An online speakeasy of potent potables and other pabulam.

In a few days, we will say goodbye to 2008 and usher in 2009.  New Years Eve is a time to reflect on the past year and celebrate the new possibilities and excitement of the coming year.  Across the world, people will be popping corks and drinking champagne, cava, prosecco or some other form of bubbly beverage.

Champagne, of course, is that fizzy white wine from the Champagne region of France.  Cava is champagne’s Spanish brother while prosecco is the Italian sister.  Learn about more types of sparkling wines here.

Whatever you call it, sparkling wine is a wonderful way to ring in the New Year.  It’s festive, tasty and looks great in a glass.  Ahhh, but even though it is wonderful all by it’s lonesome, champagne makes an excellent addition to cocktails.

One of the great things about champagne is its versatility.  One word of warning though – whichever type of sparkling wine you use for cocktails taste it first.  Many sparkling wines are very dry, also called “Brut.”  This dryness comes for a relatively low amount of sugar.  But the opposite is also true, some sparkling wines are incredibly sweet.  You’ll need to figure this out before mixing cocktails in order to achieve the proper balance.

Before the New Year celebrations begin, I want to share with you a few classic champagne based cocktails.  First, is the aptly named “Champagne Cocktail.”

Champagne Cocktail
1 sugar cube
Angostura Bitters
Sparkling Wine/Champagne

Saturate the sugar cube with Angostura bitters.  Pour a flute of champagne and drop in the sugar cube.  Watch the pretty fizz.

Honestly, the sugar cube and the bitters don’t bring much to the party.  As the sugar cube breaks down, the bitters are released into the drink but not enough to drastically alter the taste of the champagne.  The sugar just kind of sits in the bottom of the glass and without stirring it up (and releasing a lot of the bubbles in the process) it doesn’t do much good either.  But it certainly makes for a striking presentation!

Another classic champagne (or sparkling wine) cocktail is one of my favorites, the French 75.

French 75
2oz Gin
1oz lemon juice
2 bar spoons simple syrup
Champagne

-Shake gin, lemon juice and simple syrup with ice and strain into a chilled champagne flute.  Top with champagne.  Garnish with a spiral of lemon peel and a maraschino cherry.

The French 75 is, to me, what a champagne cocktail should be. It is sweet, tart, fizzy and packs a nice little punch (almost like a piece of artillery . . . ) from the gin. This is a pure crowd-pleaser – not even the self-described gin haters would turn down this cocktail. Feel free to play around with the types of gin you use to find what works best for you. I’ve used Plymouth, Aviation and Hendrick’s to great success. Each creates a slightly different profile on the final product and each was very (hic!) enjoyable!

Finally, feel free to experiment with creations of your own. Sparkling wine is a fantastic base to create your own house cocktails. While prepping for this article, I had just finished a batch of spiced pumpkin liqueur. (Keep your eyes open to the Scofflaw’s Den for more about that!) I decided to take my own advice and see if I could come up with something unique and festive using champagne and the spiced pumpkin liqueur. What I came away with is

A Sweet Ending
2oz Amber Rum
1oz Spiced Pumpkin Liqueur
Dry/Brut Sparkling Wine

-Shake the rum and liqueur with ice and strain into a chilled champagne flute. Top with the dry sparkling wine of your choice.

The name is derived from the sweet ending of a Thanksgiving or Christmas meal – usually pumpkin pie at my house.  But it also serves as a reminder that this is the ending of one year and the beginning of the next.

So there you have it.  Go out and buy a few bottles of your favorite sparkling wine and experiment with some cocktails of your own.  You and you’re guests will love the versatility and creativity that champagne cocktails bring to the party.

Have a Happy (and Safe) New Year!  Cheers!

Additional champagne cocktail photos can be found here.

Back to gin…

When we went to New Heights Restaurant last week, I had a lot of fun.  Marshall wrote up his long post on it but I wanted to touch on some of the points of my visit.

Like I said, I had a great time.  Everyone was very friendly there.  I felt a bit bad for our bartender, Chris.  He was a pretty nice guy but was almost overwhelmingly slammed a good bit of the night.  Two different tables ordered brandy alexanders!  There were a lot of no-reservation walk-ins for both the dining room and the bar thanks to a convention and the article in the WaPo (I heard them say).

Marshall is s-m-r-t … errr… smart.  When we first walked in it was fairly empty so we took seats right at the very end of the bar.  That kept us from getting surrounded when the large group came in.  I still got jostled a lot by one of the first guys in from that group.  I was convinced that they were going to be quite annoying but in fact they were very polite and when they realized they were running into me made it a point to be careful about it.  You know what?  Thanks!  Honestly, I appreciated their concern and effort to be conscientious bar-neighbors.

(Compare that to the other night at Bailey’s when the guys next to me – even a few chairs down – seemed nice at first but quickly grew annoying, to the point of having my chair stolen when I was in the bathroom and smoke blown at me.)

For the most part that night I stuck with gin and tonics.  My reasoning – which seemed to be accurate – was two-fold.

First, that’d provide a consistent tasting amongst the different gins.  To be completely consistent I should’ve stuck with the same tonic all the time.  They had a list of tonics and how to pair gin with tonic so I stuck with those guidelines.  At home I tend to stick to one kind of tonic.

Second, it would be easier for the bartender.  That it was – I definitely got drinks faster.

It looks like I didn’t manage to Twitter EVERYTHING…oh well.  I definitely had a gin and tonic to start, I just don’t remember which one!  Andrew (our original bartender) made us an Aviation with Aviation gin.  I liked it more than previous ones I’d had, though Marshall does have that creme de violette fetish.

Next was the #24.  They had a couple of these “numbered” drinks and I neglected to ask what was up with that naming schema.  This one was, according to my Twitter, G-vine gin, St. Germaine elderflower liqueur, Peychaud’s bitters, simple syrup, kaffir lime leaf, lime juice, Schweppes tonic.  I’d never heard of G-vine gin before that night and they had sent the pastry chef out to buy some more of it.  It’s a French gin and I actually found later in a gin and tonic that I liked it a lot.

Next up was another gin and tonic.  This time I tried the Old Raj, blue label, with the Fever-Tree tonic.  That was quite good.  There’s another label (red, I believe) of Old Raj, but the blue is stronger and I wanted more of the taste to shine.

Around this time we got our food.  The ham & cheese croquettes were awesome, as were the truffle fries.  I also got the pickled herring (MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE) and I loved it.  Honestly – I think it was the best pickled herring I’ve had.  To be completely honest, I’ve only had it a couple of other times but I think it was better than it was at Aquavit.

I threw Chris a curveball for the next drink.  Let’s avoid the gins and hit the classic – a Sazerac.  It’s always interesting how other people make it.  He used St. George absinthe, for one.  Due to the expense of St. George, as he pointed out, he doesn’t just toss it out as you’re supposed to do with the pastis.  He just pours a little bit in.  Then there was a sugar cube, both Peychaud’s and Regan’s bitters, and Russell’s Reserve rye.  That rye is one I use a lot in Sazeracs.  It was quite tasty, if not as sweet as I tend to prefer mine.

Next was back to the gin and tonic.  I knew I needed something big to cut through the remnants of taste in the Saz.  I went with the G-vine and Fever-Tree bitter lemon tonic.  That was a SPECTACULAR choice.  I’m really digging the G-vine.

Jake had been hanging out with us and had been waiting on a complimentary Aviation for a while but finally needed to leave.  Just after he left it came up so Marshall and I polished it off.  I’d had a Rogue Spruce gin and Schweppe’s before that and needed to clear some of the taste out of my mouth; it wasn’t that bad but it wasn’t something I particularly go for.  Kind of like how a really peaty Scotch might not be everyone’s cup of tea.

The final drink of the bar for me was a martini – I’m a huge martini fan, I’ve found.  And it was good.  Marshall had a champagne cocktail of some sort.

We went home after that.  Just as I got home some friends of Cathy’s were coming in for the birthday of one of her really good friends.  Cathy wanted a drink and surprisingly enough, not a champagne drink like she usually has.  I ended up drinking the Kir Royale made with sparkling shiraz (not the best drink ever) while I thought up something.  I called it the Cathy Cocktail:
3/4 ounce Hendrick’s gin
1/2 ounce creme de cassis
1/4 ounce simple syrup
dash of Regans bitters

Shake, pour over ice in a collins glass, top with Sprite.

Later her friends and I did an absinthe tasting between the Kubler and the Lucid.  While tasty, it was not what I needed at that point in the evening…it definitely led to a rough morning when I had to get up early to take care of the block party!

Saturday night I made a couple of St. Germain 75s.  That’s:

2 ounces Hendricks Gin
2 ounces St. Germain
1/2 ounce simple syrup
1/2 ounce lemon juice
2 ounces sparkling wine (I stole some of Cathy’s Korbel)

Mmmmm.

For a good bit of the day I’d been drinking Sam Adams Winter Lager so the drink made a great departure from that.  I passed mine around the room and everyone seemed to enjoy it, too.  The first was a bit too sweet, so I upped the sparkling wine in the second (I was using the Demerara simple syrup which might’ve caused that).

I need to buy some of my own sparkling wine so I can make this more.

So I’m perusing Northern Virginia magazine while buying cat treats (don’t ask) and I see in their “(Relish)” (yes, it’s in parenthesis) section a “cocktail corner” by Natalie Bovis-Nelsen aka The Liquid Muse.

Hey that URL sounds familiar…oh yeah.  It’s in my bookmarks.

She’s got two recipes in there from the “resident mixologist” for Bombay Sapphire.  Since I was thinking of picking up a bottle of that (mostly for martinis) soon, I went ahead and picked up the magazine (well, for that, and for the article on take-out).

Here are the recipes.

White Sapphire Ginger Martini
1 ounce Bombay Sapphire
Slither of fresh ginger
8 white grapes
1/2 ounce fresh apple juice

Muddle ginger and grapes at the bottom of a cocktail shaker.  Add remaining ingredients, then shake with lots of ice.  Strain into a chilled martini glass.

I’m not certain if I see the point of this one.  You’ll get…sort of grape-ginger-apple flavor?  I’m guessing that the Bombay Sapphire is going to be fairly overwhelmed by everything else, especially the grapes, though you might get a hint of flavor/burn.  And by shaking, it’s going to be all cloudy, as the attached picture shows in the magazine, but I guess with 8 muddled grapes it’s going to look worse if it was stirred.

The suggestion is for it to go with rich, meaty crab cakes.

Sapphire Bubbles
1 1/4 ounce Bombay Sapphire gin
1 teaspoon fine sugar
1/2 ounce lemon juice
2 ounces dry champagne
1/2 ounce mandarin liqueur

Mix lemon juice and fine sugar into stirring glass then fill with ice.  Add gin and mandarin liqueur.  Shake and strain into chilled champagne flute.  Top with champagne.

Again with the shaking!  On his site, Robert Hess often complains about the grittiness that one can get from using sugar in a drink versus simpnle syrup.  You may need to shake to get the sugar fully dissolved, but I’d rather stir (maybe) with simple syrup.  On the other hand, maybe the bubbles in the champagne would cover up the sugar’s grittiness.

This is one I could see myself making for Cathy – though it may be too strong for her.

I haven’t had any experience with Mandarin liqueur.  Any suggestions on a brand out there?

There’s also a review of a vodka that’s trying to be a gin called Sonnema VodkaHERB.  I’m kind of wondering the point…