Camper English's Blog, page 10
March 23, 2024
Review: Dusty Booze by Aaron Goldfarb
This story first appeared on AlcoholProfessor.com.
[image error]Dusty Booze: In Search of Vintage Spirits (Abrams Press, March 5, 2024) is the first book devoted to a specific phenomenon within the liquor industry. Dusty hunters chase after bottles from bygone brands or old formulations that are no longer available.
When I first learned about dusty hunters, they were of the tequila variety. The spirit category had and still has a large amount of variation in quality over the years, even within one brand. Brands move between distilleries, are made on new or different equipment, are distilled from agave from different places, or new owners cut corners in a way that impacts the quality. The tequila superfans notice, and stockpile.
Looking For Old Tequila & More
I heard tales of agave afficionados scoping out dumpy or distressed liquor stores for old inventory, hunting for specific brands of tequila down to the batch number on the bottles. Some of these dusty hunters did so for the love of the category; some for the thrill of the hunt; others for the love of the resale value of special bottles. I heard of people printing out maps of every liquor store within a certain region and visiting them one-by-one; sometimes scoring cases of unsold spirit at rock bottom prices. I also heard about the resale market and the piles of money some people were able to make by flipping bottles. One person said he sold his top finds to hoteliers in Las Vegas where they were given as gifts to high rollers.
This was about fifteen years ago. Since then, I’ve always fantasized about certain vintage spirits I’d love to try such as pre-phylloxera cognac, the 17 year old Jamaican rum used in the first Mai Tai, Chartreuse from the 1800s. They’re not in my budget, but I like to dream about them, and occasionally consider ordering one from a vintage spirits menu at a bar.
In Dusty Booze: In Search of Vintage Spirits spirits writer Aaron Goldfarb introduces us to the world of the dusty hunters as well as their dusty prey – the collectible or resellable special spirits of old. In the book he zigzags through history, as every spirit category that people now collect had a different glory period when the category was particularly good, or else a glut period when pretty good liquor was particularly cheap (and still findable); before an ownership change or a legal one, or even just before changing consumer preferences rendered existing inventories irrelevant and unsellable. There was a time when the only way to unload bourbon was to put it into hokey collectable novelty containers – and today those containers are collectable only for their contents.
We meet plenty of dusty hunters in the book but I wouldn’t say we meet the dusty hunting “community,” because it turns out a lot of these guys are competitive, secretive loners who mostly know each other online as they bid at auction for undervalued treasures up for sale. In this field there are paranoid hoarders and rumored caches from collectors of old. One thread throughout the book is tracking down one specific collection from legendary Hollywood mogul – from rumor to auction to where it wound up and where you can go drink it.
A Question Of Value
Dusty Booze inspires reflection on the nature of what makes things valuable- time and proximity to fame, quality and rarity, age and beauty, and whether to taste a moment in time or keep time in a bottle forever. With stamp or coin collecting we don’t encounter the temptation to actually stick the stamp on an envelope and mail it nor to spend the currency, but with dusty booze for some collectors the opportunity to taste history is too good to pass up. Those are my people.
The book lightly covers a lot of ground so that you’re never lost in the minutiae but introduced to a wide variety of topics including why some categories are valuable, whether older stuff was better tasting, and how counterfeiting works. Goldfarb doesn’t spend a ton of words on telling readers what to collect but does identify key vintage finds in different spirit categories including rum and liqueurs. It’s not a blue book, it is a book about a cultural phenomenon.
Whether you’ve had a little window into the world of dusty hunting already as I have with tequila, or seen vintage spirits on bar menus and wondered how those came to be, or you’re just hearing about it for the first time and intrigued at all, I think you’ll enjoy Dusty Booze. And unlike the bottle of scotch distilled in your birth year, you can probably still afford to pick up a copy.
March 8, 2024
Aspirational Water - A Story in The Guardian that Cites The Ice Book
The reporter for this story in The Guardian and I talked a long time about clear ice, iceberg water, and bottled water.
Not much made it into the final story from me (so it goes) but I did get mentioned in the lead paragraphs!
Towards the end of 2009, Camper English achieved a major breakthrough in his kitchen in San Francisco. After months of experimentation, English, a drinks industry consultant, created the perfect piece of clear ice: a cube with minimal fissures and microbubbles, as transparent as air.
His method for making clear ice – freezing water in an insulated container, which forces tiny bubbles towards the edge and leaves the rest of the block clear – is now widely copied in bars. English has also written The Ice Book: Cool Cubes, Clear Spheres, and Other Chill Cocktail Crafts, and has found his algorithmic niche as Instagram’s top “ice cube reporter”. He regularly shares pictures of bevelled spheres, ridged gems and crystalline pebbles on his account @alcademics, all tagged with #IceBling.
The story has some good points - the most important one being that bottled water does not compete with tap water.
But anyway, if you want to geek out about water with me, I have an upcoming water class in April 2024 you can join!
March 2, 2024
The 50 Iconic Cocktails of San Francisco 2024
For many years I have been compiling The Big Drink, a list of the most iconic cocktails in San Francisco, for 7x7 Magazine.
February 22, 2024
Big Brands' Nonalcoholic Line Extensions - Beer Leads, Spirits to Follow?
The flavor of nonalcoholic beer is far ahead of that of spirits (and I think wine, but I know a lot less about wine both alcoholic and not). And now that it is, nearly all the largest beer brands have released nonalcoholic line extensions recently. Off the top of my head:
[image error] Blue Moon
Sam Adams
Corona
Guinness
Tsingtao
Paulaner Weizen-Radler
Peroni
Sierra Nevada
Heineken
Stella Artois
Dos Equis
Weihenstephaner Hefe
Budweiser
Coors
Brewdog
Beck's
This is interesting because until the past couple of years, for the most part, nonalcoholic beer, wine and spirits were not line extensions of existing alcoholic brands, but startup brands with different identities (Seedlip, Lyre's, O'Doul's). I think this indicates:
Nonalc has finally become popular enough for brands to justify the line extension, and more importantly
Brands are less scared of having an NA line extension that devalues the core brand
Spirits Soon to Follow?
On the spirits side, the same trend is probably next, but there's a problem....
Nonalcoholic spirits line extension from existing spirits brands include:
Damrak gin
Tanqueray (not in US)
Beefeater (not in US)
Martini & Rossi
Sipsmith (not in US)
WhistlePig (limited release)
Four Pillars (not in US)
Seagram's (not in US)
Amaro Lucano
Pallini Limoncello
Clearly brands are dipping their toes into the category, but you can see how cautious they're being compared with beer.
The problem is that most nonalcoholic base spirits are nowhere as good as their alcoholic counterparts, and so they very well may diminish the reputation of the flagship brand.
I've tried a bunch of nonalcoholic gins, for example, and none taste anything like gin. Most taste like old lady soap. I hope to try the brands available outside the US at some point, but I am not super hopeful given what I've tried locally so far.
The liqueur and amaro categories, on the other hand, can do better. The sugar in them carries flavor, and they are flavored spirits to begin with, unlike the usually sugar-free base spirits.
I'd guess that we'll see more spirits/liqueur products that are line extensions - there's room for nonalcoholic Campari (or NA Campari & soda, which kind of exists already), Montenegro, Amaro Nonino, Kahlua, Bailey's, and Malibu. I'm guessing we'll see some of those by next Dry January.
But base gin, vodka, bourbon, tequila, etc.? I have to agree with the logic of not releasing a bad version of good products.
February 14, 2024
Review: A Field Guide to Tequila
This review first appeared on AlcoholProfessor.com.
[image error]Boozy Book Reviews: A Field Guide to Tequila: What It Is, Where It’s From, and How to Taste It
A Field Guide to Tequila by long-time Mexican resident and tour operator Clayton Szczech (Artisan, October 3, 2023) tackles tequila on a level of detail not yet seen in other works. The text is mostly broken up into micro-topics that span only a page or two for easier reading, with some sections tackling broad topics like the definitions of tequila categories and how pieces of equipment work, with others zooming in on nerd-level eccentricities like how the methanol in tequila “distills backward” compared with other spirits, and the logic behind chill filtration. There are plenty of explainer charts as well, defining things such as the differences between the GI, DO, DOT, NOM, and CRT.
Tequila Rules And Regulations—And How Tequila Is Made
The rules and regulations of tequila are outlined in the first section, which takes about 50 pages. I think that speaks to the complexity of the category – not the actual production, but the rules around how you can make it, where, and the real value add of this book: why. (Short answer: it’s complicated.)
The next and longest section is about making tequila – the various production processes (split into eight parts), how they operate, and how they impact the flavor of the resulting unaged or aged spirit.
The Role Of Additives
The author doesn’t shy away from controversies within the tequila category, from the commerce-driven nature of the convoluted Denomination of Origin to the lack of biodiversity of blue agave to the industrial processes like diffusers and additives used to make it. Though I thought I knew the regulations of tequila backwards and forwards, I learned that blanco tequilas can, in fact, have additives like sweeteners and flavorings; and that cristalino tequilas (a marketing rather than legal term for aged then clarified tequilas) take out color and flavor but then usually add additives back in. I also had some lingering technical questions about tequila production before reading this book, but I think every one of them has now been answered.
Producer Profiles
The author then zooms in a selection of producers, not trying to list a large number of brands but profiling 17 of them in a few categories: giants of the industry (Cuervo, Patron, Sauza), defenders of tradition ( Tapatio , Siete Leguas), growers who became distillers (Cava De Oro, Don Abraham), and the new generation of producers and innovators ( Cascahuin , Arette, Fortaleza, Ocho, Lalo). After fifty pages of profiles, the remaining fifty are all about tasting tequila, serving tequila, mixing tequila, and visiting the tequila region. The book does not include many tasting notes (as that could fill a whole book by itself) and there are only four cocktail recipes included, but it packs in a lot of information. My fellow nerds may find this final section less useful, but newbies may gain the most value here.
The book really does include something for tequila fans at all levels, and the copy text on the back of the book really undersells the level of depth of the text. A Field Guide to Tequila covers a lot of ground, under promises, and over delivers.
February 13, 2024
March Class Dates on the Calendar: Ice and Amaro, plus San Diego
I've added two classes to the calendar for March, and for anyone in San Diego I'll be there this weekend. Click on over to the Events Page for details.
February 12, 2024
Book Review: How to Taste by Mandy Naglich
This review first appeared on AlcoholProfessor.com.
Book Review: How to Taste by Mandy Naglich
[image error]In the book How To Taste: A Guide to Discovering Flavor and Savoring Life, author Mandy Naglich describes, you guessed it: how to taste. But not only how to taste beer, wine, and spirits: The book covers how to taste everything else including cheese, honey, chocolate, olive oil, and more. It is a book about building tasting skills to create a more rewarding existence, rather than becoming a professional-level judge. Or, as she puts it, “this book is your guide to transform from a person who eats to a person who tastes.”
In the process of writing the book, Naglich interviewed over 100 expert tasters, judges, and perfumers, and shares their wisdom and her own adventures in tasting a lot of different food and beverages along with other experts.
How Tasting Works
The first part of the book describes how tasting works – the biology (and a bit of psychology) of tasting. It covers the three types of receptors – olfactory, gustatory, and touch – and what the basic tastes of sweet, salt, umami, sour, and bitter signal to the brain when we experience them.
She then tackles the myth of the supertaster – those with greater taste bud density on their tongues. This anatomical superiority can be not so super in reality: supertasters can experience flavors at intense levels that make bitter foods like coffee or brussels sprouts unpalatable, and often supertasters favor bland rather than bold foods to avoid discomfort. Similarly, some people who are “nose blind” to specific aromas may get less out of smelling a strawberry but might be blissfully ignorant of TCA (“corked”) aroma in their wine or beer. You win some, you lose some.
Beyond basic biology, we learn about the influence of geography. The way we chew certain foods influences how we experience the taste and texture of them, and this can be related to what foods we grew up eating. People may also have negative or positive associations with the same flavors depending on where they grow up: Naglich points out that many British people associate wintergreen with medicinal liniment (like Icy Hot muscle rub), while Americans tend to associate it with root beer and gum.
Next she writes about the tasting environment and how we are impacted by the smells (floral arrangements) sounds (music, background noise), color (of cups or the wallpaper), and even ambient temperature of the restaurant or other room in which we’re tasting. These influence what we might be in the mood to eat or drink, how foods taste to us at the time, and how much and how fast we’ll eat and drink them.
Building Tasting Skills
The main body of the book is dedicated to building tasting skills. Naglich outlines a seven-step tasting method. The steps are set(ting), see, sniff, swirl/snap, sip/sample, spit/swallow, and sit and synthesize. The first step is about considering the environment, tasting glass/plate, and ideal temperature for what you’re tasting. The “see” step is just a double check to make sure things look as they should.
The “sniff” step includes five olfactory assessment techniques including the “moving sniff” and “short sniff.” The “retronasal sniff” involves holding your nose closed while tasting. “Sip/sample” also involves multiple steps of three tastes, so the seven steps are in reality at least thirteen if you work methodically through them all.
Next up, Naglich teaches how to build an internal library of flavor references to call upon when tasting new and old foods and drinks; how we might internally organize our categories of flavor (such as in categories of fruit, nuts, fats, spices, etc). Then she provides exercises for retaining that flavor vocabulary with several sets of exercises and tests to repeat regularly.
Embracing A Tasting Lifestyle
The third section of the book is about putting your tasting skills to good use. Among other topics, the author writes about how basic tastes impact each other (salt enhancing sweetness and suppresses bitterness, for example), and then gives some guidelines for different food pairing strategies.
A surprising and welcome chapter is on building one’s descriptive vocabulary to write better tasting notes. Naglich explores flavor wheels that have commonly used descriptors on them, then suggests how to add more adjectives regarding texture, color, amplitude, and even memories evoked by the food to round them out. She provides a template for writing up a tasting summary and includes an example for a Cosmopolitan.
The remaining section of the book is about embracing the full-time tasting lifestyle. It includes some practical advice about tasting while travelling, pro-taster tips that apply to multiple categories of food and drinks, and some inspirational material about growing your olfactory bulb through training and the association of taste memory with mental alertness later in life.
Impressions
Throughout the book there are links to the HowToTasteBook.com website with supplemental material, including songs that register as sweet versus sour when we hear them, and examples of flavor wheels for different types of food – semi-hard cheese and winter squash to name two. These are not indexed on the site as far as I can tell, so your reward for reading the book is getting access to these hidden pages. (And my punishment for not highlighting them on first read is that I must go back through the book and do that now.) I love this reader’s bonus.
Something that would have been useful to me is a summary in a chart or other form of the seven-step tasting process after it was described in paragraphs, for easy future reference. But to be fair, I want every book to be a workbook, so maybe that’s my issue. It just means I’ll have to write my own notes from the book to use in live practice.
I’ll also be using the book to try some new tasting techniques. I’m the judge of several spirits and cocktail competitions, and I was relieved to find that I already do some version of most of Naglich’s nosing and tasting steps naturally. But there are a couple that are new to me and I’m looking forward to adding them to my repertoire to tease out previously hidden scents and flavors.
So yes, this is a book about how to taste, but you won’t become a skilled taster by just reading it. You’ll need to put it into practice tasting things in the real world. Luckily, you have to eat and drink anyway. May as well get better at it.
Has Luxury Clear Cocktail Ice Gone Too Far?
I am quoted in this story about luxury ice (from Greenland, sold in Dubai) in which I manage to become an advocate for importing glacier ice for cocktails, lol.
Most of what I talked about in the interview was that we all choose our battles when it comes to where and how we support environmentalism, based on personal values. The more problematic environmental issue of Martha Stewart sipping on iceberg ice on a cruise was the cruise itself. Ever had fresh Japanese sushi in NYC or Las Vegas? It was probably flown in on a plane... packed in ice.
Anyway, I hope you'll join me in a freshly-clubbed baby seal fat-washed arctic mezcal mai tai served over a Death Valley ice sphere sometime in the future.
Anyway, read the story here.
February 9, 2024
Book Giveaway: Imbibe and Beachbum Berry Remixed
Sign up for the Alcademics Newsletter for a chance to win a copy of one of these now-classic titles:
Imbibe! by David Wondrich. There is a new edition (well not all that new now) of this book so I am giving away the first edition.
Beach Bum Berry Remixed by Beachbum Berry. Probably his most important tropical cocktail book before Potions of the Caribbean. I guess I've owned a second copy of this book for more than a decade.
I'm trying to grown my email list as well as thin out my office cocktail book overstock, so my "loss" is your gain. Sign up for my email list and look for info on how to win in the next newsletter.
*Note that I can only mail books to US address due to the cost of postage.
My Picks for Best Nonalcoholic Spirits and RTDs 2024
This January I gave three tastings of nonalcoholic products to small classes. The goal was to talk about the category and highlight some star products.
I've tasted dozens of NA cocktails and spirits and frankly a lot of them are very bad. And some brands have a whole line of products where some are good and some are bad, so even following a "good" brand can result in disappointment. And then there is the price- they are expensive, averaging around $35 for a 700ml bottle of NA spirit. I felt it would be helpful to show folks easy to use, recommended brands by someone (me) who has tried them and thought a lot about the category.
So while I haven't tried every single product on the market (especially all the new RTD cocktails), here are the ones I selected to feature for this tasting, and why.
Martini Floreale- This product as well as the Martini Vibrante are based on a dealcoholized wine, which gives them great body compared with all the water-based products. Then they're flavored; this one heavily accented with chamomile. I'd say it's closest to a nonalcoholic Lillet Blanc. It's great over ice with an orange peel/slice.
Curious Elixirs No 7- Curious Elixirs is a line of NA cocktails. I've tried I think four of the line, and I really like the No 1 (like a berry Negroni Spagliato) and this No 7 (a floral champagne cocktail). As I had other Campari/Negroni-type products in this tasting I went with the No 7 to highlight. This can simply be kept chilled and poured into a glass or over ice. It's great.
Tenneyson- This one has some kick to it! Gingery and peppery. You can add soda water and make it a ginger beer, or sip it like a spicy digestif. I'm keeping a bottle in my office for a mid-day wakeup.
Ritual Rum- Many "aged" nonalcoholic spirits lean in to barrel flavors, including vanilla and caramel. So if that's the flavor range you enjoy there are several worthwhile "aged" tequilas, rums, and whiskeys. If you add them to cola you get extra-cola flavored cola; I would try this brand in an n/a Mai Tai. In this tasting I used it as an example of the category, though it has less obvious/easy utility compared to the rest of this tasting.
Bare Bourbon - I don't like many NA whiskeys, but I feel that Bare does a good job at being "bourbon" rather than "whiskey" like most brands. Again leaning in to barrel flavors. In the class I had people add a dash of bitters and simple syrup to make an Old Fashioned with this brand; in part to show that the NA spirits can't really tolerate more dilution, and how you'd plan for that when using it. (Chill everything including the glass, serve over a single big cube.)
Three Spirit Nightcap - There are three Three Spirit "functional" spirits. I like the taste of all of them, but the Nightcap is woodsy and most drinkable without mixers. That said, I knew of two different bars who used it in an Old Fashioned. It's functional, but not cannabis-related. Its relaxing ingredients are hops, valerian root, and lemon balm; nothing extreme.
Martini Vibrante - NA wine-based like the other Martini product, I'd say the Vibrante is most like a wine-based Negroni. Delicious over ice with an orange wedge.
Lyre’s Italian Spritz - Lyre's answer to Aperol. Surprisingly bitter and needs to be put with a mixer, which we find in the next product....
Lyre’s Classico - I really love Lyre's take on prosecco. It's quite fruity with apple notes, and not overly sweet. I've made lots of mimosas with it. In the class we add the Italian Spritz to the Classico to make an NA Sbagliato/Aperol Spritz. Delicious, and a hit in this tasting.
For Bitter For Worse Rose City Fizz - The FBFW line is four products. I like three of them a lot (just not the smoky one) and chose the Rose City Fizz for this tasting. This one also has a Berry Negroni flavor to it and I find it has lots of the mustardy rhubarb root flavor to it - a flavor that I love. Along with the Curious Elixirs line, I think you can just pop these open and serve them in a glass for NA cocktails at bars and events, they're that high quality.
Dr. Zero Zero Amarno - Speaking of rhubarb root: This is a nonalcoholic rabarbaro - a rhubarb amaro. In fact it tastes a lot like Zucca. I drink it as a digestif.
The Pathfinder - Another amaro, this one with a long lingering wormwood note. Admittedly I didn't like that specific note at first but now I'm into it. I find that people are divided on this product but fans of amaro (and bartenders, who are the same people) tend to really dig it. This is my other NA go-to digestif.
Spiritless Cinnamon - And for the dessert course: Spiritless Cinnamon. Designed to be a nonalcoholic Fireball, I chose this brand as a last sip and palate cleanser for those overwhelmed by wormwood. This is another one I wouldn't mix but take as a shot.
Bonus Products - I also featured All the Bitter nonalcoholic cocktail bitters, plus the newish Heineken 0.0 and Guinness 0.0 beers.
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