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Vodka

Fall 2009 column is now online

by Michael Dietsch on October 10, 2009 · 1 comment

in Booze in the news,Brandy,Cocktail recipes,Edible Rhody,Vodka

Hey, folks. My fall 2009 column for Edible Rhody magazine is now online. As a reminder …

The focus of the column is on using seasonal, local ingredients in cocktails. Each column will have two recipes–one that I mix and one from a local bartender. Trust me, my focus will always be on classical techniques and interesting spirits.

So, now you can see whether I made good on that promise. First, though, the stunning cover:

Edible Rhody Fall 09 Cover

Who knew there were cranberry bogs in Rhode Island? I didn’t! Now, the column (if you want to read the text without squinting, click here):

Mix Master, Edible Rhody Fall 09

Photo for the article is by local photographer Chip Riegel, and boy did I have fun mixing drinks for a photoshoot at 9am.

Apple Sage Old-Fashioned

For this drink, I was inspired by traditional Thanksgiving flavors, particularly apple and sage stuffing.

  • 2 ounces Calvados apple brandy
  • 1/2 ounce sage simple syrup (recipe follows)
  • 2 dashes Angostura bitters (when I made this at home, I used Fee’s Whiskey Barrel Bitters, which were superb in this, but aren’t for sale in Rhody as far as I know)
  • Apple slice, for garnish

Build in an old-fashioned glass over ice. Add garnish.

Sage Simple Syrup

  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 cup water
  • 1/4 cup fresh sage leaves

Add sugar and water to a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat. When sugar dissolves, remove from heat. Add sage leaves and stir. Cover and let steep for 15 minutes. Strain into a jar (discard sage leaves) and refrigerate. Will keep for one month.

Apple Sage Old-Fashioned

photograph by the ever-loyal Jennifer Hess

Pippin’s Pear of Aces

This drink is by Providence bartender Bonnie Siharath. At the time of writing, she was at Chinese Laundry, but that restaurant closed just a week before this issue was released. I have not yet followed up to see where she’s landed. The food at Chinese Laundry was inspired by the tastes of East Asia, and this drink follows that theme.

  • 1/2 fresh pear
  • 1/2 stick of cinnamon
  • 1 ounce Wokka Sake vodka
  • 1 ounce Gray Goose pear vodka
  • 1 ounce Asian pear nectar
  • 1/4 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice
  • pear slice, for garnish

Gently muddle pear and cinnamon in a cocktail shaker. Add ice, vodkas, nectar, and lime juice. Shake well and strain through a tea strainer into a chilled cocktail glass. Add garnish.

1 comment

MxMo: Local Flavor

by Michael Dietsch on August 11, 2008 · 4 comments

in Mixology,Mixology Monday,Vodka

The challenge this month, thanks to Kevin at Save the Drinkers, is local challenge. Let’s see how Kevin defines that:

Option 1: Gather ingredients that are representative of the culture/geography/tackiness of your respective cities and make a drink with a truly place-based style. For example, huckleberries are native to the geographical area where I live, as are elderflowers, potatoes, and extremely conservative, closet-case politicians. (I’m just saying!)

Option 2: Dig up an old drink that came from your city and revive it! If you can find the original bar, that would be even more interesting.

I don’t know about you, but when I think “local flavor” and “New England,” the first thing I think of is seafood. The official vegetable of Rhode Island, after all, is the squid.*

But alas, there are few cocktail recipes that require seafood, unless you count the oyster shooter, which I don’t, frankly. And I haven’t settled in to Providence long enough just yet to know what’s representative of my city. Forbes tells me that Providence is fourth among the nation’s hardest drinking cities, but that doesn’t really tell me what Providence drinks. The 18th Amendment, which prohibited the sale, manufacture, and distribution of beverage alcohol, was ratified by all but two states–Rhode Island and Connecticut. But that still doesn’t tell me what Rhode Island drinks.

I don’t know what edible flora are native to Rhode Island. I don’t know what Roger Williams ate for dinner the day he founded Providence. So, aside from seafood, I don’t know much about the food culture of Rhode Island or Providence.

What I do know is what’s available to us from local farmers at the city’s farmers markets. I know what spirits are distilled in Rhode Island and its neighboring states. And I know how much Jen and I enjoy shopping our local farmers markets, especially in August, at the height of the season.

I’ve talked before about the benefits of making your own tomato juice for a Bloody Mary, but today, we’re going a little farther. Today, I can tell you that everything we could source locally, we sourced locally. Jen was tentatively calling our weekend’s concoction the Bloody Rhody, but that’s not quite accurate, as you’ll see. I’m dubbing it the Bloody Nor’easter.

For the Bloody Nor’easter, I started with local heirloom tomatoes, grown in RI and prepared as discussed in the previous link. I took two ounces of Triple Eight Vodka, distilled on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts, and muddled two small hot peppers and a small handful of basil (both from the farmers market) into the vodka. I strained the solids out and returned the vodka to the mixing glass.This worked well because I got the flavors of the peppers and basil in the vodka without the solids mucking up the works. I could have achieved the same effect by steeping the peppers and basil in the vodka for some time, but I didn’t plan ahead.

I added four ounces of tomato juice (for two drinks), lime juice (not local, since citrus doesn’t grow in the Northeastern United States), Worcestershire (also not local), salt (also not local), some local Rhode Island Red hot sauce, and a secret ingredient.

What? Okay, I’ll tell you the secret. Remember how I said that few cocktails require seafood? Well, as any reputable Canadian might tell you, a tomato-based drink does well with a bit of seafood. The night before I assembled the Bloody Nor’easter, Jen had simmered up some Rhody clams with a bit of Trinity IPA (from a Providence brewpub) and some shallot. She reserved a bit of the clam-beer liquid for me before doctoring it up with spices and butter for our dinner, so I added a bit of that to the mix.

We served ‘em up with a beer chaser. Jen chose the Trinity IPA from Providence, and because I don’t really dig on the IPA style, I selected the Hurricane Amber Ale from Coastal Extreme in Newport, RI.

I actually have another drink with local flavor, but I’m whizzing close enough to deadline and bedtime as it is. The second one will have to wait until later in the week.

*I kid, of course. I’m a squid kidder. RI has no state veg, and its state fruit is the Greening Apple, which won’t ripen for at least another month.

4 comments

360 Vodka

by Michael Dietsch on October 6, 2007 · 4 comments

in Vodka

A couple of months ago, the marketing team for 360 Vodka offered me a sample bottle for review. And although I took them up on the offer, I’m only now finding the time to write anything up. (I can’t tell you how happy I’ll be to put this overtime period behind me, but I still have three weeks to go.)

It must be difficult to market an unflavored vodka. The taste is so subtle that it’s hard to sell it on that front. Additionally, many vodka drinkers are steadfastly brand loyal (although I’m puzzled as to why), so you’re not going to convert them. McCormick Distilling, the creators of 360 have chosen to carve out a “green” niche for themselves, as I’m sure many of you already know from reading earlier reviews.

And it’s apparently not just hype; McCormick uses locally grown grains to cut back on fuel emissions, it bottles and packages the vodka in recycled materials, and it offers a program through which it will donate a buck to environmental organizations for every returned swingtop bottle closure. Thanks to the swingtop, though, I’m probably going to reuse the bottle, so although I think the return program is cool, I won’t be taking advantage of it.

But really now, how does it taste? To judge that, I mixed it up into a martini, with a healthy splash of vermouth. Nice. It won’t knock the gin martini off our Friday-night slate, but it’s worth adding to the mix every now and again. The flavors are clean with a hint of grain; nothing metallic or “off” in the taste or the finish. It makes me enjoy vodka martinis, and that’s saying something.

4 comments

Mo Bloody

September 5, 2007

Perhaps it’s the holiday weekend, but Bloody Marys are in the air. I have to say, I don’t drink Bloodies very often. I don’t like the flavor or texture of most commercial tomato juices, as they tend to be heavy on the palate and the tummy. Often, I feel like half my meal becomes the [...]

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Charbay v. Mother Nature!

January 25, 2007

Charbay wins! If you’ve turned on the teevee at all this month, you know that Cali got hit hard by a deep freeze that wiped out its citrus crops. To the tune of $800-million bucks, it seems. Bad news for those of us who like some fresh juices in our cocktails. But not everyone’s so [...]

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Party drinking

January 14, 2007

My good friend Todd had a birthday brunch party today and to help him celebrate, I took along a couple of premixed drinks that seemed to go over well. I brought a Bloody Mary premix, and also a Ward 8 premix. I left the Bloody Mary stuff out for folks to pour into a glass [...]

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Being and nothingness

September 26, 2006

Eric Asimov returns today to the spirits, with a good entry about vodka. From time to time, I find a good non-flavored vodka that actually tastes like something (and, moreover, something good). I’ve praised Charbay on this point in the past, and they deserve it. But in most cases, I find that Asimov’s right. Vodka [...]

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MxMo: Limon

July 17, 2006

Hey! It’s time for MxMo V: The One With the Whales, this month hosted by hosted by Jonathan at Jiggle the Handle. So grab a bowl of lemons, tart yourself up, and strap in: Look at the lemons/See how they juice for you/And everything you do/Yeah they were all yellow… Having become an avid reader [...]

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Charbay Vodka

May 29, 2006

Who cares about vodka? If it’s not the most boring spirit on earth, it’s damn close anyway. Since most of them are designed to be clean and flavorless, I’ve never honestly seen much point to drinking it, except maybe in a bloody mary, or straight from the freezer, in a shot glass and downed quickly. [...]

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