Fernet Branca

Photo by Fernet Branca

Though I was a bit critical of the book Replay by Marc Levy in my forthcoming review in Washington Independent Review of Books, I did learn about a new drink that pays a pivotal role in the plot -- Fernet Branca and coke.

I've been meaning to get some Fernet Branca anyway, but wasn't sure what I would do with it. Mixing it with coke, it turns out, is something like the national drink of Argentina and it is the Argentina connection that figures in Levy's plot.

Web sites describe Fernet Branca as an acquired taste, and I have to admit drinking it straight is a hard swallow. However, it does mix astonishingly well with coke at about 2 to 1. Could be a good drink for the upcoming Argentina vs. Germany in the World Cup final.

Craft cocktails

The objective of the craft cocktail movement is to tinker with ingredients and create blends that yield a new flavor, a taste all its own where you cannot easily discern the components. With all its pretentiousness and preciousness, there is nonetheless a charming whimsy -- and some really great drinks.

I received Craft Cocktails by Brian Van Flandern as a gift. This is a book in its design and content that is overflowing with whimsy. A spiral notebook with recipes handwritten chalkboard style facing fabulous styled photos, it is over the top in every way, and promises to be a lot of fun.

The key, of course, is not to take it too seriously. Van Flandern started his career as bartender at Per Se and his recipes can work well for a bar (infuse 1 liter of vodka with 2 teaspoons of culinary lavender, etc.) and less well for the home mixologist. Also, he calls for very specific spirits, but presumably you will still have something potable if you substitute.

This is what I did for the first drink I tried, the B.A.F. I didn't have the Macallan fine oak 10-year Speyside single malt Scotch he called for, so I took the Speyside single malt I had in my cabinet, a simple Glenrothes. The sherry I had on hand was an oloroso "dulce" instead of a dry oloroso, so the drink may have been a little sweeter than intended. The Aperol and Gran Classico are by now part of my drinks pantry. This is a stir and strain, garnished only with the spray from the twist of a lemon peel. It was refreshing and tasty -- a new flavor with all the complexity of its components but balanced and harmonious. A good start!

For Andrea I fixed a nice cocktail I had tried myself earlier in the week -- a Basil-ica I got from a website with drinks using St. Germain elderflower liqueur. In this one, you muddle basil leaves with lemon juice and simple syrup, add a healthy portion of Plymouth gin, the St. Germain's, and dashes of Regans Orange and Peychaud's bitters. Shake and double strain into a chilled cocktail glass, garnish with an orange twist and basil leaves. She loves it. It goes down like lemonade but of course has a satisfying punch.

These are labor intensive, though I find a good mise en place, as in cooking, makes the whole process much more pleasurable.

My Particularly Bitter Pal

Photo by Hum

Fortunately the new Macon restaurant in Chevy Chase DC is better at conceiving and mixing drinks than naming them. This one is a variation on the Old Pal cocktail that usually has whiskey (I've seen rye or Canadian specified), Campari and dry vermouth.

For this version, the Macon bartenders mix equal amounts of rye (Old Overholt), Hum (a new hibiscus-based bitter), and Carpano Antica Formula vermouth. They shake it rather than stir, mixing the bitter through it and giving it a nice pink color, and pour it into an Old-Fashioned glass filled with ice. It is a nicely balanced drink, with a good herby bitter flavor and just the right touch of sweet. You don't taste the whiskey at all, but it's lurking in the depths, giving the drink a nice body and punch.

Hum is described on its web site as a "botanical spirit" and "inspired by the Caribbean." Technically a liqueur, it is 70 proof and serviceable as a base spirit. It is a pot-stilled rum infused with hibiscus, ginger, cardamom and kaffir lime. The web site tells me it's available at Paul's, so I will look for it the next time I'm there.

Other drinks we sampled over a couple of visits to Macon were something called Water Lillet, which had gin, white Lillet and lemon served straight up -- again a good balance though a bit "girly." I tried a moonshine cocktail (called something like Another Silver Drink, or some such very forgettable name). It had lemon, demerara (apparently a type of sugar), and something else I'll have to check, so basically a sour. It was fresh and original.

Some of the "signature" drinks in this new craft cocktail boom are half-baked efforts to juggle traditional recipes or find unusual ingredients. These by contrast are nicely balanced, finished efforts that do offer a fresh flavor. Macon apparently used a cocktail consultant and hired some good bartenders. That along with great food will keep this place mobbed.

Mer Soleil Silver Chardonnay 2012

Photo by Mer Soleil

This unoaked Chardonnay from the Santa Lucia Highlands in California comes in a distinctive ceramic bottle which "reflects the small cement wine tanks" used in making this Chablis-like wine. It has a sharp, dry mineral taste with just the right amount of fruit. It is crisp and smooth, perfect with fish and quite nice just for drinking.

It is from the Wagner family, who are behind Caymus, Conundrum and other well-known wines. This wine retails at $24 and was on sale during a tasting at Magruders for just $16, a true steal.

The highlands are described as a cool grape growing region so that the result is a "pure wine with all the vitality and mineral character of the earth." It does in fact have a feeling of terroir missing from the oaky Chardonnays that just taste of wood and have a buttery mouthfeel. I don't often buy wines in this price range, but this is one that might be worth it.

Red by Joseph Puig

Photo by 2941

Again referring to my recent dinner at 2941 in Falls Church, I wanted to put in a good word about one of the most engaging sommeliers I've encountered in the Washington area, Jonathan Schuyler.

He took the time to discuss our wine choice at length. After I asked him for a less expensive wine than his initial recommendation of a Priorat grenache to accompany our duck, lamb, pasta and halibut entrees, he immediately went to this wine and explained exactly why. Puig had been one of the master winemakers in Priorat and upon retirement started to have some fun with own wines, using grapes just outside the delimitation of Priorat. This wine was half the price of the Priorat and a steal for the quality it offered.

In general, the wine list a 2941 offered a great mix of price and regions. That, combined with un-pushy and un-condescending (you see I don't have a great opinion of sommeliers) assistance from a real expert passionate about his cellar, adds immensely to the overall dining experience and could tip the scale in making that long trek out to Falls Church again.

Government Mule

This drink ordered by a friend when we recently visited the 2941 restaurant in Falls Church instantly became a favorite of mine, even though I just got a taste. It was a well-balanced, remarkably refreshing drink that tasted great even on a cool spring day and would be awesome in the hot summer.

The restaurant's version listed dark rum to go with the lime, syrup and ginger beer, making it a kind of dark and stormy. Classic recipes usually use vodka (Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore apparently uses this version in a drink everyone raves about). The 2941 restaurant listed "Sri Lanka ghomme syrup" as the sweetener, though since the menu in general was ridden with proofreading errors, I presume they mean "gomme syrup" and God knows where they find a Sri Lanka version.

Gum syrup, to give it its English name, is sugar syrup with acacia gum added. Obviously, you could substitute sugar syrup but enough Web commenters praised the added effect of the gum as a binder and balancer in the drink that I ordered a bottle from Amazon (close as I could get to Sri Lanka).

Besides the ingredients, what made this drink so refreshing was being served in a metal mug filled with ice that kept the drink frosty. I had a very nice Vieux Carre that showed every sign of having been properly stirred instead of shaken. The problem with the large drinks served straight up is that they don't stay cold. There is apparently a bar in New York that solves the problem of super-sized drinks by serving half the drink in a chilled cocktail glass and the other half in a small beaker resting in ice. This way you can serve what is essentially a double -- for the much higher price -- without any extra work by the bartender while keeping the customer totally happy.

Once I get my gomme syrup I see a long, challenging period of getting the proportions just right.

Highball

My mother's highball was a bourbon, Jim Beam or something cheaper, and 7-Up or Coke. My best memory of it is when we drove the Santa Fe Trail together on one of my trips back home, going the full length from Independence, Mo. to Santa Fe. We'd check into the motel each evening and repair to the swimming pool with the bourbon, the mixer and ice.

Turns out, however, that the original highball is whiskey and ginger ale -- and that's a heckuva a good drink. I used Crown Royal and Fever Tree ginger ale and it made a refreshing, balanced drink, not too sweet and very smooth. Even in this day of craft spirits and homemade mixers, sometimes that's all you need.

Zombie

A Hurricane would have been the drink of choice for Mardi Gras, but the local market didn't have passion fruit juice, so I got some pineapple juice and went for a rum alternative -- a Zombie.

It was appropriate enough because I've been binge-watching The Walking Dead, the cult-hit zombie series on AMC. It was predictable that my brother would like it -- hero a sheriff, lots of gun play -- but when our mild-mannered, Chevy Chase bridge partners also confessed their addiction, I knew I had to give it a chance. So I've been bitten.

Rum was the order of the day because I've been reading Wayne Curtis's And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails. The book itself was a suggestion from a nice culinary travel article that appeared recently in the New York Times, "On a Caribbean Rum Trail" by Baz Deisinger. He is identified as a journalist and associate professor of English at John Jay Criminal College, go figure. Wayne Curtis is a contributing editor at The Atlantic who writes a regular column on the cocktail culture. What am I doing wrong?

The Curtis book is a well-written, entertaining account of rum, from its origins, presumably in Barbados, through now. He has a short list of premium rums at the end and, the point of this post, recipes for several rum cocktails.

The Hurricane is relatively simple, but requires passion fruit juice. The Zombie is the most complicated drink I've ever made, but, once I had the pineapple juice, I had all the ingredients. Curtis's version, which he credits to Don the Beachcomber, uses apricot liqueur instead of passion fruit syrup. He calls for 1 ounce white rum (Flor de Cana), 2 ounces amber rum (Mt. Gay), 1 ounce dark rum (Myers), 1 teaspoon simple syrup, 3/4 ounce lime juice, 3/4 ounce pineapple juice, 2 teaspoons apricot liqueur (Orchard), dash of Pernod, dash of angostura bitters. This all gets shaken and strained over ice, garnished, he says, with fruit, mint leaves and a dusting of powdered sugar.

I didn't fool with the garnish but managed to keep all the ingredients straight for the drink. It was of course very tasty, much like a Planter's Punch a bartender mixed for me on my first trip to New Orleans decades ago. I still think of rum as a summer drink, but it was nice enough on a cold winter night.

Harold Black

After our serendipitous dinner at Ambar recently, our friends decided we had to cap the evening with a visit to the "speakeasy" across the street from Eastern Market. And truly, neither the outside door nor the door to bar itself ("knock for service" was all it said) gave any indication there was a bar.

Good thing, because it was hard enough to get into. The relatively small space was just the right combination of chic and cozy. Sitting at the small square bar with a view into the lounge was the perfect perch to enjoy the energy in the place. My cocktail of barrel-aged gin and bitters was a complex and satisfying drink, though perhaps too medicinal for some. The Finch Brewery Fascist Pig beer they served in a can was outstanding.

The bar is attached, at least by the staircase and interior entry, to the restaurant Acqua al 2, which our friends say is an excellent Italian. We were able to conjure an entry into the speakeasy because our friend, having ascertained that Ralph, the manager, was present, used his name freely. However, it is possible to reserve a table through cityeats.