Good booze for sipping

My booze preferences are nothing if not mercurial, and right now I find myself in a mode where I don't often feel like mixing an actual cocktail for myself. But I don't want my contributions to this blog to dry up just because I'm tending toward laziness, so instead I'll talk about some spirits that are great all by themselves, with nothing added but ice (and maybe not even that).

Sipping candidate #1: Bourbon

If you're ordering bourbon in any small-town bar in Kentucky, you ask for it straight up or you risk a lot of funny looks from the bartender and your fellow patrons. (I know this not because I've actually been to Kentucky, but because I am a regular viewer of "Justified.") Maybe you'd like to practice at home before you make the trip. Here are some of my favorite bourbons that stand up quite well on their own.

Pricey pick: Blanton's Single Barrel ($50)

Even the most pretentious of boozehounds will be impressed if they see a bottle of this on your shelf, and rightly so. It's rich, sweet, smooth, and delicious, and at 92 proof it'll take the edge off rather quickly but also won't burn your throat going down even if you drink it neat.

Affordable pick: Bulleit ($25)

Bulleit is very good bourbon, and it's also fairly ubiquitous (not advertised-during-NFL-games ubiquitous, but available-in-most-decent-liquor-stores ubiquitous). Great in an Old Fashioned or all by itself, and therefore a wise choice for your liquor cabinet.


Sipping candidate #2: Rum

Like tequila, rum is known to most people as strictly a cocktail ingredient (or something reluctantly gulped from a shot glass). That's because Bacardi has essentially cornered the international rum market, almost to the extent that "Bacardi" and "rum" are as interchangeable as "Kleenex" and "tissues." Bacardi is perfectly suitable in a mojito or a piña colada, but it's definitely not for sipping. If you want to consume rum straight-up, aged rum is the only way to go.

Because of its dark color, aged rum can easily be mistaken for dark rum, even though the two spirits are nothing alike. Dark rum is basically light (read: clear) rum with coloring and flavoring added. Aged rum, like bourbon or scotch, gets its amber tint from spending many years in a barrel. Therefore, a good aged rum might actually remind you more of whiskey than it does other types of rum, and that's not a bad thing at all.

Pricey pick: Ron Zacapa Centenario 23-year ($40)

Slightly-less-pricey pick: Cruzan Single Barrel ($30)

Either of these is a great choice for sipping on a warm summer evening. Throw in a lime wedge if you really want to live it up.


Sipping candidate #3: Mezcal

In the past few years mezcal has emerged from relative obscurity to become a popular component of many craft cocktails. The shorthand way of describing mezcal is to say that it's the scotch of tequila; it's aged much longer and tends to have the same kind of smoky flavor associated with scotch. Because it has such an intense and distinct taste, it'll come through strongly even in a cocktail where it's a minority ingredient. But once you've tried it in a cocktail, you may be tempted (as I was) to see what it's like on its own. The answer: Pretty damn fantastic.

Mega-pricey pick: El Jogorio Espadin ($80)

I know, I know. This is definitely a once-in-a-while purchase for once-in-a-while sipping. (Or you can go Full Gwyneth and give bottles out as party favors at your next locavore BBQ. Up to you.) It has some very distinct notes that separate it from even most top-tier mezcals, although I am neither knowledgable enough nor pretentious enough to be able to tell you exactly what those notes are.

Regular-pricey pick: Alipus San Baltazar Guelavila ($40)

Mezcal is priced pretty similarly to single-malt scotch, so there aren't a lot of good choices below this price point; however, the Alipus is great on its own or in cocktails, and it doesn't have the overly-smoky profile that I've tasted in some cheaper mezcals.


Sipping candidate #4: Aquavit

Here comes the weird one. Aquavit (or akvavit) is a very popular spirit in Scandinavia but a total unknown to most Americans. It's similar to vodka in that it's distilled from grain or potatoes and typically comes in at 80 proof, but the flavor is quite different. As with gin, herbal infusions help to take away the astringent alcohol-y taste, but the most unique (and noticeable) element is caraway. That's right, caraway. So if you're intrigued by hard liquor that tastes vaguely of rye bread, aquavit is your pick! (Seriously, it's worth a try. Twenty million beautiful blonde people can't all be wrong.)

Fairly-affordable pick that is also the only one I've seen for sale in the States: Linie ($30)

The Improved Dirty Martini

I love olives. Put pretty much any kind of olive in front of me and I'll eat it. I also love martinis, and I'll put as many olives in the glass as it will hold. So I'm very excited to try the Olives 7 Ways, as described in this New York Times article, "The Dirty Martini Cleans Up Well."

Fortunately, to tide me over until I have time to get to the East Village, the article included a home version of the recipe, "The Improved Dirty Martini," and I made my first one tonight.

I couldn't find Perry's Tot (I didn't look very hard) so I used Dorothy Parker, for the very scientific reason that it's made by the same distiller and has the same label design. I did get Noilly Prat and the Cerignola olives. In lieu of an eye dropper, I dipped a chopstick into a small dish of olive oil and kind of flung the drops onto the drink. The drops are smaller than in the Times photo, but it worked.

Instead of a dish of olives on the side, I put a single Sicilian olive in the glass.

You guys, this thing is amazing. It's incredibly smooth, and you can taste the olive and the salt without it being olivey or salty, if that makes sense. It has a slight bitterness and tang that I really like. It really is a far cry from the "slop of random brine" of the classic dirty martini. The olive oil adds a scent more than anything. I was worried about the drink being oily but it's really just a garnish. Even on the last sip I never felt like I was drinking oil.

With the 1:1 ratio of gin to vermouth, I can see why a stronger gin was recommended, and I'm looking forward to trying different ones and playing around with the proportions.

Brisa Frances

Okay, so you would not expect The Grove to be a place to find a good cocktail, and you certainly would not expect a bar called (ugh, I can barely even type this) Mixology 101 to be the establishment that would serve said cocktail. And yet, dear readers (both of you!) that is exactly the case. (Editor's note: I will be censoring the bar's name from now on because I find it that offensive.)

The menu at M******y 101 is pretty extensive, with a solid mix of the old-school and the new-fangled.  Since I'm perfectly capable of making the former at home, I opted for one of the modern drinks, the Brisa Frances. (I did ask the bartender if he could make a Holland Razor Blade, but alas, they had no cayenne.) And luckily for me, M******y 101 has the recipes for many of their cocktails printed on the walls, so I didn't have to awkwardly ask the bartender for the exact measurements.

I'm always partial to mezcal cocktails, as well as anything with a touch of absinthe (or a lot of absinthe, or just plain absinthe), and I also love a good cucumber margarita, so the Brisa Frances seemed like an ideal choice.  As expected, it was refreshing and delicious and just the right amount smoky.

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Recipe (transcribed from the walls at this place):

1.5 ounces mezcal

0.75 ounce agave syrup

0.75 ounce lime juice

0.25 ounce absinthe

0.5 ounce cucumber juice

Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice and shake well. Strain into a highball glass with fresh ice cubes, and top with soda water and a cucumber peel.

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Some notes:

- Mezcal is easier to find than it used to be. BevMo sells a few varieties, and even less well-stocked liquor stores often have one or two. As with any other spirit, you can safely buy a cheaper variety if you're going to use it exclusively in cocktails like this one, but if you want one that's good for both mixing and sipping, you should probably get something in the $30-40 range.

- As far as making cucumber juice goes, if you don't have a juicer at home, you have a few options. You can put cucumber in a blender or food processor and strain it, or just go to a juice bar and have them juice you up a pint or so of cucumber-only.  It should keep in the fridge for at least a couple of weeks.

- There are a couple of brands of absinthe you can buy in 100-ml bottles like this one, which is ideal if you just want to be able to add a splash of it to a drink like this one (or for rinsing the glass to make a Sazerac). We'll get into sipping absinthe in a subsequent post.

- To make agave syrup, mix agave nectar (the squeeze-bottle stuff you buy at Whole Foods or Trader Joe's) with equal parts boiling water, stir it up, and let cool. You'll end up with a much thinner liquid that dissolves more easily in drinks (especially cold drinks), and it'll last longer too. (And don't worry, it's still insanely sweet even in diluted form.)

Ginger Sidecar

Adapted from this recipe for a Bourbon Sidecar from the New York Times.

4 oz bourbon

1 oz cointreau* or triple sec

juice of 1 lemon

2-3 teaspoons ginger syrup

Combine all ingredients in a shaker over ice. Shake very well. Strain into a rocks glass.

Makes "two" but let's not kid ourselves. 

The original recipe calls for a sweeter bourbon. I prefer something a little stronger (in flavor, not in alcohol content) so the triple sec doesn’t overpower it. (This may be the difference between using bottom shelf triple sec and actual Cointreau, but I haven’t tried the latter, so I can’t say*.)

I used a Meyer lemon. They have a nice herbal quality that I like. Also they were on sale.

Making ginger syrup (or any flavored or plain simple syrup) is super easy. Mix equal parts sugar and water (1 cup each is usually good) and a bunch of peeled, chopped ginger (or flavoring of your choosing, such as fresh mint) in a small saucepan. Bring to a low boil, stirring, just until the sugar is fully dissolved. Let cool and steep, then strain into an airtight container and store in the fridge. How much syrup you use in this drink will depend on your taste and on how strong your syrup is.

As previously discussed, I’ll serve any brown liquor with homemade cocktail cherries, because they are the best. More logical garnishes in this case would be lemon peel or candied ginger.

UPDATE: I've now made the original NY Times recipe with Cointreau and a sugared rim, and it's noticeably different and, to my taste, better. I had thought that Cointreau was needlessly expensive when cheap Triple Sec and Curacao abound, but I was wrong. It's worth the investment to stock it in your home bar. Your margaritas and sidecars will thank you.

Apple Pie Manhattan

Nick was kind enough to invite me to contribute to this site, but it took a while for me to feel like I had anything to contribute beyond "drinking good!" I haven’t been very adventurous lately, booze-wise. Unless you count putting a dash of bitters in some bourbon and calling it an Extra-Dry Manhattan, I'm not big on making up drink recipes; I spend too much money on liquor as it is, I don't want to risk wasting it on experiments. 

But I wanted to do something with some apple cider I'd bought for a recipe (I'm not a fan of apple juice or cider, but it's great for cooking with) and I remembered the bottle of cinnamon whiskey at the back of the bar we'd bought on a lark that was pretty undrinkable on its own. Apple pie! It worked.

Photo by Adam Grosswirth

4 oz bourbon

2 oz sweet apple cider

1 oz cinnamon whiskey

2-3 dashes cranberry bitters (optional)

cocktail cherries (optional)

candied ginger (optional)

tart apple, such as Granny Smith (optional)

Pour all liquid ingredients into a shaker. Shake with ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass with cherries. Garnish with a piece of candied ginger and/or a slice of tart apple.

Photo by Adam Grosswirth

I used Maker’s Mark, which is my go-to bourbon, but if you want a stronger bourbon flavor you could use something like Knob or even a rye.

The cranberry bitters were another thing I happened to have in the house, an “ooh, neat!” impulse buy that I can’t really do much with. It seemed like a good Thanksgivingy touch, and it was.

I also tried this with a spoonful of ginger simple syrup, thinking a little sweetness would cut the harsh Fireball nicely, but I found it too syrupy. If you like a sweeter drink, though, that’s a good solution. If you want to get fancy, you could rim the glass with cinnamon sugar or maybe ground ginger and sugar. I am too lazy for that, so let me know how it turns out if you try it!

There’s really no reason for this drink to have cherries, except that I love them and I put them in basically anything with bourbon, including otherwise straight bourbon. I make my own, not because I’m a snob (I love me a classic bright red maraschino cherry) but because they’re so easy and awesome. I use this recipe, ideally with sour cherries (I hoard and freeze them during their very short season at the farmers’ market) but Dole frozen cherries from the grocery store are great too. Hmmm, maybe I should try to concoct a cherry pie Manhattan next? 

Holland Razor Blade

Last month I was in Seattle visiting my friends Rossanna and Tiago, and as usual, a good portion of our time was spent eating and drinking.  The thing I've realized of late is that cold-weather towns inevitably have the best bars.  Portland, Seattle, Boston... even Minneapolis -- which, if you saw my tweets, you know I wasn't altogether thrilled with in most respects -- definitely holds its own in the booze department.  And I'm not just talking about having two or three really fantastic bars; I'm talking about the average level of alcoholic intelligence across a broad spectrum of places.  (This is specifically where L.A. falls short -- sure, we have a few really fantastic bars, but you have to seek them out.  Mostly what we have are the kinds of joints that have one kind of bourbon, two kinds of gin, and fifty-eight varieties of flavored vodka.)

Anyway, I'm getting off track.  Point being: Seattle has many great bars, and according to many people (or at least my friends), Canon is the king of them all.  Having now been there three times, I am more than willing to believe this.  You could get a mild buzz just scanning the massive shelves behind the counter, reading off the names of every bottle of liquor known to man (as well as some that I think the bartenders might have invented themselves).

Since Canon is the type of place where you can literally just say, "Surprise me!" to the bartender and end up with an amazing drink in front of you, I decided to solicit a suggestion.  I've long been curious about Genever, the Dutch spirit that's kind of a cross between gin and bourbon, so I asked the bartender for a Genever-based recommendation.  And this is how I ended up sipping a Holland Razor Blade, and then, upon my return to L.A., buying myself a bottle of Bols Genever so I could whip one up myself.

This drink is definitely a case of -- well, if not "less is more," then at least "less is plenty."  It's about as simple as a cocktail can possibly get (I might not even have ordered it if I'd realized how few ingredients it has, given my strong inclination toward ridiculously complicated drinks), but it doesn't taste simple at all.  And what a name, right?

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Recipe (from Food & Wine):

2 ounces Genever

0.75 ounce simple syrup

0.75 ounce lemon juice

pinch of cayenne pepper

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add the genever, simple syrup and lemon juice and shake well. Strain the drink into a coupe glass and sprinkle with the pinch of cayenne.

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Some notes:

- Bols Genever is not the easiest spirit to find.  They don't have it any of the BevMos in Greater Los Angeles (as far as I can tell), but K&L Wines in Hollywood and Bar Keeper in Silver Lake both carry it.  K&L also ships.

- The coupe glass is another great bar staple, and also one that's not easily found.  (In fact, I still have yet to acquire any -- the glass I used is similar but not quite it.)  Most standard martini glasses range from 5 to 7 ounces in capacity, which means that if you make a drink like this one that tops off in the vicinity of 3 ounces, you're going to have some awkward empty space at the top of the glass.  Coupes are usually more like 3-3.5 ounces, so they're perfect for little drinks that pack a punch.

Yellow Jacket (modified)

Last Saturday, Alexis and I hosted a wrap party for the short film I wrote and directed, The Spy Who Came to Brunch.  Since we were expecting a lot more guests than my limited bartending skills could possibly handle, we bit the bullet and hired an actual bartender for the evening.  And holy crap, was it ever worth it.  He was a great guy who really knew his stuff (even taught me a better technique for making an Old Fashioned), and it was a lot more fun to not have to run to the kitchen every four minutes when someone needed a refill.

At one point in the evening, I was discussing cocktails with Christian, one of the lead actors, and we started talking about what to do with the bottle of mezcal I had on hand.  He suggested making a Yellow Jacket, which I'd never heard of but definitely found intriguing.  After some quick phone-Googling, we discovered that the drink is actually made with tequila; however, in my humble opinion, there's almost no tequila-based cocktail that can't be improved by substituting mezcal.  So we took our findings to the bartender and asked him to whip us up a couple of modified Yellow Jackets.

The verdict?  Really, really good.  Smoky, sweet, refreshing.  And nicely colored, thanks to the St. Germaine and Yellow Chartreuse.  I was happy to have an excuse to make another one today for the purposes of taking this photo.

Photo by Nick Rheinwald-Jones

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Recipe (courtesy of Serious Eats, modified by Nick & Christian)

2 ounces Mezcal

1 ounce St. Germain

0.75 ounce Yellow Chartreuse

1 dash Orange Bitters

1 lemon twist, for garnish

Combine mezcal, St. Germain, Yellow Chartreuse, and Orange Bitters in a mixing glass with ice.  Stir until cold.  Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with lemon twist.

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Some notes:

- The mezcal I happened to have was Sombra, a low-to-mid-range silver mezcal that's only so-so for sipping but great for cocktails like this one, since the rich smokiness comes through even in small quantities.

- Yellow Chartreuse and its sibling Green Chartreuse are great to have around, but also pretty freakin' expensive (usually $65 for a full bottle).  Fortunately, they're also sold in half-sized bottles for half the price -- and even that size should last you a long while, since most cocktails that use Chartreuse don't call for very much of it.

- A long, spiraled bar spoon for stirring is an essential bartending tool for this and many other drinks, and you can find one at pretty much any well-stocked kitchen store (like Sur La Table or Williams-Sonoma) or at BevMo.