Posted by Matt Robold on July 27, 2010
Filed Under Matt Robold | 3 Comments
Matt Robold is an Orange County, California-based blogger with a passion for rum, an interest he indulges on his blog Rum Dood.
This has been my third straight year attending Tales of the Cocktail. Every year presents me with new experiences, new faces and a lot of new information (and some cocktails, I’m pretty sure there were cocktails too).
When I first attended in 2008, I was a wide-eyed rum enthusiast with no idea what to expect. I had never attended Tales before – in fact, other than Ed Hamilton via his Ministry of Rum, I didn’t know a single person that was attending. Five days and several hundred rummy beverages later, I had a bevvy of new friends to drink with all over the world.
Coming into my third Tales, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. There would be lots of drinking. There would be a massive crowd of people at the Olde Absinthe House late every night. The Carousel Bar would be completely packed with people who were in-between destinations – either heading to bed or heading back out into the night. There would be dozens of other bloggers dressed in a manner similar to me, thereby making us easier to identify and mock in an open fashion. There would be amazing food, good times, laughs, and likely more than a few mornings of cursing the fact that our planet orbits a large ball of unnecessarily bright fire as I dragged myself out of bed to hike to the Monteleone for whatever sessions I had signed up for that day – praying that the small plastic cups of whatever cocktail accompanied the speakers would smooth out my head.
Still, there are things to learn every year, and this year was no exception:
- Jeffrey Morgenthaler may be physically absent from Tales, but Tales is never truly without him.
- Gene’s Hot Sausage Po’boys are as good as advertised, and you will know you ate one for at least 14 hours.
- Hotels will let you fill dishes with gunpowder and overproof spirits and light them on fire if you’re Wayne Curtis.
A potato works really well for forging a customs stamp when you’re running rum in the Caribbean.- Rum Runners during American Prohibition weren’t running rum to the US (they were running Scotch and Brandy) but they were running plenty of rum into Canada.
- There used to be three bottles of Mandarine Napoleon XO in the US. Thanks to a house full of bloggers, there are now two.
- When everyone in your row is passing around a bottle of Laird’s Applejack for the duration of a seminar, you will get funny looks.
- Chartreuse Swizzles are best-prepared at 2am in a glass vase to be shared by 6 people.
Posted by dietsch on July 27, 2010
Filed Under Darcy O'Neil | Leave a Comment
At the Art of Drink, Darcy sums up his Tales 2010 experiences:
Wow, what a week. This year was bigger and better than last year. In fact there were so many people I wanted to have a drink with that there just was enough time. But I did manage to drink my fair share and chat with a lot of people. This year I went as a presenter and not media. I presented 3 sessions, plus helped out on Andrew Nicholls Essential Oil session so I was busy. I tend to feel obligated to do what I’ve agreed to do, and as a media blogger I would have felt compelled to write which would have added way to much to my already full plate. So instead, here’s a summary.
Click on through to read the rest.
Posted by dietsch on July 26, 2010
Filed Under Michael Dietsch | 4 Comments
Michael Dietsch is a bartender between gigs, a writer with an attitude, and an editor with a fast red pen. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and blogs about spirits and cocktails at A Dash of Bitters.
This one’s quite a mouthful… Sunday morning, bleary-eyed and unhappy to be awake, I stumbled to the Royal Sonesta for Dale De Groff’s cognac seminar.
His panelists included Salvatore Calabrese, Alain Royer, and Olivier Paultes. Calabrese is one of the world’s most famous bartenders and also author of a book about cognac. Alain Royer has worked with cognac for most of his life and now works with Renaud-Cointreau Group. Olivier Paultes has also worked with cognac most of his life; he is now cellar master for Frapin and Fontpinot. And if you don’t know who Dale is …
So DdG started off with a history of cognac, the region and the spirit. He moved quickly through this material, so my notes are somewhat sketchy. He wanted to get right into the first tasting portion of the panel. We started with a 2009 distillate of cognac, bottled off the still. Not a lot of complexity to this, as you’d imagine. Floral (lavender, violet) and fruity (a hint of citrus zest) on the nose and tongue, but also quite hot. It needed a few drops of water to open it up and get past the alcohol burn. We moved on to a VSOP Frapin, then a VSOP Château Montifaud and an XO Château de Fontpinot. I’m pretty inexperienced when it comes to cognacs of this caliber, so I don’t really trust my tasting notes. I’ll just say I thought the Fontpinot was just gorgeous, though.
A quick aside here: if I remember Dale’s definition correctly, in cognac terms, a château is a single house producing all its own cognac. These cognacs don’t blend their cognacs with distillates from other houses, like mass-market cognacs do. This is, in a rough sense, analogous to a single-malt scotch.
The final cognac tested was called Vat 49, and it was unusual. It’s from the Forgotten Casks program imported by Preiss Imports. A blend of older cognacs, containing brandies from 1904 and 1955. Interesting and a bit of a challenge.
Next part of the panel dealt with still construction in the cognac region, and this part was great. Royer played a video showing craftsmen taking a flat sheet of copper and hammering, bending, and shaping it into the rounded wall of the boiler. Someone interrupted with a question to Royer: “What’s the price of a cognac still these days?” Answer: “A Ferrari.” As labor intensive as it is to build one, I’m not surprised.
We were running low on time at this point, but Calabrese, the mad bastard, had a couple of surprises for us. First up, a pre-phyloxera cognac from 1865. That’s Eighteen Sixty-Five, the year Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Phyloxera is a pest that nearly destroyed the European wine industry in the late 1800s. The only salvation was to take European vines and graft them onto North American rootstock, which had evolved alongside phyloxera and was thus resistant. Many wine and brandy experts insist that pre-phyloxera wines and brandies were much different in flavor and character from today’s. I don’t know the provenance of the stuff that Calabrese brought along, but it’s a survivor. I thought it nosed like a madeira or a sherry, and caught a lot of complex aromas, but I also thought that the flavor was a little flat.
However, it was the other surprise that was a true treat, an 1805 Sazerac cognac.
A little history here: when the Sazerac cocktail–now rye whiskey, sugar, absinthe, and Peychaud’s bitters–was originally a brandy cocktail. And the brandy of choice was Sazerac. From what I can tell, though, the Sazerac cognac succumbed to the phyloxera pest. A bottle from 1805 is a rare thing indeed.
Which made it surprising when Calabrese mixed about half of a 200ml bottle into a Sazerac. I was one of the few who caught a sip of it, and zoh-mah-gah. The drink was far richer and more complex than any Sazerac I’ve made or tasted with rye or modern cognac, and I can reasonably suspect, a tipple I’ll probably never taste the likes of again.
Posted by dietsch on July 26, 2010
Filed Under Camper English | Leave a Comment
Exactly how many cocktails does one consume at Tales of the Cocktail? Camper English from Alcademics sought to answer that question by sending a Twitter message every time he had one. Now he’s compiled them to find the answer: Up to 35 drinks in a single day! Read this post to learn what they were.
Posted by The Liquid Muse on July 25, 2010
Filed Under Natalie Bovis | Leave a Comment
Natalie Bovis is a writer in Los Angeles. She publishes The Liquid Muse.
There was a time when it was unseemly for a woman to let a sip of hard alcohol pass her lips. It would be crass for her to raise a glass and toast alongside a man. And, certainly, only women of ill repute would be seen in (gasp!) a bar.
Today, our society is somewhat accepting of the other extreme. Teenage girls are swigging gulps of high-proof jungle juice in high school. No college party is complete without licking and sucking body shots off a member of the opposite gender. And, strings of plastic beads reward drunken female revelers flashing body parts at Mardi Gras. Heck, we’ve all (allegedly) been involved in some variation of those scenarios, and though it was fun at the moment, didn’t we always know that we deserved something, well, more sophisticated from our drinking experience?
So, what about the women who are neither throwbacks to the women’s temperance movement nor binge drinking sorority girls? Where does a somewhat classy-but-cool cocktail “nerd” go to mix and mingle with like-minded maidens who appreciate fine booze and can skillfully mix a cocktail from a century-old recipe? Why, she goes to a L.U.P.E.C. meet up, of course.
The acronym stands for “Ladies United in the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails,” which always provokes a little smirk on the part of the person hearing it for the first time. What is an endangered cocktail? Who are these ladies? Isn’t it just a drinking club for chicks?
Well, yeah, it is a drinking club for chicks. Bad-ass, mixology-driven, quality-liquor swilling chicks, that is. Chicks who come from various walks of life – bartenders, consultants, PR reps, brand ambassadors, writers, and plain old civilians (otherwise referred to as “enthusiasts.”) Chicks who would chuck a florescent green fruity “martini” in your face should you be so ignorant as to offer her one, and mix herself up a Corpse Reviver #2, thank you very much.
I first became aware of L.U.P.E.C. through the incredibly active and uber-awesome ladies of L.U.P.E.C. Boston, which was founded in 2007 by respected mixologist / bartender Misty Kalkofen. Luminary personalities both behind and in front of the bar make up their membership and their chapter is always up to something interesting. Among other things, they put out their own cocktail book (and rumor has it there may be another in the works); they produced a USO show; and threw a Boston (spiked) Tea Party. Kirsten Amann (“Pink Lady”), who works with DrinkPR , also helps organize and promote the L.U.P.E.C. Boston events says “People are usually intrigued by the fun concept of the group [that] serves as a gateway to learning more about classic cocktails and spirits about which they may previously have given very little thought.”
Another exemplary chapter is L.U.P.E.C. Chicago, which was formed in 2008. The concept received such overwhelming interest that they have now added two additional chapters to accommodate all the ladies. Sonja Kassebaum, L.U.P.E.C. member and owner of North Shore Distillery remarks, “Until this year, our role has primarily been to ardently support the craft of the cocktail in Chicago through social events and occasional charitable events. With the addition of two new chapters, one of which is industry-dominated, we hope to further increase our impact in the coming year.”
LUPEC was first founded in 2001 in Pennsylvania. The women who first started the group have some specific goals and guidelines, which include each member choosing a name for oneself from among old / endangered cocktails & spirits, and occasionally dressing up in period garb. From the LUPEC.org website, other principles are:
- To create a secular “coven-like” atmosphere in which Classy Broads of today can invoke and honor the spirits of their Forebroads
- To continue the 150 year American tradition of dangerous women calling themselves Ladies and getting together in groups, clubs, and societies to work undercover while they chipped away at the patriarchy.
- To protect the collective Joie de Vivre of LUPEC members by assuring them at least one good party a month
- To encourage the accumulation and use of vintage serving and barware.”
Inspired by the concept of a “sisterhood” in an otherwise male dominated industry, I gathered up some gals in Los Angeles to launch L.U.P.E.C. L.A., in 2009, which will hopefully find its legs this year. Other cities with L.U.P.E.C. chapters include New York, Seattle, London, Paris, Dallas, Denver and maybe even a few more by now. Tales of the Cocktail provided an opportunity for women from all of the above to meet face-to-face at the Swizzle Stick bar in the Loews Hotel. Renowned mixologist Lu Brow mixed up typical New Orleanian brandy milk punches, and announced that the Big Easy will soon be starting up its own LU.P.E.C. chapter!
The ladies of New York and Boston also joined forces for a sold out spirited dinner, a cocktail pairing dining experience, which takes places in restaurants around New Orleans during Tales. More and more, the spirits and hospitality industries are recognizing the contributions and support from the female sector of both the biz and the cocktail-consuming public. And, as Amann points out, “Of course, if Boston didn’t already have a vibrant cocktail culture filled with great, knowledgeable bartenders and curious consumers where many of our members came up, we probably wouldn’t have a LUPEC.” Proving that when all aspects of the industry come together, it’s a recipe for success – and some damn fine drinks enjoyed by both women and men.
Signed – Natalie / The Liquid Muse, aka: “Green Fairy,” L.U.P.E.C. LA.
Posted by dietsch on July 25, 2010
Filed Under Abigail Gullo | Leave a Comment
Blogger RyeGirl had to represent NYC as a bartender, blogger, sales rep and brand embassador at Tales of the Cocktail. And she still managed to win People’s Choice at the Milagro Margarita competition. Now she is celebrating with a new tattoo and Swing Dancing tonight at d.b.a on Frenchman St. Care to join her?
Posted by karanewman on July 24, 2010
Filed Under Kara Newman | Leave a Comment
Kara Newman (Spice & Ice) is the New York-based author of “Spice & Ice: 60 tongue-tingling cocktails” (Chronicle Books, 2009) and Spirits Reviewer for Wine Enthusiast magazine.
This is my third time at Tales, and once again I’m loving the juxtaposition of the old & new in the cocktail world.
Old Drinks: Usually, “old” means 1870s….but a trip back to the 1970s turned out to be one of my favorite events thus far. Consider this photo of Jeff Berry & Martin Cate:
Where are the foxy ladies?
The “Fern Bars” seminar turned out to be one of the most entertaining and joyful seminars I’ve ever attended. If you missed it for something boring and serious, go beat yourself over the head with a bottle of Galliano. Here’s what you missed: Christopher Cross. Frozen blended drinks. Julie, your cruise director. Peacock feathers. I wish I could put the entire experience on rewind and play it over and over again.
New Drinks: Judging by the packed house at the Progressive Cocktails seminar, we haven’t seen the end of molecular mixology yet, not by a long shot. The money flowing through the financial houses of Singapore and the devil-may-care Aussies apparently have sparked a desire for showier,crazier, more gimmick-laden drinks than we’ve had here in the U.S. Expect presentation to be stepped up a notch in the coming year or so. For example, Australia’s Der Raum, they’re serving up The Teacher’s Tipple — a drink served within a bottle, presented within a hollowed-out library book.
Here’s a drink we tried at the Progressive Cocktails seminar:
Smokey Old Bastard
It’s an Islay Scotch smoked with a PolySci gun. Not sure if you can tell by my photo, but the smoke was trapped inside the mason jar — drinking this one was kind of like drinking a cigarette, but others at the seminar were much more successful, like the mojito-infused carbonated grapes and a molecular Michelada.
A word of caution: apparently, the future involves a LOT of work….the cocktail apprentices had been slaving away on our drinks for many hours ahead.
Posted by dietsch on July 24, 2010
Filed Under Kevin Gray | Leave a Comment
Kevin Gray (Cocktail Enthusiast) is a Dallas-based freelance writer and food and drink fanatic.
When a man tastes eight spirits each morning, and has reviewed thousands more, you tend to listen when he speaks. Plenty Tales of the Cocktail
attendees did just that at F. Paul Pacult’s Spirits Critics Workshop on Thursday morning. Paul led a group of groggy drinkers through the proper
methods for tasting liquor, from 100 proof vodka to Irish whiskey to single malt Scotch.
Posted by dietsch on July 24, 2010
Filed Under Ted Munat | Leave a Comment
Ted Munat is a Seattle-based fan of good spirits and a co-author of Left Coast Libations, available right-the-hell-now at the Tales bookstore, in the lobby of the Monteleone. He blogs at Le Mixeur.
If I were ever to move to New Orleans I would almost certainly end up writing the best novel ever written. People all over the world would drop their bags and look to the sky in awe and reverence over what had just been accomplished, sensing the seismic alteration of the universe my words had caused. Mothers would clutch their children. Construction workers would remove their protective eyewear and proudly wipe away tears. Football players would pull up short of tacking their prey and instead offer pats on the back and warm embraces. Such is the level of inspiration of New Orleans and such are the possibilities when it gets wired into my brain. The title of the book would be one of those poignant couplings of words we typically take to be contradictory, such as Joy and Sorrow, Hope and Doom, Life and Death, or Sex and the City.
[more]
Posted by dietsch on July 24, 2010
Filed Under Wendy & Dayne Miller | Leave a Comment
Wendy and Dayne Miller (LuggageTag) spend their time searching out bars, restaurants and adventure in the near and far corners of the world, chronicling many of those experiences at LuggageTag.
More More More — here’s a review of the At Full Sail high-proof spirits session.
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