Jeffrey Morgenthaler

“Try this.” The wine rep looked determined. The wine salespeople in town usually know better than to waste their time with me, as I have little-to-no influence on the wine list. If it’s a distilled product you’re trying to push - and if it’s not vodka - then I’m the man behind the bar to talk to. Otherwise, you’ll probably want to save your breath.

“It’s an Italian aperitivo and I think you’ll really like it.” She was aware of my fondness for Negronis and such and was certain I’d take a liking to the bottle of Vergano Americano she was presenting to me. Reminiscent of the drink of the same name, this Americano was a special type of Italian aperitif referred to as a chinato.

Chinati are Italian fortified wines, similar to vermouth. Originally solely flavored with quinine, they took on a life of their own sometime around the late 19th century and came to be infused with various herbs and other flavors. There is most certainly orange peel and possibly caramelized sugar in this product.

I had to have this bottle, but living in a small town sometimes means that the more esoteric liquors on the shelf don’t move as quickly as I’d like them to. Since I was afraid to buy a case and have it sit behind the bar waiting for me to hand-sell each individual glass, I figured it was time for a cocktail.

After several rounds of base liquors and bitters selections, it was time to try it out on the unsuspecting. “It’s quite strong, but really pretty right below the surface,” was the first comment I received.

So, voila: The Beauty Beneath.

2 oz Appleton Estate V/X rum
1 oz Vergano ‘Americano’ chinato
½ oz Cointreau
1 dash Fee Brothers’ Old-Fashioned bitters

Stir ingredients with cracked ice until combined and cold. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Express the oils from an orange twist over the surface of the drink and drop the spent twist into the drink.

If you can find the Fee Brothers’ Whiskey Barrel Aged bitters, grab ‘em. Unfortunately, my only bottle was in service when I stopped by the bar to pick up supplies for the photoshoot.

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Not to be confused with the Spanish wine-and-fruit-based alcoholic beverage sangria, sangrita (meaning “little blood”) is a traditional accompaniment to a tequila served completo; a non-alcoholic sipper that cleanses the palate between fiery doses of agave.

Years ago I was taught that sangrita is a blend of tomato and orange juices, with the addition of something spicy (hot sauce, typically) for a little kick. But further research has convinced me that this American sangrita recipe, while still enjoyable and certainly prevalent, is not altogether authentic.

Real sangrita from the Lake Chapala region of Jalisco is made with Seville orange and pomegranate juices, with powdered chiles added for heat. Taking into account that even the most cocktailian bartender (professional or otherwise) doesn’t typically stock sour oranges or pomegranate juice behind the bar, I’ve worked up a recipe that should approximate the flavor of this spicy little sour orange and pomegranate chaser while still providing an authentic experience.

1 oz orange juice (freshly-squeezed)
¾ oz - 1 oz lime juice (depending on the sweetness of your oranges)
½ oz real pomegranate grenadine
3 dashes hot sauce or ¼ tsp chile powder

Mix ingredients, chill, and serve.

This is far from the final word on sangrita. I’ll still continue to enjoy the tomato varieties (1,2,3), but I think you’ll find a brightness and depth of flavor from this version that plays better with a wider variety of mezcals and tequilas than its heavier gringo cousin.

What’s your experience with sangrita? Chime in with your stories and recipes in the comments section.

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I just looked at the calendar and realized that today is a crucial halfway-point in the year - and that I only have six months to prepare myself for my favorite American holiday: Repeal Day!

Last year was a big year for Repeal Day. We saw the launch of RepealDay.org, the official home of Repeal Day on the web and a source of information for an astounding 50,000 visitors in the month of December alone. Repeal Day parties sprang up everywhere across the country, and the good people at Dewar’s Scotch generously brought me out to New York to help them celebrate Repeal Day, of which they’ve been proud supporters since the beginning.

But as monumental last year’s Repeal Day celebration was, it should look like nothing at all when compared to this year: The Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition. I’ll be updating not only this website but also expanding the valuable information at RepealDay.org and reporting on what Dewar’s has got in store for all of us this year. Stay tuned!

PS - If you’re new to the site, please take a minute and read my thoughts as to why I feel Repeal Day is so important. As always, thanks for reading.

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This subject has been covered many times before, but after numerous requests and some positive encouragement from a good friend this weekend I have decided to post my version of homemade tonic water.

The base for this recipe came from my friend Kevin Ludwig, who pioneered craft tonic water in Portland. His recipe can be found on page 76 of the March/April 2007 issue of Imbibe Magazine. This version is all mine.

My problem with homemade tonic water has always been a flavor profile that was too esoteric for the general audience. This recipe takes some of the positive qualities people have come to understand from commercial tonic water and updated them with fresh ingredients.

4 cups water
1 cup chopped lemongrass (roughly one large stalk)
¼ cup powdered cinchona bark
zest and juice of 1 orange
zest and juice of 1 lemon
zest and juice of 1 lime
1 tsp whole allspice berries
¼ cup citric acid
¼ tsp Kosher salt

Combine ingredients in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat. Once mixture starts to boil, reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

Remove from heat and strain out solids using a strainer or chinois. You’ll need to fine-strain the mixture, as it still contains quite a bit of the cinchona bark. You can use a coffee filter and wait for an hour or more, or do as I do and run the whole mixture through a French coffee press.

Once you’re satisfied with the clarity of your mix, heat it back up on the stovetop or microwave, and then add ¾ cup of agave syrup to each cup of your hot mix. Stir until combined, and store in the attractive bottle of your choice.

You now have a syrup that you can carbonate with seltzer water; I use my iSi soda siphon for some nicely-textured bubbles. To assemble a gin and tonic, use ¾ ounce of syrup, 1½ ounces of gin and 2 ounces of soda water over ice.

Once you’ve mastered your own tonic recipe, you can begin to experiment with different spices and fruit flavors to pair with specific gins. For instance, I’ve found that beefing up the orange peel results in a tonic that pairs nicely with Hendrick’s, but try playing off the coriander or cardamom in other gins and see what happens.

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I love to cook, but sometimes after a long weekend it can feel like work to me. After a begrudged visit to the grocery store last night, I came home with a beautiful head of butter lettuce, some Oregon gorgonzola cheese, locally-grown Evonuk hazelnuts and two Tombo tuna steaks. I knew what would put a smile back on my face: a nice dinner and a glass of absinthe.

Tonight’s Menu:
Pan-Seared Tombo Tuna with Wasabi Cream
Butterleaf Salad with Oregonzola Dressing and Roasted Hazelnuts
Lucid Absinthe in the Traditional Preparation

Absinthe has a nice way of pairing well with a wide variety of foods. It has enough acidity to cut through the fats in my dressing, yet it provides a nice, clean palate on which to balance a piece of tuna crusted in black peppercorns. All this magic in one glass, yet in order to make absinthe truly sing, you need to pay attention to preparation.

Properly-prepared absinthe is cold, a little sweet, and bitter enough to stand up to some hearty flavors. It is never consumed straight, and there is never a burning cube of molten sugar involved. So I set about filling a small pitcher with ice water, and let it rest to ensure it was nice and cold. Next I poured an ounce of absinthe into a glass, and capped the mouth of the glass with a slotted spoon upon which rested a single cube of sugar.

Patience is key here, but I knew that the payoff would be worth my time as I slowly, s-l-o-w-l-y, dripped ice cold water over the sugar cube and into the waiting shot of absinthe. The liquid gradually formed an opalescent louche (the milkiness that is the hallmark of proper absinthe) and once the glass was half-full I knew I was ready.

The tanginess of the vinegar and Gorgonzola flirted with sweetness of the drink, and the cold from the ice water tamed the heat rising from the black peppercorn crust. Wormwood’s bitterness teased the wasabi into revealing its sweeter side, and the lush savory aromas of fennel mingled with the roasted hazelnuts for a flavor that lingered well after it was gone.

I’ve tried pairing absinthe with everything from rare hamburgers to grilled pizzettas with caramelized onions and smoked trout, and I’m constantly amazed at how well it works with the curve-balls I throw at it. What foods have you tried with absinthe? Fresh country-style pork ribs, anyone?

Photos and text by Jeffrey Morgenthaler. Thanks for reading.

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Some of you are here to find out how to make my pinot gris reduction for the East of Eden, and as the directions will tell you, you’ll need to reduce the wine by half. But how can you tell when a liquid is reduced by half without pouring it into a measuring cup every five minutes? Here’s what I do:

Before you apply heat to your liquid, dip the end of a wooden spoon into the pot and let it sit there for a few seconds. You know, so that it soaks into the wood a little bit.

Then, using your fingernail or a table knife, make a mark where the liquid level was on the wooden spoon.

Make another mark halfway between your nail mark and the end of the spoon. Now you have a gauge that will tell you when you’re done. When the liquid in the pot is the same height as your halfway mark, you’ve reduced that liquid by half.

A couple of notes:

This is only mildly accurate with straight-sided, flat-bottomed saucepots. Anything with curved or beveled edges won’t quite have the same effect.

This technique works equally well for recipes that call for a liquid to be reduced by two-thirds, or a fourth, or what-have-you. Fingernail your spoon accordingly.

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Clearly I have been smiled upon by a greater power as of late, for I have been fortunate to take on so many new readers over the past month. If you’re one of those new to the site: welcome!

For the benefit of the newcomers, I feel I should explain how things work around here. A few years ago, this guy named Paul Clarke had a great idea: let’s get all of the cocktail bloggers out there to get together and write about the same thing for a day. So one website becomes designated as the “host” and chooses a theme that everyone adopts and writes about, and then the host donates a summary of all the day’s events. (I even tried to host last December, but decided to blow the whole thing off and fly to New York to celebrate Repeal Day with my friends from Dewar’s scotch instead.)

So here I am on Sunday, having my whole day off ruined yet again as I wrack my brain trying to think of something to write about, and honestly getting quite frustrated. So, a solution: I’m going to make something using only the ingredients in my liquor cabinet and try a previously untested recipe from one of my many books on the subject of cocktails.

When I think about rum, I think about Trader Vic. And when I think about Trader Vic, I think about dusting off my 1947 edition of Trader Vic’s Bar-Tender’s Guide and looking for a recipe I’ve never tried. So that’s exactly what I did. On page 209, he gives us the recipe for a Beachcomber Cocktail, calling for light rum, lime, Cointreau, maraschino liqueur and a Waring blender - all of which can be found at my house on a standard Sunday in May.

At first glance, this looks suspiciously like the poorly-translated recipe for the La Florida Daiquiri #4 found on page 215, with the substitution of Cointreau for sugar. But cocktailian tradition dictates that by changing one or more ingredients in a cocktail, we’ve created a new drink altogether, so let’s forge ahead:

Beachcomber Cocktail (Trader Vic’s Version)

2 oz light rum
½ oz Cointreau
Juice ½ lime
2 dashes maraschino liqueur

Mix in Waring mixer with shaved ice; pour unstrained into chilled champagne glass.

The verdict? It’s gross. First of all, we’ve got two ounces of light rum, which is a big speed bump of alcohol to try to climb over. Next, the drink is blended, which to me always calls for some big, bold flavors since things tend to get lost among all of that blended ice and water. A scant tablespoon each of lime and orange liqueur, spiked with maraschino liqueur doesn’t strike me as bold, so I’m going to recommend bumping up the proportions and selecting some brands.

Right off the bat I’m going to suggest using something other than the Myers’s Platinum I used at home. Try a Puerto Rican like Bacardi, 10 Cane from Trinidad or St. Croix’s Cruzan Estate Light, which is aged for two years. Each of these rums is going to provide a slightly sweeter base with less of the acids that I find to be the hallmark of Jamaican rum.

Next, let’s use ¾ ounce each of lime and Cointreau - enough already with this “juice of ½ a lime” business. As for the maraschino, let’s try a half teaspoon if using a sweeter liqueur like Maraska, and a quarter teaspoon each of simple syrup and maraschino if using a heavier version such as Luxardo.

Beachcomber Cocktail (Adjusted)

2 oz light rum
¾ oz Cointreau
¾ oz lime juice
¼-½ tsp maraschino liqueur
¼ tsp simple syrup (optional)

Blend well with ice and pour into a chilled champagne coupe.

This seemed to work better with my palate, but I tend to like drinks that taste delicious. To read about a whole bunch of other tasty beverages, head over to my friend Trader Tiki’s website for the complete wrap-up of this month’s Mixology Monday, along with more rum and Tiki information than you can shake a swizzle-stick at.

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I considered naming this article “How To Take an Order Behind the Bar”, since there seems to be a problem with bartenders and servers not fully understanding the vocabulary used in their workplace. I was reminded of this while reading this thread on the StraightBourbon.com forums some time ago. Yes, there seems to be some confusion about the terms “neat”, “up” (or “straight up”) and “with a twist”, and my goal is to try to help straighten this mess out.

Neat

The first - and simplest - term we’re going to examine is “neat“. “Neat” - as applied to drinks served in bars - refers to a shot of liquor poured directly from the bottle and into a glass. There is no chilling involved with a “neat” drink. There is never an additional ingredient in a drink served “neat”. You can not have a Screwdriver served “neat”. That’s not how we use the word.

Up

If you walk into a bar and order a Dry Martini, “neat”, you might be served a tepid shot of Martini and Rossi Dry Vermouth in a room-temperature glass. That’s how the term “neat” is used. Although you know how much I love vermouth, nothing about that order sounds appetizing. What you were probably looking for was a Dry Martini, served “up. “Up” implies that there was some preparation involved, and that there is no ice in the final product. You can have a Manhattan on the rocks, or I can give it to you “up”.

Straight Up

Where the real confusion lies is with the term “straight up”. Although I don’t know where the choaos began, these days there is a bit of conversation required when that phrase is used.

Let’s say you order a Wild Turkey, “straight up”. Your bartender should assume you mean that you want your bourbon “neat”, and serve it as so. However, if you were looking for a chilled shot of whiskey in a cocktail glass, you probably should have dropped the “straight” and asked for your drink “up”. And if, as a bartender, you’ve received an order for a Ketel One “straight up”, you should probably check with your customer to make sure they’re looking for chilled vodka and vermouth, and not a glass of warm vodka.

Twist

The third term that causes some confusion on both sides of the bar is the word “twist”. I’ve ordered a gin martini with a twist (my preferred garnish) and received a big wedge of lemon on the side of the glass. I’ve taken an order for a gin and tonic with a twist, and had the drink sent back because I garnished with a thin strip of citrus peel. A delicate blend of gin and vermouth, the Martini is ruined by a big squeeze of lemon juice. Conversely, the bold flavors of a gin and tonic need more than a light spritzing of lemon or lime oils on the surface of the drink.

To recap:

Neat: Right out of the bottle.
Up: Chilled, and served in a cocktail glass.
Straight Up: Usually means “neat”, but check first.
Twist: A thin strip of citrus peel. Default is lemon.

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