Claridge's

Lukas made the best sazerac I've ever tasted, and I told him so. The bartender at the Fumoir bar at Claridge's Hotel in London, Lukas starts with a scoop of crushed ice and a shot of absinthe in a coupe glass and lets it sit. Meanwhile he mixes the rye with two bitters -- presumably Peychaud's is one of them -- and then adds a shot of cognac for good measure, stirs this in the mixing glass and strains it into the coupe after he's tossed the ice and absinthe. He cuts a large-ish section of peel from an orange and then slices off the pith, takes this supersized twist and wrings it with both hands over the drink.

Lukas is from Poland, but a native New Orleans mixologist would have nothing on him. I started with a martini made from Oxley gin, a London craft gin distilled at -5 Centigrade. It is made with botanicals such as cocoa, meadowsweet, grains of paradise and licorice.

I stumbled into the dark Fumoir bar (strictly nonfumeur these days) because the main bar at Claridge's was full. But I was alone at the 3-seat bar and had a chance to watch Lukas exercise his craft. He was meticulous and efficient, but did not let the happy hour crowd -- thankfully isolated in a lounged separate from the bar -- hurry him. The show and the excellent drinks were well worth the hefty bill.

Sangria as a craft cocktail?

Can Sangria, long reviled as a way for unsophisticated drinkers to mask cheap wine with sugar and fruit, make a comeback as a craft cocktail?

Photo by Tamorlan (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

For our recent fiesta paella, I used the red wine sangria from Claudia Roden's The Food of Spain, and I was very happy with the result. She says she got it from a bar in Seville, so that it is Andalusian.

Virtually any fruit can be used. Apples are the standby, but I used peaches from the farmer's market, plus a couple of nice little apricots we had left over from making the fruit salad. Peel, pit and dice the fruit and put it in a pitcher with 3 to 4 tablespoons of sugar, juice of 4 oranges, a strip of lemon peel, juice of 1 lemon, 1/2 cup brandy or Cognac, and 1/2 cup of rum and let the fruit macerate for an hour or so. When ready to serve, pour in a bottle of chilled Rioja wine and 2 to 3 cups of chilled club soda. Serve into glasses filled with ice.

This was surprisingly tasty and refreshing, and not too sweet. Chilling the wine and soda obviates the need for ice in the pitcher, so the sangria remains undiluted. The orange juice disappears and combines with the fruit and the lemon to give the drink a buoyant, fresh taste and feel. I used a relatively cheap Rioja, but it was not a cheap wine.

My introduction to sangria was in Las Cuevas, the little pubs trailing off the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, so it has always had positive recollections for me. But a few weeks ago, I told a friend I had made some sangrita to go with tequila and he was confused, wondering why a sophisticated drinker like myself would want to make a drink using cheap wine.

But now both The Modern Mixologist and The Craft of Cocktails include recipes for sangria, though the former has one calling for a stunning 12 ounces of Cointreau. I found Roden's recipe simpler and more authentic, and was very pleased with the result.

Italian stout, Spanish vermouth

One of the best treats I ever had was a Guinness tapped in the way only the Irish can do it at a pub in Galway served with oysters on the half shell from that rugged Atlantic coast. Oysters and stout are a match made in heaven, as the heavy, malty beer washes down the briny fresh molluscs. So it makes sense that someone is brewing an oyster stout.

From Birra del Borgo website

The Del Borgo craft brewery in Borgorose, Italy, mixes in 33 lbs of Brittany fines de claires oysters with 500 liters of must during the brewing process to give a briny edge to the dark, foamy stout. As part of its effort to expand its beer list, 2Amys has added this "Pearls to swine" stout to its drinks menu and I sampled it on our visit there this week. The stout itself was a good, solid dark brew. The head in the 12-oz serving could have been a little bigger, but the beer was fresh and there was definitely something fishy about it. I paired it with a mozzarella and sausage pizza, which may not have been the happiest combination, but it worked fine because the hearty beer was a match for the rich sausage flavor.

Surprisingly enough, 2Amys has a full bar but they focus on beer and wine as if they didn't. The effort to increase the beer offering is typical as restaurants even with a restricted license try to keep up with the craft trend in drinks.

Little Serow, which we visited recently, has only beer and wine so they add a dash of trendiness by offering vermouths. I ordered the Perucchi Gran Reserva from Spain, a spicy, clovey concoction which claims to have 40 different ingredients. While Spanish vermouths may be new for us, Perucchi has been making them since 1876, and the tradition shows in the finished, mature taste of this aperitif. It was an excellent accompaniment to the spicy starters at the Thai restaurant, and helped whet the appetite appropriately for what was to come.

It is still a novelty in this country to drink vermouth straight, but it's one of the first things I learned in Europe. My first summer there, in 1970, I met a friend in Geneva who encourage me to order a "rouge et blanc" at the sidewalk cafe right on the lake. This was a mix of red and white vermouths, served on ice with a twist of lemon, and perfectly matched the sunny day, cooled by the breeze off the lake, with the mountain peaks in the distance. So Little Serow and others without a full license are making a virtue out of necessity by offering these herb-infused wines.