Got troubles? Life getting you down? At a fork in the road, and don’t know the path to take? Can’t find your car keys?
Bruce Willis has your answers! Just ask him.
This invaluable service is brought to you by the makers of Sobieski Vodka, and can be accessed on their website for the low, low cost of telling them your birthdate.

Bruce recently became “part owner” of Sobieski. Just what this means, I’m not sure, since the purchase of one share makes you a “part owner” of any company. I’m “part owner” of Diageo, for instance. But regardless, these days Willis is all over the Sobieski website, including this new interactive advice interface. His head looks appropriate, but I can’t quite make out where the big “8″ is.

I happen to really like Sobieski, for at least three reasons. Firstly, a bottle of their vodka was my first ever Liquor Fairy free product sample I got through blogging on this site. They will always have a warm spot in my heart, just for that. (Here’s my post on Sobieski from 2008.)

Second, I think it is damn good vodka. Moreover, it is damn good vodka at a more than just competitive price. At as little as a third the price of many “ultra-premiums”, Sobieski is possibly the best value to be found in any kind of spirit in the US market.

Third, I have always found their advertising and marketing efforts refreshing, entertaining, and above all offering some great insights into the nature and challenges of the vodka industry. That last is, I’m sure an unintended feature, but it makes it no less valuable to anyone who is interested in the business of liquor, especially vodka.
All vodka makers are in an inescapable bind. Sobieski has from its introduction not tried to ignore or, worse, deny the issue. Instead, they have embraced it and made it their strength. Here’s the bind: Almost by definition, you cannot compete in the straight vodka market based on the quality or distinctiveness of your product. Vodka is defined by law as being colorless and tasteless. You can (and many makers do) argue all you want about quality, but if you are holding your deep-diving championships in the local YMCA pool, Guillaume Nery won’t be able to beat my daughter.
Sobieski turns that bind on its competitors. The first, and still best, tagline of theirs that I saw was, “Distilled 5X, 8X, 39X. Oh, please. How about distilled enough?” A recent one is “The next gimmick in vodka is, well, the next gimmick in vodka.” Visit the Sobieski website, even if you don’t need the Part-Owner’s advice, for lots more fun stuff. They clearly have fun with their ad campaigns, and you will too.

I recently received via Liquor Fairy a bottle of OYO Honey Vanilla Bean Vodka, the second release from local Columbus micro-distillers, Middle West Spirits. I quite like the unusual style of vodka in their flagship OYO brand, and was happy to give this new expression a try. (Yes, I said “unusual style of vodka”. Chew on that for a while, liquor snobs!)

The folks at Middle West make a commitment to locally sourcing everything they can for their products. The winter wheat that is the base for all their liquors is from a single farm in Ohio, and the bees making the honey for this product similarly bleed scarlet and gray. As for the vanilla beans, well vanilla orchids don’t take well to places where it can be sunny, raining, snowing and sleeting, all at the same time like today, so Middle West gets those from Uganda. But they buy the actual raw beans and scrape them here to get the best flavors. You can smell both of these ingredients in glorious flower, just by opening the bottle. The liquor is actually drinkable neat (very drinkable out of the freezer), which is an incredible rarity in a commercial infused vodka.

The Honey Vanilla Bean was originally intended as a one-batch seasonal bottling for Christmas. But when they ran out of their run, and found orders only increasing, they decided to make it a regular product for now. This is what is known in the business world as a “no-brainer”. I sense that they see the success of this bottling as a mixed blessing, because it takes a lot of hand crafting (scraping vanilla beans, etc.) to make this stuff. But again… lots of orders.

My next post will be an original cocktail of my own using this (here it is), but I’ll give you a few of my own impressions of how it goes with other ingredients.
First, the honey and vanilla flavors are powerful. I think it’ll be hard to use this in cocktails where it is the only spirit. If I put enough for a decent amount of alcohol into a cocktail, I found it very hard to balance out the intense flavors of the OYO, especially the sweetness of the honey. Fortunately it pairs well with a wide variety of other liquors and liqueurs.
Second, while my initial impression on tasting it was of rum, I’ve failed utterly to get it to pair well with any kind of actual rum, light or dark.
Third, it goes a lot better with lemon or orange, if you want citrus, than lime. Any significant amount of lime juice ruined every otherwise promising mix I got going.
Of course, advice (especially mine) is made to be ignored, but this is what half a bottle of OYO Honey Vanilla Bean has bought me in the way of experience.

I’m quite happy with the OYO Honey Vanilla Bean Vodka (though not with the name, which makes my writing seem verbose or commercial every time I type it). For me, most infused vodkas are at best either fun gimmicks or lazy shortcuts. This bottle brings some nice, real flavors to the table, flavors that aren’t necessarily going to be better added to the drink another way. If you are in Ohio, try some of this OYO. If you aren’t, stay tuned, it should be available outside Ohio in the not too distant future. I’ll let you know.

The Liquor Fairy Was Here!
The following product, OYO Honey Vanilla Bean Vodka, was recently provided to me as promotional consideration to encourage me to discuss it.
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.

Why is this man smiling?
Well, first off he’s back on screen with Belushi. A Belushi at least. In the picture above, he’s torturing Jim Belushi’s lawyer character as Judge Max Hunter in the CBD series, The Defenders. I got a kick out of this little scene at the start of last episode because I like Dan Aykroyd and because I like seeing lawyers being tortured.

But he didn’t make me burst out laughing until much later in the show, when he wasn’t even in the scene. Check out Belushi’s desk (highlighting mine):

Many of you are laughing now too. If you aren’t, the highlighted bottle looks like a skull. It is a vodka called Crystal Head. I wrote about a controversy surrounding it here, and also about their promotional gift pack with the coolest shot glasses evar.
The reason it’s so funny to see this bottle suddenly appear on that desk in this episode is that Crystal Head is owned by one Dan Aykroyd. Now that’s product placement I can live with happily. I wonder if it was part of his guest star contract, or if he just slipped two bottles to the set dresser on condition that one ends up on the desk.

Judge Hunter has nothing to do with the rest of the episode after that first scene, and I had just remarked to my wife that either Aykroyd really wanted to hawk Crystal Head, or The Defenders was engaging in a seriously expensive bit of stunt casting to use Dan Freaking Aykroyd as a throwaway bit character when they ended by teasing the next episode….

Yeah.
30-40 hits of Ecstasy, a gun, and a hooker on a gurney will require a bit more work by your Defenders, even if you are a judge in Las Vegas.

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t find a way to shoehorn this post into Tiki Month somehow. So, in honor of Aykroyd’s fine vodka in the awesome bottle (a Tiki decoration in it’s own right), I offer you this vodka based Tiki drink. It’s a modification of the classic Blue Hawaii, a cocktail that embodies all that was right and all that was wrong about Tiki, and one that originated as a cheap promotional stunt to boot.

Rather than post a photo of this more-tasty-than-it-deserves-to-be concoction, I’ll take this excuse to post one last screencap from the Defenders. This image from the opening credits is the inspiration for making this particular drink. It is also a good way to highlight my contention that Las Vegas may have a thousand themes, instead on just one, but at it’s heart, it’s naughty, less dangerous than it looks, gloriously inauthentic heart, it is just the world’s largest 24-hour Tiki bar.

Halloween time, folks!

Among the spook-tide offering from the Liquor Fairy this year was a bottle of Three Olives Purple. Three Olives has one of the larger spread of flavors available, with more coming all the time. Purple is a bit more differentiated than most, as we’ll see in a moment.

I’ve written before about the difficulty vodka makers have in differentiating their products from their competitors. Some use sex. (Some are bit more on the nose about this than others.) Others use beautiful or gimicky packaging. The most useful thing the distillers do to make themselves stand out is to offer a flavored or infused variant or two.

Three Olives has used all these methods over the years, but they seem to have chosen to be the king of flavored vodkas as their core competency. They show sixteen flavored vodkas on their website currently, including all the basics called for in most decent cocktails that use flavored vodka, such as a citrus and a vanilla.
Purple, along with the unfortunately(?) named Rangtang, are part of a new evolution in the flavored vodka field: Color. Purple looks just that, a dark, opaque concord grape purple. It makes for some very interesting looking mixtures.
The flavor is also just that, Purple. The label says “grape-flavored vodka”, but it’s purple-flavored vodka. That’s not a bad thing, by the way, just a thing you need to know when deciding what to do with this product. I happen to like purple flavored things, others don’t. That’s no different from any other infusion choice in vodka.

Now, if you like the basic flavor, what do you do with it in a drink? The initial, and easy, route to go is sweet flavors. I think most bars will use Purple in shooter-like drinks. It looks distinctive, and the flavor is a powerful quick hit. Try playing with orange curaçao, cranberry, or even real grape juice.
You can also produce an interesting Cosmopolitan variant with a sweet red wine in place of the cranberry juice.

But this is a serious cocktail blog (har!) and I wanted to come up with a drink using Purple that was more dry and/or spicy, in the vein I prefer. After a few rather unfortunate dead ends, it hit me that Purple would marry well with ginger. Purple, Canton, a splash of lime, and some orange bitters (in all sorts of different ratios) yields a tasty cocktail.

The drink that I hit on that I really like, and that I think goes really well with this whole Halloween time we have right now, is my Skeletal Mule. It is essentially nothing but a Moscow Mule, modified for spookiness. Use Purple in place of plain Three Olives or other brand vodka. And replace the copper cup with the best drinkware you can find at one of the fifty temporary Halloween supply stores that are open near you right now.

This drink looks all Halloweeny without the dry ice, and positively Vincent Price with it. I plan on having one close at hand when answering the door for the trick or treaters this Sunday.

(A few words about Dry Ice: You can usually get it, year-round at good ice cream shops. They keep it to pack with ice cream for travel. And do not use dry ice to garnish shooters or shots! If someone drinks even a sliver of the stuff, the consequences don’t bear dwelling on. And even if there are no accidents, the bubbles in a small glass are going to splash Purple all over the place and make a mess.)

The Liquor Fairy Was Here!
The following product, Three Olives Purple, was recently provided to me as promotional consideration to encourage me to discuss it.
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.

I recently had a chance to tour a brand spanking new distillery right here where I live in Columbus, Ohio. Middle West Spirits has set up in a re-purposed auto service garage and has begun producing fine artisanal liquor. Middle West is a fascinating story in many ways, from their production methods, to the community efforts of their principals, to the challenges and obstacles we as a society present to startup businesses in this industry. I hope to write about all of these subject in coming weeks, but for this post I just want to do a review of the first product they have commercially available, OYO Vodka.

{Welcome Foodista readers! I hope you’ll look around while you are here. In addition to spirits reviews, I also do bar reviews, cocktail recipes, intermittent tikiblogging, and a lot about basement bar design, among other things.}

I’ll talk about the spirit, but first we have to talk about the name. It is not “Oh-Yo”, nor “Oi-oh”, but “O-Why-O”, as in an older pronunciation of Ohio. I like the name, but I foresee future marketing problems with it if (as I expect) this brand takes off outside of the Midwest.

OYO is not anything like your standard, made for the American market, vodka. The common American idea is that vodka needs to be as tasteless as possible. We tend to call this lack of character “smooth”. But drinkers who expand their horizons to liquors beyond vodka soon realize their definition of “smooth” simply means “bland”. Try a high-end Bourbon or Cognac, and you will see that “smooth” can be complex, rich, and flavorful.

The methods used, indeed bragged about, by Vodka makers are designed to hunt down character, kill it, and drag the corpse as far away from their product as they can. They repeatedly distill and repeatedly charcoal filter their spirit (perhaps pouring in some glycerin) until this body dump is complete. And for a huge portion of the drinking public, this just the right thing. If your aim is to look cool whilst jacking up your BAC, then by all means, order your “Martini” or your Triple Cranberry Fandango with Grey Goose.

Middle West goes a different way. OYO is single-distilled. That is, their first-of-its-kind-in-the-US Kothe Vodka Still takes their mash all the way to the required 190 proof in one pass. Further, they do not use any charcoal filtration at all. They run the product through a product that is essentially a coffee filter on steroids, but this only removes visible particulates and performs no chemical filtration. Of course, they discard the first and last cuts, where the bad congeners dwell, but what remains is a spirit that while still definitely vodka, is very distinct from most others you’ll find on shelves.

The first, and to me most noticeable difference is in the texture. I normally avoid phrases like “mouth-feel” as belonging to pretentious foodies and/or wine snobs. But I can’t think of a better phrase to use to describe this difference between OYO and your average, run-of-the-mill $35 Vodka. It simply feels different in your mouth. While viscous isn’t exactly right it coats your tongue and feels thicker in your mouth. I remember Head Distiller Ryan Lang swirling a glass of OYO before handing it to me. It developed big, beautiful legs in the glass, but did so much more slowly than I’m used to.
Beyond the texture, there is also a taste component difference in OYO. I wouldn’t say it has a flavor, Vodka shouldn’t, but there is a depth and breadth to the burn that you don’t usually get. Ryan suggested several hints of flavor that are present in OYO, but I’ll leave those to him. My mind doesn’t process flavors like that, so I very seldom pick up that “hint of Montmorency cherries” people will rave about in some new cabernet either. What I did note was the pleasant fact that more of my tongue was engaged while sipping OYO than I am used to.

The differences are subtle, but quite real. And all to the good (with one odd exception I mention below).

OYO is distilled from 100% whole Ohio-grown red winter wheat, which arrives at the distillery as bags of (custom ground?) flour. I am usually a potato vodka guy, but this works very well.
Wheat and water go in 1230 Courtland Ave., and bottled OYO rolls out. The still I mentioned before dominates the center of the building and is a real beauty. Middle West has a beautiful efficient setup, which has room and is laid out to expand as demand grows.

Now, how do you drink this stuff? Well, it’s Vodka. You can do most anything with it, but I have some suggestions of ways that take most advantage of its different character. Some of this comes from my explorations with a bottle of OYO that they presented me with when I toured the distillery, and some from their brand ambassador, my friend Cris Dehlavi.

First, this is a wonderful Vodka Martini product. It is delicious if you are from the “glass of cold vodka” school, but I think it extends and enlivens the drink even more when you use a measurable amount of vermouth, say 4-1, and some Regan’s Orange Bitters.

I had thought that it would make an interesting Old-Fashioned. But experimentation showed me that subtlety of the OYO is wiped out here. In fact, the sweeter the drink, the less interesting and distinctive the OYO’s effect. Along this same line, do not use OYO in Vodka Gimlets or Kamikazes. Rose’s and OYO do not get along very well at all.

Beyond that caveat, OYO likes regular lime juice. But I think if you want citrus, you are better off starting with lemons.
I’ll offer one of Cris’ recipes she has created to promote OYO, called the Summer Thyme. It works nicely as a counterpart to the Vodka Martini to show how OYO works in a more complex vodka cocktail.

* A more experienced cocktailian is going to want to reduce or even eliminate the simple in this, I think. Try muddling the thyme in the Grand Marnier.

Right now, you can only get OYO in Ohio, but they hope to have that rectified soon. I’ll let you know. They have only been in production for a few months, and I’m told that the response has been very promising.
If you want to see the distillery for yourself (it’s a fascinating facility) they have weekly open houses every Wednesday from 5-7 PM.

The Liquor Fairy Was Here!
The following product, OYO Vodka, was recently provided to me as promotional consideration to encourage me to discuss it.
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.

I recently posted on a great Heineken ad, observing that Beer Ads Still Kick Liquor Ads Butt, Take Their Lunch Money. The beer companies just make more entertaining ads than liquor companies. (They both soundly trounce wine ads, which are boring and pretentious at best) Part of this is because there are lots more restrictions on when, where, and how hard liquor makers can advertise compared to brewers. But still, it’s no excuse and bad business for the distillers to be so lame in comparison.
Well, Stolichnaya is stepping up to the plate and taking their cuts. Good on ‘em. Here is their new television advertisement that asks the rather odd question, Would you have a drink with you? They ask it of perhaps the world’s most famous, (sort-of) non-fictional vodka martini drinker, the Hef.

I realize that this is in danger of becoming a “Stupid Liquor Laws” blog, but that category really is a target-rich environment lately….

Today’s amusing-if-it-weren’t-alarming idiocy comes to us courtesy of the Liquor Control Board of Canada (via The Globe and Mail, via Ed Driscoll). The LCBO has seen fit to ban Crystal Head Vodka from stores in the increasingly benighted province.
Why?
Er, the bottle, as you can see above, is in the shape of an attractive crystal skull. And, um, That’s an image that’s commonly associated with death.
So?
Well, the concern du jour in prohibitionist government regulatory circles is [spins Wheel of Furrowed Brows] the possibility of binge drinking. And since binge drinking occasionally leads to alcohol poisoning, which occasionally leads to death, a skull bottle of vodka is apparently an inducement to, um, something. But whatever it is, it’s bad! Very Bad!
Oh, but bars and restaurants can still serve it in Ontario, and display this visual inducement to ethanol-induced suicide right there where the children, the children can see it. And you can buy it by the case as well. Because it is always better to sell binge-drinking products in bulk. You know, for safety.
The LCBO might consider that Crystal Head is not exactly in your average binge drinkers target price range. You’ll need to pony up fifty bucks (sixty if your cash has the Queen on it), to buy a bottle.

As it happens, I happen to have a bottle of this dangerous, banned product sitting on the display shelf of my Basement Bar. Dan Aykroyd sent it to me to try. Well, his minions sent it to me, but it is much cooler to use the Transitive Property of Liquor Fairys and claim he did. Why Dan? Because Crystal Head is Aykroyd’s company. He started the brand as a joke, and to ensure he had a ready supply of unique and fun gifts for the holidays. But the bottle is really cool looking, and the product it contains is good, so he has found himself with a profitable business.
And Aykroyd, who has more marketing acumen locked up in his own, personal skull than possessed by the collective rocket scientists at the LCBO, is unfazed by the ban. I like it, it kind of makes the product more appealing in my view, he told the Globe and Mail.
While Crystal Head may not be terribly inconvenienced, and perhaps may be helped, by this ban, the problem is that every ban like this that slides through makes the next, possibly more damaging one easier to put in place. If this stands (and it will) you may turn around in five years and hear the LCBO say that Creme de Violette is pretty, and has flowers in the name. And little girls like pretty things and flowers. So they are banning Creme de Violette because it might induce little girls to drink. (I have more realistic examples to offer, but I refuse to give the ninnys any ideas.)

If you are interested, I do like the vodka. As I demonstrated in my last post, I’m no anti-vodka cocktail snob. And I damn sure can tell the difference between brands. Crystal Head is every bit as good as most other premium vodkas, and better than some. But let’s face it, at this price point, you are buying it for the bottle, not the liquor. True to Aykroyd’s initial idea, it makes a cool, distinctive gift. Also, it is fun to pour from when you have guests over and you need a conversation starter. (Careful when you show off with this bottle, it is lovely, but not ergonomic.)

I’ll throw the Liquor Fairy disclaimer down below for disclosure’s sake. But I go the bottle a while ago, and chose not to write about it because everything I had wanted to say about it had already been said (with better photographs) by lots of other blogs. It’s very irritating when other bloggers write what you want to say before you can say it, leaving the choice of sounding like a copycat, or not writing about an interesting product. So I guess what I’m ending with is a thank you to the LCBO, whose cranio-rectal inversion gives me an excuse to finally write about Crystal Head.

The Liquor Fairy Was Here!
The following product, Crystal Head Vodka, was recently provided to me as promotional consideration to encourage me to discuss it.
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.

I’ve written before of the four bedrock drinks of cocktailia. Each based on one of the four foundation spirits of classic cocktailia, gin, bourbon, rum, and brandy, I refer to these cocktails as The Four Gospels. There are other great and/or popular spirits that people mix with, of course. And there is for most of them an emblematic cocktail as well. I’ll refer to these drinks as the Gnostic Gospels, since the spirits they use aren’t quite canonical for one reason or another.

We shall discuss today the (Gnostic) Gospel of Vodka: The Cosmopolitan.

The Cosmo is the new kid on the block among the power cocktails, which among other reasons means it gets less respect than it should. I’ll get to those reasons in a bit, but I’ll lead with why the Cosmopolitan deserves to be considered one of the Gospels.

Firstly, the drink is very popular. I challenge you to find a bartender in America (biker bars probably excluded) who isn’t called on to make them often. While it is no longer so omnipresent as it was a few years ago, that is actually a testament to its importance and influence. So many people who were attracted to the Cosmo learned that there was a world of cocktails to explore beyond it.

And influential the Cosmo is, like all the Gospels. The Manhattan was the first gospel, the Martini defines cocktails as elegance, the Daiquiri and its progeny kept hope alive down in Cuba during Prohibition, and the Sidecar is the iconic Europeans contribution.
The Cosmo was the light that brought classic cocktails back out of the wilderness.

Aaaah!

Zut alors!

Aack!

Kaaahn!

Yes, it did, oh snooty drink purists. Please remember the state of cocktails when the Cosmo was born. The drinking world was a vast wasteland of shots, and slushies, and sour mix. (Oh My!) Even the mighty Martini had devolved into a glass of cold vodka, drunk only by old men and paleo-hipsters.

Then the Cosmopolitan burst onto the bar scene. The cocktail glass became cool again, as did drinks in it. Because most bars had become places that had neither the inventory nor staff to produce drinks like a decent Cosmo, fashionable patrons sought out Martini Bars, where they could get one without a fuss. Over time, you could once again find measurable numbers of bartenders who stood out because of their mixing skills, instead of just their sympathetic ear or appearance (or cleavage). I’m not saying that the Cosmo sparked the craft bar renascence of today, but I’m sure it provided several critical items of support.

• It provided cash flow for a (still to this day) niche market.
• It spiked demand in the mainstream for Martini-style mixology.
• It convinced a hell of a lot of young women to put down the wine bottle and pick up the cocktail glass.

To be a Gospel, a cocktail must also be the perfect vessel for its base spirit. I contend that the Cosmo is the perfect embodiment of what you can do well with vodka. Vodka provides no distinctive character of its own to a drink, nor
color, or aroma. Instead it provides a simple, smooth kick. When you mix with vodka, your drink has cocktail potency, but you can decide on whatever flavors you need, without having to subjugate them to a dominant spirit. The delicious, well-balanced mixture of flavors from the the other ingredients in a Cosmo won’t work without the vodka. I’ve tried. Interestingly, it is the addition of a large amount of 80 proof liquor that actually makes the drink smooth and drinkable.

Of course, the mere use of vodka is why many in the Church of the Cocktail would relegate this gospel to gnostic or “also ran” status. Vodka has a very short history in cocktails, and not a particularly distinguished one. Most of its oeuvre consists of either simply dull concoctions, or dumbed down versions of superior gin drinks.
The Cosmo is different in that when made well with good ingredients, it is an interesting, balanced cocktail. Further, the ground is littered with the bodies of cocktailians who tried to turn the Cosmopolitan into a decent gin cocktail. The fabled Metropolitan heresy has wasted more good gin on bad results than you can imagine. (For the record, my attempt can be found here. I cheated and it is still only OK.)

There is more to be said about the history and culture of the Cosmo, but I’ve gone too far into the post already without giving a recipe. Here is Dale DeGroff’s Rainbow Room recipe:

For the record, I actually think Dale’s recipe is too sweet. (Ducks head to check for lightning) My preferred recipe is this, the Dry Cosmopolitan, if you will.

I use a lime wheel because I seldom have oranges around, and I’m tired of burning my fingers learning how to flame the peels anyway.
When you are learning to mix your own Cosmopolitans, the cranberry you use will dramatically affect the final product. The omnipresent brand in America is Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Cocktail. That is what my ratios are designed for. Other brands vary in sweetness. You can also find pure cranberry juice, but please be aware that it is seriously tart. You’ll need to add simple, more Cointreau, or less cranberry to make the drink work. Frankly I see no benefit.
Ocean Spray isn’t really a juice in cocktail mixer terms, but a cordial, like Rose’s Lime. Use accordingly.

Another issue worth discussing with Cosmos is the Cointreau. Use it. Any decent vodka will do fine in a Cosmopolitan, but if you skimp and use cheap triple sec, the quality will suffer. And using most other orange liqueurs is a heresy, as the darker color will throw off the pristine pink shade of the cocktail.

The Cosmo, at its Miami nativity, used citrus-infused vodka. You can experiment with this if you like, but employing such vodka so you can omit the lime is a heresy. And using Rose’s in your Gospel of Vodka will surely as the Sun shall rise bring a visit from these guys…

I’ll wind things up with some discussion of the history and cultural impact of the Cosmopolitan. While DeGroff is widely and persistently credited with inventing the Cosmo, to his credit he has just as persistently refused to take credit. Cheryl Cook, a South Beach bartender, first made a “Cranberry Kamikaze” with this famous moniker. DeGroff adopted and improved the recipe as a signature drink for the rebooted Rainbow Room in New York.
The Cosmo’s first big splash with the general public came when Madonna visited the Rainbow Room after the Grammys in the early 1990′s. A NewYorker photographer snapped a picture of her enjoying a Cosmopolitan and it created a sensation around New York’s bar scene.

Then Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda made the Cosmo their cup of communion on HBO’s Sex and the City, and the cranberries really hit the fan.

The show never suited my taste, so I watched only a few episodes. But it’s clear to anyone why it sparked such a sensation in the cocktail world. The four fabulous women of SatC led thrilling lives, attend fabulous Manhattan events, wear incredible (and incredibly over the top) outfits, have wild, varied sex, and drink exotic Cosmopolitans. The largely female audience which made the show popular wanted that life. But they mostly didn’t live in Manhattan, didn’t have the money for designer clothes, and wanted that sex to be with men other than those available.
All that and six bucks would get you a Cosmopolitan. See the effects on the cocktail world, as postulated above.

With the arrival of the latest installment of the Sex and the City saga in theaters, expect another run on this drink, as well as other means of spicing up marriages. Carrie and Big are apparently getting bored with each other, and such dodges as wearing identical men’s tuxedos out for a night on the town don’t seem to work. The ladies therefore take the only logical step, which is to jet off to a Muslim nation to ogle men and drink heavily. (?!?!) To paraphrase the movie’s trailer, It’s like Aladdin? Yes, but with Cosmopolitans.


Thus endeth Cosmopolitan, The Book of Vodka.
Here are the posts detailing the Four True Gospels of the Cocktail:
The Daiquiri, The Book of Rum
The Sidecar, The Book of Brandy
The Manhattan, The Book of Whiskey
The Martini, The Book of Gin

Everybody has a Bloody Mary recipe. And everyone thinks that theirs is the best one on Earth.
Everybody also has an assho….

Hey!
Let’s not insult the readers, shall we? Not in the first line, anyway. Besides, what you say is not true. I do not have a Blood Mary recipe.

…!

Among the (many) holes in my cocktail repertoire, perhaps the largest is the Bloody Mary. I always avoided it due to its resemblance to the hated V8 Juice, and thus I find myself with no experience here at all. During a momentary need for escape from Tiki monomania last February, I ordered my first Bloody Mary in a bar and found it darned intriguing. I resolved to undertake the task of developing my own Bloody Mary recipe this Summer. That quest begins here.

The problem is that it is a daunting task. Recipes are highly individualized, and since I have drunk perhaps five Bloody Marys in total, I don’t have a lot of experience to give me leads. I began with the basic recipe, at least as given in the BarSmarts Wired course, which matches up pretty well with a number of my books. It gave me the basic elements of a Bloody Mary: Tomatoes, Vodka, citrus, and spices.
But what kind of cocktailian would I be if I didn’t want to go beyond, to concoct my own twist on this most personalized of classics?

Inspiration struck last week in the form of a date night with Maggi, down to M at Miranova to see Columbus’ best bartender, Cris Dehlavi. (No really, she was just voted Columbus’ Best Batender) With all the mutterings around the web about Aviation variations, I wanted to try her new Violet Sour, an Aviation made with lavender-infused Plymouth Gin.
However, the other new offering I tried was her take on the Bloody Mary, which she calls the Heirloom. The key feature with the Heirloom is that it uses tomato water instead of juice. This makes for a less in your face appearance and a smoother texture that really appeals to me. Cris also garnishes it in a way that is beyond my resources right now, but I’ll work on gilding the lily when I have a lily worth gilding. If you are in Columbus, go try her Heirloom.

Or you can stick with me and give my experiment a try to see if you like it. I think you will.

The easy but time-consuming part is to make some tomato water. There are all sorts of recipes out there on the web, with varying degrees of complexity. I chose to eschew any peppers or other produce for this first run, simply choosing six or seven of the best looking tomatoes I could find and quartering them. I put them in my Blendtec (the new larger carafe makes this work a lot better) and hit the smoothie button. Have I mentioned before how awesome this blender is? It takes about four seconds to go from this…

to this…

Lay your largest strainer over a glass bowl and line it with several layers of cheesecloth. Carefully pour your pureé into the cloth and let drip overnight.

The next morning, you can discard the pulp and you have a lightly cloudy, pale red, very fragrant liquid. The amount it yields will vary on the size and quality of your tomatoes, but you may get more than you were expecting the first time.
Rick Stutz tried this last fall, and recommends refrigerating during the draining, but I chose not to. Cold can do things to tomato flavors and textures that I like to avoid if possible. Cover overnight and live dangerously.
Interestingly, I could not find a commercial source of tomato water anywhere. If anyone knows of a brand of commercial stuff I could keep on standby for when I want a drink now, instead of tomorrow, I’d love to hear about it.

At last, I was ready to make my first shot at a decent, somewhat unique Bloody Mary. Here’s what I came up with, after a few iterations:

Just a quick note here.
Protect your basil from any errant May frosts, or those two measly leaves in the picture will be all you have left that aren’t ruined!

The result is a mildly spicy deliciousness. The texture is far lighter than with traditional Bloody Marys, but it still possesses a definite comforting richness in your mouth and gullet that would be helpful with a delicate constitution. That said, the transient nature of the tomato water means I’ll be looking for a juice version to have on stand by if I ever get around to having my first hangover….

Stick around over the Summer, and help me figure out how to say, Well, my damn Bloody Mary recipe is the best there is! Or you can post your own version in the comments and I’ll steal from it shamelessly down the road if it is any good at all.

It was recently brought to my attention that in the event of a post-apocalyptic scenario, Paul Clarke will likely be king, or at least Prince of Puget.

Wait, what?
Paul Clarke? And what Apocalypse?

Yes, Paul Clarke. And just name your favorite end of civilization.

Uh huh.
And why, pray tell, do you think this?

Yesterday, I ran across a post on a liquor blog I had not previously seen called Liquor Locusts (thanks, Insty!). Entitled The Whiskey Standard, it tells the tale of the blogger’s grandmother, who always had three full cases of Old Crow bourbon under the stairs of her home. Now Grandma was not some sad old alcoholic. Nor was the whiskey some treasured collection of rare potables laid down for investment purposes. (Obviously) It turns out that this stash was not connected to her personal drinking habits at all, it was emergency supplies.

One impression (of Depression and Prohibition survivors) was that you could count on whiskey. It did not go bad. If you wanted, you could drink it. But more importantly you could always spend it. In some ways, it was better than money. It was inflation proof. It did not suffer from devaluation or inflation. There were always people who would trade you for whiskey. They would fix your car, paint your house, doctors would look at your kids, people would sell you food, all for that wonderful commodity-whiskey.

This woman was smart. No matter the situation, so long as people are alive, there will be trade. While the classic emergency currency is gold, whiskey has much to recommend it as an alternative.
As Grandma understood, booze has uses of its own, unlike gold. And if the greater world finds you have a stash of gold, many out there in it may be moved to take it from you instead of trading goods and services for it. A stash of whiskey in hard times is more likely to win you friends….
But Old Crow?
This too, makes sense. It’s perfectly good stuff, but cheap enough to make laying in a stash affordable. And it is not so exotic or esoteric that the average person would look on it with uncertainty. You want people to see it and feel reassured as to its universality.
And why bourbon? This too is understandable, since bourbon is America’s great spirit. Perhaps vodka would work as well. Everybody drinks it nowadays, and it’s more generally useful for not drinking applications. In really hard times though, I see a dark liquor as more comforting and valuable.
But are three cases of Old Crow really the best asset for your post-apocalypse bank? I used Paul Clarke for my poster boy on this post because his liquor collection would leave him in high clover for a long time, and because his head looks less ridiculous on Mel Gibson’s body than Rumdood’s. (Hell, my head looks less ridiculous on Mel Gibson’s body than Matt’s….) But would a bottle of Old Potrero Single Malt Straight Rye Whiskey 19th Century Style really be any more valuable to a shade-tree mechanic (who you want to mount a machine gun on your dune buggy for you) than a bottle of Early Times?

Probably NOT a Corpse Reviver aficionado….

Help me out here, folks. What would you (what will you) lay in down in the cellar for an (acid) rainy day?
Here’s what I think I’m going to add to my emergency preparedness locker in the basement, alongside my water, filters, medical supplies, and indestructible foodstuffs: three cases of Jack Daniel’s and one of generic American vodka. (I’m a cocktail nut, I can’t even talk of a zombie-ruled wasteland without focusing on ratios!)

Would you bother with gin, rum or brandy? I would think they might be less valuable in hard times, but you tell me. And if you live outside the United States, what would you want to have in your wallet?