Nope, it's not a classical piece composed by the Italian equivalent of Johann Sebastian Bach featuring the Italian counterpart of Johann Gottlieb Goldberg. (Insert Woody Allen joke: "I-I don't know anything about classical music ... for years I thought The Goldberg Variations were something Mr. and Mrs. Goldberg tried on their wedding night."  ba-da-BUMP!)

It is, in fact, a few great ideas by bartenders both local and afar on how to take that classic combination featured in the Negroni -- equal parts gin, sweet vermouth and Campari -- and tweak them to take the drink into other dimensions. The basic Negroni formula lends itself quite nicely to variation of spirits and even in the bitter element, despite Campari seeming quintessential to the drink. I’ve sampled many lovely versions that take the gin-Campari-vermouth formula to something more like spirit-bitter-aromatized wine. Enthusiasts, here are some things to ask your bartender to try next time you go out.

Lots of people find the standard Negroni too sweet, and will bump up the gin to 1.5 or even 2 ounces. I'm a fan of the slap across the palate that's called the Cinnabar Negroni, invented at the late, lamented Glendale restaurant for which it's named.  Keep the vermouth and gin at 1 part but bump up the Campari to 2 parts, and add a couple dashes of orange bitters.  We've been fans of this one for years, and it's perfect for Campari lovers.

Jason Schiffer at 320 Main in Seal Beach, CA uses the relatively new Gran Classico Bitter in one of my favorite recent twists on the Negroni, swapping the gin for its malty progenitor, Dutch genever, and bringing down the other two components. If you still haven't tried Gran Classico, do -- it's based on a recipe from Turin from the 1860s and contains bitter orange, gentian, rhubarb and wormwood among its botanicals. It’s got quite a bitter punch, not unlike Campari but with a less bright, rounder, deeper flavor. It’s being directly marketed as a Campari substitute, even recommending its use in cocktails like the Negroni, Americano or spritzer. In this drink the maltiness of genever with the citrus oils accenting the citrus notes in the bitter work beautifully here; this one didn’t last long the last time we visited 320. They’ve just changed their menu and this cocktail isn’t on it anymore, but they’d still be happy to make you one. If you’re in Southern California, and especially if you’re in Orange County, you need to drink here — it’s the best place to get a drink for many miles. The food’s terrific, too. Duck mac ‘n cheese? Oh my.

NEGRONI’S LOSS
(320 Main, Seal Beach, CA)

1 ounce Bols Genever.
3/4 ounce Carpano Antica sweet vermouth.
3/4 ounce Gran Classico bitter.
Lemon and orange peel & oils.

Combine with ice and stir for at least 30 seconds. Strain into an Old Fashioned glass. Express the oil from the lemon and orange peels onto the surface of the drink, and garnish with the peels.

None of this is particularly rocket science, as I’m sure you’ve caught on to. Substitutions of spirits, bitter and aromatized wine that basically hew to the basic Negroni formula are often quite tasty, and great springboards for experimentation.

Last time I was at the venerable Vessel* in Seattle, bartender Jim Romdall made me a lovely, spicy, bracing Negroni variation using a very different style of gin, the aforementioned Gran Classico Bitter, and a different vermouth to kick up the spice and bitterness profile a notch.

Ransom Old Tom Gin comes from Ransom Spirits in Oregon, and is their recreation of one possible expression of the 18th and 19th Century style of gin known as “Old Tom.” It’s lightly sweetened, sweeter than a London dry style, where the juniper is not so forward as in the latter. I’m not sure of the botanicals that go into Ransom, but they provide a nice, peppery spice profile, and the color comes from an amount of barrel-aging roughly equivalent to what the gin might have picked up while being shipped over from the Old Country in barrels. They developed the spirit in collaboration with writer, historian and monarch of the Hereditary Principate of Drunkistan, David Wondrich. If you’re looking to recreate a spirit from the mid-1800s, he’s probably your man. Or prince. Or … well, you get the idea.

Ransom works wonderfully in a Negroni, and Jim kicked it up with the new bitter on the block as well as my second-favorite vermouth after Carpano Antica, most coincidentally made by the same folks.

Feel free to vary the proportions to adjust to your preferred level of sweetness; this is just a guideline.

I don’t remember what Jim called it, but for the moment this will do:

RANSOM NEGRONI
(as served by Jim Romdall at Vessel, Seattle)

1-1/4 ounce Ransom Old Tom Gin.
1 ounce Gran Classico Bitter.
1 ounce Punt E Mes.
Orange peel.

Stir with ice for 30 seconds, strain into a chilled coupe, garnish with the orange peel. You know the drill.

[* – Vessel is currently closed, having lost their lease at the old location. They’re working hard to reopen in a new space (which I think will have parking, yay!) by late spring or early summer 2011. That’s a grand reopening party I don’t want to miss.]

This is a drink that I think should get a lot more attention than it does, 'cause it's damned good.  It isn't a Negroni variation per se, as it developed quite independently from that drink, but fits in with them quite nicely.

THE BOULEVARDIER COCKTAIL

1-1/2 ounces Bourbon whiskey
1 ounce Campari
1 ounce sweet vermouth.

Stir and strain. Garnish with orange slice, lemon twist or cherry at your discretion.

Ask for it by name!

This next one is the one that's been killing me lately, and I mean in the best possible way. As with so many of us, I just can't get enough Smith & Cross rum. This "traditional Jamaican" navy-strength rum (coming in at 100 English proof, i.e. 57% alcohol by volume) is so packed with flavor and funk and "hogo" that a bottle doesn't last long on our shelf. I like it so much I briefly considered pouring a bottle into my humidifier so that I could breathe it. Eric Seed of Haus Alpenz, whoi imports this stuff, should be canonized for bringing this to us alone, not to mention all the other wonderful things he provides -- Batavia arrack, Crème de Violette, allspice dram, Old Tom gin, Cocchi Americano ...

I had forgotten what this drink, first sight of which came from bartender Joaquin Simo at Death & Co. in New York was actually called and started calling it the "Funky Negroni" -- fortunately Sporting Life member Garret Richard (currently drinking his way through New York) reminded me it's really called ...

THE KINGSTON NEGRONI
(adapted from Joaquin Simo, Death & Co., NYC)

1 ounce Smith & Cross Jamaican rum
1 ounce Campari
3/4 ounce sweet vermouth (Carpano)

Stir & strain, no garnish.

Don't ask for that one by name, because nobody will know what the hell you're talking about.

Finally, here's one that came about one night when Chris Day and I were talking about cocktails in Google Chat. Our Boulevardier and Funky Negroni got together and had a demon spawn, which is actually amazingly good.  I wondered if the strength of this whiskey would overwhelm the Campari, but when I tried it with equal proportions I didn't like it as much. The Campari is still there in the standard Boulevardier proportion, but it's less assertive.  That said, Wes and I both preferred the version below; the balance is really nice.  Your mileage may vary; try it 1:1:1 if you like, and see if you like it. Justin Burrow in Houston said, "That drink should be called the "Naptime.'" That gave me the idea to call it this:

BOULEVARD DES RÊVES

1-1/2 ounces George T. Stagg Bourbon
1 ounce Carpano Antica
1 ounce Campari
1/4 ounce Smith & Cross rum

Combine the first 3 ingredients with ice, stir and strain into a chilled coupe. Float Smith and Cross onto the surface of the drink. Lemon twist.

Make sure someone else is driving you if you have this one.

Finally, if you're anywhere near Bar 1886 in Pasadena, especially on a Sunday, ask Brady to make you one of the beer-topped Negroni's he's been working on with Marcos.  A premixed Negroni is chilled, undiluted, then poured into a highball glass and topped with a Hefeweizen.  Crazy good.

So, things to try, folks!

I came across this cocktail video today (thanks to Garret Richard for sending it!) which sets a new standard for instructional cocktail videos. Beautifully directed, entirely visual -- no dialogue -- with gorgeous graphics and music, this video starts off with a fascinating look at a bartender's custom ice preparation before shift, and moving on to making an American Trilogy cocktail.

Dutch Kills Ice/Trilogy from Shlomo M. Godder on Vimeo.

AMERICAN TRILOGY
(adapted from Michael McIlroy, Milk & Honey, NYC, 2007)

1 ounce rye whiskey (we like Rittenhouse bonded rye).
1 ounce Laird’s Bonded Apple Brandy.
1 barspoon rich Demerara syrup.
2 dashes orange bitters.
Orange peel.

Combine with ice and stir for 20-30 seconds, strain a large ice cube into a large Old Fashioned glass. Express the oil from the orange peel onto the drink and around the rim of the glass, and garnish with the peel.

A couple of things have prompted this post, beginning with our trip to Seattle a couple of months ago. We’re very lucky to have great friends up there, several of whom are bartenders, so when in Seattle we drink really well. This trip was no exception, as our livers were given a vigorous workout and we FINALLY got to sit across the bar from Murray Stenson — a terrific guy, and a bartender’s bartender.

One of the places we hadn’t been to yet was Tavern Law, and as I’d heard and read so much about it I wanted to make it up at the top of the list along with Zig Zag. They have a spectacular cocktail menu and seriously talented bartenders, one of whom, Cale Green, took care of us that night. My memory-jogging notes from that evening are sadly somewhat liquor-sodden, so I don’t have names or proportions, but that evening Cale made us cocktails consisting of:

1) Rye whiskey, Amaro Montenegro, Punt E Mes, Angostura bitters
2) Bourbon whiskey, Amaro Ramazzotti, dry vermouth, Peychaud’s bitters
3) Laird’s bonded apple brandy, Swedish punsch, sweet vermouth, lime juice

These are EXACTLY the kinds of drinks I love, and Cale’s the kind of bartender who, after chatting with you for a bit about what you like, can come up with amazing drinks.

We had been hoping to get to the speakeasy-style bar above Tavern Law, a place called Needle and Thread, a hidden room which one enters by passing through a bank vault (gotta love existing architectural details in your building!). Cale also works up there, but alas, they were closed that evening. No worries, though — we’ll hit them next time, and that evening we had a wonderful time, had world-class drinks and made a new friend.

The other bit prompting this post was GQ magazine’s publication of its list of the The 25 Best Cocktail Bars in America (as they see it). Number One on that list is, unsurprisingly, The Zig Zag Café, where Murray works alongside Ben and Erik and Kacey the whole gang there who make it such a wonderful place.

I was happy to see some of our local L.A. bars (Tiki-Ti and Cole’s Red Car Bar, plus a mention of The Varnish), one of our New Orleans watering holes (Arnaud’s French 75 Bar, although I’d have thrown Cure and Bar UnCommon into that list, at least whenever Chris McMillian is behind the stick at the latter) plus one I frequent in Houston whenever I’m there visiting family (the wonderful Anvil) included in the list as well.

And right there at Number 25 was not Tavern Law (although I think it deserves high mention in such a list) but Needle and Thread upstairs. GQ said:

“I spend all day on a tractor. Make me a drink that reminds me of the farm. You know, of dirt and diesel.” This is how an organic farmer from Portland ordered his drink here, because that is how they encourage drinks to be ordered. Get poetic about it; you’ll wind up with something like the Dirt ‘n Diesel.

I found out from Cale later on that the aforementioned bartender was himself, and the Dirt ‘n Diesel was his creation. It’s a cousin to the Corn ‘n Oil, with inky black Black Strap rum as its molasses-heavy base, with additional bitterness from the Cynar and plenty of dirt from Fernet. This is a terrific drink, and makes up for the fact that we never get out to the farm. Stop in at either of the two aforementioned bars where Cale works, and see what he’ll come up with for you.

DIRT AND DIESEL
(by Cale Green, Tavern Law and Needle & Thread, Seattle)

2 ounces Cruzan Black Strap Rum
1/2 ounce Fernet-Branca
1/2 ounce Demerara sugar syrup
1/4 ounce Cynar
1/4 ounce lime juice

Combine ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker and shake for 10-12 seconds. Strain over ice into a rocks glass. Garnish with a lime wedge.

Our local bartenders keep popping up in the local media more and more, and this is a very good thing.

The "Cocktail Confidential" column of the Los Angeles Times Magazine features Matt Biancaniello of The Library Bar at the Roosevelt this week, offering a new cocktail he's prepared for an upcoming event at the Henry Fonda Theatre.  I love three-ingredient cocktails, and can't wait to try this one out.  I might just have to break down and get an espresso maker at home.

          UN CAFÉ VA BENE
          by Matthew Biancaniello

          2 ounces Cynar
          3/4 ounce crème de cassis
          1 ounce espresso

          Combine all ingredients, shake vigorously for 20 seconds and strain into a glass without ice.

Follow the link for more details and a pretty photo.

Last weekend the LA Times also featured a good list of where to drink in town -- as if we didn't already know, but it included a couple of new places and a few others I haven't tried yet.  Follow that link and pass it on!

There's a lot of crappy tonic water out there.

Look at the label of any major commercial brand and you'll see high-fructose corn syrup -- not something the officers of the British Army were drinking in India when tonic water was first concocted as a malaria preventative (liberally spiked with gin and lime to make it more palatable).  The nadir of supermarket tonic water comes out of the bottle labelled "Diet Tonic Water," with no sugar and with artificial sweeteners.  Unbeknownst to me that was used to make my gin and tonic at a party once, and it took a Herculean effort to keep myself from spitting it out.  (The remainder went into a potted plant. Such a waste of good gin.)

Fortunately we have some really nice small-label brands that are more interested in quality than in cheap ingredients -- Fever Tree, Q Tonic and Stirrings all make fine products.  However, you can get much more of a depth of tonic flavor if you make your own.

Bartender Kevin Ludwig of Beaker & Flask in Portland makes his own tonic syrup from cinchona bark (nature's source of the profoundly bitter quinine), mixing it with plain soda for tonic water in his very flavorful G&Ts.  You can order powdered cinchona bark from Tenzing Momo in Seattle (it's pretty cheap, and powerful; a little goes a long way). Here's the recipe for the tonic syrup, and the G&T is made thusly:

GIN AND HOUSEMADE TONIC

1/2 oz. homemade tonic syrup

1 1/2 oz. hearty, full-flavored gin
Soda water
Lime wedge
Ice cubes

Fill a large rocks glass with ice. Build: pour in the tonic syrup and gin, top with soda water and a squeeze of lime and garnish with either a fresh lime wedge or lime peel.

I'd probably want to throw a dash or three of Peychaud's in there, too.

While you've got your cinchona bark, there's some more playing to be done.

The fortified wine we know as Lillet Blanc, as you probably know, started life as Kina Lillet.  It was a quinquina, which are slightly bitter aperitif wines containing small amounts of quinine (hence the "Kina" in its original name).  In the 1970s Lillet was reformulated, the quinine was removed, and it was rebranded "Lillet Blanc."  It's still a lovely product, but that lack of quinine bite radically changed the flavor profiles of cocktails that were created with Kina Lillet in mind.

One of the more famous ones was the Vesper, or the so-called "James Bond Martini."  He specifically calls for Kina Lillet when he's talking his bartender through it, as that was what was being made at the time.  If you truly want to recreate a Bond-era Vesper, add a tiny pinch of cinchona to your mixing glass or shaker (we're talking 1/16th of a teaspoon or less).  The results may astound out.

"Come and see me if you get a chance," read the message from Chris McMillian. "I've got a new drink for you."

To describe my reaction as "intrigued" would be a fairly massive understatement.

(If you're not familiar with Chris, read Wayne Curtis' article about him in Imbibe, and watch some videos of him making cocktails, especially the Mint Julep. Well, maybe not that last one; that one's better seen and sipped in person.)

While we were home in New Orleans for two weeks a visit with Chris, dean of New Orleanian bartenders and his lovely wife Laura, both of whom are founding board members of the Museum of the American Cocktail, was pretty high on our list. We'd been hoping to get to Cure and French 75 as well, but seven days at the Fair Grounds, a trip to Acadiana and visits with family and friends cut down on our bar time. We were lucky enough that timing worked out such that we were right near Chris' bar when he was on during one of our only free days in the Quarter/CBD.

Laura stopped by not long after we arrived and we were having a grand time all around when Chris asked if we'd like to taste something. Despite his great talent and profoundly deep knowledge of New Orleans and cocktail history, Chris is a pretty modest guy and doesn't consider himself the type of bartender/mixologist who's constantly coming up with new drinks. "If I come up with two new drinks a year that's pretty good for me," he says. In my experience those two drinks tend to be worth waiting for, and this was no exception.

The drink he prepared for us falls into the category of "Why didn't anyone think of this before?" or even, "Hell, why didn't I think of this?!" (Well, because he's Chris and I'm me, that's why.) The drink was so simple, yet so sophisticated and absolutely delicious.

It has its history in a few different places, starting with the classic Champagne Cocktail. Traditionally it's a sugar cube soaked with Angostura Bitters, dropped into a Champagne flute and topped with bubbly. The Champagne treatment in a cocktail is often acknowledged by appending the word "royale" to a drink's name, as in the classic variation on the Kir cocktail. That began as a combination of crème de cassis (blackcurrant liqueur) poured into white wine, a drink that was once commonly called blanc-cassis but was eventually called Kir in honor of Félix Kir, a mayor of Dijon, France in the early 20th Century who loved the cocktail and was frequently seen quaffing it. Substituting Champagne for the white wine made it a Kir Royale.

Simple enough, then -- give a Sazerac the Royale treatment. This is an ideal apéritif and a perfect Sazerac variation to serve to those for whom a strong whiskey cocktail is a bit overwhelming. This drink is a knockout.

 

THE SAZERAC ROYALE
by Chris McMillian, Bar UnCommon, New Orleans

1/2 teaspoon Herbsaint Original or absinthe
1 sugar cube
3-4 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
1 ounce rye whiskey (Chris used Old Overholt)
4 ounces chilled Champagne
Lemon peel

Rinse a Champagne flute with the Herbsaint or absinthe and discard the excess. Drop the sugar cube into the flute and soak with the bitters. Add the whiskey, then carefully top with the chilled Champagne. Twist the lemon peel over the surface, rub it around the rim and commit the sacrilege of dropping it into the drink.

Don't miss Jeffrey Morgenthaler's latest post about the amazing barrel-aged cocktails he serves at Clyde Common in Portland, and learn how to make Negronis, Manhattans and Tridents that are aged for six months in charred oak barrels.

Today’s cocktail is an original from New Orleans bartender Chris McMillian of Bar UnCommon, and it’s my favorite of his. “I don’t really come up with that many originals,” he said (although I’ve had several), “but I think this one might be the best yet.”

It’s deceptively simple — only two ingredients in a simple proportion — but what a pair of ingredients … oh so complex.

First off, Old Raj Gin. There are two that you’ll see on your spirits store shelves if you’re lucky — one at 92 proof and the other at 110, the more common of the two and the one you want. Despite its alcoholic heft it’s quite smooth and has no burn, juniper present but not overly forward, plenty of citrus and earthy spices. The straw-yellow tint comes from a bit of saffron among the botanicals, but the saffron is very subtle and understated.

Next, our old friend Chartreuse of the green variety, an herbal knockout also at a hefty 110 proof. The alcohol-by-volume in these combined ingredients is, as you may have noticed, 55%, hence the name of the drink. These two powerful ingredients combine with that delightful cocktailian alchemy into a very well-balanced, highly sippable drink in which the herbal onslaught of the Chartreuse is stretched, rounded and balanced by the gin and its own herb-and-spice profile. What you might think would be over the top is anything but, and might be just the thing to offer a Martini drinker who might be looking for something a bit more exotic for his or her next drink.

You knocked this one out of the park, Chris … thanks!

The 55º Cocktail
(by Chris McMillian, Bar UnCommon, New Orleans)

1-1/2 ounces Old Raj Gin, blue label.
3/4 ounce green Chartreuse.

Combine with ice in a mixing glass and stir for 30 seconds.
Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. No garnish.

Just back from another visit to Houston (my stupendous nephew Thomas just turned 3!), and as is my wont it included a visit to one of my favorite bars, the stupendous Anvil Bar & Refuge. It was an even rarer treat this time, as my sister Melissa got to come with me — I hadn’t gotten to take her to a bar since well before the kids were born, and my brother-in-law kindly volunteered to stay home with the kids (the fact that he had to work from home that night was a factor as well). “It’s 7:15 and I’m driving away from my house with no children, and going to a bar!!” It makes me happy to facilitate the occasional boozy evening out for the mother of a two-year-old and a three-year-old.

On my previous Anvil visits I got to hang out with bartender/co-owner Bobby Heugel and have him take me through Anvil’s always challenging and exciting menu. This time Bobby was in South Africa, happily swilling Pinotage and having a well-deserved vacation, and behind the stick this was Justin Burrow, one of the other owner-partners who I finally got to meet at Tales last year. Justin took great care of us on a busier-than-usual Sunday night, as he and his crew accommodated not only the usual locals but the entire cast of the touring production of “Miss Saigon,” who are performing in Houston at the moment and who descended on the bar en masse.

The first drink on the new seasonal menu that caught my eye was the one with the most unusual mix of ingredients — Batavia Arrack, Strega, Falernum and lime. Wow, now that’s a combination I hadn’t thought of, and I immediately ordered one. My sister said, “The only one of those ingredients I’ve ever heard of is lime!” whereupon Justin very kindly poured a little sip of each ingredient into a glass for her to taste, “a deconstructed version.”

Melissa tasted each one ... "Ooh, that's funky," to the arrack; "Wow, that's really complex," to the Strega; "Um, I'm draining this - you don't get any" to the falernum. Hmm, guess I'll have to buy her a bottle.

Justin explained that they had been doing inventory at the end of the year and there was an excess of arrack, Strega and falernum, and they wondered what they'd do with it as none of the drinks on the Anvil 100 call for them, and the current seasonal menu didn't either. Justin started mixing, using the Last Word as a template, and lo and behold ... they worked together beautifully.

Complex yet comforting and approachable, and still fairly light, I think this one's a real winner.

the Eulogy

3/4 ounce Batavia Arrack.
3/4 ounce Strega.
3/4 ounce John D. Taylor's Velvet Falernum.
3/4 ounce fresh lime juice.
Combine with ice in a shaker, shake for 10 seconds and strain into a cocktail glass. No garnish.

If you live in Houston or you'll be visiting soon, don't miss Anvil.