The cold war

One of the first things you learn behind a bar is alcohol tastes better when it’s cold. It’s what you say to people who complain that you’ve put too much ice in their vodka and Coke. It helps that, as a general rule, it’s true.

But not always. Take wine, for example. Reds usually want to be served just south of room temperature. For me, rosés can go straight from the fridge to the trashcan (it is possible that I just haven’t met the right one for my tastes. Theoretically, anyway), and whites are comfortable in the ballpark of 4-7 degrees Celsius. What showed me that the majority of Edinburgh bartenders are probably more into cocktails than wine was when one of them filled an 18oz wine glass with ice and soda and then stirred it for thirty seconds before pouring the wine straight from the fridge. At least his heart’s in the right place.

That was five minutes ago. My £5-plus glass of Australian Sauvignon Blanc still tastes like chilled grape juice, which is all well and good, but I’m fairly sure I ordered wine.

Do want

BoingBoing Gadgets reports on this particularly swish mobile bar setup that packs up into a suprisingly slim flight case. Downsides? The $1,900 price tag.

Mixology Monday: 19th Century Cocktails

Mixology Monday is a monthly celebration of mixological stuff, with each themed installment hosted somewhere within the drinkblogging community. This month’s edition is on 19th Century Cocktails, and is being hosted at Bibulo.us. This is the ednbrg MxMo debut – here’s hoping I don’t screw this up…

So, I…uh, forgot the bacon

Not the most balanced shopping list I’ve ever written:

1 bottle Finlandia vodka
3 enormous grapefruits
1 air-tight container

Notably skipping the all-important meat, fish, dairy and vegetable components of an effective weekly shop, but fear not – there’s a plan.

It’s not even complicated. Strip the zests off the grapefruits, lob in the vodka, seal and in about two weeks, I’m going to add a couple of ounces of sugar syrup, et voilà I’ll have a limoncello. Only grapefruitier. Grapefruitcello? Definitely not as catchy.

D-fly (2005-2008, 2008- )

Dragonfly – one of the bars that kickstarted the cocktail renaissance in Edinburgh – is up for sale. If any passing millionaires want to toss me some change (about a quarter of a million should do, I guess), I’ll give it a shot. It’s a great bar, run by awesome folk. Deserves more of the same.

Businesses for sale – brief details. [Via Barbore]

Metaphor doesn’t seem like the right word

Meantime, people are calling Sarah Palin’s six-year rise from part-time mayor to V.P. nominee improbable, but people who say that have a poor understanding of probability. Sarah Palin’s election as governor was improbable: getting hit by lightning. The fact that she might be vice president is more like getting hit by an asteroid and yet surviving because the asteroid has a hole in it shaped exactly like Sarah Palin.

Welcome to the Palindrome by Kevin Guilfoile & John Warner – The Morning News.

Everything you know about X is wrong, where X = juicing lemons

The Test Kitchen: How to Get the Most Juice from Lemons and Limes: Food + Cooking Video : gourmet.com.

At least I didn’t cut my ear off.

I had a bad experience with absinthe once. I was with a bunch of friends and we went to a flatparty somewhere in Manchester. We were greeted at the door by the lovely girl who lived there who offered us a tray of green shots. Apple Sourz? Don’t mind if I do…

I remember literally nothing else of the night.

In other news, US bartenders vs. the rest of the world in Simon Difford’s Cabinet Room, battling for inclusion in La Fée’s definitive guide to absinthe cocktails? Might be time to reacquaint myself with some green fairytales.

Absinthe Cocktail Grand Prix.

It’s the same hat.

Great article over at SFGate about cocktail competitions. Also notable for proving that there’s really only one style of hat for the professional bartender.

Spirits: The cocktail arena – why so competitive?

On vermouth

So Wednesday is my training day at work – we alternate sessions between spirits and liqueurs, and wine. It was my last seminar on spirits with one of my groups and we were doing cocktail history. I was talking about the development of the cocktail through the ages while making drinks typical of each period for the guys to try.

First up, I decided to make a Martinez as an example of a pre-Prohibition cocktail. So, I start with my spiel about how drinks were different back then: for one, vermouth was way more popular than it is now.

“Vermouth?” asks one of the group.
“Yup,” I say, and before I can continue, she makes a face like I’d answered by saying “Yeah, so your dog? It died.”

This, of course, sparks five minutes of everybody saying they don’t like vermouth, only old people drink it, so on. And then I remember a conversation with my restaurant manager a couple of days ago, when he’d said that when you first start making cocktails, everything gets berries in it. Strawberries, raspberries, whatever. No recipe is complete without a berry component. And then I’d said “it’s like there’s an 18 month trial before you’re allowed to use vermouth.”

What is it about vermouth that the kids don’t like? I suspect that it takes a while to get your head around the more complex flavour as an ingredient in your own recipes. But, fortunately, they liked the Martinez. Which is a start.