Professor Cocktail

Alternatives to the Same Old Cocktails

Most of us are creatures of habit. When we go to a bar, we tend to order the same drinks over and over again. And if you've found something you love, why not? The downside, though, is that we end up missing the possibility of discovering a new favorite. 

Nobody knows good new drinks like the bartenders at the cocktail bars in Portland. Five of the best suggest craft cocktails that you can order as alternatives to the tried-and-true.

• If your usual drink is a Lemon Drop, try an Elderflower Gimlet (Gin, Lime Juice, Sugar, St-Germain Elderflower Liqueur). This is a bold choice. Definitely worth trying. St-Germain has a unique flavor: floral, fruity and fascinating.
• If your usual drink is Maker's on the Rocks, try an Old Fashioned (Bourbon, Sugar, Bitters, Citrus). Great suggestion! I love an Old Fashioned. There's a reason that this drink has persisted since the beginning.
• If your usual drink is a Cosmopolitan, try a Negroni with Carpano Antica (Gin, Campari, Sweet Vermouth). I'm not sure about this recommendation. The flavor profiles of the two drinks have some similarities, but are still quite different. Most people who order a Cosmo are looking for something sweet, and a Negroni isn't sweet, even when made with Carpano Antica.
• If your usual after-dinner drink is Baileys, try some Pastis instead. This is a very odd suggestion, as the two liqueurs are nothing alike. Baileys is sweet and chocolately, while Pastis (e.g., Pernod or Ricard) is bitter and aromatic, and tastes like licorice.
• If your usual drink is a Gin and Tonic, try a Gin Rickey instead (Gin, Lime, Sparkling Water). This is a great pick. I love a Gin and Tonic -- one of the best, simplest cocktails around -- and the Rickey is similar, but makes for a nice change of pace. Plus, it's the official cocktail of Washington, D.C., named for Colonel Joe Rickey, a 19th-century lobbyist.

Granted, your local T.G.I. Friday's will probably screw up these drinks. But if you can find a halfway decent bartender, you'll be in for some fun.

New Year's Resolutions: New Drinking Rules for 2012

Liquor.com offers their resolutions for the new year -- some interesting advice you might want to consider. (The commentary is adapted from their piece. It's not mine. But I agree with it.)

• Have nightcaps and aperitifs
  • At least once this year, try this classic style of imbibing.

• Visit a new bar
  • Not that long ago, it took some work to find a good cocktail. Now, it seems that another dozen craft-cocktail bars open across the country every few days.

• Start grating
  • We hope you’re already using fresh fruit juices in your tipples. But you should also be grating whole spices.

• Embrace technology
  • Bars and distillers are experimenting with new technologies, like cocktails on tap. No doubt the trend will become more common; we suggest giving these high-tech concoctions a chance

• Read up
  • Over the last decade, there’s been an outpouring of excellent historical books about cocktails and spirits that you should read. If you don’t already have them, some of our favorites are David Wondrich’s Imbibe! and Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl, Wayne Curtis’ And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the World in Ten Cocktails and Daniel Okrent’s Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.

Good suggestions! Check out the whole piece for the commentary.

Year in Review: Chicago's Year in Cocktails

Over on Chicagoist, Roger Kamholz presents the "Year in Cocktails," a fast summary of what happened on the craft cocktail scene last year in Chicago. In short:

"It's been an incredible year for cocktails in Chicago. From the openings of several exciting new bars, to the creativity on display at the city's most established watering holes, Chicago has hit an impressive stride when it comes to the cocktail."

According to Kamholz, the best drink he had all year was the Gunshop Fizz, a cocktail mixed up at New Orleans' Cure using Peychaud's Bitters as the primary ingredient. (Sounds kinda gross to me, but maybe it works.)

Probably the most exciting cocktailian happening in Chicago last year was the opening of Aviary, one of the country's most innovative bars.

Kamholz concludes by saying he looks "forward to seeing what Chicago's remarkable group of bartenders and mixologists have in store for us in 2012."

Cheers to that!

Year in Review: Top 5 Cocktail Experiences of 2011

Derek Brown, owner of DC's The Passenger and one of the cocktail world's brightest luminaries, took to the pages of The Atlantic to share his Top 5 Cocktail Experiences of 2011.

Over the course of the year, Derek visited some of the country's (and the world's) best bars in order to sample the cutting edge of mixology. It's a difficult job, but Derek took the hit for us.

Among his favorite drinks he encountered: the Martinez Sour, as prepared by Justin Pike at The Tasting Kitchen in L.A., a Rob Roy, as mixed by Arash Hanjianpour at Candelaria in Paris, and the Cold Hot Chocolate from Craig Schoettler at Aviary in Chicago.

Derek opines that the trend for high-end cocktails shows no signs of abating; if anything, it's now become part of the mainstream. Good news for those of us who love fine spirits. (Even if it makes our livers a little sad.)

The Myths of the Bar, Debunked

The New York Times recently tackled a collection of beloved bar and spirits myths, debunking them with the help of some well-qualified experts.

Among them:

• Older is better: “It’s absolute nonsense,” said Ronnie Cox, director of the Glenrothes, a Speyside Scotch. “It’s not about oldness, it’s about maturity. Age doesn’t mean anything other than that whiskey’s been in that cask for that amount of time.”
• Sweet is silly: “I think expectations are still informed by the cocktails of the pre-craft era, when people added sour mix and cranberry cocktail,” said Tom Chadwick, owner of Dram, who insists that all his cocktails, even the sweet ones...are balanced, with the spirit, citrus, sweetener and other elements cohabiting in the glass.
• Absinthe: Customers “really hope they’ll hallucinate,” said Maxwell Britten, beverage director at Maison Premiere, a Williamsburg bar well stocked with absinthe. “I tell them, ‘If you drink enough alcohol of any category, I guarantee you will hallucinate.’ ”
• Irish Whiskey are Catholic or Protestant: “If you look into the ownership, it’s all international corporations,” Mr. Frizell said. “I don’t think the Irish even care.”
• The worm in the bottle of mezcal: [Note: The myth usually claims that tequila has a worm in the bottle. It doesn't. It was mezcal, tequila's uglier sister, that did.] “It was created by Gusano Rojo in the 1950s,” said Steve Olson, an owner of the Lower East Side tequila and mezcal bar Viktor & Spoils, of the widely sold mezcal brand, “when the tequila market had boomed and left mezcal far behind, as an enterprising marketing attempt to get mezcal away from its image as moonshine.”

Kudos to the writer, Robert Simonson, for a great piece. He includes some more quotes that didn't fit, over on his blog.

The World's 50 Best Bars

A poll was taken of 100 bar professionals from around the world to produce a list of the world's 50 best bars. Obviously lists like this are a little silly. Such things are subjective and prone to cronyism, and also vary depending on the respondent’s criteria and state of inebriation. Still, I love a good list, so I'm sharing it with you.

Note: I haven't been to any of these bars. And that makes me sad.

Here are the Top 10:

1. PDT, New York
2. Connaught, London
3. Artesian, London
4. Death & Co, New York
5. Milk & Honey, London
6. American Bar at the Savoy, London
7. 69 Colebrooke Row, London
8. Drink, Boston US
9. Harry’s New York Bar, Paris
10. Black Pearl, Melbourne, Australia

See the rest of the list.