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.