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The Classic Margarita – A Perfect Drink for Cinco de Mayo
- Published on Thursday, 03 May 2012 10:35
- Geoffrey Kleinman
- 1 Comment
Tequila, lime, and agave – that’s all you need to make a perfect margarita. While there are many ways of making a margarita, including using triple sec, a mix, or throwing it into a blender, the best margarita you’ll ever have has just three simple ingredients.
This classic margarita was revived in San Francisco at Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant, a little hole in the wall place you’d never expect to be the epicenter for one of the best drinks in the world. Behind the bar is Julio Bermejo, one the the ambassadors of Tequila in the US, and the margarita is his calling card.
To make a good margarita, you need good ingredients. The better the tequila you start with, the better your margarita is going to be. It’s important to find a tequila that is made from 100% agave for your margarita. Tequilas labeled “Gold” are usually made from only 50% agave, and the rest is basically rum. Tequilas which make great margaritas include Pueblo Viejo, Don Julio, Siete Leguas, El Tesoro, and Tequila Avion.
A good margarita is all about proportions, so it’s important to carefully measure out each ingredient. Also, fresh lime juice is essential, and it takes almost no time to juice a lime. The difference between fresh lime and bottled lime juice is extremely noticeable.
Here’s the recipe for the best margarita you’ll ever have:
Tommy’s Margarita
2 oz Blanco Tequila (Tequila Avion, Don Julio, or Patron)
1 oz lime juice (must be fresh squeezed)
1 oz agave syrup (diluted 1:1 nectar/water)
Shake and strain over cracked ice (no need to salt the rim).
Belvedere Intense Unfiltered Vodka – Naked Rye Vodka
- Published on Thursday, 26 April 2012 15:00
- Geoffrey Kleinman
- 0 Comments
When it comes to good vodka, what a vodka is made from is often more important than how many times it has been distilled. Vodka is commonly made from wheat, rye, potato, grapes, or corn. There’s also a huge segment of the vodka category made from the nonspecific “neutral grain spirits,” which can be any fermentable grain including soybeans, grasses, and even agricultural waste. Each source material has its own individual characteristics and can greatly impact your vodka drinking experience: wheat based vodkas tend to be more soft and round, potato vodka tends to be more sweet, and rye vodka has more spice. When picking a vodka, especially a premium vodka, it’s generally best to stick to ones which state their source grain on the label.
A vodka’s flavor and character is determined not only from what it’s made from, but also how it was distilled and what is used to filter or ‘polish’ it. Vodka is often run through charcoal, coconut husks, lava rocks, and even diamonds in an effort to make it more smooth and clean.
When you start with high quality ingredients, fermented well and well distilled, it reduces the need to filter it. Belvedere has shown great confidence in their rye with Belvedere Intense Unfiltered, an 80 proof vodka which showcases the character of the rye grain.
There’s a slight spice to the nose on the Belvedere Intense Unfiltered Vodka even though the overall character is soft and clean. The entry is slightly sweet with a soft powdered sugar note. Because it’s unfiltered, it has a nice smooth and round mouthfeel that is very pleasant. In the midpalate things really ramp up with a nice rye spice note that comes in early and then continues to intensify through the midpalate. The rye spice is joined with some heat which leads to a nice finish. There’s the signature ‘pin prick’ on the tongue which you find in really good Polish or Russian Vodka.
While still a clean vodka, Belvedere Intense Unfiltered manages to deliver some nice flavor and excellent spice.
Good rye vodkas like Belvedere Intense Unfiltered stand up well in the traditional vodka soda, where their spice shines through, but it’s in a drink like the Moscow Mule where the rye character really dazzles.
Moscow Mule:
1/2 oz fresh squeezed lime juice
2 oz Belvedere Unfiltered Rye Vodka
4 -6 ounces ginger beer
Add lime juice (which is about ½ a lime) to a Collins glass or mule mug, add ice, drop the squeezed ½ lime into the glass. Add the vodka, top with ginger beer, and serve.
Bacardi 8 Year Rum – Time to Sip your Rum
- Published on Friday, 13 April 2012 15:44
- Geoffrey Kleinman
- 0 Comments
When most people think about Bacardi, they think Bacardi Superior white rum. This is the rum that you’ll find behind most bars, and typically it’s you’ll get when you order a ‘Rum and Coke.” Bacardi Superior is very light, slightly sweet, dry and clean, perfect for mixing into cocktails, and it goes well in Coke.
The universe of rum is vast with a tremendous number of different kinds of offerings beyond the basic white rum. Bacardi 8 Year Aged Rum is a great way to begin your exploration of rum beyond the standard white rum. It maintains many of the same easy qualities while adding to the mix flavors that come from the aging process.
Bacardi 8 Year Aged Rum has a light and soft nose with vanilla, brown sugar, and the slightest undercurrent of oak spice. The entry is soft and sweet with the vanilla and brown sugar leading and a subtle, charred oak note underneath. The oak spice builds slightly in the midpalate where it picks up the slightest bit of heat for a solid and clean finish.
Bacardi 8 Year Rum performs solidly both as a sipping rum served neat or over rocks, and as a mixing rum. Perhaps the best way to enjoy Bacardi 8 is in an Old Fashioned where the soft and flavorful qualities all come together.
Rum Old Fashioned
2 oz of Bacardi 8 Year Aged Rum
1 sugar cube or 1 tsp of sugar
3 dashes of bitters (Angostura, Cherry, or Chocolate Bitters all work well)
A dash of water or soda water (no more than 1 tsp)
Orange and Lemon Zest
Put the sugar in a glass and add the bitters and water. Stir together until the sugar has completely dissolved. Add the Bacardi 8 Year Rum and ice and stir well (at least 30 stirs). Add both a lemon and orange zest.
Pisco Porton – Discover the Gem from Peru
- Published on Monday, 09 April 2012 14:50
- Geoffrey Kleinman
- 0 Comments
Many people are unfamiliar with pisco, a grape-based brandy made in Peru. Pisco was once a very popular spirit. Gold rush era imbibers used to knock back more pisco punch in San Francisco that almost anything else. Pisco’s popularity faded after Prohibition, when drinkers turned to whiskey as their drink of choice.
Pisco has seen a real revival with the increased popularity for Peruvian cuisine and culture in the United States. There are three major different kinds of pisco: puro, which is made from a single varietal of grape variety; acholado, which is made from a blend of grapes; and, mosto verde, which uses a shorter fermentation process to accentuate the properties of the grapes.
Pisco Porton is mosto verde pisco that blends three varieties of grapes (Quebranta, Torontel, and Albilla) and uses a shortened fermentation process that gives it an amazing, fresh floral quality.
Pisco Porton is wonderfully aromatic with fresh floral grape blossom notes on the nose which combine with a crisp white grape note. The entry is extremely soft with a beautiful floral opening that expands across the palate. White grape notes intensify in the midpalate with the slightest undercurrent of honeysuckle. There’s a touch of spice with a white pepper note towards the end of the midpalate which helps create a very long and flavorful finish.
The very best way to enjoy pisco is with the signature pisco drink, the pisco sour. The pisco sour is to pisco what the margarita is to tequila.
Pisco Sour
2 oz Pisco Porton
1 oz Fresh Squeezed Lime Juice
3/4 oz Simple Syrup
1 Egg White
1 dash Angostura Aromatic Bitters
Hard shake all ingredients (except the bitters) with ice and strain into a glass. Put a few drops of bitters on top of the egg foam that gets created when you shake the cocktail.
Scrappy’s Bitters – New Drinks with Just a Dash
- Published on Monday, 02 April 2012 17:09
- Geoffrey Kleinman
- 0 Comments
You don’t have to be a mixologist to quickly change up a classic drink and transform it into something new. While many classic cocktails call for Angostura, Peychaud’s, and Regan’s Orange bitters, you can easily mix them up by substituting one of the many new bitters options now available.
One of the best of this “new wave” of bitters is Scrappy’s Bitters. Handmade and bottled in Seattle, Washington, by noted bartender Miles Thomas, Scrappy’s Bitters are intense in flavor and capture the fresh, true flavor notes of what they are made from. Scrappy’s Bitters are available in a myriad of flavors, including Grapefruit, Orange, Cardamom, Lime, Aromatic, Lavender, Chocolate, and Celery.
Of the flavors Scrappy’s offers, the Celery is by far the most amazing. Bursting with celery flavor, Scrappy’s Celery Bitters is a perfect addition to a vodka soda, giving it a fresh, crisp celery note. Because Scrappy’s is so intense in flavor, you only need a couple of dashes in your drinks. In addition to Celery, we love to add a few dashes of Scrappy’s Lime into our gin and tonics, a few dashes of Cardamom in our Old Fashioneds, and the Lavender in our daiquiris.
Scrappy’s is sold in both in full 5oz bottles and in four ½oz-bottle sample packs. There are two sample collections: a Citrus set that has the Lime, Grapefruit, Orange, and Cardamom; and an Aromatics set that includes Chocolate, Aromatic, Celery, and Lavender. The sets sell for around $23 and can be purchased online at Kaufmann Mercantile. They are a great way to get your feet wet experimenting with bitters.
