So I had to resort to hiring a crew to clean up my yard after the wholly inadequate job I did last Fall of putting the gardens to bed. I was outside in the gloaming just now and discovered that my unstoppable bed of mint has put in its debut. This annual appearance always leaves me of two minds. On the one hand, my struggle to keep it in its confined bed becomes more and more like Leiningen vs the Ants each year. On the other hand, mint is the greatest combined cocktail ingredient and garnish since limes.

Lemons?
Screw lemons. They aren’t in the same class.

Cherries either.

The way I see it, a cocktailian has only two choices when he beholds nature’s first offering of mint each year. He can whip up a Mai Tai with a garnish so thick it tickles one’s whole face. Or it is Julep Time, baby! Somehow, I always end up making the same choice. There is time enough for Tiki Month flashbacks later.

Screw waiting for Derby Day. And screw the sickly sweet, maddeningly green concoctions you are too likely to get at a commercial bar or lame home parties when Derby Day comes. The Julep is one of the truly great cocktail categories of the 19th Century, and it is high time it is restored to greatness in the 21st.

That is my recipe. You can omit the other spirits, if you like. If you are a wimp. You can also substitute rye for the bourbon, which I often do, especially if I’m having my Julep before, rather than with food. A Julep at its heart is just spirit, sugar, and mint. How you put it together shows whether you are a contender… or a pretender.

It took about a week.

Maker’s Mark has now completed the legendary and incredibly difficult New Coke Maneuver.

After backlash from customers, the producer of Maker’s Mark bourbon is reversing a decision to cut the amount of alcohol in bottles of its famous whiskey.

Rob Samuels, Maker’s Mark’s chief operating officer, said Sunday that it is restoring the alcohol volume of its product to its historic level of 45 percent, or 90 proof. Last week, it said it was lowering the amount to 42 percent, or 84 proof, because of a supply shortage.

“We’ve been tremendously humbled over the last week or so,” Samuels, grandson of the brand’s founder, said of customers’ reactions.
—NBC News (H/T: @TeeKeeMon)

I didn’t quite have the guts to predict this when I posted about it last week. You can see from the post title that I cut out a lot of my speculation, in part because it would have been so risky, and in part because I wanted to focus on the bind Maker’s was in economically and marketing-wise.

But I kinda think they pulled it off. Most giant corporate entities who try similar maneuvers, planned or not, (I’m looking at you Netflix and The Artist Formerly Known as Prince and Now Is Once Again Known as Prince™) fail like Hitler’s push on Stalingrad. But I’m betting Maker’s has pulled it off. And they pulled it off because of the fact that they were honest about why they made the move in the first place.

They had to do something, as I outlined before.

If they had just jacked up the price, with a few dry stories about supply constraints in business publications, customers would have just noticed the price increase and said, “Aw, sheeoot! Maker’s is so damned expensive alluva sudden. They’re a awfully proud of their product these days. I’ll be proud of my Jim Beam for less.”

If they had constrained supply, bars and restaurants would have stopped making it a staple brand. And cutomers not finding it on shelves would have said, “Hmmm. No Maker’s these days. I’ve always wanted to see what the fuss was with this Four Roses….”

If they’d just tried to quietly lower the proof with the bullcrud explanation that customers wanted less booze in their booze, as Jack Daniels (barely) got away with in an era before Twitter and FaceBook lynch mobs roamed the Earth, in this age, where Twitter and FaceBook lynch mobs roam the Earth, they would have been crucified with comments like this:

Alert drunkard Chris Sharp brought this unfathomable blasphemy to my attention and I feel it my sworn duty to bring it to yours.

“I was outraged,” says Sharp, a once avid Jack drinker. “They continue to claim in their ads that they stick to tradition. Tradition, my ass. If they think that people will take this sitting down they are sadly mistaken.”
—Modern Drunkard Magazine, on the Jack Daniels watering

But Maker’s pushed their decision big. They went out of their way to tell all their biggest customers what they were doing, and more importantly, why. And they were explicit with the press about the problem as the inevitable wave hit. And customers told them, in no uncertain terms, and in a way that everyone knew what everyone else was telling them, that, “Thank you, but we’d really prefer that you keep our whiskey the same, and try one of those other options.” (Please note the peculiar consumer deceit that it is “our” bourbon.) I disagree with the old adage that any publicity is good publicity, but Maker’s didn’t hunker down and stonewall through it, but made sure every reputable story about the situation made clear the problem was real.

Now Maker’s can go back to the old formula. The customers have essentially all told them “raise the price instead,” and they know they all told Maker’s that. If they see an intermittent shortage, they will know why. Maker’s has the consumer buy-in to take the long-term path out of a supply crunch.

Source: Bourbon Blog.
Follow the link for more on initial reaction to the 84 proof decision.

And now they have cases and cases of the best collector’s item bourbon out there. Bottles that will be bought, but not drunk. Most bottles sold at 84 proof will be sold right alongside a bottle of 90 proof that is meant to be drunk.

Did they mean to do this all along? Just as I’m not a Coca-Cola Classic Truther, I doubt (despite my suspicions this would end this way) they intended for this to happen. But they were smart. And they did lay the groundwork to retreat and get away with it. I think that they will.

Source: WDRB

The Maker’s Mark distillery has announced a change in the classic formulation of their iconic bourbon. It’s simple really, just an increase in one premium ingredient… water. Maker’s has sent a letter to its “Ambassadors” (its most ardent, heavy-buying fans) announcing that it is essentially watering down its product. This is an interesting and important development in the spirits, and especially the whiskey industry, for a host of reasons.

The most important part of this is the why behind Maker’s decision. The global whiskey marketplace is undergoing some significant changes, and this is much more likely to be one of the first, rather than the last, impacts on existing consumers because of it. Simply, a veritable sea of Asian folk are discovering a taste for whiskey, especially bourbon. Simultaneously, they are acquiring the means to indulge that taste.
(more…)

Yup. It’s pretty reliable. Don Draper and the firm must be about to hit the airwaves with a new season of Mad Men.

I‘m just sayin‘.

Maggi and I will be celebrating by actually getting around to watching Season One for the first time. Better late than never.

For the record, here’s the way to make an Old-Fashioned. This is not “my take” on this subject. This is Old Testament, tablets of stone stuff here. Really.

Oh. And no post about Mad Men is complete without one of these:

A week ago, I took a little Tiki-timeout to attend an event for Four Roses bourbons downtown here in Columbus. I wrote about Four Roses’ product, it’s story, and its brand ambassador Al Young extensively last Summer. This time I had the opportunity to hear and meet Four Roses’ master distiller Jim Rutledge, a man who evangelizes for his product with the zeal of someone who was foiled in his ambitions for a long time before disaster brought opportunity.

I’ll explain in a moment, but first I want to thank two of Columbus’s best bartenders for this event. Cris Dehlavi of M at Miranova, one of my best friends in the business, organized this stop on Jim’s promotional tour. And Josh Rice hosted things at SideBar 122.
In a delightful coincidence for me personally, the welcome cocktail they served at the event was Josh’s Bourbon Fog Cutter. Four Roses certainly isn’t your mainline Tiki spirit… and this drink is certainly not the lemony blast of its namesake, but between the name and the richness of some demerara syrup, it was more than enough to keep me from feeling like I was cheating on the Tiki Gods. I also had a chance to catch up with a number of bartenders from the area that I know, and even get some interesting ideas from them that I’m now hoarding for next year’s Tiki Month.

Jim got up and talked to us all for a good long while. I learned a few new details I had not head before about the story behind Four Roses’ name, and quite a bit more about their Limited Edition products. These bottles are well worth the time for whiskey lovers to explore, and next time I’m in a state where I can get a few of said bottles, I’ll have a good time doing that here.

But what I want to discuss in this post is some new insights I got into the brand’s journey from elite leader to Bowery Bum hooch, and its recent return to top shelf status. A triumphant return, for Jim.
To briefly summarize Four Roses’ brand history, coming out of Prohibition, they were essentially the number one brand of premium bourbon in the United States. They were then purchased by the Bronfman family of Seagrams Liquor. Bronfman was a near religious believer in blended whiskey as the only way to commercial success in North America. He therefore began making a blended whiskey under newly purchased famous name, Four Roses. It soon became clear that having two products with the same name was causing consumer confusion, and only one or the other could effectively be marketed here in America. The premium bourbon outsold the blend at that time by more than ten to one….

But remember I said that Sam Bronfman was a True Believer™ in blended whiskeys? Seagrams dropped the number one Bourbon in America to pour money into the blended product. Full disclosure here. I went to high school with one of Sam’s grandsons. I have to say that despite occasional appearances, they are not a stupid family.

Fortunately, the straight bourbon continued to be made, as it was also the number one seller in Japan, as well as being big in many European nations. This was the situation when Jim became master distiller of Four Roses: The bourbon was in exile, while the increasingly rotgut blend sat on ever lower shelves here in the US, poisoning the brand name further with each passing year.

Rutledge found himself making a product of which he was tremendously proud, but that he could not sell in his own home town. He says he became a bit of a gadfly. A life-long Seagrams employee, he earned a reputation for annoying every corporate officer he spoke to with his constant demands that the withering blend be withdrawn so he could bring back his premium product to America.

“Hey Jim! How’s the kids?”
“They’re doing fine, thanks. But they’d be better is we could go back to selling my whiskey here in the US!”

To hear Jim tell it, I can only imagine hapless Seagram’s Vice Presidents at corporate HQ, ducking into bathroom stalls to avoid another ear full. But his efforts did not, and were not going to, bear fruit. But like any good company man and true believer in one, Jim plugged along, making the good stuff and the bad.

And then, an unthinkable disaster happened. Seagrams and the Bronfman family imploded. The company was spinning apart like a broken centrifuge. Jim and his crew in Kentucky went from dreaming of showing their fellow Kentucky whiskey wizards how tough a competitor they could be, to fearing that they’d have to stop making their whiskey altogether.

But for Four Roses and, as far as I’m concerned, for American bourbon drinkers in general, what looked like a disaster turned out to be the best possible turn of events. Instead of being held by ownership that neither appreciated nor understood them, their new Japanese owners bought them specifically for that premium product.

It still took some work to get permission to return to the American market, as getting rid of the blended stuff, physically and reputationally, was expensive, but Jim at last prevailed, and has spent the last ten years establishing the right product for America and proving its worth.

For his sins, he now travels constantly, looking for any group of bourbon-sellers who sit still in a group long enough for him to find them and tell them about his product. I wish him every success in continuing to make his hooch, as the bottles of his Four Roses (Single Barrel, Small Batch, and Yellow Label) that I keep in my bar refuse to remain full.

Source: DC Beer

The first place we visited in Washington was Bourbon. We went to the Adams Morgan location (there are two). Adams Morgan is a youthful upscale neighborhood in the northern part of the District. It is rife with interesting restaurants, shops, apartments, and people. Bourbon is right in the heart of the neighborhood, so you could comfortably make it a part of a larger evening’s perambulations.

Bourbon does not have the feel of a “Craft Cocktail Bar”. With exposed, rough brick walls, battered dark wooden tables and bar, and fairly dark lighting, you’d think it was just a nice neighborhood tavern. You could, and I bet a lot of patrons do, enjoy a nice meal without ever realizing quite what is going on here. I found that to be very pleasant, both in concept and execution. This is a place where the cocktailian can bring his buddies who think the whole “drinky thing” is silly, and everybody will still be happy. The food (which to our sorrow the next morning, we did not eat enough of, early enough) is very well executed tavern fare, tweaked to the upscale. What little we did eat was excellent, in particular the sweet potato chips. It is damn hard to make sweet potato chips with the same consistency and texture as those from regular potatoes, and they succeeded about as well as I’ve ever seen. The sliders were also delicious and symbolized the same balance as Bourbon’s decor: They were superficially ordinary enough to make the conventional diner happy, with just enough subtle twist to give the more adventurous something to hang his hat on.

Once you start delving into the drinks menu, the place becomes really interesting for folks like me. While the cocktail list is all interesting-looking originals, the real strength here is the spirits selection, especially the bourbons (duh). There are four pages of bourbons, ryes, scotches, and other whisk(e)ys. All are offered as two ounce pours, and most can also be tried in half ounce tots as well. If you want to expand your whiskey experience, you could not choose a better, more practical environment to try what the world has to offer. (Actually, you can, but that’s the next post.) If you want a little help with you whiskey adventures, they offer a variety of pre-selected flights as well. There are flights to explore different schools of bourbon and rye, as well as between entire different spirits. There’s also a fight of reserves for $40 bucks that I wish I’d felt flush enough to try.

Bourbon was a great environment to meet up with friends, with its manageable light and noise levels, and that is what we did. We had planned to meet Chris Hwalek and Matt Hamlin here, and SeanMike Whipkey also managed to make it moments after we arrived. As an added bonus, through the magic of a Twitter mention of our destination, Jake Parrott joined us as well. Both the booths and the bar are conducive to amorphous groups, so it was a good choice for our launching point upon a nation’s worth of bar hopping.

SeanMike, the PeguWife, Chris, and Matt

In conclusion, Bourbon is a great place for a light meal, and certain kinds of serious drinking. The whiskey selection is slightly over the top, and the rest of the inventory is extensive as well. There is a good selection of beer and wine too, for the amateurs. It is not a destination for an evening of mixology, however. Their cocktails are interesting and very well-made, but they are not the focus of the operation. For a Washington-area resident, Bourbon should definitely be part of your bag of tricks when planning your night life. For visitors, I’d recommend it highly if you are a whiskey aficionado, but there are places I’d send you to first for more adventurous food and especially cocktails.

This review is part of my larger Great Cross-Country Bar Crawl series. Here is the main post for our Washington stop, with links to all reviews for DC.

To kickoff Maggi’s and my Great Cross-Country Barcrawl, we took a guided tour of the Four Roses distillery in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. Four Roses is a small major bourbon maker of whom I’d never heard until about a year ago, when I spied a bottle of their Small Batch product on a shelf and brought it home. I’ve already written whimsically of the story of the brand, and how a product this good, which for about a decade sported a Coca Cola-sized neon billboard in the heart of Time Square, could be so obscure. This post is about the product as it is today.

Four Roses markets seven different products. Two are available only in Japan, and for an explanation of that, see my previous post referenced above. The rather unique thing about Four Roses’ production is that while they make seven products, they actually produce ten different bourbons. They then combine these bourbons in differing degrees to produce the products.
Each of the bourbons produced has a flavor profile distinct from the others. To get ten different bases, Four Roses uses two distinct mash bills, one which contains 20% rye, and the other which has an exceptionally high 35% rye content. In combination with each of these mash bills, they maintain 5 completely separate yeast strains which originated in five different distilleries with historical connections to the brand. Each strain confers a unique character to the resulting product.

Brent Elliot, Four Roses quality control manager, took us through an incredible tasting experience. We had a chance to taste several of the individual bourbons to compare the differences the distinct yeast strains make in the same mash bill and the difference the mash bills make with the same yeast. Also, we had the rare chance to taste side by side the same recipe as both a white whiskey and aged. And throughout the tasting, we had a long discussion of the laboratory techniques used to control the quality and consistency of a product that is essentially alive for a good portion of its manufacture. It was interesting and somewhat comforting to see that, while laborious work with pipette and test tube has been replaced with pushing buttons on machines made by the Perkin Elmers of the world, the real decisions still rest with a group of well trained noses and mouths.

The resulting ten bourbons make for a tremendous pallet of flavors which Four Roses uses to blend some delicious products.

At one end of the spectrum, the main commercial product, Yellow Label, uses all ten whiskeys in varying percentages. At around $17-$18 and 80 proof, this is a very good everyday bourbon for a host of simpler drinks. If you do happen to have any residual memory of the Four Roses brand before its American resurrection, it is important to note that today’s Yellow Label is not your father’s Four Roses… it’s your grandfather’s. During the decades that Four Roses offered no straight bourbon in the US, Yellow Label was a perennial best-selling premium in Japan.
Four Roses’ Brand Ambassador, Al Young (more on him below) says that the distillery’s aim is to produce “Bourbons that don’t bite”, and they succeed. But it is not so smooth or sweet as to sacrifice character. It’s worthy call-brand competitor with the similarly priced Beams, Makers’, and Wild Turkeys.

The Small Batch was the first of their products that I personally had tried, and was the reason that I really wanted to tour their distillery. This big, delicious bourbon is a blend of four whiskeys from their pallet. Two use the high-rye mash bill, and two the low. They also use only two yeasts, the one that produces a berry-like overtone and the one that is the most spicy. Two mashes, two yeasts, means four components. Small Batch is a great craft cocktail bourbon, the Four Roses product that I’d most recommend the mixilogically inclined give a whirl.
The flavors are big and rich enough to stand out with and up to pretty much whatever you want to mix with it. I found it very nice for the fairly few whiskey-based Tiki drinks I like to make, such as the Port Light. The high rye content makes it worthwhile to experiment with for drinks that usually call for straight ryes. But don’t worry, this is still clearly a bourbon and not a rye. The round, cork-stoppered bottle with raised glass roses is lovely both to hold and behold.
This $30 bourbon has earned a permanent place in my inventory.

The top end Four Roses is their Single Barrel. This is, frankly, a monster bourbon. It is not a blend, but a bottling of one of their high-rye recipes. The whiskey has a powerful, rich, sweet, and deep flavor and aroma. Taking a good slug of it compels me to use a word I ordinarily hate, “mouthfeel”. Single Barrel has it in spades. It flows over your mouth and coats it. This means a very long and extremely comfortable finish. Nothing nasty shows up at the end here, unlike many other big and bold spirits.
Of course, at 100 proof, this Bourbon may not bite, but it will gum you pretty strongly. I think the Single Barrel is a bit too big for most mixing tasks, and I suspect the ghost of Paul Jones, Jr. would hunt you down if you wasted this in a glass with Coke…. It makes a fine Old-Fashioned, of course, and also works awesomely in a well-made Mint Julep, even without my usual addition of dark rum. Of course, at nearly $40, most people will reserve the Single Barrel for a sipping bourbon, in which field it is a formidable competitor.

Four Roses also offers private casks for sale, as well as Limited Editions of both the Small Batch and the Single Barrel, aged much longer and sold at barrel proof. I haven’t tried either of these. If you have, let me know what kind of an improvement they are over the regular equivalents.

Our tour was a private one, and bit more extensive than the usual excellent one they offer. But even if you can’t con them into thinking you deserve press treatment like I did, I recommend making a tour at Four Roses a priority if you make a visit to Kentucky and/or the Bourbon Trail. The distillery and the grounds are gorgeous. The somewhat anachrogeographic (is that a word?) Spanish Mission-style distillery building is on the National Register of Historic Places.
I’d like to end with a brief comment on our guide, Four Roses’ Brand Ambassador, Al Young. As brand ambassadors go, Al may not quite be Champagne Charlie, but he’s on a different planet from the more, um, common variety. Al has been in the distilling business for more than 40 years, working his way up through the ranks. He was the Four Roses distillery manager for about 17 years before becoming the brand manager. In short, he’s likely forgotten more about making whiskey than a lot of pros now know. He’s the first distiller who (with the aid of this cutaway segment of de-commissioned “beer still”) managed to make me really understand how a column still actually works. We learned a lot more about how bourbon in general and Four Roses in particular are made, but this post is long enough. I’ll simply wrap up by saying that he also has been a very active historian of the Four Roses brand, as you can see for yourself in his interesting and lavishly illustrated coffee-table book: Four Roses: The Return of a Whiskey Legend.

Four Roses has a good story and a better product. You should look into both. You’ll be glad you did.

A much better picture of the distillery than any I took. Click for a larger size and bonus, hilariously inaccurate, historical information!

The Liquor Fairy Was Here!
The following products, a bottle of Four Roses Single Barrel Straight Kentucky Bourbon and a copy of Four Roses: The Return of a Whiskey Legend, were recently provided to me as promotional consideration to encourage me to discuss them.
For a complete disclosure of my policies regarding promotional items and all other financial interests, please click this link, or follow the Liquor Fairy link in the header of this page.

In marketing, some brands seem to have a life their own. If so, then the life of the Four Roses brand is a sprawling epic of betrayal and fall followed by redemption after time in the wilderness.

The name Four Roses was born of a love story. Lawrence Jones, the successful scion of a Kentucky whiskey family, fell in love with a young belle who lived in Columbus, Georgia. He wooed her ardently for years, repeatedly asking her to marry him, always to be rebuffed… but never dissuaded. At last, he wrote her a letter that he was returning to her with the intent to ask her to marry him yet again. But this would be his last time, and he could hardly bear the thought of a final rejection.
Therefore, he implored her that if she would finally consent, she should arrive at the ball wearing a corsage of four red roses. If she did, he would be happy, and if she did not, he could retire from the event with his dignity intact and never trouble her again.
Of course, as with all good family stories of hazy authenticity, she swept into the ball adorned with four beautiful roses.

Needless to say, such a story became important to the family, so important that they named their flagship brand Four Roses. The Jones family were gifted rectifiers (blenders) of whiskey, and the brand enjoyed success in the days before Prohibition. While Prohibition brought the stories of most brands to a tragic end, the makers of Four Roses were quick to act, and purchased one of the few allowed licenses to sell whiskey as “medicine”. Thus the brand endured through the Noble Experiment.
When legal sales at last resumed, Four Roses found itself with tremendous advantages. It had a current, known brand. It had some financial resources. Most importantly, it had aged product available to bottle and sell.
The company used those advantages to the fullest, and by the end of World War II, was one of the nation’s most popular brands. If you look carefully in the background of the famous Alfred Eisenstaedt picture of the sailor kissing a nurse in Time Square on V-E day, the topmost sign in the world’s most famous outdoor ad space was for Four Roses.

My mother remembers that her father, a wealthy New England manufacturer, drank Four Roses as his favorite whiskey. My grandfather, J. Howard, was a man of moderate appetites, but exquisite taste.

Our tale takes its dark turn when the brand was sold to Seagrams in the late 40s, and this new guardian of Four Roses began slowly to betray its legacy. Tinkering began on the product, changing it to a blended whiskey of progressively lighter and blander character. Our noble, romantic hero began to fade as the brand slipped first into mediocrity and then decrepitude. Like a fallen bum on the Bowery, it found itself relegated to the cheap end of the bottom shelf, while its name faded from the living memory of the market.

And there it languished and would likely have died, forgotten and unmourned, except for a secret love it kept hidden away like a golden locket, secreted in a safe place under its tattered clothes. That secret was Japan.

You see, the real Four Roses, the high-quality straight bourbon whiskey, never stopped being made, and in large amounts. But it was all being sold in Japan. (OK, Europe got some, but Four Roses was a huge, perennial top-seller in Japan)

As the new millennium dawned, Seagrams completed it’s own rags to riches to rags arc and began to spin away it’s spirits brands and operations. Japan’s Kirin Brewing stepped in and purchased the Four Roses brand, the distillery where it was made, and about half its inventory of aged whiskey. I suspect Kirin’s management looked into the abyss of no more Four Roses, and moved accordingly.
The blended, artificial, whiskey-drink product was discontinued, and a comeback in America of the good stuff was planned. Any remaining stock of the old crap was bought up and destroyed. If you find any out there on a dusty shelf somewhere that they didn’t track down, put it down and back away. Such sad ghosts need not be disturbed.

In 2004, Four Roses returned to American shelves as a high-end whiskey again, with the introduction of a single-barrel bourbon. In 2006, they added the excellent Small Batch premium blend. Now they have reintroduced the Yellow Label as a mainstream straight bourbon. Finally, there are a number of single-barrel special bottlings, as well as private cask sales.
But Four Roses has not forgotten the country which kept the brand alive. There are at lease two major bottlings which still are available only in Japan. It’s not that they would not do well in the US market, but they simply sell there for so much more.
It remains to be seem how this tale will end. The name really was poisoned in the US, and few who remember the name are old enough to have fond memories. Will Four Roses be able to return as a major player with its Yellow Label? Will it settle in as a comfortable premium small brand?
But any good tale should leave you wanting to know just what “happily ever after” means…

I haven’t touched on an awful lot yet, there’ll be another post coming up shortly with some discussion of the excellent whiskeys that make all this bodice-ripping interesting in the first place, and how they are made.

(IITTALA Ultima Thule Old-Fashioned Glass: available from Amazon.com )

OK, most important thing: It’s pronounced Oh-WHY-Oh LAH-nee. Got it? Good.

My last post reviewed the new bottle of honey and vanilla infused vodka I received from local Columbus micro-distillery, Middle West Spirits. It’s a boldly flavored, and tasty, spirit, but it is a bit direct to leave on its own in a good cocktail. After some experimentation, I found it pairs rather nicely with a good premium bourbon, like Blanton’s, which adds some harmonious depth.

On inspection, the drink I’ve come up with to enjoy this bottle may seem a bt, um, straightforward to be called a Tiki drink. But the OYO provides a very exotic flavor on its own. Combine it with a healthy sprig of mint, and the resulting vibe is remarkably Tiki. I give you the OYO Lani:

The mint garnish is important here. I’m hardly comparing this little ditty to Trader Vic’s Mai Tai, but the effect of the mint is the same. The drink is delicious without it, but the aroma of the bruised mint oils as you sip livens things up considerably.

Of course, this drink doesn’t need to be thought of as a Tiki drink if you don’t want to. It’s just a complex Sour after all. Simply adjust the presentation to fit your mood, or the tastes of your recipient. But keep the mint.

I have been a bit hard on Eben Freeman in the past, and I just ran across a story on him, about which you’d pretty much expect me to tee up and take a rip at.
See, the reason I’ve taken shots at Eben in the past isn’t that he so richly deserves it. He doesn’t. He’s one of the Boss mixologists out there, with great feel for ingredients, a wealth of knowledge of food, cocktails, and chemistry, and an adventurous, avante garde mind. And a bit of ego. Combine all that in one man, and from time to time he’s going to take an idea, puff it up and stretch it from intelligent to ridiculous. Get ridiculous, and snarky critics like me will be there to ridicule you.

But not this time.

See, this time, Eben’s got a idea that’s both ridiculous on its face, and guaranteed to piss off a bunch of purists I could link. But I’m here to praise, not bury, because the drink sounds cool, Eben’s not puffing it or himself up, and the method is both ingenious and appropriate.

[Source]

He’s shooting a finished cocktail out of a soda gun. It’s called the Waylon, and while I’ve never heard of it, he’s been making it for a while.
The Waylon is a highball, with Buffalo Trace bourbon and smoke infused Coca Cola. To produce it, Eben smoke-infuses the pure Coke syrup, then mixes in the whiskey. Add the right amount of water, and you have a mix that will likely last months. Or hours, if it’s a busy night and the drinks geeks know it’s there to be tried.
Plug in the CO2 tank and hook up the gun. Eben runs the output tube through a chilled aluminum block to produce a cocktail that is already drinking temp. I have no idea if this is something that most soda fountains do, but I doubt it. I can see the value, even though this is a rocks drink, of the chilling. There will be less, and more reliable melting, leaving a drink that is reliably strong, no matter what ice you end up using.

Yes, it uses a soda gun, but the blasted mechanism is put to good use here. The drink’s also fun, different, and not at all pretentious. OK, it’s a little pretentious, but with a wink. And if you’re on a mission to shut down all winking pretension, you’re going to have to shut down the whole craft bar industry. So piss off.

[Source]

I imagine that this is a method most anyone could use themselves at home for all sorts of jiggery pokery. I’m thinking it’ll be fun with Cuba Libré variants. All you’d need is a soda siphon, which you hopefully have, and if not, shame on you. The drink won’t be pre-chilled, but some things just can’t be helped. And depending on what ingredients you play with in your own efforts, the batch should last quite a while.

The serious ingredient you’ll need is the Coke syrup itself. You could go all Darcy and make it yourself. Or you could pick up any of the scores of knockoff syrups out there for use in home soda machines, like the bottle that came with my SodaStream.
But back in the day, you could just go to your pharmacy’s antacid aisle and buy a bottle of pure, genuine Coca Cola syrup. It’s a lot harder to find today, which is a shame since it does the job on nausea. Still, here’s at least one source where you can buy small bottles of the stuff. And you can even buy five gallon bags of Essence of the Real Thing™ right from Amazon. That’s a bit much for the home mixer, I suppose.

Regardless, Eben is serving up his Waylons tonight (I believe) at a bar called Fatty Johnson’s in New York. I’ll miss out because I am here, but if you can chip your way through the ice encasing your door in New York, tell Eben I said hello, and come back and tell me how the Waylon tastes. (Via The Feast, H/T: Gizmodo)