EMBURY COCKTAILS

Krimko on Wine (And Cheever)

(Editor's Note: This piece from Embury Wine & Food Editor Stuart Krimko has been amongst a backlog of posts I've had piling up to due to chronic modern urban distractedness and terrible sloth on my part. How backlogged? Check the original title: Back to School cocktail reading and listening. A thousand apologies to Krimko, whose other fine pieces can be read here. J.R.)

I've got some good drinking stuff on my to-do list for the upcoming school year.  Several of you have asked me to recommend wines from Trader Joe's, which is a noble task that I have been postponing for too long; I'll get to it soon, but in case you're thirsty this moment and reading this on your smart phone in the booze aisle of your local TJ's, pick up a bottle of VINTJS Sauvignon Blanc.  This is some of the best less-than-eight-dollar-a-bottle white wine I've had in some time, and I've had it several times since realizing this was so.  If you need more convincing, I'll do my best in my next post.

Now, onto slightly more literary topics.  Over the past few months I've enjoyed making my way through the New Yorker's podcasts.  They've set up a nice format: a writer who has published a story in the magazine chooses a story that another writer published in the magazine to read aloud.  The first in the series is John Cheever's "Reunion," read by Richard Ford, in which a boy named Charlie meets his father in Grand Central Station for an afternoon of Beefeater Gibsons.  I love Beefeater martinis, but I prefer mine with olives––I was going to say I prefer mine up with olives, but I've recently been delighted by Beefeater martinis with olives on the rocks.  Will martinis on the rocks come back into fashion soon?  Were they ever in fashion? 

Cheever, not Krimko

"Reunion" is heartbreaking and hilarious.  Richard Ford does a wonderful job of switching back and forth between the voices of the meek, embarrassed, wistful Charlie, who narrates the story, and his drunk blowhard of a father.  The story takes no more than a few minutes for Ford to read, but Cheever has packed much into those few minutes: underage drinking, the proper ratio of gin to vermouth, the echoing splendor of Grand Central Station, the everlasting battle between obnoxious customers and exasperated wait staff, and the distressing vagaries of the father-son relationship.  When Charlie tells us, at the end of the story, that this was "the last time I saw my father," we want to pat him on the back and pour him another drink.S.K.

New Yorker podcasts on iTunes

Letter From Embury U.K.: A Rant From Will Foster On Pre-Made Mojitos

There are many abominations to the wonderful world of drinks. Sambuca Cream Liqueur, Apple Sourz (or anything with the word Sourz for that matter), Cuervo Gold, Cuervo Silver and Smirnoff Red Label vodka, to name but a few.

However, our friends at Bacardi Brown Forman have managed to top the bill. Having been bombarded by the usual Christmas ad campaign for their questionably-named flagship “superior” product for several weeks now, I was relaxing on my sofa, enjoying a particularly risable episode of Frasier, when I saw something that made me jump to my feet in astonishment and disbelief....

It seems our distinguished friends have, in their wisdom, decided to release a Mojito premix (Bacardi Mojito) with the tag-line “for the perfect Bacardi mojito”.... I don’t know quite where to begin. I mean... really?

Premix anything is just a bad idea. I can’t think of anything that doesn’t taste better when made from scratch. Lime juice is better than a sweet n sour mix, fresh mashed potato is better than instant, and packet sauces are not as good as a sauce made from fresh ingredients. So why do Bacardi think that a Mojito-flavoured rum will make the perfect Bacardi mojito? Especially as their tag-line for their Ron Superior very recently claimed that it would make the best mojito.

I presume, that the product is meant for the home bartenders out there, but surely half, or possibly all, the fun in home bartending is making a huge mess in your kitchen trying to recreate the drinks you had last week in your favourite bar?

Depressingly, I have no doubt in my mind that this product will fly off the shelves faster than Santa on his sleigh (had to get a festive note in somewhere) and should you want to find it, it will be on the same shelf as the Mint-Chocolate Baileys and the previously-mentioned flavoured Sambucas and Sourz.
But on a more positive tip for all you bartenders beginning to worry that our days are numbered due to this startling new innovation, I don’t think we need start scouring the Wanteds just yet!

Merry Christmas from old Blighty!

Will Foster is the propretor of Casita Bar in Shoreditch and Embury's U.K. Envoy.

Wednesday's Cocktail: Shanghai 24 Punch

 

Casita Bar's Will Foster  made an impromptu visit to New York City last week and we visited far too many of the key cocktail places in New York to properly recount (or recall) every detail here, but it was a pretty heroic push. From our first stop at the tequila and mezcal-focused Mayuhuel (which scratched South American spirits-enamored Foster behind the ears for about four happy rounds),  to our final stop at our default end-up joint Louis 649 (where you can sip spot-on cocktails without any pomp or fussiness until quite, quite late) the entire expedition was simply epic.  Day 5 brought a planned food and drinks gathering with Stuart Krimko, our Wine and Food Editor and host of the Verdita party of yore. Exhaustion after marathon drinking all around, but the punch that we came up with on the spot revived us just in time for the arrival of our guests.  I'd printed several recipes from a punch story I was working on in preparation for shopping that morning, but had neglected to designate page numbers for the document and so was immediately confused about what ingredients went with which recipe, Subsequently the Shanghai 24 is something of an amalgam of various bartender's punches, with the added variable of whatever looked good at the greengrocers' that morning. Perfect. J.R.

SHANGHAI 24 PUNCH

1 litre Beefeater 24
1 quart of unsweetened green tea (bottled, in our case)
1 small bottle club soda,
3 or 4 apricots,
8 raspberries
6 lychees (peeled and sliced in two)
2 large grapefruits, juice of
2 lemons  (no lime! and contrary to what the photo might indicated, no Gary Regan's Orange Bitters--we tried it in a small serving and it nudged it in a spicy direction, and this one is all fresh summer sweetness)
1 generous oz. Luxardo Marischino Liqueur

Muddle all the fruit first, leaving aside a few bits for garnish. Mix everything together in a large bowl with ample ice. Give it a few minutes to chill and water down--then enjoy to your heart's content. This one isn't too strong, but rather incredibly refeshing with just enough booze to keep it interesting, which is just what you want from your summer punch.

Bourbon Fest Postcards Pt. 3

Part 3 of 3, Part 1 here, Part 2 here, everything about bourbon here. At the Maker's Mark distillery, giant vats of fermenting mash.

The distillery is much more polished and art directed than Jim Beam--rather than a raw, bare pipes factory it's a a series of carefully preserved and judiciously updated barn-style buildings with red shutters that echo the trademark red wax on the Maker's bottles.

Bourbon Fest Postcards Pt. 2

(Much of the  following is borrowed liberally from press materials from Jim Beam) At the Jim Beam plant, a table representing the components of the distillation process. Ground corn is mixed with pure limestone-filtered water and then cooked at a fairly high temperature. The temperature is then lowered and the ground rye is added. After the mixture has cooked, the temperature is lowered again for the addition of barley malt. This begins the mashing process. Barley is malted by moistening the grains until they sprout, which releases an enzyme that converts grain starch into sugars. When the conversion is complete, the mash is transferred to the fermenters.

Yeast is then added to the mash to begin the fermentation process. Each different strain of yeast imparts a distinctive flavor and aroma to the finished whiskey, and each distiller has a preferred strain. At Knob Creek, they use a proprietary jug yeast that has been the same since the end of Prohibition. The yeast converts the grain sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

When the fermentation is complete, the mash, now called “distiller’s beer,” is pumped to the still. Inside the tall column still, mash entering from the top meets steam entering from the bottom. The steam vaporizes the alcohol in the mash and carries it out the top of the still to be cooled and re-condensed. This product of the first distillation is called “low wine.” The low wine is delivered to a second still where it is heated and converted again to a vapor that is collected and condensed. The product of this second distillation step is called “high wine” or “white dog.”

New whiskey is as clear as water. All of the distinctive color, and some of the flavor, come from aging in new, charred oak barrels. The longer a Bourbon is aged, the more flavor and color it takes from the wood. The charring of the inside of the barrel produces a layer of caramelized sugars in the wood, which slowly dissolve into the resting Bourbon.

Wednesday's Cocktail: Will Foster Double Bill

Will Foster, proprietor of Casita Bar in East London's Shoreditch District and the man who turned Embury onto The Verdita, was recently in Florida at the same time as I was in Key West, so he and Mrs. Foster came down for a visit. Naturally, we had to have a little drinks get-together. Will had some pretty grand ambitions that were amended due to lack of availability of a couple of key ingredients, and his ability to change it up and adapt is instructive to the home bartender who doesn't have access to all ingredients under the sun.  Will and I had been chatting about bourbon since his arrival and when I asked him what we might serve at the party he ruminated on it over the next 24 hours. He arrived on a riff on the Bossavelha, a cachaça based drink he'd created for Sagatiba Velha: 

BOSSALVELHA

50ml Sagatiba Velha
20ml Creme de Peche,
25ml lemon juice
1 bar spoon accacia honey
3 quarters of a peach,

Muddle the peach, cachaça and honey add the rest,  shake very hard and strain into a coupe. W.F.

Will planned to adapt it to a bourbon base, and was dead set on Buffalo Trace: "Buffalo lends itself well to cocktails because of its deep flavour and smoothness - one can still taste it through mixers and other elements."  Will asked for fresh peaches, creme de peche, lemon and white honey, and while he and Mrs. Foster were out enjoying the Key West sunset our host Haven and I were driving all around town trying to source the ingredients.  Key West is one of the great drinking towns but that's great in the volume sense, not in quality or variety. After hitting almost every liquor store in town with no luck, at our last  stop we did find the Trace, and big bottles too. No creme de peche was to be found, but there was some peach brandy, situated next to racks of the peach schnappes Will had explicitly warned against, and after some soul searching I grabbed it. So the key ingredient was covered-or was it? Three grocery stores later and there were no fresh peaches to be found. So we hit the frozen aisle and grabbed bags of frozen peaches.

Back at Haven's we rendezvoused with the Fosters and brought him up to date on the near misses, a bit   hesitant-the man's an artist behind the bar and you want an artist to have his weapons of choice. No fear. As Will wrote to me later, "When winging it, it is always essential to remember that there's always a way and the show must go on!" So a muddled drink became a frozen one, as the peaches would only work that way, really, and the peach brandy was in fact an acceptable substitute in our pinch.

THE BOSSY BUFFALO

50 ml Buffalo Trace
20 ml peach brandy
1 teaspoon honey
25 ml lemon juice
4 frozen peach slices,
3 ice cubes, blended

Of course, these proportions were quadrupled by Will as he made blender-size batches of the Bossy Buffalo, and it all worked out perfectly.

Mr. and Mrs. Foster, impressed by the massive jug of Trace, dutifully document it.

 

Mr. and Mrs. Foster picking mint for the batch of Mint Juleps they served.

Some guests were a little taken aback by how strong they were: essentially just bourbon, mint and sugar, and crushed ice. As they chill up in the glass and the ice melts they become much more manageable for the bourbon novice. Will advises infusing  the bourbon with the mint at least overnight to achieve a very saturated flavor. Our resident Kentuck native Jenny (left) approved of the Juleps, which was doubly nice as the mint came from her garden. J.R.

Casita Bar

Sagatiba Velha,

Buffalo Trace

And everyone was quite happy at the end of the party.

On Drinking: The Sachs-Meehan Plan for Sustainable Drinking

Travel/Booze/Other Things writer Adam Sachs took several rounds for the team, and quite happily. In his piece for the April GQ Sachs documents a reasonably epic night out on the town with PDT's Jim Meehan, in an effort to take a few pages from the Meehan playbook on how to maintain while drinking quite a lot over a lengthy evening with various unscheduled stops. (The piece isn't online at GQ but you can check it out at Sachs' site here: or, and I'd advise this, pick up an actual copy of the magazine. Sachs walks you through one night out with Meehan, with many locations and many more drinks. Along the way Meehan lends the benefit of his considerable savvy on How To Do It Right. There are so many really important texts on not getting, for lack of a better term, too drunk. Kingsely Amis is the master in this, as in all matters relating to the proper attitude and approach towards drinking, as well as towards excess. David A. Embury, the businessman/avid drinker-turned-bar-scribe (and the inspiration for our name), may have the most foolproof bit of advice for how not to go to the Dark Side that I've ever heard (and I paraphrase): if  you think you will be fine after the next drink, but you cannot be certain that you will be fine after two more, stop. Meehan's counsel to punctuate every drink with a glass of water is much easier to adhere to (rehydrates, and helps you keep conscious track of how many you've had, advantageous to those of us who occasioanally slip into Cookie Monster drinking mode). But it's all a rich tapestry of well-researched and thoroughly vetted personal strategies and is, in fact, a life's work that never ends for those who really throw themselves into their drinking. As Amis wrote (and as quoted in Sachs' piece) "If you want to behave better and feel better, the only absolutely certain method is drinking less. But to find out how to do that, you will have to find a more expert expert than I shall ever be."

Adam Sachs
PDT
GQ

On Drinking: March Madness at Hollywood Bowl Bar

To me, the most exciting and enjoyable televised sport is college basketball and the epitome of that excitement is the March Madness NCAA tournament. I absolutely must watch this tournament from start to finish (it covers three weekends) and revel in the bracketology geekdom that ensues. And, of course, it provides an excellent opportunity for leisurely and extended daytime drinking, plus, occasionally, some choice encounters with fellow Madnessmen.

I live in Portland, OR and decided to go to a bar and watch the games on the first Saturday of the series. I felt proximity to my house was paramount so I went to the local bowling alley and discovered the bar with 10+ large screen TV’s and couches galore. The best spot in the house was already occupied by 3 scruffy guys but a spot on the couch was available so I sat my ass down and introduced myself. Travis, Alan and Tim soon warmed up to me and beers and sport conversation flowed. These dudes each belonged to different sub genres of scruff: Travis was more logger scruffy, Tim was more indie rock scruffy and Tim (Alan's brother-in-law) was all tatted and goateed scruff. They were all from Butte, Montana, and had come to Portland in search of the good life, part of which, apparently, involved afternoons at Hollywood Bowl on NE Halsey.  Halftime of game 1 came and we ventured over to the bar and they bought me a shot. They ordered a “boilermaker” type concoction that consisted of a shot of Crown Royal dropped into a half full pint glass of Red Bull (or in this case the cheap Hollywood Bowl equivalent to Red Bull). I have, for the most part, spurned the energy drink craze as it seems shallow and overhyped. But this shot was pretty tasty.

I considered the gauntlet to be laid.

On Drinking: The Courteeners

We caught up with The Courteeners hours before their U.S. debut at the Mercury Lounge and days before they kicked off their plum gig opening for Morrissey on tour. They filled us in on what to drink pre-show (chilled red wine is good for the vocal chords) and where they drink back home in Manchester. Like The Hot Melts, these rockers from the North seem to have a fondness for the pub chain J D Wetherspoons, their local branch being The Moon Under Water. (I neglected to direct them towards the rather posher-than-Wetherpsoons bar at Harvey Nichols Manchester, where my man Matt Fairhurst is performing absolute wizardry.) If you haven't heard The Courteeners you can preview their album St. Jude on lala.com here. J.R.

Big Hands
The Moon Under Water.
Marble Beers Ltd

The Courteeners
Visit Manchester

On Drinking: The Hot Melts

Embury Cocktails caught up with scrappy Liverpool rockers The Hot Melts just before their first U.S. show opening for The Courteeners at Mercury Lounge. Later that night they (presumably) got on a plane bound for Austin, where they were to play several shows at South by Southwest. Clearly, endurance is not a problem for these guys who radiate good vibes and rock out with utter sincerity on stage.  They know a thing or two about drinking as well, and were kind enough to share some of their insights into the art of what (and how much) to drink before performing, where to drink in Liverpool, and how best to spend a hungover day (awesome detail: it involves watching "The NeverEnding Story").

The Hot Melts
Korova
J D Wetherspoon