EMBURY COCKTAILS

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.

KWLS 2013 Airstream Love: The Loud American and The Power & The Glory (a.k.a. Enzo Lim's "The Fort" in punch form.

In 2011 we'd served gimlets for guests of the Key West Literary Seminar from my brother Josh and sister-in-law Bonnie's Airstream--the beast was out of commission last year, getting a new engine and various upgrades by mad inventor bro, and this year she was back in full effect. We decided to serve from the Airstream at a party held on the lawn of Harry S. Truman's Little White House. But first she needed to get a good sprucing up. And: we had to come up with some cocktails for the evening. 

A huge fan Aperol, I had been struck by an ingenious cocktail of Enzo Lim's that he'd made for me at his bangin' Fhilipino restaurant in the East Village, Maharlika. "The Fort" is a beguiling fusion of Aperola,
guava juice, lemon juice and celery bitters. Front-loading a drink with Aperol is a ballsy move and this one really succeeds. When I found myself staring at the 6 bottles of Aperol I'd ordered the morning of the party I decided to attempt to recreate "The Fort" in punch form, following Enzo's proportions. Worked out quite well, particularly for the Aperol lovers in the crowd. In an attempt to retrofit this one to our Graham Greene theme I dubbed the punch "The Power and the Glory" after Greene's novel--the boldness of the drink just seemed right for that title. So, with huge thanks to Enzo:

THE POWER AND THE GLORY a.k.a. THE FORT 

1 1/2 oz Aperol

1 1/2 oz Guava juice

1/2 oz lemon juice

Dash of Bitter Truth Celery Bitters

Add ingredients in a shaker; add ice and shake.

Splash with soda.

Strain over fresh ice.

Garnish: lemon wedge.

 

Our transportation to the Airstream--the family ride, an admirably beat-up Honda truck, driven by little brother Ian. 

Our cocktail lounge on wheels.

 

Our home for the evening, with Hannah Scott along for the ride.

Sean was mixing up a vodka based punch, silky and smooth and friendly and as usual the hit of the evening. A more herbaceous variation on his "The Third Man" from our opening night party, "The Loud American" employed fresh thyme and lemon balm which I'd picked up (potted) at Key West's amazing nursery, The Marc House.

THE LOUD AMERICAN

22 Lemons

2 Oranges

2 Lbs. sugar

2 bunches fresh thyme

2 bunches fresh lemon balm

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

Brew 64 oz green tea (10 tea bags) 2 min.

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

Add roughly 16 oz lime juice and roughly 16 oz lemon juice to stock mixture.  (to taste)

Add 3 litre bottles of Absolut vodka and 3-5 liters of soda water and serve over ice.

Garnish with lemon wheels, a few sprigs of fresh lemon balm & fresh thyme.

We served through the Airstream's windows, but many if not most of our guests stuck their head into the cab and it became quite the ad hoc VIP lounge.

Boom.

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.