“Is it always this busy on a Tuesday?” unsuspecting customers asked upon entering Green Street last night. Yes, if that Tuesday happens to fall on the date of a historic U.S. presidential inauguration. And if drinkboston, BeerAdvocate and the Second Glass band together to invite everyone in the city to celebrate at this nicely stocked bar. And if presidential cocktails, inaugural craft beers, a champagne “tower of freedom” and $4 tacos are on the menu.
The crowd drank early and often, so that, by 7:30 p.m., the Ale to the Chief and Inauguration Ale (aka “Obamagang”), the Whiskey Punch (recipe below) and the Gruet Brut tower (built from specs by Martha Stewart!) were drained dry. But there was lots more good beer, sparkling wine and cocktails to be had, and bartenders Andy McNees and Emily Stanley served them up as fast as they could. Everyone seemed to be in a good mood. I know I was.
Whiskey Daisy (New School, 1910s)
From Imbibe! by David Wondrich
2 oz whiskey
Juice 1/2 lime and 1/4 lemon
1 teaspoonful superfine sugar
2 dashes (1 tsp) grenadine
2 dashes (1/2 oz) carbonated water
Last night, this recipe was batched up to make a large bowl of punch cooled by a sizable chunk of ice. The proper Daisy preparation, however, is as follows: “Use silver mug, put in above ingredients, fill up with fine ice, stir until mug is frosted, decorate with fruit and sprays of fresh mint and serve with straws.”
A wonderful thing happened recently. I got whiskey in the mail. Rye whiskey. This never happens. Sure, I’ve received gin in the mail, and cachaca, and tequila. All were welcome. But whiskey — and this is a relatively high-end whiskey — people don’t just give that stuff out. But here I was, opening a sleek white box containing a bottle of … um … well, the label appeared to be some sort of mathematical equation or unpronounceable glyph, like the thing Prince changed his name to.
I had to read the promotional materials that accompanied the bottle to figure out that this whiskey, produced by Beam Global Spirits & Wine, Inc., is pronounced “rye one.” The label and the contemporary design of the bottle could not have broadcast more clearly that this is not your grandfather’s whiskey. There’s no “old” in the name, no 1800s font.
“[Rye one] is a cutting-edge spirit for today’s top tastemakers and cocktail drinkers who are looking to expand their ultra-premium spirits repertoire,” Brand Manager Mara Melamed is quoted in the press release.
Playing the part of “top tastemaker,” I sampled the Rye One neat alongside a few ryes I bought myself: the bargain brands Old Overholt and Jim Beam, the premium Sazerac 6-Yr, and the increasingly rare Michter’s 10-Yr. In terms of complexity, depth and the spicy kick you look for in a rye, the Rye One came out ahead of Old Overholt and Jim Beam, stood about equal with (but was a bit hotter than) Sazerac 6-Yr, and was clearly not on the same plane as Michter’s 10-Yr. Later, Scott joined me in comparing Rye One to Old Overholt and Sazerac in a 3:1 Manhattan with a dash of Angostura bitters. Scott preferred the Sazerac. I was on the fence between the Rye One and the Sazerac.
Conclusions? I thought Rye One was pretty comparable in quality to Sazerac 6-Yr. But here lies the rub: Rye One is $46-$48 a bottle. Sazerac is $25-$30. What’s the deal with the high price of Rye One? I’m guessing that in packaging this rye to appeal to the Nightclub Set, Beam Global is simply borrowing a page from the vodka-marketing playbook: put your booze in a sexy bottle and charge conspicuously more for it than any of your competitors. This ploy has made premium vodka wildly profitable. It will be interesting to see if it works for whiskey.
At 11:00 p.m. last night at the Independent, it was like the Red Sox finally winning the World Series, only with more crying.
Holy crap, we just witnessed a turning point in American history. That happens, like, once or twice in a lifetime. And despite an assembly line of Ward Eights at the beginning of the evening, and shots of rye passed around after Obama gave his acceptance speech (man, is that guy steady), my memories of Election Night ’08 are clearly branded on my brain. Here are some photos from the drinkboston-Indo party celebrating the end — the new beginning, actually — of a two-year political saga.
CNN’s Dana Bash calls Ohio for Obama.
Partygoer Zack Hickman won a $25 Indo gift certificate for Best Election Night Getup.
The crowd is stirred as the winner is announced. That tall guy in the back looks familiar.
Barack Obama is announced President-Elect. Much cheering, toasting, hugging, crying. The DJ plays “Don’t Stop Believin’,” and people laugh and sing along.
There’s a big debate happening tonight. People all over Boston are asking themselves, ‘Do I go to the grand opening of Drink, or wait a few days/weeks until the hoopla dies down?’
Oh, there’s the vice-presidential debate, too. Which leads to yet another debate: ‘Do I stay home and watch what might be the most memorable 90 minutes of the 2008 presidential race, or go out and avoid a potentially cringe-worthy evening in front of the TV?’
These are tough choices.
If you decide to go out and watch the debate, there is a debate-watching party tonight at the Hong Kong in Harvard Square. It is sponsored by the group Drinking Liberally, whose motto is “promoting democracy one pint at a time.”
While you’re wrestling with the weighty matters of the presidential campaign, the financial crisis and whether it’s too soon to check out Boston’s newest bar, take a few minutes and have a laugh at this, um, instructional video (Jeffrey Morgenthaler posted this on his blog well over a year ago, but I saw it just yesterday). The bartender in it claims that she is making a Mint Julep. Her perkiness, confidence and utter lack of a clue are positively Palinesque.
Jacqueline Church, a freelance food writer who pens the Leather District Gourmet blog, recently attended one of Slow Food Nation‘s first Slow Spirits workshops. Jacqueline explains, “The essence of the Slow Food movement is to re-connect us with our food producers. The ‘Slowies’ want us to savor regional, sustainable food, to build fair food systems, and to talk, eat, drink and share — over food and wine. But what about cocktails?”
I attended the Slow Food Nation Come to the Table event over Labor Day weekend in San Francisco. I enjoyed some sips and learned quite a bit.
1. You can spot a “meeting” anywhere. You know what kind of “meeting” I mean.
All the “respecting anonymity” stuff aside, I could spot these guys a mile away. Several cheery hellos! and then, finally, a guy said to me, “Are you one of Us?”
Then I knew I was right. It was an AA meeting. After successfully dodging conscription, I made it to my meeting. How ironic that the Slow Spirits workshop was scheduled in the same building, at the same time, as an AA meeting. Of all the gin joints…
2. Spirits just graduated from the Slow Food kiddie table.
Slow Food Nation needed persuading that spirits should be allowed to Come to the Table, literally. Imagine, they had to defend their right to be there. (More about rights in a moment.) As much as wine (which Slow Food invited to the table from the beginning), spirits are a product with direct consequences for the environment, the workers that produce it, and the people that consume it.
Allen Katz, board chair of Slow Food USA, and Gregory Lindgren, owner of Rye Bar in San Francisco, note that leading bars began furthering the art of the cocktail by using fresh, seasonal fruit. If that doesn’t exactly make them Slow Food Royalty, it does elevate the cocktail from an Archie Bunker brew to a quality culinary experience. Our Prairie Mary, for example, was made with organic, local Early Girl tomato juice, ancho chilies, rosemary and Prairie Organic Vodka (distilled in Minnesota with local, organic grain).
3. The Godfather of the American Cocktail was Jeremiah P. Thomas.
“The Alice Waters of his time,” according to Katz. He was, by all accounts, quite the entertaining and industrious barman. He wrote one of the first bartenders’ guides, called The Bon-Vivant’s Companion (1862), and invented cocktails (and claimed to have invented even more). He is credited with elevating the bartending occupation to where it has recently returned.
4. There is something called a “Universal Right of Pleasure.”
Maybe that was covered in the poli-sci class I never took. A universal right? Really?
That was actually part of the workshop title: Slow Spirits — Food, Justice and the Universal Right of Pleasure. The “Food, Justice” part was more palatable for me than the so-called “Universal Right” part. It’s a nice idea, but I’d hate to look a starving child in the face and tell him about my universal right to have a cocktail. Then again, if I had to look a starving child in the face, I’d need a cocktail. Probably several. Mother Theresa, I’m not.
5. Demonstrating the validity of slow spirits’ right to be, we learned about parallel aspects of food and spirits’ production.
Just as some farmers are farming organically without paying for the certification process to acquire the official label, so it is with liquor producers. Safe to say many workshop participants were surprised to learn that the second of our tasting samples was Maker’s Mark — not a brand that touts its green cred by selling its story with a green spin.
Maker’s Mark uses locally grown grains (corn, wheat, barley). Their distillery sits on a state-certified nature preserve, and they return water to their spring cleaner than when it was extracted. They re-use or recycle the spent grain (keeping local pigs and cows happy) and harness the energy of anaerobic digestion to power their stills. Kudos to Maker’s Mark for not bludgeoning us with how green they are. But they are!
This was a well-rounded evening. Like any good night at the watering hole, I walked away happier and with insights I didn’t have before the evening began.
Jacqueline provides more details on the spirits featured in the workshop here.
"Lauren Clark takes readers on a supremely sudsy tour of New England ales, lagers, pilsners, and porters. This is the New England the Puritans warned everybody about, but few have chronicled."
– Wayne Curtis, And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in 10 Cocktails
