Republic of Rum

Party's moved down the block!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:30:00 +0000

It has been pointed out to me, not inaccurately, that I have not updated my rum blog in well over a year now. (Thank you, Martin, for your vigilance.) Yet, I have not given up drinking, nor writing. After a bit of a breather, I've resumed cocktail chatter — keeping an eye now on the broader world of spirits — over at www.slowcocktails.com.

Stop by, pull up a barstool, have a drink, say hello.

- Wayne Curtis

When in Rome (or Parma) …

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:16:00 +0000

Last month I was on a trip to Italy, and happened upon a bar called Rum Central while walking through the city of Parma. I was headed elsewhere at a goodly clip, but was abruptly sucked through the door by some inexplicable form of liquid magnetism, whereby the dozens of rum bottles on display pulled me inward, a phenomenon I believe related to my uncommonly iron-rich blood.

I felt immediately at home here, despite my lack of ability to communicate with the bartender other than through primitive sign language (point to bottle; insert tip of thumb into mouth; tilt head back sharply). They had a fine selection of rums not commonly found in American bars, including a half-dozen Jamaican sugar cane rums I wasn’t familiar with.

Rum Central also had a cocktail menu, with a full page dedicated to mojitos. My feelings about mojitos generally parallels my feeling about martinis: there is one, and only one, and anyone who asks “what’s your favorite kind of mojito?” needs a corrective lecture. (Although I have been known to make an exception for the ginger mojito, topped with ginger ale rather than soda water.) Rum Central offered a goodly list of mojitos, including a Mojito del Ché, topped off with beer. I do not know of any documentation linking such a drink with Ché, nor could I think of any reason to try one.

But I was tempted by the Mojito al Spritz, a variation topped off with a mix of prosecco and soda water. When in Rome, and all that. This is a variation that I’ve seen in a few restaurants in the United States, and assumed that the front-of-the-tongue mint and back-of-the-throat astringency of the prosecco would not play nice.

But in Parma, I was willing to be proven wrong. And sitting at a table under a colonnaded walkway along a narrow street on sunny spring afternoon with college students bicycling past and yelling unintelligibly at one another, I found this drink uncommonly agreeable.

And in no time I forgot where I was supposed to be headed. Which, of course, is the essential first step in all successful vacations.

Beachbum Berry does New Orleans

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 22:57:00 +0000

Last night Jeff “Beachbum” Berry — the great tiki drink authority and noted layabout — served as bar chef and tour host of the Tales of the Tiki Cocktail, held at the Pelican Club in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The event, organized by the Tales of the Cocktail folks, was sold out — about 100 people turned out and filled to capacity the restaurant’s two large dining rooms.

The theme was New Orleans tiki, with each of the six drinks presented by Berry having a link to the Crescent City. Everyone was greeted with a delightful Bali Bali welcome cocktail, made with rum, cognac, gin, falernum and passionfruit, and derived from a lost recipe of the late, lamented Bali Hai restaurant. (This was one of New Orleans's Big Night Out Polynesian restaurants, located up on the tropical shores of Lake Ponchatrain.)

Other drinks were either once served at defunct local bars (like the St. Charles Hotel’s Outrigger Bar), or created by Don the Beachcomber, who was born in New Orleans as Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gantt. These drinks included: the Mystery Gardenia, the Nui Nui, Missionary’s Downfall, the Mai Tai, and the Bo-Lo.

A few comments: the most remarkable feat to me was that a small staff got these drinks out to the huge crowd in perfect shape — the crushed ice not yet watery, the gardenia not wilted, the flavors still pert and lively. The only glitch was with the Mystery Gardenia, which calls for a mix of honey and butter, which needs straining. That took longer than expected and left our table with a brief but manageable drought, but generally the drinks kept flowing, and stayed coordinated with their intended food pairings. (Of which, the ginger-sesame scallop and coconut crawfish cake with a spicy slaw and cilantro-jalapeño-lime dressing was the clear winner in my book. Chef Richard Hughes did an equally outstanding a job getting meals out hot and fresh.)

The Nui Nui was my favorite drink of the night — although someone at our table thought the allspice and cinnamon made it taste too much like a Christmas cookie, after which each sip brought visions of sugarplum fairies dancing in my head. The Missionary’s Downfall, blended with fresh mint, rum, lime, peach brandy, and pineapple, was very green and very minty. The classic 1944 Trader Vic Mai Tai was made with Rhum Clement VSOP, which was a bit woody for my taste on the initial sip, but I found method in this madness when I tasted the pork ribeye with five-spice mango barbecue sauce. The two paired up like a deconstructed grilled meal, with the smoky taste of the drink complementing the full, sweet flavor of the pork.

The final drink of the night was a beauty, the Don the Beachcomber Bo-Lo, served in cored pineapples with the tops reattached with toothpicks. Even though we all had been sufficiently numbed by the five drinks leading up to this, the trays of pineapples making their way through the room was like the grand finale of a tiki fireworks display. And the drink — made with molasses and sugar cane rums, lime, pineapple juices, passionfruit and honey mix — served as a great nightcap masquerading as a dessert.

Add this to the fine evening: I got to sit with rum collector Stephen Remsberg and talk about rum for several hours. And nobody noticed or thought it weird.

Rum and chutney

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:22:00 +0000

It's a safe bet you could drive from New York to California on two-lane roads and listen to songs about whiskey for a week and never hear the same song twice – Whiskey Before Breakfast, Whiskey in a Jar, Evil Whiskey Woman, Drinkin' Rye Whiskey, and on and on. Sad songs, cheerful songs, country songs, hard rock songs, and a surplus of tunes about loose women and skanky bars.

A trip with a mix tape of American songs about rum and rum drinks won't even get you from your home to the nearest Wal-Mart. If you don't count the 1979 Pina Colada Song -- and you shouldn't, because the lyrics are beyond appalling ("If you like Pina Coladas, And getting caught in the rain. If you're not into yoga, If you have half-a-brain....") – the number of memorable songs about rum comes to precisely one: Rum and Coca-Cola the Andrews Sisters hit that shot to the top of the charts in 1944.

I devote the a chapter of And a Bottle of Rum to the cultural, economic, and political forces that cleared the path for this song’s rise to stardom. The gist of the history is this: the song was an adaptation of a Trinidadian ballad, swiped by an American comedian visiting an island Army base during WWII, then sent into the stratosphere by American singers.

But scratch the surface in Trinidad today, and you’ll find a whole slew of rum songs, many recent variations of a popular hybrid Subcontinent-goes-Soca style called “chutney.” (About forty percent of the population of Trinidad is of Indian descent.) An article on the subject recently ran in the Trinidad and Tobago Express under the headline “Rum and chutney the latest Carnival drink.” (Having made cocktails using rum and raspberry preserves recently, my first thought was, “Well, this sounds interesting!” Then I clicked and remembered. oh, yeah, chutney, the music.)

The trend kicked off about five years ago, but songs celebrating rum — or “celebrating” rum — continue to crop up on the island, with a couple of new songs released for the current carnival season. Here are some of the lyrics, which I don’t think will be licensed anytime soon by major spirits corporations for use in advertising campaigns:

Hey ... listen mister Shankar,
you sayin' I is a drunkard,
you doh want me to marry yuh daughter.
But yuh doin' me a favour,
cause I ain't want yuh daughter
she too damn ugly anyway.
More rum for me,
more rum for me,
more rum for me,
more rum for me.

And this:

Rum kill mih mother,
rum kill mih father,
rum kill mih whole family.
Rum kill mih brother,
rum kill mih sister,
now it want to come and kill me.
But I doh really care what people say...
oh, ah drinking today and ah drinking forever...

And more:

Yuh could bring it in a bottle,
yuh could bring it in a flask.
You could send it in a cup,
you could bring it in a glass.
Ah want mih rum in de morning.
Ah want mih rum in de evening.

Trinidad is clearly a culture that appreciates rum.

A confession: I know I gave short shrift to rap in my inventory of American music above. Rappers appear to like rum, although not as much as Hennessy. But, seriously, some rapper somewhere surely must be able to improve upon rhyming “Bacardi” and “party”:

Whoa, Nellie

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 21:31:00 +0000

An excellent crop of cocktail books came available during the holiday season this year, offering great possibilities for elaborate experiments. After Thanksgiving I was dipping into one of the books — the wonderfully written and illustrated In the Land of Cocktails, by Ti Adelaide Martin and Lally Brennan — when I came across an odd sounding drink with a good pedigree.

The authors are the proprietors of the incomparable Commander’s Palace in New Orleans, and for this book they pulled together a great collection of drinks, including many local favorites like the Vieux Carré and the brandy milk punch, plus classics like the Papa Doble and French 75 (two variations).

I was intrigued by the Whoa, Nellie — not only for the name but the ingredient list and its provenance.

According to their write-up, it was concocted recently by Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh on a visit to town, when he basically rifled through the fridge to see what he could find. He threw some things together, took a sip, and said “Whoa, Nellie!”

It’s an odd mix of ingredients, but it comes together with perfect balance and none of the seams showing. It’s got a distinctly pre-Prohibition taste profile — heavier on the bitters than the sweet — I’ve been making it for friends the past few weeks, none of whom have refused seconds.

Here’s the recipe. It deserves a broader audience.

Whoa, Nellie
1-1/4 oz Sazerac rye or other rye
3/4 oz dark rum, such as Myer’s
3/4 oz Cointreau
4 dashes Angostura bitters
1/2 oz fresh lemon juice
1/2 oz grapefruit juice
1/2 oz simple syrup.

Shake and strain into chilled cocktail glass.

Faux flip

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 03:34:00 +0000

Last night in New Orleans the “Tales of the Toddy” was held at the Hotel Monteleone. It’s sort of pre-holiday, one-night riff on winter drinks from the same folks who put on Tales of the Cocktail. A couple dozen bartenders and restaurateurs came up with drinks both hot and cold and served them to a crowd of several hundred.

One writer also served a drink. That would be me.

My aim was to ladle up a colonial drink as a counterpart to more modern offerings, like the Absolut Mandarin orange creamsicle. A colonial flip seemed like a winning idea — fresh and unknown, yet historic — and I’d made it before in front of a fireplace in Maine. Problem is, it requires an open fire and iron poker heated to the color of a cherry, which is then thrust in a tankard. I devote the better part of a chapter in the rum book to flip, which fueled a colonial craze from about 1700 up to the American Revolution.

Sadly, I was laboring under the jackboot of unreasonable restrictions from event organizers: “Please insure that all cooking equipment is powered by sterno, electricity or butane as allowed by the New Orleans Fire Department.” This seemed to rule out building an open fire and brandishing of a glowing piece of iron.

So a few weeks beforehand I started messing around with adaptations of flip, which has as its base ingredients beer, rum and molasses. I monkeyed around with vats of beer syrup made with molasses. The result was more like something one might consume as a science project rather than for enjoyment. (Although beer syrup made with 50/50 sugar and molasses and served 50/50 with vodka makes for a wonderful sort of beery liqueur. There. I’ve said something favorable about vodka. )

I concluded that there’s something that occurs chemically during the scalding by red-hot iron, a process that creates a whole new beverage, something that can’t be replicated with a hot plate or butane stove. (Flip tastes like none of its components, and has a not-unpleasant burned flavor, like Starbucks coffee.)

So I sadly abandoned my dalliance with molasses, and took up with something else that would have been available in colonial times: maple syrup. And I found that mixed with ginger syrup and rum and beer and lemon, the result was a colonial-style drink that was at once tart and complex and tasted not of beer or rum but something else altogether.

Flippin’ Flip

1-1/2 oz Old New Orleans Crystal Rum
2 oz Abita Amber Beer
3/4 oz maple syrup
3/4 oz ginger syrup*
1/2 oz juice of Meyer lemon**
fresh nutmeg

Combine all ingredients except nutmeg in saucepan and heat until steaming but not boiling. Pour in mug and grate fresh nutmeg over surface.

* Ginger syrup: combine one cup sugar with one cup water, bring to boil and take off heat. Add approximately four ounces of chopped fresh ginger (unpeeled is fine), and let sit until cooled. Strain into bottle. (Will keep refrigerated for a couple of weeks.)

**Note on the Meyer lemon. OK, it’s not really colonial. The Meyer lemon is an Asian fruit that was “discovered” and brought to the US around 1908 by a U.S Dept. of Agriculture staffer named Frank Meyer. It looks like an unripe and soft-skinned lemon, and is sour like a lemon, but has a distinct Mandarin orange tang to it. It’s available at the farmers markets in New Orleans and some stores hereabouts; I’m not sure about availability outside the region. I understand Alice Waters is a fan. If you can’t find them, use regular lemon juice, and a dash of orange bitters.

Tales of the Toddy was a terrifically fun event, and my thanks to Chris Hannah of Arnaud's for saving for me one of the 53 Pouuse Cafes he made (with Gran Duque de Alba Brandy, Chartruese, and St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur), and Marvin Allen of the Carousel Bar for sending over a much-needed Mrs. Claus Tea, made with Rhum Clement's Creole Shrub, Earl Grey tea, Fee Bros. spiced cordial and a dab of spiced butter. And, as always, it was great to catch up with the other authors selling books, including Philip Collier (Mixing New Orleans), Ti Martin and Lally Brennan of Commander's Palace (In the Land of Cocktails), and the always inimitable Lorin Gaudin, photo above (86 Recipes: New Orleans).

A Zombie comes back to life

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:48:00 +0000

Today’s New York Times has a great article by Steve Kurutz about Jeff “Beachbum” Berry and his tiki-drink related investigative work. The article gives Jeff all the credit he deserves for taking something that’s camp and making it, well, if not classy, at least respected and worthy of discussion.

“Mr. Berry’s single-minded scholarship has gained him respect in the cocktail world.” Kurutz wrote. He noted Jeff’s uncovering of the three supposedly original Zombie recipes, one after another, and the process he used to identify the original original. This involved, in part, a year-long effort to crack the secret code of a recipe he turned up in a 1937 little black book owned by a former Don the Beachcomber bartender. (The recipe is here.)

But he only scratches the surface about what Jeff’s research actually entails. Cocktail history tends to be more participatory than, say, the study of deep-ocean mollusks or ancient Roman architecture. Inquiring minds want to know: what did the original Zombie taste like, using the rums that were available back at the inception?

The Times didn’t tell the story of a tasting this past summer, which I was lucky enough to join in.

One night during Tales of the Cocktail in July, Jeff, Martin Cate (of Forbidden Island in Alameda) and I headed over to Stephen Remsberg’s. Our goal: make the original Zombie. Stephen, as those who’ve read the book might recall, is the rum collector with 700-plus bottles in his stockpiles, many of them vintage, rare and unopened.

We were interested in recreating the proto-Zombie, then called the Zombie Punch, one of the drinks that made Don the Beachcomber famous soon after he opened his bar in Los Angeles in 1934. Stephen had painstaking accumulated the prescribed rums, including a pre-1935 Puerto Rican rum, an equally early Demerara rum, and a no-longer made early Lowndes Jamaican rum. For the latter, Stephen could locate only an unopened mini, which sadly provided just enough rum to make a single original original Zombie. But this is scholarship and sacrifices must be made. We shared one drink.

(In the interest of scholarship, I should also note that we cheated a little: Stephen broke out a bottle of vintage absinthe for the anis flavor — and that would have still been illegal in the United States in 1934. Some other anis substitute would have gone in the original original Zombie.)

I’m happy to report that the Zombie — flash blended with crushed ice, as Don would have prescribed — was a thing of utter and complete beauty. The biggest surprise to me was how woody it was — this wasn’t all about sweet or juices or ooh-la-la, but about complexity. It had touch of natural pucker to it thanks to the wood, which was eased by the anis and falernum. This Zombie came at you from many directions, all at once, all demanding attention. It was all you could do but to sit down and marvel.

You can have King Tut’s tomb. Unearthing the taste of the original Zombie is my kind of archeology. I’m quoted in today’s Times article as calling Jeff the “Indiana Jones of tiki drinks” — and I’m here to tell you I’d follow Jeff into any cave, snake pits be damned.

UPDATE: I missed this on the first go-around: On the Times web site Jeff narrates a slide show featuring up an excellent capsule history of tiki.

(Photos: NYT portrait of Jeff, above. Tasting photos, by Martin Cate: left to right, Stephen, Jeff, Wayne. And, below, the original original ingredients.)

Cocktail ranger: Trader Vic's Scottsdale

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 23:34:00 +0000

The original Trader Vic’s in Scottsdale, Arizona, opened in 1962 on West Fifth Avenue, just six years after the luxe midcentury modern Valley Ho Hotel up the street. It was axis of swank. Then it became the forgotten zone. The Trader Vic's closed. The Valley Ho closed and there was talk of demolition.

Time passed. Now the Valley Ho has been made over top to bottom respecting its midcentury roots, and a new Trader Vic’s opened adjacent to the hotel a year ago. I was in Arizona last week, and made a detour to check it out, spending a night at the hotel and being drawn by a curious gravitational pull to Trader Vic’s.

The redone hotel is impressive — I’ve always thought that to capture the midcentury sensibility you had to not just recreate the past, but to recreate the future, a far trickier proposition. Fifty years ago, stepping into a sharply angled, plate glass building was to glimpse an open, airy, bright sense of tomorrow. Of course to replicate that “wow” factor today, you need more than just plate glass and boomerang fabrics.

And Valley Ho pulls it off with a great melding of past and future. it’s got the FLW-inspired balcony railings, the mod fabrics, the white brick walls, and the almost perfect two-story scale of a “classy motel.” But it’s not slavishly retro — my bathroom was tucked behind Lever-House like slabs of blue translucent glass that glowed beautifully; the carpet was a lovely black and white textured houndstooth, and the stationery (which of course, I swiped), was dotted with faded olive-on-a-toothpick abstractions. It all worked wonderfully.

And the Trader Vic’s? The lounge/restaurant is similarly a mod adaptation of the old Trader Vic’s. It stands across a parking lot, which somehow made it seemed small and removed. Longtime tiki fans will be horrified by the amount of light allowed to enter — it’s got more in common with a Googie coffee shop than a dusky faux-Polynesian haunt of yore. I have to admit, it’s strikingly beautiful. But the more intimate scale, the cars passing by outside, the TV in the bar…. it seems to have more in common with Applebee’s than one of the old Trader Vic’s. The place doesn’t transport you so much as give you a poke in the ribs and a wink.

The drink menu beats that at Applebee’s, of course — you can get a fine Suffering Bastard — but even here I was pained by some missteps. A “rhum cosmo” made with Barbados rum? A “vodka mai tai”? That'll snap you out of a reverie.

Overall, the hotel is well worth a trip — it’s a great adaptation of the sort of place you’d expect to run into Frank Sinatra at the bar. (You might want to pack some hipster repellent, though.) And the Scottsdale Trader Vic’s is worth stopping by if you’re already there. But I wouldn't suggest a lengthy detour to check it out.

Link: Hotel Valley Ho

Cocktail ranger: Honolulu

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 17:16:00 +0000

Fate (and an assigning editor) brought me to Honolulu this week, and so I used the opportunity to visit several bars in search of a good rum drink in the land of the mai tai.

Unfortunately, it’s the land of the wrong mai tai. Most variations here — and they’re everywhere — are heavy on the fruit juices (usually pineapple and orange) and few have the fleeting, dreamlike taste of almond that’s the hallmark of a well-balanced classic mai tai. These are not even variations on the Don the Beachcomber mai tai (made in part with grapefruit juice), so I’m not sure whence these came. Wherever it is, I wish they’d go back. It made me think of the great Bernard deVoto comment: "And then, swiftly, came the Plague and the rush of the barbarians in its wake, and all the juices of the orchard went into cocktails."

One regret: I didn’t have time to make it out to La Mariana Sailing Club near the airport, the last of the original tiki bars in Honolulu. Next time.

Mai Tai Bar at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel
There’s no doubt the Mai Tai Bar has a lovely setting, sandwiched between the beach and the pink towers of Waikiki’s most revered old hotel. Tragically, the mai tai here trends toward nasty. Perhaps even beyond nasty. This really should not come as a surprise after consulting the rum selections on the bar menu: Bacardi Light, Meyer’s Dark [sic], Captain Morgan, Malibu. That’s it.

The drink is festive, as if wearing its own Hawaiian shirt, and is adorned with a hibiscus blossom, mint, cherry, and a manly wedge of pineapple. All that visual tropical sweetness makes the first sip all the more jarring: it’s hot and harsh, and you wonder if it has a float of Bacardi. I stirred with some vigor, let the ice melt for a while, and sipped again. Less burn, but now just a muddle of something vaguely tropical and lacking definition. You could taste alcohol but not rum.

The most serious indictment of this mai tai came a few minutes later when a man sat down next to me at the bar and ordered a Coors Light. “Mmmm,” I thought, “that sounds pretty good.”

Mai Tai Bar at the Royal Hawaiian, 2259 Kalakaua Ave.

Roy’s
I ordered a "Waikaloa Kohalo Gold" off their drinks menu, made with Malibu Mango, “island juices,” mint, and club soda (photo, above). I'm not sure why. Anyone who’s aware of my loathing of flavored rums will assume I would hate this drink. I thought so, too. But you know, it wasn’t bad. Not complex, not sophisticated, not giving any classics a run for their money… but not bad. The juices seemed to knock down the noxiousness of the ersatz mango, the club soda made the juice less treacly, and it actually offered a nice counterpart to the afternoon heat.

I sat at Roy’s outdoor thatched bar — it wasn’t overlooking the beach or even a pool, but it was overlooking an intersection that overlooked the Halekulani Hotel, which overlooks the beach. So I guess this was is a beach bar one generation or two removed. My chief complaint was that Fox News was blaring all afternoon, with endless coverage of the Southern California fires. At one point Shepard Smith excitedly said, “Well, the smoke’s blowing up and taking the fire along with it,” the sheer vacuity of which left me in such an unsettling state of bafflement I had to stop drinking after one cocktail.

Roy’s, 226 Lewers Street

Tiki’s Grill and Bar
This retro tiki bar was under construction on my last trip to Honolulu about four years ago, and so I was glad to return to see how it turned out. It’s on an open, upper floor between a parking garage and a hotel tower, with a nice view of moonlit Waikiki Beach across Kalakaua Avenue and its flaming sidewalk torches. Outside there was a soft rock band having a dispute with an umbrella that kept blowing over; inside the restaurant was adorned in a sort of restrained tiki-lite style, with a few tiki carvings and some glass fishing floats. I sat at a bar half inside and half outside.

The drinks menu, as most everywhere here, was heavy on fruit juices. The mai tai was made with orange and pineapple juice, passionfruit syrup, light rum with a dark rum float. This sounded more like a snow cone topping than a cocktail, so instead I went with a mojito. And it was fine — made with Cruzan white and fresh lime wedges. It was better than average (no mojito mix), although for efficiency’s sake they make it by muddling two large lime wedges with simple syrup and the mint (a bit skimpy in the leaf department). As a result, a powerful bitterness from the lime peel and pith come elbowing to the top. Also, the scene was a bit frat-boys-go-to-Hooters-while-paunchy-middle-aged-men-in-
Hawaiian-shirts-watch-from-the-margins.

Tiki’s Bar and Grill, 2570 Kalakaua Ave.

House Without a Key at the Halekulani Hotel
My aim was to have an early drink at Lewers Lounge, which Dale Degroff has been working with for a couple of years to get their service and cocktail list up to world-class standards. Alas, Lewers didn’t open until 7:30pm, and I had dinner plans for that night, my last. So after sticking my head in the door (think: a British naval officer’s club in Singapore), I walked over to the House without a Key restaurant and outdoor lounge, which is also part of the Halekulani Hotel.

I showed up as three guys in white suits and shoes were starting a set of classic Hawaiian songs with upright bass and steel guitar, and the sun was slipping down into the sea, perfectly framed by palms and an ancient kiave tree. I ordered a mai tai — and it was superb. Nicely accented with lime wedge, sugar cane, mint, and hibiscus blossom, it also had the classic Trader Vic flavor profile. Not too syrupy, a teasing complexity of rum flavors, and the touch of almond that stitches it all together. The consensus among mai tai fans is that this is the best in town, and I have no reason to believe this would be improved upon elsewhere.

For an encore, I ordered a Tropical Itch, which made of rum, bourbon and juices. (I actually think rum and bourbon is a great combo, and I’d love to see more drinks built on this.) The drink didn’t live up to its promise — the passionfruit was overpoweringly perfumey, and I couldn’t detect any bourbon taste — but it came with a take-home bamboo backscratcher, which almost made up for it.

Halekulani, 2199 Kalia Road.

Rum Field Training School

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 11:06:00 +0000

On Saturday, December 8, I'll be hosting a Rum Field Training School in New Orleans. If you can think of a better way to spend part of a Saturday than discussing, studying and drinking rum, be sure to let me know. The event -- which is sponsored by Tales of the Cocktail with support from the Museum of the American Cocktail -- will offer talks about rum culture and history, distilling demonstrations, and a rum cocktail pairing lunch with drinks crafted by outstanding mixologist Lu Brow of Cafe Adelaide.

The day starts at 11am with a punch at Cafe Adelaide and some historical overview. Then all recruits board a bus for a quick trip across the French Quarter to the Old New Orleans Rum distillery, where Ben Gersh will walk everyone through the process of distilling a fine rum. We'll talk about how rums differ, sample a few, and then reboard the bus for lunch at Adelaide, where we'll enjoy three rum cocktails created to compliment the meal. All attendees will receive a signed bottle of rum and a signed copy of my book.

Rum people: if you've considered making your first post-Katrina trip to New Orleans, this would be the time.

Tickets are $150 per person and can be purchased at www.TalesoftheCocktail.com or at 504-558-1840. The course has a 30-person maximum.

Hope to meet you in New Orleans!

¿Cuba? Si. ¿Libre? No.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 11:03:00 +0000

In the introduction to And a Bottle of Rum, I wrote a bit about the Cuba Libre bar and restaurant in downtown Philadelphia. I liked the place — it offered a very good selection of rums (about 65 varieties), and nice explanatory menu introducing different types of rum cocktails. It also had a comfortable neighborhood bar feel to it, if your neighborhood was old Havana.

A bigger, brasher sister property with the same name opened three years ago in a casino in Atlantic City. I was transiting through New Jersey the other day and made a detour to see how it compared to the original.

Short answer: it doesn’t. The Atlantic City Cuba Libre has in its sights a more mass market and transitory audience, which makes sense since anchors a heavily themed section of the Tropicana Hotel called “The Quarter.” (What quarter, I wondered? Latin Quarter? French Quarter?) The interior is fun in that Las Vegas faux exotica kind of way, and everything is supersized — the soaring interior, the loud Cuban soundtrack, even my bartender must have been six-foot-five.

But the rum drinks? Very disappointing. Cuba Libra Atlantic City doesn’t have the depth of the shelves at the Philadelphia property (Matusalem was about exotic as it got here), and the cocktail menu leans heavily toward sugary drinks and flavored rums. I counted 15 “mojitos,” including classic, watermelon, pineapple, passionfruit, and cherry (made, lord help us, with Three Olives cherry vodka — wasn’t I just writing facetiously about the impending invasion of vodka mojitos?). There was also an “Energy Mojito” made with Red Bull. If you’re looking for proof that mojitos are the new martini, and not in a good way, look no further.

I ordered a Caballito — described on the menu as a Cuban Manhattan — made with the house label dark rum, sugar cane juice, mint, lime, sweet vermouth and a cherry. (Well, the cherry promised on the menu didn’t actually appear the drink.) The drink was a chore to finish — watery, sweet, and with hardly any hint of rummy goodness.

A few minutes later, a customer came to the bar from his table to complain about his mojito — it just was uninspired and uninteresting, he said, claiming to be from Cuba and knowledgeable about mojitos. The bartender heard him out, then said, “I guarantee you, sir, that your drink has the full ounce-and-a-quarter in it.”

The full ounce and a quarter? For $9? The man asked if the bartender could add a dollop more of rum to give the drink a little actual flavor. Sure, the bartender said — $8 for another shot.

The man shook his head sadly and walked away.

Which is pretty much what I did after finishing my drink.

Cuba Libre, Atlantic City

Iceberg! All hands on dreck!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 10:27:00 +0000

I was on a bootleg run to Canada recently, slipping across the border to New Brunswick to pick up some rums not available in Maine — Havana Club, Lemon Hart, Young’s Old Sam. (The last is an old-fashioned London Dock-style Demerara rum, made in Guyana and bottled in Newfoundland. It’s rich and molassasey and tasty.)

As I was reaching for the Old Sam, I spotted something out of the corner of my eye: Iceberg Rum, packaged in a vaguely iceberg-inspired bottle. Well, what have we here? Of course, I bought a bottle.

I knew a bit about products made of harvested icebergs — I did a story for the Atlantic Monthly five years ago (link here, subscription required) about two Newfoundland companies that chase icebergs and turn them into drinking water, beer and vodka. (One later went bankrupt.) The process was not terrifically complex — it involved unemployed fishermen and chainsaws lubricated with vegetable oil. Still, it’s an expensive way to get water.

The cost was supposedly justified for marketing purposes. (One of the company founders put it this way: "It's great that a large inland city can clean its drinking water and strip out impurities. But ten million people pee in it on a daily basis. And you know what? Nobody peed in mine. Isn't that worth an extra ten cents a bottle?") Vodka sells clean taste and purity, so blending it with 10,000 year-old, pee-free water makes some sense, I guess.

But rum? Not so much. Rum’s flavor has nothing to do with crisp and clean — it’s muddled and complex, and, actually, a little pee would probably improve most cheap rum.

So how is iceberg water supposed to enhance rum? The marketing copy throws a long bomb: "the warmth of the tropics meets the chill of the northern waters." One sort of imagines Godzilla vs. Mothra in taste wars.

Who wins? Fire wins over ice, and, my friend, it's no contest. This is one of the hottest, harshest rums I’ve had the misfortune to sip. The flavor profile was vaguely like a decent light rum (say, a Cruzan two-year), but that was hard to discern because of the flamethrower it applies to your tongue and throat. It’s more like a harsh, cheap vodka with a bit of rum flavoring.

But it’s got icebergs in it. And that’s worth about three minutes of bar chat.

My new best bar: Zig Zag Cafe in Seattle

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 07:33:00 +0000

I was in Seattle last week on an assignment, and my labors included going to the Zig Zag Cafe. This was my first time here, and I have to say this unassuming place tucked off some stairs below Pike Place Market has instantly vaulted to the top of my list of all-time favorite bars.

The Zig Zag was relatively empty when I showed up on a Monday night. Co-owner Ben Dougherty was behind the bar, and I asked for a rum drink — no surprise, there, I guess. I counted 36 different rums on their list, and there wasn’t a one I would be ashamed to have on my own shelf. (Among them: Zaya, Pusser’s Blue, Westerhall.) Ben suggested I pick a rum, and he’d make up a rum old-fashioned for me.

I went with the Angostura 1919, which I knew would be oakey — and a preview sip showed it was, although not nearly as full of wood as the bottle I’ve got at home. I guessed it would make a nice old-fashioned, and I guessed right. The drink was sublime — the exact right balance of sweet and bitter, strong and weak. And it came with a house-made maraschino cherry, puckery and rich with almondy goodness. (And not an alarmingly lipstick-red color.)

Other impressive details: they keep a bowl of citrus on the bar and made twists to order — no stockpiling in little bartop sarcophogi. They have several shelves lined with eight-ounce ginger ales, tonics, and club sodas to ensure customers get the right sparkle and zest — no shooting insipid soda from a gun. The highlight of the evening came when someone down the bar ordered a Spanish coffee. A great blue blaze flamed erupted up thanks to generous dollop of Stroh’s 160 rum, and then with a understated touch of theatricality Ben sprinkled cinnamon from high into the cauldron, and the grains snapped and sparked like Fourth of July fireworks. It made a flaming orange twist seem like a sputtering sparkler.

And then there was the house-made falernum, which was pure ambrosia. Not to mention the Fernet Branca cocktail I ordered up next. Concocting something that can offset the powerfully bitter flavor of Fernet is a real test, and I admire anyone who can pull it off. At Zig Zag they do it with not one but two house cocktails.

Later on in the evening, Ben pointed out the two engraved plates mounted up on the wall above a door — Zig Zag won two Spirit Awards last July at Tales of the Cocktail: for Best Classic Cocktail Bar, and Best Drinks Selection. No argument here. Sadly, I had time to sample only four drinks while I was in town. But my short sampling gave me ample reason to head west again as soon as I can.

The Zig Zag Cafe, 1501 Western Avenue, Seattle WA 98101. (206) 625-1146.

Angostura Bitters: Breaking Away

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 17:31:00 +0000

It’s taken nearly two centuries, but Angostura bitters has finally secured a beachhead in the United States.

Actually, two of them.

This week Trinidad-based CL Financial —- which acquired Angostura from spirits giant Pernod Ricard earlier this year — bought Lawrenceburg Distillers in Indiana and the Charles W. Medley distillery in Owensboro, Kentucky, in two independent transactions. That’s a lot of acquisition for a company whose flagship product is a four-ounce bottle containing a product that’s rarely served more than three drops at a time.

Angostura began in 1824 as an elixir to quell grumbling guts. It was made of various herbs, barks, and roots steeped in rum, and was invented by the German adventurer Dr. Johann Gottlieb Benjamin Siegert, who served as the surgeon general to Simon Bolivar at a town called Angostura on Venezuela’s Orinoco River. (It’s now Ciudad Bolivar.)

Siegert made lots of infusions, but the one that caught on was called "amargo aromatico," or aromatic bitters. After the Bolivarian wars, Siegert remained in Angostura and continued to sell his bitters. Customers appreciated them not only for their relief of gastric distress, but because they made alcoholic drinks taste much better.

Siegert’s bitters operation relocated to Trinidad some years later, and has since been bought and sold several times. (Bacardi owned it for a while.) The Angostura plant in Trinidad now produces not just bitters but lots of rum — they make their own 1919 brand rum, produce 10 Cane for Moet-Hennessey, and distill many other rums sold regionally — but under the new owners, have aspirations globally. And a good place to start seemed Kentucky bourbon, which is in great demand now in Europe and Asia.

The Lawrenceburg distillery is the largest in the country, producing nearly one out of ten bottles of spirits consumed domestically (much of it for Seagram). The plant will also serve as the U.S. headquarters for Angostura. It’s unknown if they’ll start producing their own rum here. But they do plan to shift some bottling of their bitters to Indiana.

Will Angostura bitters be made in the U.S.? I hope not. The ingredients in this fine and complex bitters are guarded as closely as Coca-Cola’s formula, and the plant in Trinidad has top-secret locked rooms, mysterious chutes to convey ingredients from place to another unwitnessed, and a convoluted supply chain to ensure no one can track what herbs and barks enter the plant.

All this mystery sure makes it taste better. I’m pretty sure Indiana Aromatic Bitters just wouldn’t taste the same.

Tasting: Lucia Duque Rum

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 11:51:00 +0000

Take a moment to scan the store shelves today for a new and much-hyped rum being launched amid one of the most expensive marketing campaigns I've ever seen. Lucia Duque Rum formally rolls out today — available in white, gold, and anejo.

But don't look on the liquor shelves. It's stocked only in the magazine racks. In the current Rolling Stone (on shelves September 7), there’s a splashy ad for Duque rum with a sealed pouch that allows you to taste a nonalcoholic “rum mojito” made with Duque.

Duque Rum is part of a clever campaign to advertise Cane, a new CBS series revolving around the complicated doings of a family of Cuban exiles growing sugar and making rum in Florida. (I’m thinking: Dallas, with sugar replacing oil.) As far as I know, it’s the second fictional rum coming out of Florida in recent months. Bacardi’s Havana Club, which premiered earlier this year as a spin-off of a complicated court case, was, of course, the first.

I was hoping to taste the Duque rum mojito today via the proprietary “multi-sensory marketing” technology (an upgrade of the old scratch ‘n sniff), and see if any rum taste comes through. But I read that the “Peel ‘n Taste” flavor pack is being included only in Rolling Stone editions sold in New York and Los Angeles. Ah, well, and here I am in Maine.

I did explore the very impressive site at www.luciaduquerum.com — and, seriously, this could be any upscale rum website, complete with the requirement that you enter your birthdate to proceed, and full of shots of improbably beautiful but vapid young people enjoying rum at those parties you and I are never invited to. The site features a very professional ad (grizzled men hacking at sugar cane with machetes; labeled bottles rolling off a production line), a serviceable mojito recipe, and a (real) call for a Duque spokesmodel — apparently this is an actual contest and the winner gets to appear on a future episode.

This all raises a couple of questions. Can an actual Duque rum far behind? With all the millions of dollars spent on building brand awareness, it seems a little silly to let it go to waste. I haven’t seen any reference to a licensing agreement anywhere (yet). But who knows?

And what’s up with the “rum mojito”? Is this to distinguish it from the “vodka mojito”? Perhaps Absolut is behind the whole campaign, clearing brandspace to invade the popular mojito market.

It’s just so hard to tell what’s real these days.

Lucia Duque Rum

The secret of Jasper’s special mix

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 17:16:00 +0000

At the rum seminar at Tales of the Cocktail last July, we served three rum-punch-based cocktails to illustrate just how versatile rum punch is as a base for great rum drinks. One of the three was Jasper’s Jamaican Punch, expertly demonstrated and prepared by Stephen Remsberg (photo, at left), the country’s preeminent collector of rum and one of its great repositories of rum lore. (See chapter 10 of And a Bottle of Rum.)

The recipe for this punch he got firsthand from Jasper LaFranc, a noted bartender at the Bay Roc Hotel in Montego Bay, which Remsberg visited in the early 1970s. It's simple but very tasty.

The official recipe cards distributed at Tales included only the ingredient “special mix.” Some attendees found this uniquely unsatisfying in the useful information department. We didn’t mean to be obtuse or secretive - it was mostly a communication lapse with the Tales staff. But a few folks have asked, so here’s the full recipe:

Jasper’s Jamaican Planter’s Punch
1-1/2 oz dark Jamaican rum
1-1/2 oz special mix*
1-1/2 cups crushed ice

Flash blend for ten seconds, pour in a 10-oz highball, and add ice to fill. Garnish with orange slice and cherry.

*Jasper’s special mix
1 part fresh lime juice
1 part sugar
To taste:
Angostura bitters
fresh-grated nutmeg

Stir until dissolved. Let steep in refrigerator at least two hours.

Slowing down at the Tiki Ti

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 15:53:00 +0000

I’m only now recovering from the Tales of the Cocktail five-day boozefest. The world around me is slowly coming back into focus, and I’m realizing that there are actually not two of everything. (For a brief account that deftly captures the event's flavor, see Jason Wilson's story in the Washington Post.)

Sadly, Tales of the Cocktail is not the sort of event that allows long periods of quiet reflection between seminars and sessions. Nor does it allow time to update blogs, at least not after the first toast, which occurs in the middle of the first day and signals that this annual semi-scholarly debauch has begun.

Tales is more like a vortex you get sucked into than an event you witness. When Stephen Remsberg, the noted rum collector, suggests in passing that he might have an interesting 1917 rum that would bear sampling, you don’t say, no, um, I’ve got to write up an upaid blog entry. When you walk into the Carousel Bar at the Monteleone and a rum producer who has samples of a product not yet launched invites you to sample, you don't say no. When the opportunity arises to have cocktails with Dave Wondrich and Ted Haigh and Dale Degroff, you don’t come up with feeble excuses and slip off to do what needs to be done.

Because of further catastrophic scheduling failures on my part, I had to fly out of New Orleans Sunday morning to give a talk on rum history in Pemaquid, Maine. I didn’t even get to hear Chris Macmillan on mint juleps or Ted Breaux on absinthe. And right after that talk I had to hop on a jet to Los Angeles and to research a story due soon.

But after a couple days here in California, life has finally started to resume a more normal pace. Actually, that happened at a precise moment at a precise place: at the Tiki Ti, one of the last of the great tiki drink bars.

Many of us had been talking about the Tiki Ti during Tales. As the estimable tiki researcher Jeff “Beachbum” Berry noted at one of our two panels, the Tiki Ti is just one of three tiki bars nationwide where you can get an authentic Don the Beachcomber-style exotic drink. The owner, Mike Buhen, is the son of the late Ray Buhen, who trained with the original Don the Beachcomber staff back in the day. Mike and his wife and sons now run this tiny bar (capacity of less than 50, with seats for about half) in a part of L.A. where Paris Hilton does not hang out. (Although Drew Barrymore was here a couple of weeks ago — she had to wait in line like everyone else.)

I wandered in yesterday right after it opened at 6 p.m. — once capacity is reached you might have to wait for an hour to get in. I found an immensely agreeable seat at the bar, and ordered up a Ray’s Mistake, one of the bar’s most popular drinks. (It’s unclear what’s in it — even Jeff Berry hasn’t figured it out.) It’s tart and tasty, and slices through the dry California heat with amazing swiftness. And it served as an anchor thrown abruptly overboard. Life started to slow.

Then it took on an even more relaxed tempo with a Space Pilot — a drink not unlike the Zombie, with passion-fruit and several rums, including 151. I fell into talking with the guy next to me, a man named Bill from Chino with a handlebar mustache and a Hawaiian shirt.

This was his first time here. (It was my second.) Bill was a wine drinker and brand new to rum drinks, but making up for lost time. He’d been given a copy of Jeff’s new book, Sippin’ Safari, and had seen the light. He bought Jeff’s three earlier books, then set off on a daylong Beachbum Berry pilgrimage. He drove around L.A. and bought $102 worth of Berry-prescribed rums for his own exotics, then cooled his heels until the Tiki Ti opened. He began his Ti quest with a Mai Tai and a Zombie. We compared notes.

Drinking and chatting about drinking and drinking some more. It was like Tales of the Cocktail all over again, but in extremely slow motion.

Which is just how it should be.

Celebrating Bastille Day

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:13:00 +0000

I've been taking a little time off to dry out and pursue other subjects for the past couple of months while I've been up in Maine, but I'm now sloshing around for a couple weeks back in New Orleans.

On Saturday July 14 at 1 p.m., I'll be doing a talk and tasting at Garden District Books at 2727 Prytania St (at the corner of Washington). I'll talk about the book and rum for a mercifully short while, and then, praise be, we'll get to the tasting. I'll have some Martinique rum for ti' punch (it is Bastille Day, after all), and some of Prichard's from Tennessee. Also, Ben Gersh from Old New Orleans Rum is planning to stop by with three of their rums, including their new spicy spiced rum.

It's free, it's fun, and if I give you enough samples, I'm hoping you'll buy a slew of signed books for gifts.

And then on to Tales of the Cocktail next week. More on that soon.

New Orleans Rum, new and old

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 13:05:00 +0000

Last week I joined a half-dozen other rum lovers at Celebration Distilling's factory in New Orleans for a late afternoon sampling of some of the new rum products now working the way through the pipeline.

We sipped some of their commendable amber rum (aged three years), both the version currently on the market and one that's been slightly reformulated. We tried their new spiced rum (not yet released – but worth looking for when it comes out). We admired their handsome new, type-driven labels – Celebration Distilling has been nothing if not prolific with their labels in the past, since the company is owned by a New Orleans artist.

And best of all, we sampled some of their 10-year-old rum, which was strikingly complex, and filled with the suggestions of ripe fruit. The company recently found 10 barrels of the quietly aging stuff (the company has been producing rum for 14 years), with about half it lost to evaporation. That still leaves some 300 gallons of honey-colored barrel-proof rum, making it worth considering a limited bottling rum. They're still debating whether to put it up as a straight ten-year rum, or blend it with some younger rums. But they do know it will be available exclusively at their factory when it does come out, probably some time this summer.

Which is yet another entry on the growing list of reasons to visit a happily reviving New Orleans these days.

Celebration Distilling

The oldest rum

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:03:00 +0000

About once a month or so I chat with Ed Hamilton, the Minister of Rum, about some rum-related issue. And during that conversation, either he'll ask or I'll ask: "So, have you found any good evidence of rum predating Barbados?"

As I write in my book, Barbados has long claimed patrimony of rum. The islanders often insist it was invented shortly after Barbados was settled by the British in 1627. Indeed, the first documented appearance of rum that I'm aware shows rum, then called kill-devil, being exported from Barbados in 1638.

But it seems more than likely that some sort of sugar cane spirit would have arisen prior to then in one of the several Spanish or Portuguese colonies, where sugar was being produced for more than a century before Great Britain got into the game on Barbados. Beverage distilling technology had been around for about two centuries. That sugar and distillation didn't meet for a century seems seriously improbable.

Yet, no one has come up with a single ship's manifest or plantation deed or journal reference to rum being made or exported from Cuba or Brazil or Guyana or anywhere else prior to 1638.

Why no evidence? Any number of reasons suggest themselves.

First, we English speakers tend to use English language sources, and few of us have ventured into the Spanish or Portuguese archives. Second, Spain had banned rum production (to protect domestic brandy producers), so early rum-making would have been illegal, and not likely to yield a paper trail. Also, as Ed points out, the colonial archives often didn't last long – coastal ports were sacked and burned with numbing regularity.

Anyway, I was thrilled to recently track down a scholarly 2004 book by José Curto entitled "Enslaving Spirits: The Portuguese-Brazilian Alcohol Trade at Luanda and its Hinterland, c. 1550-1830." The title certainly held out the possibility of early rum or cachaça production in Brazil. But no: as the book recounts, the 16th-century trade with Africa involved mostly wine from Portugal. Only later do the traders start with Brazilian rum.

In fact, the documentation mentioned in the book doesn't do anything to upend the Barbados-first theory. Curto notes that cachaça (which he sometimes calls sugar cane brandy) was eventually important for ballast in outgoing voyages, and Brazilian tobacco was also exported in quantity. But, he writes, "neither of these Brazilian colonial products were found amongst the numerous items of exchange utilized prior to 1641 by the Portuguese merchants based in this West Central African seaport to procure slaves."

Another excerpt:

Precisely when Brazilian trading interests began to forward cachaça and tobacco to their commercial representatives in the colonial capital of Angola has not been satisfactorily established. In the case of sugar cane brandy, some scholars have stated that it began arriving sometime in the seventeenth century. Others, on the other hand, have been far more specific by suggesting the year 1660. .... The first reference to sugar cane brandy being used to acquire slaves in the hinterland of Angola's colonial capital comes from the late 1650s. Thus the first tobacco and cane brandy shipments from Brazil probably arrived around 1650.

This is certainly not a comprehensive statement – the book deals with rum exports, not Brazilian production. But it does raise a question: If Brazilian rum was being made in quantity by the late 1500s or early 1600s (as many of us assume), why would traders wait a half-century or more to start shipping it abroad? It's the dog that didn't bark.

So the search for documentation continues. In the meantime, Barbados retains bragging rights.

St. Lucia, gnarly brown, and peanuts

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 02:02:00 +0000

I recently laid my hands on a bottle of Castries Peanut Rum Crème because, well, it's got rum in it. And I sometimes like an emulsified cream liqueur, like Bailey's. But I have to admit, my first thought was: Peanuts? Ewww.

Castries has a story and tradition behind it: peanut punch is pretty common throughout the West Indies, just like soursop punch, pumpkin punch, and banana punch.

It's way to take a common ingredient and put it to work as a cooling potion. It's often made with peanuts ground up and mixed with water, milk (often evaporated), sugar and maybe some vanilla or nutmeg.

But mixed with rum? Not all that common.

Castries Rum Crème is made on St. Lucia, and uses African vanilla, peanuts, a few spices, and local rum. It's sold in an opaque bottle that looks a bit like it swallowed a few tennis balls. It's 32 proof (about the same as Bailey's), and thick and luscious. And it smells like peanuts.

The taste: actually, not all that peanuty. At least not at first sip. The initial hit is more of cream and liquor, although the liquor isn't immediately identifable as rum. The aftertaste is slightly peanuty, and in a good way. Not roasted peanuts, but raw and fresh. My chief hesitation: the product is thick and viscous – it seems somehow thicker and more mealy than the always-velvety Baileys, but that might be more the power of sensory suggestion ("peanuts!") than anything tactile.

I started thinking about a cocktail that might employ this to good effect. Castries has some cute drink suggestions, including a peanut butter cup (with chocolate liqueur and vanilla vodka). That's not bad. I also played around with a peanut-butter-and jelly cocktail using crème de casis, but that's not an experiment I need to repeat any time soon.

Then I started thinking about Thai food. Mmmm... Thai food. So I mixed it with ginger ale – it's my belief that peanut and ginger is one of the world's great combos. And this mix actually worked fine – about two parts ginger ale to one part Castries yields a concotion with a taste that engages. You don't think "Thai," but it strikes the comfort food chord better than the peanut butter cup or the PB & J. (At least it did for me.)

Problem: the appearance. You know how it looks when you mix vanilla ice cream with root beer – you get those filmy, gnarly brown bubbles that climb up the side of the glass. Yeah. And what looks like a bit of curdling, or at least de-emulsification. (Lime with your peanut and ginger? Don't go there.)

But lean back, close your eyes, and sip – and it's pretty OK.

It's probably still best served neat, consumed by someone who truly loves peanuts. That, sadly, is not me.

Castries Peanut Rum Creme

New American Rum: mind the wave

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 20:00:00 +0000

Last week I spent four days at the American Distilling Institute's annual meeting in Louisville, Kentucky. This year's focus was on rum distilling. (I gave a short talk on rum history. And sold some books. See photo below.) This was chiefly a gathering of microdistillers, who seem to be happily growing in number by the day. And the rum focus this year drew folks out of the woodworks interested in making our great American spirit. I'm here to tell you that American rum seem to be poised to go big.

Most of the current rum microdistillers I knew about were here: Rogue from Oregon; Dogfish from Delaware; New Orleans Rum from, well, you know; Bardenay from Boise, Idaho; and Prichard's from Tennessee. Pirate's Choice also made an appearance (they market two rums, a lime flavored rum and an aged rum, both produced under contract by Phil Prichard). Maui rum was here in spirit, if not represented by a distiller.

But then there were the new kids on the block – or rather, the new kids visible down on the next block: Newport Storm brewery from Rhode island has been producing rum several weeks, putting some in the barrel and getting some ready to sell sooner as a white rum. It should be on the shelves this summer, although they're not yet revealing what the name is. They're looking to emphasize the historical connection of rum to New England – an idea so simple and powerful I'm puzzled that no one else has gotten there first.

Someone is on Newport Storm's heels, however. Another Newport, R.I., resident flew into the conference, with a head full of plans to start producing a New England rum and a whole bunch of domain names registered in advance. He's done a bunch of research on Rhode Island rum history, and was raring to go. Not surprisingly, he was a bit crestfallen to find out that someone had anticipated his idea, and was out of the gate ahead of him. But he insists he's still pushing on. I'll update as I hear more. (In the small world department: they're both graduates of the same college: Colby in Maine.)

I also spoke with a North Carolinian headed to New Mexico to distill a molasses-based rum on the Rio Grande south of Albuquerque. It will be called Rio Grande Rum; they haven't yet applied for permits, but they have a facility already. Rum and the southwest don't have much of a history, but he's made a connection, if with tongue a bit in cheek: Rum is from the Caribbean. The Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico. Slogan: It took 400 years to make it to the headwaters.

Green Bay Distilling in Wisconsin also has rum in the pipeline. They're producing a white rum that's aged six months then filtered, as well as one- and three-year rums aged in old bourbon barrels.

Those are the folks who are moving along. I met several others with ideas and lots of ambition, but as yet no facility nor permit nor firm timetable. But rum distilling seems to be seriously returning to American shores. Clearly, it's not just palm trees and piña coladas anymore.

I'll try to update as I get a chance to savor some of the New American Rums, and report back when some of those in the pipeline start to decant onto the shelves.

Learning from Ybor City

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 00:41:00 +0000

A number of surprises cropped up in last week's Cane Spirits competition in Ybor City.

Tortuga five-year-old and twelve-year old rums swept two of the three best-in-category honors among the aged rums. (It tied with the statesmanlike Diplomatica Resesrve Exclusiva in the nine to fifteen year rums.) Who knew? Tortuga's appearance in both categories was not predicted by me, nor by anyone else, and it provoked a general murmuring among the judges. I was especially surprised that Tortuga soundly beat the Santa Teresa Gran Reserva from Venezuela, and both Appleton Estate entries, including the much touted new Estate Reserve, which garnered only a bronze medal. (And was very woody tasting, I thought, and some of the judges I spoke with concurred.)

In the no surprise department: Prichard's Crystal rum winning best in the white rum category. I've been talking this up for some time, and was pleased to see others agreeing with me. It's good straight up, and it's good mixed in cocktails.

Also no surprise: the sweep of the agricole rums by Clement and J.M. That was in large part because they were the only ones (other than Depaz Blue Amber) entered from Martinique. Some of the other great Martinique rums are imported by Ed Hamilton, who was instrumental in arranging last year's competition. But he and Dori Bryant, who organized the fest this year, are communicating only through very low-tech means: lawyers. So Ed's rums – Niesson and La Favourite – weren't represented in the competition.

Another non-surprise surprise: Zacapa 23-year-old shared the best in the older-than-15-year category with another rum: Santa Teresa 1796. Zacapa usually takes its category in a walk, and it was slightly startling to see it sharing the honors. Santa Teresa is certainly a worthy co-winner, although I'd still give the edge to Zacapa.

And speaking of Zacapa, I chatted one evening with a rum distiller whose company has a sophisticated lab to analyze their own products as well as that of the competition. How about Zacapa? I asked. It's often a source of speculation that they doctor it with various somethings to make it so good, since it's often so far ahead of the others. They put it through the paces, he reported. "And nope," he added. "Nothing unusual."

What they did find in analyzing Zacapa, he said, were heavy alcohols – the kind produced from pot stills, which are blended in with the lighter column-still alcohols. This isn't a big secret – Jamaican rums often perform this trick, and Mount Gay is likewise a blend. Since Zacapa is made from sugar cane syrup and not molasses, the distiller can probably get away with a lower proof off the still, bringing across flavors without the off-taste of low-proof molasses-based rum. Anyway, I'm always looking for clues as to what makes Zacapa Zacapa, and this offered small insight.

Another pleasant surprise: the Ron Barcelo Imperial. I hadn't had it before, and I found it full and complex, with pleasing cherry and chocolate notes. It seemed to be not too far off the flavor profile of Zacapa, but with a less cloying aftertaste. It's been.... well, never, since I tasted something I thought might give Zacapa a run for the money. This was a first. Not quite pulling ahead, but damned close.

Cane Spirits Competition results

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 19:46:00 +0000

Here are the result of the Cane Spirits Competition in Ybor City last week. I'm still awaiting a list of the rums by number (all were tasted blind), so I can check my notes against the group results. Some interesting results here. I'll post a bit of commentary when I get a chance.

DARK RUM
BEST OF CATEGORY: ONE BARREL RUM
GOLD
Khukri XXX
One Barrel
Vizcaya VXOP Cask 21
SILVER
Pirate’s Choice Molasses Reef
BRONZE
Jack Tar Superior Dark Rum
Rogue Dark

RUM, AGED UP TO & INCLUDING 8 YEARS
BEST OF CATEGORY: TORTUGA 5 YEAR OLD
GOLD
Goslings Black Seal
Mount Gay Sugar Cane
Prichard’s Fine Rum
Ron Barcelo Imperial
Tortuga 5 Year Old
SILVER
Bacardi 8
Cockspur Fine Rum
Diplomatico Reserva
Goslings Gold
New Grove Oak
Santa Teresa Gran Reserva
BRONZE
Appleton Estate Reserve
Appleton Estate V/X
Bacardi Select
Centenario Anejo Reserva Especial
Mount Gay Eclipse
Ron Botran Anejo 8 Year Old
Ron Botran Oro (Gold)

RUM, AGED 9-15 YEARS
BEST OF CATEGORY: (TIE) DIPLOMATICO RESERVA EXCLUSIVA
& TORTUGA 12 YEAR OLD
GOLD
Diplomatico Reserva Exclusiva
Tortuga 12 Year Old
SILVER
Mount Gay Extra Old
Ron Botran 12 Year Old
Ron Zacapa 15 Centenario Year Old
Santa Teresa Selecto

RUM, AGED +15 YEARS
BEST OF CATEGORY: (TIE) RON ZACAPA CENTENARIO 23 YEAR OLD & SANTA TERESA 1796
GOLD
Pyrat XO Reserve
Pyrat Cask 1623
Ron Macuro Anejo Ultra Premium
Ron Zacapa Centenario 23 Year Old
Santa Teresa 1796
SILVER
Centenario Fundacion
Goslings Old
Ron Botran Solera

WHITE RUM
BEST OF CATEGORY: PRICHARD’S CRYSTAL
GOLD
Mount Gay Special Reserve
Prichard’s Crystal
SILVER
Bacardi Ruby Rey Reserve
Ron Botran White
Santa Teresa Blanco
BRONZE
Havana Club (Bacardi)
New Grove Oak Plantation
Mainstay Cane

RHUM AGRICOLE, UNAGED
BEST OF CATEGORY: CLEMENT PREMIER CANNE
GOLD
Clement Premiere Canne
SILVER
J.M. Rhum White

RHUM AGRICOLE, AGED
BEST OF CATEGORY: (TIE) J.M. VSOP & J.M. 1997
GOLD
J.M. Rhum Vieux X.O.
J.M. Gold
J.M. VSOP
J.M. 1997
SILVER
Clement Cuvee Homere
Clement V.S.O.P.
Depaz Blue Amber Rhum

CACHACA, UNAGED
BEST OF CATEGORY: AGUA LUCA
GOLD
Agua Luca
Leblon
SILVER
Beleza Pura
Fazenda Mae De Ouro
BRONZE
Cabana
Cuca Fresca

CACHACA, AGED
BEST OF CATEGORY: YPIOCA 160
GOLD
Fazenda Mae De Ouro Single Barrel 5 Year Old
GRM ‘Small Batch’ 2 Year Old
Ypioca 160
SILVER
Cuca Fresca Gold
Rochinha ‘Single Barrel’ 12 Year Old
Ypioca Ouro
BRONZE
Armazem Vieira ‘Onix’ Solera 16 Year Old
Ypioca Prata

LIQUEURS/FLAVORS/CORDIALS
BEST OF CATEGORY: SANTA TERESA ARAKU RON Y COFFEE LIQUEUR
GOLD
Clement Creole Shrub
Santa Teresa Rhum Orange Liqueur
Santa Teresa Araku Ron y Coffee Liqueur
SILVER
Castries Peanut Rum Crème
Prichard’s Sweet Georgia Belle Peach Mango Liqueur
BRONZE
Beleza Pura Caipirinha
Pirate’s Choice Lime Rum
Prichard’s Cranberry Rum
Rogue Hazelnut Spiced Rum