EMBURY COCKTAILS

Deneuve, Delon, Crenna: "Trois Scotch"

In Jean-Pierre Melville's pulpy 1972 film policier, Richard Crenna plays the nightclub owner & master thief, Catherine Deneuve is his icy gun moll and Alain Delon is the detective who is pursuing a gang of thieves that turns out to be led be Crenna. Delon and Deneueve are having an affair, naturally. When Delon stops by Crenna's nightclub all three players go to the bar where he casually orders "Trois scotch", which seems to be scotch and water or possibly charged water,with just the merest hint of an ice cube or two, served in a tall, wide glass that's somewhere between a collins and a pint.  In this context, with the supercharged looks between the trio, the dancers in the smokey nightclub in the background, the lush Michel Colombier score and the faint clink of French ice,  "Trois scotch" plays here as one of the more glamorous orders in cinema.

Saxon + Parole's "Point Blank"; Cocktail Cabinet Program

Finally got to make good use of the photos I shot of the bottled cocktails at Saxon + Parole for my Men's Journal piece on the killer "Point Blank" cocktail at Saxon + Parole. Shot these back in May or June and they languished a bit until finding their rightful home. The rich visuas of these cocktails in the tall glass and wood cabinet behind the bar made it easy to photograph, and those photographs hard to edt.

POINT BLANK


1.5 oz. Chivas 12 Year



1 oz. Dolin Blanc Vermouth

1/4 oz. St. Germain



5 dashes Bitter Truth Lemon Bitters



 Stir to well chilled, strain into coupe, top with lemon twist.


Named after the ultra-stylish 1967 John Boorman gangster movie, I can personally attest to its wicked potency of this cocktail in addition to its irrestible flavor harmonics. Just don't have more than two, or it may trat you the way Lee Marvin treats Angie Dickinson in the film: brutally.

On the ligher side of the bottle cocktail news a S + P, the El Presidente was on offer when I was shooting. Below, the mini bottles that are sent to the recipient of a gift subscription to announce their prize. These little bottles are almost cooler than the big bottles with your name amblazoned on them.

You get the drink's backstory and recipe on your little mini bottle of happiness that arrives in the mail to tell you the good news. Brilliant stuff.

The cabinet is a rogues gallery of cocktail world figures.

..although all are welcome. This has got to be one of the sweetest holiday gifts you could give a New York City drinker this year. 

Eeu de Vie Offerings: The Taming of Ardberg

 

Pursuant to my piece in the New York Times T Magazine on the Small Bars of Sydney we'll be running cocktails from the bars included therein. First up is Eau de Vie, the snug, elegant and damn near perfect speakeasy in Darlinghurst. Barry Chalmers, a wry Scotsman,  runs the show there, and we spoke about how the crew had been cherry-picked for their respective strengths.  The personalities behind the bar are quite diverese and complement one another both in style and specialties. It's a well cast gang, all with immense cocktailing skills and deep knowledge of spirits. Barry's made this cocktail for me  while I was there, an audacious attempt to fashion a cocktail around of the profoundly peaty Islay single malt, the Ardberg Ten Years Old. Having partaken of the very cocktail Barry's making in the above photo I can attest to his  success with this endeavor.

THE TAMING OF ARDBERG

40 ml Ardberg Ten Years Old
20 ml Martini Rosso
10  ml Averna
1 Bar spoon Muscovado sugar
1 Dash Angostura Bitters
1 Bar spoon Kirsch

Stir down, serve up with an orange twist.

Vintage Reserve: J & B, Playboy May 72

We see and must obey...Browsing through vintage Playboys online, one finds some very cool vintage spirits ads. More after the jump, and past Vintage Reserves here.

Wednesday's Cocktail: William Grant & Sons Quartet

The other night I was a guest at a William Grant & Sons cocktail tasting at the Bouley Test Kitchen on lower, lower, lower West Broadway. Leisurely, intimate, and painlessly informative-the drinks' creators were right there to discuss their inspirations as they made them for you-it was one of those surreal, highly cinematic and unusually gracious evenings you sometimes experience when you write about cocktails.

William Grant's small portfolio boasts a hardy, eclectic array of spirits, so the cocktails employing their brands were all over the map, but unified by a certain elegance and certainly a high grade of craftmanship. Bartenders and brand ambassadors. ringed the room serving Grant-based drinks, four of which were real standouts for me.  William Grant's noted doyenne, Charlotte Voisey, manned the first cocktail station as you entered the kitchen, and we found ourselves migrating back their throughout the evening for another taste of her Blood and Sanguinello, a pink and amber cloud of single-malt scotch, Lillet Rouge, and exotic citrus punched up by Solerno, their new blood orange liqueur.

BLOOD AND SANGUINELLO - Charlotte Voisey

Solerno 0.75 oz
Glenfiddich 0.75 oz
Lillet Rouge 0.75 oz
Fresh pink grapefruit 0.50 oz
Fresh lemon juice 0.25 oz
4 luxardo maraschino cherries
Orange bitters 2.00 dashes
Egg whites

Combine ingredients and shake very well
Serve up in a coupe (or small wine glass)
Garnish with a thin slice of blood orange.

People kept migrating back to Charlotte's table for to further sample the Blood and Sanguinello.

Rob Krueger  of Employees Only and Macao served up his Kobayashi Cocktail, with homemade candied kumquats. He told me he'd wanted to strike a balance between the style of his two establishments.