Punch

Punch is making a comeback. Last fall, I went to a presentation at Paul's by Washington mixologist Dan Searing, who has written a book about punch and who fixed one for us as part of his demonstration. His objective was to sell some of the spirits from the distributor he represented, but the Ruby Punch he made using Stonewall American Rum and Graham's Six Grapes Reserve Port was delicious. I made the punch -- which also includes green tea, demarara sugar and lemon juice -- for Thanksgiving and it was a big hit with the dozen or so family members there.

So my Christmas wish list included a crystal punch bowl with cups and I made a spiced rum punch from Food and Wine. The spirits were Smith & Cross high-proof Jamaican rum, and Sailor Jerry spiced rum, along with grapefruit, orange and lemon juice, and maraschino liqueur, simple syrup, and Peychaud's. It was fun, but a little too rummy.

The third punch of the year then came on New Year's Eve, with an Anjou punch from Food and Wine that combined cognac, Belle de Brillet pear liqueur, and triple sec with a cinnamon sugar syrup, fresh lemon juice and chilled Champagne. This, too, was a big hit with the dozen drinkers at our dinner party.

Rum, in the form of arrack, lies at the origin of punch, so many of them will include rum and it is perhaps the ideal way to drink this spirit. A good punch, it seems, has a high but no overpowering spirit content, a sour aspect, and some form of dilution. The green tea used to dilute the Ruby Punch gives that mixture an extra punch, I think. The citrus dilution in the Christmas punch was less satisfying somehow. The Anjou punch relied on crushed ice for dilution, both in the punch bowl and the serving cups.

Ice is a critical factor. In the first two, I used a block of ice frozen in a tupperware container. Crushed ice in the traditional sense is virtually unobtainable. The powdery crap sold by Talbert's was useless, and the closest I could get was a relatively small cube from Paul's.

The beauty of punch is that everyone is drinking the same thing and getting the same gentle buzz at the same time. It's a communal affair and brings people together. Also, given its relative obscurity until recently, it is a nice surprise to people who think of punch as premixed fruit drinks.

I have Searing's book and another pathbreaker from David Wondrich, as well as the magazines, which are now including punch recipes -- and more cocktail recipes in general.

So watch this space. There will be more.

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.

Osocalis Rare Alambic Brandy

The explosion of craft distillers in this country is truly amazing, and the availability of a brandy as smooth and flavorful as the Osocalis Rare Alambic Brandy makes it easier to accept that the Chinese are buying up all the Cognac.

This brandy was recommended to me at Weygandt's, which makes a real effort to stock craft spirits. The distillery, near Santa Cruz, describes itself as a second-generation of American craft distillers combining Old World techniques with New World fruit. They imported the alambic still from Charentes, but the grapes are local Pinot Noir, Colombard and Semillon. In fact, they explain on their website, American distillers have an advantage over French producers because they can blend different varietals to get the flavor they want, unlike the strictly delimited appellations in France.

In any case, this brandy, one of the 1,800 bottles produced in Lot No. X, is exquisitely smooth, not sweet but graceful enough to make you think so, with hints of spice in the background. It is great in a snifter, after a meal, or anytime, really.

Mockingbird Hill

It's great to have a bar in DC specialized in sherries and cured ham, but Mockingbird Hill also betrays the flaws in a food culture that is far too precious. There's no reason why you should have to spend $40 for a total of 6 ounces of booze and snacks hardly plentiful enough to make your stomach growl.

The sherries were great. Unfortunately, MH doesn't have a website with a menu and I didn't take notes, so this is a bit vague. I started with a glass of fino en rama (meaning from the cask, I was told) that might have been two ounces. It was dry, crisp, with that indefinable "sherry" taste. I then had a flight that included a fino, an oloroso, and a dark, syrupy version described as a dessert wine. The oloroso stole the show for me and I will explore this category further. The serrano ham was good, and the sampler of American hams was excellent. A little plate of three tiny octopuses was fine. The snacks were all shared and the price above only includes my share.

The music, apparently punk rock, was obnoxious, the table uncomfortable, the service about what you'd expect. Barrio gotico it isn't, of course, but one would hope that these efforts to bring slices of European food culture to the U.S. would be to bring some of the comfort and generosity, rather than such carefully measured, overpriced dollops.

A dinner at the nearby Bistro Boheme was much more satisfying, yet even here it was an uncomfortable cross between European comfort and American chic. My braised pork with knoedel and sauerkraut was quite nice, the Pilsner Urquell on draft was great. The server must have been in training but he managed all right.

Burritt Room

Tricked out like a speakeasy, the Burritt Room was a welcome oasis after flying 6-some hours from DC and tramping through the streets of San Francisco in the hot sun. There was jazz, there were cushy seats, there were great signature cocktails -- starting with the Berlinetta, a mix of bourbon, cynar, Carpano antica, and orange bitters that makes for a relaxing and complex drink.

We stayed at Charlie Palmer's Mystic Hotel off Union Square largely because of the Burritt Room. Our second evening there, we sat at the bar and had a chance to talk with Josh Trabulsi, the head bartender and creator of the Berlinetta and other signature drinks. He was embarrassed that Serious Eats said the Berlinetta was a mix of rye and boubon ("Makes me look like an idiot"). He explained that he like Four Roses Yellow Label for the drink because it was a bit rougher and more robust than some other bourbons. We discussed how hard it is to find in stores because of its checkered past -- consumers are not ready to recognize its return to serious bourbon-making -- but he said it was doing a roaring business with California restaurants.

I tried a couple of the other cocktails -- the passably good Poquito Picante (a margarita-style drink with tequila blanco, Aperol, lime, and a house serrano tincture) and a very forgettable cocktail of the month. Trabulsi was clearly passionate about his work and still working very hard mixing drinks. It was interesting to me that he scrupulously measured every ounce and used a sip straw to test each drink, much as had my Claridge's bartender. Also interesting was the ice used in each drink -- a single large cube for the Berlinetta, a glass full of normal cubes for the Poquito Picante -- all helpfully pictured in the menu. I take it that the single large cube is for Sazerac-style drinks that might normally be served without ice, and the big cube minimizes dilution.

Byrrh

This spicey wine-based aperitif is fine by itself, over ice, and a nice alternative to higher-proof drinks before a meal. But this formerly obscure French concoction is also enjoying a resurgence in craft cocktails.

Somehow an original cocktail from a site called Kindred Cocktails looked more convincing to me than some of the standard recipes for a Byrrh cocktail. This one, called Byrrhlesque, and attributed to Ron Rovner in Portland, Maine, calls for 1-1/2 ounces bourbon (I used Woodford Reserve), 3/4-ounce Carpano Antica vermouth, 3/4-ounce Byrrh, 1 barspoon Luxardo maraschino, and 2 dashes orange bitters, mixed in a shaker over ice, and strained into a glass with ice.

The drink was smooth, balanced, complex with notes of spice from all three liquors -- a real treat! It seemed to address some of the issues with classic Byrrh cocktails, which tend to use dry vermouth, with complaints of the whiskey overpowering the subtlety of the Byrrh (though clearly the choice of bourbon or rye will make a difference).

A real keeper!

Aperol ascendant

After drinking Aperol spritzes everywhere during our trip to Italy, I came home to Saveur magazine offering me another Aperol cocktail from Hawaii. This drink comes from Monkeypod Kitchen in Ko Olina, outside Honolulu, and is called the Ho'opono Potion.

It looked to me like a variation on a Margarita but it actually tastes quite different. It starts with muddling three cucumber slices with 1 ounce of lime juice. Add 1-1/2 ounces silver tequila, 3/4 ounce sugar syrup and 1/2 ounce Aperol. Shake with ice, strain into old-fashioned glass filled with ice (they say single large ice cube), and garnish with a cucumber slice.

It is surprisingly tart, as the sugar syrup just balances the lime juice. The Aperol enhances the tequila, but the agave flavor comes through loud and strong. The muddled cucumber may add a vegetable undertone but there's no pronounced cucumber taste. I liked it better than I though I would and found it very refreshing.

Craft beer, cask ales

American craft beer makers have surpassed their English role models and are making the tastiest ale-style brews. I had a chance to compare during my recent trip to London, stopping in pubs in Mayfair and Borough Market to sample the cask ales. When friends took me to the World of Music, Arts, and Dance (WOMAD) festival in the Cotswolds, we ended up in a large tent with two dozen big metal casks lined up on bales of hay with numerous ales containing the words "sun" and "golden" in them.

The cask ales are good. They are fresh and flavorful. But they have a slightly sour taste from the fermentation process and the minimal carbonation makes them seem thin. And while historically it made sense to serve them at room or cellar temperature, there's really no need in the age of refrigeration to serve them at anything but the optimal temperature. American bars may err on the side serving beer too cold, but you mind that less on a hot, summer day than a beer that tastes warm and flat.

I had a delicious local craft beer on our recent visit to Pizzeria Orso -- Face Plant from the Lost Rhino Brewery in Ashburn, Va. It had a fresh grain flavor bursting with effervescent energy, a dark gold color in the frosted glass and was refreshingly chilled. I'd order it any day over the cask ales.

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.

200+ Margaritas

Maria's New Mexican Kitchen in Santa Fe offers a fabulous menu of more than 200 Margaritas, using their large collection of 100% agave tequilas with other slight variations on the basic recipe. Some have triple sec, some Cointreau, some Grand Marnier, some a combination. Most have the lime, lemon, and sugar mixer but some have other citrus fruits.

The heart of the list, though, is the wide selection of tequilas -- blanco, reposado, anejo. The Margaritas start at $6.50 with the house special and go up to $42 for the 24-karat Gold Reserve, made with very special hand-crafted Jose Cuervo, special Grand Marnier, etc. The drinks arrive well-shaken, ice cold and served in pear-shaped Margarita glasses.

Someone had a good time making up the names and writing the descriptions. Here are the ones we tried:

The Merry Margarita - Featured in the 2008 Christmas edition of The New Mexico Magazine, it is made with Corazon 100% agave Silver tequila, Cointreau and Blood Orange Juice served in a glass rimmed with green sugar (though in requesting no salt we lost out on the sugar).

The Grand Old Soul -- Alma 100% anejo tequila and Grand Marnier. A great addition to our list!

The Elizabeth-Two -- El Tesoro 100% agave plata tequila, a 1/2-shot of Cointreau and a 1/2-shot of Grand Marnier.

Moon Over Santa Fe -- Dos Lunas 100% agave silver tequila with Cointreau - Romance on the Rocks!

I'm not sure there is a greater selection of Margaritas anywhere, and in any case this has become one of the obligatory stops in our visits to Santa Fe. The food, btw, is supposed to be good, but the green chile meatballs we ordered as an alibi to sit at a table were fairly bland.