Drink Doctrine

The L.I.T. cocktail is actually not my own creation, it comes courtesy of the Park Hyatt Tokyo, and their much famed New York Bar & Grill which I had the joy of visiting back in 2008. As any movie buff would be aware this hotel was one of the main locations used in the film Lost In Translation, where actors Bill Murray and Scarlet Johansson flirted with eachother but never quite got it together. In the film Murray sideshows as an actor promoting Suntory whisky, but if only he had tried their signature cocktail the L.I.T. he may have been able to win over Johansson…

As the sister hotel to my own I’m promoting this wonderful drink at my bar during March. It features a great liqueur made from cherry blossoms (Sakura) and is appropiate timing as during the months of March to May many of the cherry blossoms festivals (Hanami) take place throughout Japan. This age-old custom of the Hanami has been around since the 7th century and is a annual celebration of performing arts, poetry, singing and tea ceremony.

The cocktail itself is a fairly simple mix, where the tartness of cranberry and lime really cut through the two liqueurs used. As this is not my creation I’m respecting the author and not divulging the recipe, but I will say it’s a hard one to replicate as Sakura liqueur, at least here in OZ anyhow, is pretty much impossible to come by. There is a version produced by Suntory in Japan but it is not available here unfortunately, perhaps you may have better luck where you are. I’m utilising the bottles I snuck back from my trip there, but my stocks are dwindling… I’ve also added my own garnish for this one, as one wasn’t supplied. Here I’ve dehydrated a wheel of orange, minus the skin, using a dehydrater, it takes around 12hrs to complete but the flavour and texture you get is well worth it.

Kampai!!

L.I.T.

Enclosed a recent article I penned for b&c magazine on gin, entitled New Generation, it explores the gin world in that it has seemingly gone full circle now with many of the older styles – old tom, genever etc – leaning back into favour, propogated by the continued lust for long and until now often overlooked classic recipes. Gin is certainly leading the way in excitement for the white spirits category at the moment…

It’s been a while between posts for me dear readers, well that’s what a summer subject at university does to you + getting through the busiest two months of the year for most Sydney bars/hotels etc. Christmas/NYE seems a long way away now and so time to bring myself back into line with a new offering, featuring oh-so-hot-right-now GIN! Gin is reaching new heights of popularity and use it seems these days in bars, with a plethora of newer brands hitting the shelves, unfortunately not all make it to these Australian shores, alas we here in OZ are left to window shop in magazines and make the most of duty free shopping overseas. But everything old comes new again, and this post I take grasp with two firm hands Bols Genever & Bols Sloe gins, re-released in 2009 to much fanfair and applause.

In the recipe below I take to task the champagne classic the French 75, a drink created by a WW1 pilot, in description of a French artillery piece, popularised in the first half of last century and still argued about today whether you should use gin or cognac as the base!
My version is named Bessie’s 75, the naming in honour of Bessie Smith, a prominent black jazz/blues singer who died at the young age of 43yrs but who dominated the jazz scene in America in the 1920s & 30s. She has been inducted into the Grammy Awards hall of fame and is spoken of today to have influenced many jazz artists who have come to prominence since her death in 1937. Gin was prominent and popular during the peak of her career in the 1920s & 30s and no doubt wet the lips of audiences at her shows, even in those sneaky prohibition bars and murky speakeasies… and there was another cocktail around at this time that was making waves, the martini, you may have heard of it…!

Cheers to you Bessie… our empress of blues.

Bessie's 75

Bessie’s 75
40ml Bols ‘Oude’ Genever
20ml Bols Sloe Gin liqueur
15ml fresh lemon juice
15ml fresh lime juice
30ml pressed mandarin juice
barspoon orange blossom syrup
dash egg white
45ml dry French champagne
add all ingredients, except champagne, and dry shake to emulsify with the egg white
shake then with rock ice and strain over no ice to a collins glass, top w/ champagne
garnish with a long, thin orange zest coiled around a spoon straw

St George’s distillery in Norfolk UK has just released the first single malt whisky to be commercially produced in England within the last 100yrs. Their first release was a 3yr old unpeated, un-chillfiltered spirit, very young and fiery indeed but by all accounts delicious enough to already be grabbing people’s attention worldwide. Whether it competes against the almighty Scottish dram remains to be seen but what an achievement at last and it begs the question – what took so long?! check the BBC’s coverage here

El Diablo

The El Diablo cocktail, literally translating to “the devil” from Spanish to English, is one of those recipes that on paper just looks as if it shouldn’t work, but happily for all us agave spirit lovers out there it does, and does in no mediocre fashion either…. the widely accepted recipe nowadays is disputed to have been around since the heyday of the 1940s, when Trader Vics was well in its stride as a successful chain of restaurants/bars. The first known recipe in print for an El Diablo was featured in Trader Vic’s Book of Food & Drink (1946) where it was called a Mexican El Diablo and called for ginger ale instead of ginger beer as a lengthener. The debate surrounding the ginger ale versus ginger beer use rages on but suffice to say their flavour characteristics are so similiar that to me using either one only dictates a subtle difference in the end product, I’m more concerned with the quality of the cassis and tequila being employed. A drink that is perfect for the heat of the Australian summer ahead and one sure to aid some relief to Satan’s whiskers….

Beberse todo!! (drink up)

El Diablo
45ml reposado tequila
15ml cassis de dijon
25ml fresh lime juice
60ml homemade ginger beer
add ginger beer to the bottom of an ice-filled highball, shake remaining ingredients over ice and with each half of lime husk previously used for squeezing, strain over the ice/ginger beer mix
garnish with single half lime husk & spoon straw

An oldie but a goodie this one, master bartender Chris McMillian from New Orleans waxes lyrical on the evolution of the cocktail and explores the history of one of the oldest known recipes, the Sazerac. Regular web-hoppers will likely have seen this one before but I feel this video is definitely worth a revisit every now and then to remind us of the depth and tradition in our trade…

Cheers to you Chris, your knowledge is infectious!

Back in 2007 was when my love affair with mirto began, myself and a few friends spent a week on a boat sailing and sampling the delights of the islands within the Pontine archipelago, off the west coast of Italy. We were then to discover how this local elixir surely had become something of an identity to each and every island we set foot upon. Traditionally a favourite of Sardinia, it seemed every island had their own version of the stuff, all with varying degrees of quality it must be said. Mirto is essentially a digestive liqueur, usually served chilled straight from the fridge, and is the result of a maceration of the berries or leaves (or both) of the locally grown myrtle plant. It generally comes in two varieties, rosso (from the berries and usually sweeter) and bianco (from the leaves, a bit drier). After a many filling Italian meal during this trip we all found it was the perfect antidote to feeling normal again, amazingly powerful stuff and certainly worth tracking down if it’s available in your country. Here in Australia it’s not widely available but it can be found, and I’ve enjoyed experimenting with it often as a substitute for sweet vermouth in various recipes. A rum manhattan with Mount Gay XO was a particular stand out, it also adds a whole new complexity to a negroni instead of the said vermouth. Notable brands that are tried and tested have been Zedda Piras and Lucrezior R. Distilleria.

Below is a drink I concocted earlier this year which combined all good things Italian – Sardinian grappa and mirto – more on the naming of the drink later, but for now the recipe…

Battle of Solferino
45ml Ciroc vodka
10ml Sardinian ‘Filu e Ferru’ grappa
5 red grapes
10ml fresh lime juice
10ml agave nectar
mirto foam
muddle grapes with lime and agave, shake/fine-strain to chilled cocktail glass. top with mirto foam
serve with pieces of torrone nougat on the side
*to make the mirto foam I use the following recipe:
6 egg whites, 20ml lemon juice, 20ml simple syrup, 90ml mirto liqueur – place all in a crema cannister and charge with two charges, leave overnight in the fridge and shake well before using

The Battle of Solferino was one of the few battles in the 19th century where actually the French and Italians helped eachother to victor over another. June 24th, 1859 was a day of fierce fighting where a Franco-Sardinian alliance fought off an invading Austrian army attempting to enter Italy from the north, the battle and resulting victory by the alliance was a crucial step in the process of Italian unification. In honour of this piece of military history and the then alliance formed between two great European nations, this drink combines the best of French vodka, Ciroc, with grappa and mirto from Sardinia. The name Filu e Ferru literally translates to iron wire in English, and this refers to those farming Italians who essentially used to manufacture moonshine grappa on their estates. Once they had produced their distillate and to avoid detection and taxes being paid on its production, they would bury it underground, marking its whereabouts with a simple iron wire sticking out of the field in order to find it again… clever and most industrious farmers they were.

Launched in 1984, Midleton Very Rare is a unique and highly regarded
(and expensive!) premium blended whiskey release, produced by Irish Distillers down in Cork, southern Ireland. Here they also produce the iconic Jamesons, which used to be made in Dublin ’till the 70s until production moved south. They also churn out grain whiskey which goes into the Bushmills blend.

For the hefty price tag of 50,000EUR (82,000AUD per current exchange rate) you can pick up a bottle of every vintage since its inception in 1984. That’s 24 bottles at an average price of 3400AUD each… no financial crisis there!

And here’s the loot…

And just for those who thought I would forget about our beloved Jamesons, apparently this is some of the last run to condense off the pot stills in Dublin back in June 1970, before they halted production and sent their wares down south for a seachange…