June 7, 2013
My absolutely favorite thing in the world at this moment (well, outside of my dogs) is Meletti Anisette. I wrote about my trip to the Meletti Café (which was lovely), and having some of Meletti Anisette while there, and how great and perfect it was – but on some level, I always wondered if a little of that sentiment was due to being Italy. How to tell? Try some of the same here in the old U.S. So, I picked up a bottle, and you know what? It’s exactly as good here. It’s the tops, it’s the coliseum (as the song goes). Just by itself, with an ice cube or two, it makes me very happy. However, because I’m a tinkerer (not that I drive a wagon around fixing up pots and pans, but that I tinker with liquids), I’ve been wondering if it would also be great with things. And you know what (again, do you know what, or what)? It is! I kept my mixing really, really simple, cause simplicity is awesome and why mess around much, just adding some of the Meletti to another favorite, Woodinville Whiskey Company bourbon, in a classic 5-to-1 combo. Oh my! It’s delicious. I’m calling it (for obvious reasons) The West Coast of the Le Marche. Have one instantly. Or quicker. You can thank me later.
The West Coast of the Le Marche
Cracked ice
2-1/2 ounces Woodinville Whiskey Co bourbon
1/2 ounce Meletti Anisette
Ice cubes
1: Filled a cocktails shaker or mixing glass with cracked ice. Add the bourbon and the anisette. Stir well.
2. Fill an old fashioned or comparable glass (preferably a commemorative Nutella jar from Italy) with a couple fat ice cubes. Strain the mix over the ice. Relish the loveliness.
Tags: bourbon, cocktail recipe, Cocktail Recipes, Friday Night Cocktail, Meletti Anisette, The West Coast of the Le Marche, What I'm Drinking
Posted in: Cocktail Recipes, Italy, Liqueurs, Recipes, What I'm Drinking, Whiskey
December 7, 2012
So, you ever have those days when you lose a bunch of information about this or that (nothing that serious, but right annoying) and need a perfect drink to remind yourself that all is well in the dreamy and bright world. Turn to this lesser-known classic originally from a hotel of the same name in Louisville, KY. It won’t let you down, friends, in the least.
The Seelbach
1 ounce bourbon
1/2 ounce Cointreau
7 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
7 dashes Angostura bitters
Chilled brut Champagne or sparkling wine
Orange twist, for garnish
1. Pour the bourbon, Cointreau, and the two bitters into a flute glass. Stir briefly.
2. Fill the flute almost to the top with the chilled Champagne or sparkling wine. Stir again, but don’t get nutty about it. Garnish with the orange twist.
Tags: Angostura bitters, bourbon, cocktail recipe, Cocktail Recipes, Cointreau, Friday Night Cocktail, Peychaud's bitters, The Seelbach cocktail, What I'm Drinking
Posted in: bitters, Champagne & Sparkling Wine, Cocktail Recipes, Liqueurs, Recipes, What I'm Drinking
May 14, 2012
Hey whiskey lovers, this little announcement is for you (and for anyone around the W-A who liked to support local distillers. And really, who in the whole state doesn’t? Only the bad people, that’s who). On the 19th of May, those fine folks at the Woodinville Whiskey Company are releasing their “Mash Bill No.9” bourbon at noon on the old fashioned dot. They’re gonna have sandwiches, good cheer, and hopefully some whiskey songs sung in the round. But most of the all, it’s bourbon on a “get it while you can” availability, so, well, get it while you can. If you need more to grab you, you’re probably a bit daffy. But I’m here to help all, so as one final enticement, a quote from owner Brett Carlile (who owns along with Orlin Sorensen): “As we narrowed down our final selection, one had just the right combination of corn, rye and malted barley — and that’s how ‘Mash Bill No. 9’ was born; it was our ninth recipe.” Yeah, boy.
May 4, 2012
Okay, honesty time. Raise your hand if you’ve had a broken, or even a fairly seriously cracked, heart. You, in the back, without your hand raised? Quit lying, we’re all friends (or at least boon bar companions) here. That’s what I thought. Turns out, even in short story collections from the 1950s, people have broken hearts. Even in mystery short story collections from the ‘50s, such as Murder by 14 (here and there called My Best Murder Story), which is a collection shading pretty seriously to the “want-to-be-Agatha” side of the mystery section (as opposed to the “want-to-be-Dashiell” section—both of which are sections I like). One of the stories that doesn’t shade too much is A Matter of Life and Death by John and Ward Hawkins, which is pretty much one long hangover for the main character, after a night of heartbreak (somewhat mitigated by the inducer of said heartbreak trying to help him out of what looks like a pretty murderous situation). Really, I know little about John and Ward, the authors, but the story was good enough that I’m gonna look for more. And I certainly understand the sentiment and set-up of the below quote, all about bourbon and heartbreak.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I got loaded in the bar across the street from the office. Straight bourbons. I got full of bourbon clean up to here. I rubbed it in my broken heart. I cashed my paycheck. And then I went riding in taxi-cabs. I went pub-crawling. I met this guy–this big guy with the crew hair-cut and the tough face and the little scar on his chin. We were a couple of ex-sergeants and that made us buddies. He bought some drinks and I bought some drinks, and we really pinned one on–the Giant size.’
— A Matter of Life and Death, John and Ward Hawkins
November 9, 2011
It’s been over two years since I had a quote up here from Harold Q. Masur (though, between us, I’m guessing he hasn’t noticed), who I like cause books I have by him fit into my pockets, and because his characters don’t shy away from the sauce, and cause in the below quote he mentions three delicious boozes, and because he isn’t pulp enough to be distracting, and isn’t so light as to float away into a land of cotton candy and unicorns. Though, honestly, that doesn’t sound bad, either. Anyway, this is from a book called Bury Me Deep, and it involves a lawyerly type chasing around a drunken literary type and a girl. Which, honestly, doesn’t sound much different than some afternoons I had way back when (except the lawyerly type part).
A marble-eyed waiter with a pushed-in face and a malevolent twist to his mouth came over, snapped a napkin, nodded. I ordered bourbon for myself, Dubonnet for Dulcy, and Bob ordered a bottle of Napoleon for himself.
—Bury Me Deep, Harold Q. Masur
May 5, 2011
Well, we’re back (from Italy, that is. If you didn’t know it, wife Nat and I and our two dogs have been enjoying our Italian pre-tirement for the last seven or so months. Interested? Read more about it). Re-entry into life into Seattle hasn’t been rough, but neither has it been a box of chocolates filled with booze. To ease the edges, and to help remind me of things from here I missed, when there, without forgetting what I loved there, I whipped up the following cocktail last night, and think I’ll be whipping up a few more over the next couple of days. See, bourbon is hard to track down in the I-tal, and so I wanted the drink to be serious on the bourbon side. But, I miss (already) having loads of Italian liqueurs in every café and bar, so I wanted hints of Italy surrounding the bourbon. Which led to the Welcome Back, Weary Traveler:
2-1/2 ounces bourbon (I used Blanton’s, but others may suffice)
1/2 ounce Luxardo Maraschino
1/4 ounce Fernet Branca
Orange twist, for garnish (I like’d a wider orange twist here)
1. Fill a cocktail shaker or mixing glass halfway full with cracked ie.
2. Add the bourbon, maraschino, and Fernet Branca. Stir well.
3. Strain into a cocktail glass or a stewardesses hat. Twist the twist and drink as happily as you can manage.
Tags: Blanton's, bourbon, cocktail recipe, Cocktail Recipes, Dark Spirits, drink recipes, Fernet Branca, Luxardo Maraschino, Recipes, What I'm Drinking, Whiskey
Posted in: Almost Drinkable Photo, Italy, Liqueurs, Recipes, What I'm Drinking, Whiskey
April 12, 2011
Lawrence Block is one of those crime/mystery/thriller who I have a strange relationship with, in a way. I’ve read a number of his books, and probably three-quarters of them have left me thinking I probably wouldn’t need to read another. They weren’t bad, but neither were they good, or original, or full of characters bursting with life. However, the other quarter of his books that I’ve read are everything opposite, and quite good. The number of good has been high enough that if I run into one of his books at a sale, or on the shelves of a country home in Italy that I’m staying in, I’ll probably give it a whirl. Which was the case with In the Midst of Death. Sadly, it didn’t rock my reading world. But it was okay, and did feature this nice quote about lunchtime (or shortly thereafter drinking):
I went over to Johnny Joyce’s on Second and sat in a booth. Most of the lunch crowd was gone. The ones who remained were one or two Martinis over the line now, and probably wouldn’t make it back to their offices at all. I had a hamburger and a bottle of Harp, then drank a couple shots of bourbon with my coffee.
–Lawrence Block, In the Midst of Death
May 23, 2010
Okay, right up at the front of the stage, before the curtains go up, let me tell those readers who don’t know, what MxMo is (or at least give out what I know, which isn’t a whole barrelful of knowledge, since I’ve never had the pleasure of taking part before). Basically, it’s a bunch of bar-booze-drunken bloggers making up or bringing out a drink under a particular theme, on a Monday. So, mixology Monday I suppose. A different blog hosts every one (one a month, I believe), and they round up links to the posts about the theme on the day on their site, and send readers out and about and around the interweb to see those other posts about the theme. From what I’ve read when going boozing on the web on Mondays, the themes tend to be a particular spirit, liquor, or ingredient. However, when the really wacky bar blogger hosts, the theme may just be more, let’s say esoteric. Which is the case this month, as drink-slinger Andrew Bohrer who blogs at Cask Strength is hosting the MxMo, and he chose Tom Waits.
Which actually makes fantastically fantastic sense, as Andrew talks about in his top MxMo post (right here), in story fashion, which Waits himself would enjoy, I think. See, at heart, going around the rumbling voice and the at times otherworldly instrumentation and the harlots and hard heads, Waits is a storyteller, a boozy troubadour, a chronicler of the forgotten nights and the railroad yards, of trombone funerals and waking up wearing bruises and regret in a hotel next to the railroad tracks, of lost and long- elapsed love, and of gospel music sung under a blistering sun when all you want is a glass of whiskey and s single ice cube and the time to drink the world down.
Of course, as the above going on and on probably demonstrates, and since I’ve mentioned him in cocktail recipe intros in pretty much every book I’ve written, I’m a Tom Waits fan. I have most CDs, and listen to him on a regular basis, and have sat up singing Tom Waits with pals and bourbon and brandy until 4 am multiple times, have sat in a parked car half drunk singing Tom Waits while the thunder hit the hood like a million fists, and have put Tom Waits songs on jukeboxes with a glass of gin in one hand in more bars, lounges, dives, and hole-in-the-walls then I can remember. But as I haven’t gotten to my drink yet, I’m gonna put a leash on my Waitsean ramblings and start pouring.
Oh, wait, give me another sec, to give a drink backstory. Though I enjoy all the Waits CDs I have (including those Andrew mentions, Closing Time, Small Change, and the rollicking live Nighthawks at the Diner), the one I go back to the most is Rain Dogs. From the opening “We sail tonight for Singapore” to the New Orleans horns playing the funeral out at the record’s end, Rain Dogs matches more moods and moodiness and must-have-a-drink-while-listening-to tracks to me than any other. And while I don’t have a “favorite” song on Rain Dogs (this makes a type of sense, since they go together like egg drinks and mornings), “Tango Till They’re Sore” is the song (don’t take this morbidly, by the way) I want played at my funeral. I just want folks there to have good music, to drink well, and to toast me relentlessly, and this song, which starts “Well ya play that Tarantela and the hounds they start to roar” does just that. Not to mention that the chorus goes:
Let me fall out the window
With confetti in my hair
Deal out jacks or better
On a blanket by the stairs
I’ll tell you all my secrets
But I lie about my past
So send me off to bed forever more.
Rain Dogs also has a dandy song called “Jockey Full of Bourbon” (which has the classic line, a line I can sympathize with, “I’m full of bourbon, I can’t stand up”), so I wanted my drink to have a bourbon base, and bourbon is also mentioned multiple times within the record. The only other spirit dropped in the album is brandy (in “Union Square”), so I decided to double up on base spirits a bit, and then I wanted to bring in some bitters, in honor of the line in “9th & Hennepin” that says “till you’re full of rag water, bitters, and blue ruin.” So, that got me to three, a magic number, but because Tom Waits is also an original, I wanted to bring another ingredient into the drink that isn’t mentioned in one of his songs (four can be a magic number too y’all), but that has at least a tangential connection, and so I went with St. Elizabeth’s Allspice Dram. For one, it tastes great. For two, St. Elizabeth’s could be an insane asylum. For three, it’s based on an older ingredient called “Pimento Dram” which I could see Waits-style sailors drinking on a leaking dingy. When mixed in the following way, these ingredients in honor of Tom Waits and Andrew Bohrer make The Hounds They Start to Roar:
2 ounces bourbon (I used Blanton’s)
¾ ounce St. Elizabeth’s Allspice Dram
½ ounce brandy (I used Grand Duke d’Alba cause I’m walking Spanish down the hall)
2 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
1. Fill a cocktail shaker, mixing glass, dented top hat, or ladies leather boot halfway full with cracked ice. Add the whole bunch of ingredients. Stir well.
2. Strain into a cocktail glass or goblet. Garnish with a sad song.
PS: Feel this needs a garnish? I suggest an ice pick, a dented fender from a ’54 Ford, or a tattooed tear.
Tags: Andrew Bohrer, bourbon, Brandy, Cask Strength, cocktail recipe, Cocktail Recipes, MxMo, Peychaud's bitters, Rain Dogs, St. Elizabeth's Allspice Dram, The Hounds They Start to Roar, Tom Waits
Posted in: Almost Drinkable Photo, Brandy, Recipes, Whiskey
