*This post also appears on the LUPEC Boston blog.

If you are a fan of LUPEC Boston you are likely aware that we are big fans of gin. We love this spirit for its versatility, mixabilty, and approachability when introducing cocktail neophytes to the wonderous world of classic cocktails. At Tales of the Cocktail this week, a plethora of seminars on gin await; at the top of our list is The Botanical Garden, led by the lovely and talented Charlotte Voisey, Portfolio Ambassador for William Grant & Sons, USA.

As we discussed a few weeks back, the botanical blend chosen by a master distiller is what sets his or her brand apart from all others in the marketplace. Juniper must be play a leading role but the rest are up to the choice and taste of the master distiller. We caught up with the Charlotte to delve a little deeper into the topic of botanicals, a little preview of what’s to come during the Botanical Garden seminar on Thursday morning.

LUPEC Boston: What are the most important factors distillers look for when selecting botanicals?

Charlotte Voisey: The most important thing is consistency of the berries/seeds/botanicals.  As they are natural products there can be differences from harvest to harvest so checks are needed to look at the oil content of the botanicals to make sure that they meet the distiller’s specifications.

LB: Are there common botanicals that can be found in all/most gins besides juniper? Any particular reason for this besides tradition?

CV: Generally most gins will contain angelica, coriander and citrus elements and mainly because these botanicals work together well for a good general balance of flavor and character.  Floral botanicals help give a lovely sophisticated nuance to some gins.  I believe that tradition played a part for a while, but recently the selection of botanicals used has opened right up.

LB: Does seasonality affect a botanical blend as it may with wine, like a good vs. bad vintage?

CV: In general there will be no difference during the year as the botanicals are just the berries or seeds that will be produced at the same time every year.  Some botanicals definitely have a time during the year when they are at their best and this is when they are harvested, but as long as this is kept consistent each year then so will their quality and their contribution to the balance of flavor of the gin in question.

What are the most important botanicals beside juniper? What kinds of flavors or aromas do they impart?

CV: Juniper is the most important as it has to be, by law, the most dominant botanical.  The other botanicals all bring something to the party but it is really the balance obtained between all of the extracted oils that is the important factor. It is no use having a really dominant nose that simply swamps everything else.

Can you suggest some go-to herbs, mixers, or other ingredients that bartenders can keep in mind while developing Hendricks cocktails to enhance different facets of the flavor profile?
CV: Hendrick’s has a lovely delicate floral characteristic that bartenders do well not to overpower; strong, bitter and herbaceous ingredients can certainly be used in Hendrick’s cocktails but are best done with a light hand. Hendrick’s seems to play delightfully in four main flavor directions – spicy, floral, citrus and refreshingly clean.

Do you have a favorite botanical?
CV: Juniper is the almighty botanical and therefore the most respected, as without it we have no “gin”.  But I do love to draw on the refreshing subtle cucumber essence in Hendrick’s when I am mixing.

Don’t miss a chance to taste for yourself at the Botanical Garden seminar this Thursday, July 22 @ 10:30 a.m.

Cin-cin!

“Surviving Tales intact is definitely a challenge but its also part of the fun. Everywhere you turn there will be someone you know either less drunk than you or more drunk than you. Often, you’ll be surrounded by some of each. If you can’t tell which is which, you’re the drunk one.”
- John Myers, Tales veteran and 2009 moderator

For the uninitiated, unaccustomed, and those with un-primed livers, long days and nights of endless drinking in hot, humid New Orleans at Tales of the Cocktail may seem daunting. Seminars begin at 10 a.m. each day and every waking moment of the event is paired with drink. If not properly prepared, the neophyte could wind up passed out by mid-afternoon.

It is for these first timers (and veterans who can’t remember a thing about Tales’ past because they were too hammered) that we offer this primer for drinking all day at Tales without getting (too) drunk, culled from some of the brightest stars (a.k.a. biggest boozers) in the mixology galaxy.

1. Just because it’s in front of you doesn’t mean you have to drink it.

As Paul Clarke advises: “There’s no shortage of booze at Tales — you can skip a dozen free drinks, and there’ll still be another one coming your way.” Chuck Taggart suggests “using the provided spit buckets, no matter how much it hurts.” As Cocktail Nerd Gabriel Szaszko reminds us, “The tasting rooms are for tasting, not lounging. Yes, there are 3-4 sirens of spirits calling your name in each of them…and yes you want to try them and by all means you’re there to *report* on your findings…but, hey, stop touching the drinks on the bus tray!”

Now that you’ve survived the seminars & tasting rooms, how will you manage the Carousel Bar? Misty Kalkofen of LUPEC Boston advises low-alcohol sips like the Half-Sinner Half Saint to allow an even, glowing buzz that can last for hours. Or try a mocktail for once – The Liquid Muse Natalie Bovis-Nelsen will teach you how to make a delicious one at the Virgin Mixology(R) seminar.

Jeffrey Morgenthaler swears by “lighter spirits such as silver tequila and white rum” as ideal morning or early afternoon refreshers (“aged spirits can significantly weigh you down during peak summer hours”) and advises you bring a flask with you since “there are no glass containers permitted in the Monteleone rooftop pool area.” He suggests hitting the Carousel Bar “during the more popular, or ‘informative’ sessions’” so you’re well situated when throngs of people crowd it afterwards. And be sure to tip heavily during that slower time “so as to secure your top position in the bartender’s list of customers.” Mr. Morgenthaler misunderstood the question. If you wish to drink all day at Tales without getting drunk, don’t listen to him.

2. Eat often, eat wisely.

Still buzzed from your morning session and eager to get a good seat at your afternoon ones, it’s easy to convince yourself that lunch is optional. Says Paul Clarke: “my first year at Tales I skipped lunch one day and nearly wound up sleeping under the tables during the Cocktail Hour.” Sloshed writer Marleigh Riggins suggest you plan around lunchtime seminars “or stock up on Clif Bars.” Dr. Bamboo will keep a “breakfast stash” in his room, so as to start the day off with something besides booze in the stomach. In the words of Tales moderator John Myers, “All the culinary delights in New Orleans for dinner are great, don’t get me wrong, but you need breakfast and lunch too.”

Some believe the solution itself to be in the food. Guillaume Vialle, Western USA Regional Director at Cognac Ferrand, totally knows people who swear by drinking “olive oil to coat the stomach,” and also swears he’s never tried. A Boston-based source (also French) speaking solely on the condition of anonymity attempts the same by eating “a huge, so-fudgy-it’s-sick brownie.”

“Magic food” suggestions are as varied (and arbitrary) as hangover cures, including raw bar, oatmeal (“sticks to your ribs and soaks up the booze”), good fat foods like smoked salmon, whole grains, cheese, and avocados and bad fat foods, like haggas topped with fried eggs. Jamie Boudreau advises you “eat three kitchen sponges at the beginning of the day, drink everything in sight and take it like a man!” And videotape the event, so you come out with some memories.

3. Get your beauty rest.

Operating on a hot tip from an endocrinologist, Charles Munat advises “the absolute most important thing is to get a good night’s sleep every night.” RumDood Matt Robold agrees: “There are tons of parties and after-parties and bars and drinks” and it’s tempting to try to see and do it all. Don’t. Get “a good night’s sleep between the hours of 4 and 8 a.m.,” says Drinkboston founder Lauren Clark.

Even if you don’t sleep, John Myers suggests availing yourself of your hotel room often. “Take a shower when you’re there–you’ll be surprised at its ability to re-boot you.” He also speaks to staying “off campus”, which will absolutely have to do if you haven’t already secured a room at the Monteleone as they’re all booked up. “The 5 or 10 minutes it takes to ‘commute’ really can assuage that niggling feeling that you could be missing something. You probably are, but no matter how hard you try, you’ll always miss something at Tales.”

4. Take herbal remedies as a preemptive strike.

Milk thistle before you start (for your liver), B12 & B6 (for your hangover). One source swears by activated carbon pills: 2 with the first drink, one per each additional drink. All can be purchased at Whole Foods.

5. Drink Water.

It’s there for the taking at every event and is the only thing you shouldn’t moderate. Dr. Bamboo took a bottle wherever he went last year: “Between the heat and the booze, it was a lifesaver.” A glass with each cocktail is not a bad idea.

Also not a bad idea is John Myers’ suggestion to “Get out of the Carousel bar. This is a tough one and you’ll have to make a concerted effort to do it but you gotta! People will ply you endlessly with drink here but you’ll just end up drunker than you wish earlier than you’d have liked.” Once beyond the threshold, “keep moving…having one or two drinks per stop will put you back in the sweathouse that is the outdoors but it will help you metabolize some of that good tasting poison.”

Myers also offers his double-secret-extra-special-ace-up-the-sleeve-last-all-day prescription for drinking all day at Tales without getting (too) drunk: “while the sun is up and you’re between seminars, sidle over to the Napoleon House for a Pimm’s Cup with an espresso back. Repeat as necessary.”

As Virginia Elliot and Phil D. Strong observe in their 1930 volume Shake ‘Em Up “[E]ven the soberest of men will sometimes wake up and wonder what hit him after the second highball.” If this happens to you, head directly to John Myers’ cocktail seminar, Paying the Piper: Your Hangover and You Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 10:30 AM in the Riverview Room. He will certainly have your cure.

White-coated pharmacists may be the last thing modern drinkers think of when mixing up a cocktail to sip casually. But did you know that many key ingredients of modern mixology owe their history to medicine? Consider the following.

Muslim scholars Geber and Avicenna made groundbreaking advancements in the technology of alcohol distillation in the 8th and 9th centuries. The Qur’an’s stipulation that “the righteous man does not drink wine” suggests these chemists weren’t imbibing, but rather messing around with stills and distilling in pursuit of medicine and perfume.

Some spirits were engineered with medicinal purposes in mind. Gin, for example, was created when Arnaud de Villanova sought to harness the healthful properties of the juniper berry, believed to be an excellent aid for the kidneys. And history’s first liqueurs were invented to combat intestinal problems and difficult digestion. The quinine ones also helped keep scurvy at bay.

Bitters were also born of medical necessity, perhaps most obviously because we still reach for it to aid stomach ailments today. In 1690, British apothecary Richard Stoughton began bottling his cure-all “Elixir Magnum Somachicum”, a.k.a. “Stoughton’s Great Cordial Elixir”, a highly concentrated tonic, made of a proprietary blend of ingredients and marketed to remedy just about everything. Allegedly capable of rectifying the stomach from its indispositions and cleansing the blood from its impurities, the stuff flew off the shelves. A teaspoon of that with a glass of beer, sherry, or a dram of brandy, was akin to taking your morning vitamins.

In the case of the Sazerac, the official cocktail of New Orleans, all roads lead back to the pharmacy: the back of Creole apothecary Antoine Amadee Peychaud’s pharmacy, to be exact. He served his mixture of Sazerac de Forge et Fils brandy (the spirit du moment) and his signature Peychaud’s bitters to fellow masons there in off hours in the 1830s.

Later generations added absinthe to the drink, a spirit that owes some measure of its popularity to healthful preservation, administered to French soldiers fighting in Africa as a treatment for malaria and to sterilize their water. Soldiers brought their newfound taste for the green elixir home to France, where the popularity of absinthe soared.

Attendees at the “New Orleans Pharmacists” seminar at Tales will have the opportunity to learn about this and so much more from moderator Phil Greene, a descendent of Antoine Amadee Peychaud, and panelists Ted Haigh, a.k.a. Dr. Cocktail; Herbsaint Legendre authority Jay Hendrickson; and writer and television personality, Lorin Gaudin. The seminar will be held Thursday, July 9, 2009, 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM in the Queen Anne Ballroom at the Hotel Monteleone. Secure your spot today!