded "Global Trade Advocacy Director. Pretentious, moi?") has been cheekily serving blue drinks at cocktail competitions, trainings and special guest appearances around the world for the past several years. In the often solemn and occasionally pompous craft cocktail landscape Jacob's added this bit of silliness as a way to remind folks that cocktails are supposed to be fun, and to take a bit of the piss out of the arch seriousness we all occasionally fall victim to. There's a pivotal scene early on in "The World's End" where a seemingly normal, human character is revealed to be filled with blue liquid. It's a measure of how firm the association between Jacob Briars and blue liquid had become for me that when that rather shocking moment occurs he instantly came to mind as the guy to approach to work on the concept for a drink inspired by the film. That he works with the blue-bottled and tinted Bombay Sapphire was simply kismet. That Sapphire is Edgar Wright's gin call of choice ("mainly because I like to say it" he told me when I interviewed him about the copious drinking in the film for T Style) was icing on the cake.

Jacob and I quickly agreed that a riff on a corpse reviver just made sense, tinted blue with Bols Blue Curaçao, to be added to a pint. (Someday I'll count how many pints are consumed in the pub crawl that drives the plot, but at least for some characters it's around 12.) Here's Jacob's offering:

THE WORLD'S END

1/2 oz Bombay Sapphire Gin

1/2 oz Lillet

1/2 oz Bold Blue Curaçao

1/2 oz Strained lemon juice

Shake together, and fill a pipette or eye dropper with the mixture. Pour a crisp lager of wheat beer into a pint glass. Have a sip, then add the Reviver. Continue drinking, repeat until merry enough to forget any concerns about potential impending apocalypse.

Note: Simon Pegg's character is NOT the one revealed to be filled with blue liquid in the scene mentioned above. This is just the only photo I could get my hands on that showed the blue stuff. Also note: Pegg's kinetic, manic, endearing and surprisingly poignant performance should get him an Oscar nod, although it likely will be overlooked due to the Academy's aversion to awarding comedies and just its general lameness.

POSTSCRIPT: Have now tried the blue stuff a couple of times and when consumed as an accompinement to beer it's rather good--I'd pegged it as a bit of a stunt drink but the blue curaçao works rather nicely with the Lillet and the gin--bit of an eye opener when the party is lagging, too.

 

In droppers, the blue stuff can be smuggled into a cinema where it ought to be consumed starting with the first fight scene in the bathroom. 

Photo: Mark Hedden

KWLS 2013: Sean Hoard's "The Third Man"

For the debut cocktail on offer at the Key West Literary Seminar 2013, we went with no less loaded a Graham Greene project than "The Third Man". The connection to the drink? The citrus, black tea and English gin punch was certainly emminently British which always connects with Greene, but the ostensible hero of the movie is American. And the titular character, Harry Lime, played by Orson Welles in an epic eleventh hour cameo that informs the entire film, also seems to be American, or perhaps simply post-war mid-Atlantic thespian. But the essence of the concoction, sweet, smooth, even beguiling, and irresistebly seductive, matches Harry Lime's troubling charm nicely. Also, we wanted to really go full-on with the Greene connection when we served the punch to guests and authors as they streamed out of the auditorium after the opening night keynote adress. Sometimes a name is about expediency, another aspect that certainly fits the self-serving Lime. Sean Hoard and I and our lovely assistant Lauren served from punchbowls as the crowd streamed past, handing them plastic cups to sip from on their walk to the evening's actual party, several blocks away. 

When I enlisted ('conscripted' might be more apt) Sean to work on this endeavor I gave him a long reading list of Greene books as well as the requisite Greene films like The End of the Affair (which he didn't like) and The Third Man (which he dug, of course--it's an inarguably great film). Sean took his research seriously and read several books, and I think The Third Man came at the end of the whole process--an unmitigated treat and a nice cherry on top of the boozy sunday that was this massive project. In the end I think he was more well versed in the Greene ethic and aesthetic than me--he was certainly fresher to the material. And the enthusiasm and focus he brought elevated the entire project in exactly the manner I'd hoped, bringing serious cocktailing technique, a refined palate and unvarnished enthusiasm.

The day of the opening party he spent hours zesting lemons and oranges and muddling with the cane sugar in a 15 liter Cambro, returning over and over to muddle the citrus in the sugar and shake it around, sort of hyper-melding the citrus oils and zest with the sugar and creating the foundation for the oleo saccharum syrup. You could smell the infusion start to take hold as the elements were made to dance with each other repeatedly--an almost alchemical process. With the addition of Irish Breakfast Tea the syrup was complete, and then it as simple as 2 bottles of Beefeater and 1 of Absolut, a neat mediating of the london dry gin citrus & juniper profile with a nice clean vodka to soften it up. Using the same citrus to get 32 oz. of fresh juice was the next move, and after pouring into a punch bowl and garnishing with lemon & orange wheels adding a final touch of fresh ground nutmeg, a la minute, moments before we served the punch. That nutmeg was really the crowning touch, adding a nutty, fatty layer and nose to the potentially-too-sweet concoction. There's a great thing that happens when someone takes their first sip of a drink and their pupils widen a bit and a little color comes to their cheeks--perhaps it the Cocktail Blush Response. We saw it over and over that night, and it's an incredibly gratifying experience all around.  

KWLS Board Member Peyton Evans & Josine Hitchcock sampling The Third Man.

THE THIRD MAN

20 lemons
4 oranges
2 lbs cane sugar

Muddle peels of citrus in sugar and let sit for at least an hour, muddling periodically.

Brew 64 oz black tea (10 tea bags) 4 min.

Pour hot tea over muddled peels, stir until sugar is dissolved.

Juice citrus and add to mixture.  If needed add more juice to taste goal should be around 32 oz citrus.

Add 2 bottles of Beefeater gin and 1 bottle of Absolut vodka.

Strain peels, add 3-5 liters of soda water and serve over ice.

Garnish with fresh nutmeg, lemons wheels, and orange wheels.

 I think we got everyone in a jolly mood straight off that night, which was of course the whole point. 

 
Photog Michael Blades and KWLS President Lynn Kaufelt hugged it out.

Edmund White and Carol Munder.

The Talented Mr. Hoard at the Oldest House & Garden Museum, in an expansive mood.

Marky P. of Key West Burlesque and Momo, co-designer of the KWLS 2013 set and a noted public artist--check out an incredible collaboration with Eltono in Bacelona here.

From The Third Man, Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins and Trevor Howard as Major Calloway or as Martins refers to him, Callaghan."It's English, not Irish" he retorts, setting him up as a snob and a bad guy, but one of the endlessly facsinating aspects of  The Third Man'is how right & wrong seems to continually shift around and how good guys are revealed to be bad guys--and the other way around. A smart essay on Calloway's ulitmate role as moral guidepost in this film that is all about slippery morals by Rob White for BFI here, and Greene's screenplay in full here.

Poppa Bear Rowan, not in any way directly connected to the Seminar other than the fact that two of his sons work for the thing, was at most every party, a high grade party crasher with not moral qualms about it. Also one of our most appreciative customers. J.R.

Event photos by Nick Doll.

Coming next: Airstream Cocktails, The Power and The Glory & The Loud American.

Key West Literary Seminar 2013, Graham Greene Cocktails & Aunt Augusta

I've been doing cocktails for the Key West Literary Seminar for the past couple years and this time around I, in an outrageously audacious move,  decided to create a series of cocktails for the event's nightly parties inspired by the works of Graham Greene. Travel writer & essayist Pico Iyer's meditation on his internal relationship with Greene through his work, "The Man Inside My Head", has been an important touchtstone at this year's Seminar, the theme of which is "Writers On Writers". Iyer himself attended and spoke eloquently about the book and Greene.

It had been when I'd found out the Iyer would be attending that the idea first took hold, as I'm a huge Greene fan myself. Knowing this project would be a big undertaking I recruited Sean Hoard of Teardop Lounge in Portland, Oregon to develop Greene-tails with me, and we've been corresponding and tweaking recipes and concepts for months. Hoard joined me here in Key West this week where we've been serving cocktails for the 300 plus authors and serious readers nightly all week.

Greene was a commited drinker, and drinking is a common activity in his books, as is travel, and many are set in exotic locations, so finding national spirits or local culinary cues to look to for inspiration in his work wasn't hard. And some characters suggest drinks quite easily in your imagination. The iconoclastic eccentric grandmother-aged Augusta in "Travels with my Aunt" powers through quite a lot of champagne on trains and at various bars around Europe, so I'd thought of a champagne cocktail with a little punch as an homage to her libertine spirit, something a bit saucy. When I discovered that KWLS Lighting Director Jolly Benson had a calamondin tree in his front yard, and more significatnly that his chef mother Sarah had made an amazing marmalade with it, it all sort of wrote itself from there. The citrus' bitter-but-invigorating rind and pith was definitely saucy, and its brilliant orange actually matches Maggie Smith's flame red hair in George Cukor's film adaptation quite closely. (Smith, below, in a still from the film, looking her actual age for a flashback. Her Aunt Augusta is interesting, but Katherine Hepburn, who was originally slated to do the part and was closer to the character's age, and temperment, may have been a better choice. Still, Smith does look fantastic here.)

I mixed the marmalade with Beefeater 24, selected for its elegant, astringent notes culled  from its grapefruit and Chinese green and Japanese Sencha tea botanicals, a little honey syrup (1:1) and lemon, shook it all up vigorously & strained into a flute, topped it with champagne, expressing a lemon twist over the top and discarding. I used about 1 oz of the stock in the early versions at the opening night party, but as the evening went on I thought that more of the gin and citrus stock would make everyone ever merrier and I started pouring around 1.5-1.75 oz. Even later I began scopping a small bit if the marmalade into the flute before building the drink, with the benefits of that  flash of orange at the bottom of the transclucent, almost mother of pearl colored finished drink, as well as a little hit of the bite-y marmalade.

 

AUNT AUGUSTA

STOCK:

1 part Beefeater 24

1/2 part calamondin marmalade

1/2 part lemon juice

1/4 part honey syrup (1:1)

1/8 part Aperol

Combine all elements, stir extremely well. Shake to order and pour into a flute (to taste), top up with sparkling wine. But not before adding a dollop of the calamondin marmalade into the bottom of the flute. Lemon zest and discard. 

SARAH BENSON'S CALAMONDIN MARMALADE

Wash, cut in half, seed, and purée In a food processor enough calamondins to measure 2 cups - The skin should be in 1/4 inch pieces
1 cup orange juice
3 cups sugar
In a stainless steel pan bring the juice and Calomondin purée to a boil. Stir in the sugar. Cook the mixture over a medium-high heat at a steady boil for 15 minutes stirring several times.

Spoon the marmalade into clean jars, let it cool and keep refrigerated.

Fantastic stuff, integral for our Aunt Augusta but also brilliant on some toast.

More cocktails to come this week from me and Mr. Hoard, including The Third Man, The Power & The Glory, The Hotel Continental, The Whisky Priest, The Pennyfeather, The End of the Affair & The Loud American.

Wednesday's Cocktail: Dickens' Cider

This post Thanksgiving dinner punch came from the man with gravity defying hair that falls somewhere between the coiffures of Gary Cooper and  Morrissey, Beefeater & Plymouth's Nick Van Tiel. "Dickens' Cider" is as luxurious and reviving as its punuendo name is pleasing ribald. NVT brought his punch kit to Naren Young's place, tucked it into a corner and assembled the batch whilst the guests leaned back in their chairs and relaxed. It seemed like a fairly easy one to put together to the casual observer full of turkey and mushroom-free gravy (thank you, Naren & Kimiko, for remembering my non-magic shroom aversion.) But the ease of production on site belayed the rather considerable prep work Van Tiel had gone to beforehand; the homemade lemon & honey shrubb that Nick was packing along wtih nutmeg to grate, and cloves to pin into the center of lemon wheels betrayed the forethought and legwork off site.

Naren & Nick cutting and prepping lemon wheels in the same cutting board. One of bartenders' mutant powers is the ability to work in very small areas with other bartenders.

But the results were stellar, and worth it, and worth following closely if you need to make a guaranteed winner of a punch. Perfect balance of supple, inviting qualities contrasted with a little spicy, henry, nutty pushback. 

NVT and his fantastic hair.

DICKENS' CIDER

32oz Homemade lemon & honey shrubb*

33oz Beefeater "Winter Edition" Dry Gin

4oz Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur

4oz ginger juice from baby ginger root

20oz Fresh apple juice

10oz Fresh pear juice

5 Dashes Regan's

1/2 Bottle Perrier Jouet Champagne [750 ml [Edit. note: just in case you were thinking Magnum]. Add this last.

Serve in a 4 quart punch bowl/Chill with a large 2 pound ice block frozen with cranberries, cloves, cinnamon sticks and orange pieces frozen into it/Garnish with lemon wheels with cloves stuck into them, and a light grating of nutmeg

*SHRUBB RECIPE

12 Regular unwaxed lemons

1/2 Cup granulated sugar

1 Cup honey

10oz Water

1 Pinch ground allspice

1 Pinch ground ginger

1 Pinch ground cinnamon

5 Cloves

1 Star anise

Make an oleo-saccharin from the peels of the 12 lemons (no pith), and the sugar.  Leave for 30 minutes to extract oils/Mix the 8 oz of honey with 10 oz water and add oleo saccharin, mix well until sugar etc is dissolved. Juice the 12 lemons (approx 14 oz of juice) and add this also. Finally add the dry spices, and let sit for 1 hour/Fine strain the peels, pulp, spices and sugar out, which should leave 1 quart of shrubb.

Hosts Kimiko & Naren. Nice thing about using PJ in a punch is that there's bound to be some extra around for a glass or two.

That punch didn't stand a chance.

And in honor of NVT's "Keep Calm and Listen to Hip Hop" tee topped with an old school LL Cool J style Kangol icon, Cool James himself. Happy Holidays.