Camper English's Blog, page 6
December 6, 2024
New Booze: December 6, 2024
The mailroom here at Alcademics Global Headquarters has been working overtime receiving all the new samples. Here are four that arrived recently:
Wilderton non alcoholic spirits has new packaging, a rebrand to Wilderton Aperitivo Co, and a new product: Citrus Aperitivo. It has “Lemon, yuzu, and blood orange combine with fruity undertones and a hint of saffron.”
Three Spirit non-alc functional spirit has a limited-edition Extra Spicy Livener with Cayenne, watermelon, guava, ginger, tannins, hibiscus, ginseng, green herbs, guayusa, schisandra & ginseng. I don’t really need my non-alcs to be “functional” but I just like the taste of this line. The Nightcap makes a pretty decent Old Fashioned.
Conte Camillo Negroni from La Valdôtaine distillery in the Italian Alps. It is now available New York, Connecticut, Illinois and Massachusetts. 30% ABV
Ten Day Bourbon: I found this brand after my google news alert for “Doctors and Distillers” turned up a story about this brand founded by doctors! This is the “surgeon’s cut” edition, bottled at 8 years old and 55% ABV.
November 30, 2024
Perfect the Gin & Tonic
I contributed the recipe for the Gin & Tonic in Jim Meehan's new book The Bartender's Pantry: A Beverage Handbook for the Universal Bar. I did so at his request, given my history writing about the cocktail.
In the process of researching the recipe, I considered four gins, three tonics, nine garnishes, four glassware shapes, and various temperature options. The Bartender's Pantry just has the recipe, but in a story I wrote for Alcohol Professor I laid out the full process.
There are some surprises in there such as keeping the gin in the refrigerator, the all-purpose wine glass as ideal, and where grapefruit works as a garnish.
November 19, 2024
Photos from my Ice Diamond Classes at Portland Cocktail Week 2024
In October 2024 I gave three Ice Diamond cutting classes at Portland Cocktail Week. The classes were sponsored by the Campari Academy.
I just noticed that the photos, taken by Josh Brasted, are up online. You can see the rest of them here.
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November 18, 2024
Ask Me About My Ice Program
November 15, 2024
Agricole in Exile: A Peek at The Bar at Osito in San Francisco
I was invited in to the new Bar at Osito, the room to the left of the live fire restaurant Osito in San Francisco's Potrero Flats neighborhood.
The bar is just a small room with concrete walls and a few two-top tables. There is also a plant.
A small menu of food from the restaurant next door is available, and the main room doesn't have a bar, so essentially this bar is like sitting at the bar at a fine dining restaurant without being in the restaurant.
The cocktails come from Bar Agricole, where Osito's chef worked for many years. The spirits used in the drinks are those imported by Bar Agricole too - Kilchorman scotch, Marian Farms biodynamic brandy, custom bottled calvados and cognac. Bar Agricole itself doesn't exist in physical form currently, though plans are afoot for a new venue... possibly in collaboration with Osito. So it's an Agricole cocktail program in exile.
The Single Village Fix you may remember from as far back as Beretta when it first opened. That was one of the first cocktails on a menu in San Francisco with a full dose of mezcal, rather than splitting it with tequila back when we all thought the smokiness of mezcal was too intense. That was made with Small Hand Foods superb pineapple gum syrup, which was created by Jennifer Colliau at Agricole owner Thad Vogler's request when they both worked at The Slanted Door.
But my favorite drink by a lot was the Pan American Clipper.
November 12, 2024
Book Review: The Bourbon Drinker's Companion
I received a copy of The Bourbon Drinker's Companion: A Guide to American Distilleries, with Travel Advice, Folklore, and Tasting Notes by Colin Spoelman a few month ago and was planning to breeze through a quick read of it.
[buy it on amazon][buy on bookshop]
The plan for the quick read was because from the title I thought it was going to be an entry-level book on things like whether to add ice to bourbon and what it's like on distillery tours. I was happy to be wrong because it is a great book - and even a great model for other books in other categories like tequila and scotch whiskey. I like this so much more than any other book of spirits reviews.
As for the title, if it were up to me (a book's title is also not up to the author- the publisher usually owns that right) I would call it something like American Whiskey Today, or An Insider's Guide to the Modern Bourbon Landscape. But nobody asked me. They never do.
What's In It
The book is a bit of a tour through bourbon and rye whiskey distilleries and brands, with recommendations on which ones to visit in various regions. Spoelman looks at regionality in American whiskey and the potential future of the category. There are tons of maps and sidebars and graphics.
There is a review of characters whose names are on the bottles (Beam, Daniels, etc) in light of modern sensibilities. There are a lot of other consideration of modern sensibilities - in light of knowing that a brand is a sourced brand made by a rectifier what do we think of it? In light of a brand having been dishonest what do we think? (He has a particular distaste for less-than-truthy brands like Widow Jane and Templeton.) In light of the price and secondary market price, what do we think?
The most memorable content in the book are the whiskey reviews, which are grouped by regions or distilleries, depending on the size. Spoelman doesn't review every whiskey a brand makes, or even most of them, but chooses to highlight the flagship bottling, and/or the best bottling, the underrated one, or a problematic one. I think the most he reviews from any one distillery is six bottlings. He provides context, such as the younger whiskies from a distillery he finds to be thin in texture whereas another distilleries products shine at a few years old but their magic gets lost in older bottlings. He is constantly answering the questions: What is there to like or dislike about a bottle? Is this what the distiller does best? Is this worth the hype?
It is stuff that comes from a great palate and a lot of experience - he doesn't merely l list a bunch of adjectives and flavor notes, he talks about body and texture and value and originality. He also doesn't rate the whiskies with scores or letters but tells you what he thinks of them. I also agree with most of his reviews and opinions for the whiskeys that I have tried.
I think it's a great book for people who know a bunch about American whiskey already and want an expert's true and honest opinion on what's good and not-so-good. And he gives us a lot to think about; my favorite part.
On second hand, maybe the title should have been Bourbon: Keeping It Real.
November 11, 2024
Malort Book Review
This review that I wrote first appeared on AlcoholProfessor.com.
Boozy Book Review: Malört: The Redemption of a Revered and Reviled Spirit by Josh Noel
Jeppson's Malört is a famously disgusting liqueur from Chicago. It’s the drink that your party friends force you to try when you visit them, or sometimes the drink that a dive bar bartender might give new visitors as an ironic “Welcome to Chicago” shot. You try it, you make a horrified face and usually say something like, “Why does this toxic sludge even exist?” and everyone laughs. The memory and the bitter flavor stick with you for a long time.
In Malört: The Redemption of a Revered and Reviled Spirit Chicago Review Press (September 3, 2024), Josh Noel traces the path of the liqueur from its 1930s origins to its unlikely rise nearly a century later to its eventual sale to CH Distillery.
I expected the book to be full of jokes and quotes from people about how bad the liqueur tastes – and it has tons of them, and they are hilarious. What I didn’t expect was for the book to be so engaging and for me to become so invested in the story as Noel tells it.
How Malört Came to Be
Jeppson's Malört was a commercialized version of a Swedish bäsk brännvin, a wormwood-flavored liqueur with a medicinal reputation for soothing the stomach (and traditionally for eliminating intestinal parasites). The product was first sold to Chicago’s Swedish expat community as a reminder of similar liqueurs from home.
The brand was purchased by George Brode, who marketed it to the large working-class Swedish immigrant community of Chicago after Prohibition. He also advertised it as a macho drink, with slogans in the 1950s like, “No woman wets her whistle on Jeppson, that’s a he-man’s prerogative.”
Most of the book follows the story of Patricia (“Pat”) Gabelick, however. She was hired as Brode’s secretary in 1966, became his longtime mistress, and inherited the brand when Brode died in 1999. At that point, Malört sold very little – the height of its sales was in 1973 when it sold under 4000 cases. By 2000 it was selling sixty percent less than that.
Ironic to Iconic
It wouldn’t reach those 1973 levels again for forty years. Malört’s reputation elevation from zero to hero was due in almost no part to Pat Gabelick, despite her being the star player in its story. (She didn’t like it and never drank it but did provide hours of interviews with the book’s author.) With its dated bottle label and bottom-shelf status in Chicago’s neighborhood taverns and liquor stores, young drinkers were intrigued by the mysterious liquid and eventually adopted it as their own.
Meanwhile, the brand didn’t even have a website, and few people knew anything about it or why it tasted the way it did. (As far as I can tell its only ingredients were wormwood, sugar, and alcohol, so there’s your answer.) However, a few fan pages on Facebook and Twitter sprung up celebrating the “Malört’s face” people make when first trying it. It was young fans of Malört like these that essentially rescued the brand from extinction.
A Little Help from Friends
The book details how three key fans volunteered their time and expertise to Pat Gabelick spreading the word of Malört. They built the website, made t-shirts, held promotional events, pitched distributors, and ran social media. They seemed to do everything but control the finances – or receive payment for their efforts.
Their work ensured that media attention grew, then copycat Malörts were released, and a hostile takeover by a major liquor company disguised as a trademark lawsuit ensued. They fought it off. The brand became more successful than ever, on its way to selling 10,000 cases by 2017.
It was this story of the wholesome scrappy crew of fans working with an elderly lady to promote a unique local spirit that really hooked me. Author Josh Noel turned what could have been a silly brand history book into an underdog story. I found myself fully invested, rooting for the team to win and for everyone to come out rich and happy.
That’s not exactly what happened, though. While Pat Gabelick made out well for herself, I wouldn’t be surprised if the people who helped save Malört and build it into a big enough brand to sell for millions are left with a bitter taste in their mouths.
In Conclusion
I really enjoyed this book and was impressed by what must have been a tremendous amount of interviewing and research by author Josh Noel. I don’t know if other readers will become as invested in the story as I did or come away with as strong feelings as I now have about it. But much like a typical introduction to Malört, I plan to foist this book upon many of my friends and watch their reactions when they finish.
November 7, 2024
Promoting Sherry and Community at El Lopo in San Francisco
Just yesterday I was in the elevator in my office building and the person next to me was trying to peep the book I had in my hand. (This is okay when there is a library in your building, we are all book peepers here.) The book is this giant 450 page book on sherry and he said something like, “I just can't get into sherry. It's so sweet but my grandma used to drink it.”
There was a while during which I thought we had moved away from the stereotype of sherry as an after dinner sweet wine like port, but I've heard the old trope a couple of times in the few weeks I've been carrying this book around San Francisco.
A few weeks back I was in a bar where the staff probably has to confront that stereotype on half of the transactions. The bar is El Lopo and the name of it isn't just Spanish for "the wolf," it signifies the LOwer POlk Street Neighborhood in which it's located.
I had a time set up to talk with the owner Daniel Azarkman, who said they're really focused on the neighborhood crowd there despite highlighting the food and wines from Spain. Specifically it is a sherry bar, yet even with all the hard work that they do to promote sherry as the beverage of choice, Azarkman tells me that unfortified wines make up probably half of their beverage sales. The other half is split between vermouth, cocktails, and sherry.
Azarkman said that when they get media hits, it often tends to be about their selection of vermouth. I have also seen vermouth trending more than sherry and asked him why specifically does vermouth seem to be having a bigger moment. He said in the first place while most people associate sherry with being very sweet (most of it is actually not) despite vermouth being the sweeter beverage. And despite the fact that people think that they don't like sweet drinks, everyone in the bartending community knows that people just like to think that they don't like sweet drinks but they actually do.
The second reason for vermouth's popularity, and I think this is a great call that I hadn't thought of before, is that a lot of people have been traveling to Spain and Italy lately, and particularly in Spain people have had the style of vermouth service there, and are happy to try it again back at home. (That style of service by the way is usually over ice with a simple garnish and sometimes with soda water added. That's a possibility here at El Lopo, and the vermouth section of the menu offers several options for modifying it with your choice of soda and garnishes from a list.
Anyway, despite the higher sales of unfortified wine to sherry, they offer a good selection of sherry and certainly more options than for the regular wine. As for the cocktails on the menu, they change seasonally, although there are a few staples on the menu like the their sherry version of the Margarita and the "Fine, Here's Your Goddamn Sangria."
So the bar exists to sell sherry, and the cocktails are nearly all sherry cocktails, but still Azarkman says they have to hand sell sherry to a lot of the customers. But they have a bunch of fun programming that encourages it.
The first of which is that during happy hour for a lot of the sherry on the menu it's two-for-one, but you don't get to drink the second sherry, you get to send it to a stranger in the bar. That seems like a great way to introduce more people to sherry as well as a way to introduce more people to each other.
A second program they have is called the "take care of me club". It's sort of like running a tab on a subscription- there is a house account you pay into, and the bartender will arrange various glasses and snacks on each visit, and you don't have to know the menu yourself, they just take care of you. Lovely. (If I lived closer I might use it as a "know when to quit because you've spent all your money club.")
Yet another thing they do here is have a version of karaoke called Sherry-Oke. It's available on certain days and anyone brave enough to perform karaoke on the microphone gets to drink $5 glasses of sherry for the rest of the night. Honestly I've never sung karaoke in my life but for a discount? I'm a little bit tempted.
Once a year they have been sponsoring a Porron Star competition on New Year's Eve. Competitors wear a white cloth in front of their shirt and are challenged to tip back and finish a porron of a red sherry, and whoever spills the least on themselves is the winner for that year. The prize is a engraved porron that only they are allowed to drink out of for the forthcoming year, and with a special price for what they drink out of it.
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Still another community building exercise is that they take trips to Spain and invite their customers to come along. Their last trip to Spain didn't go to Jerez for sherry but to the Basque region, and according to the legacy information on the website up to 12 bar guests were able to join the bar staff for the trip.
But the community-building activity I was there for on the night of my visit was Sherry Week. The bar puts together an annual Sherry Bingo card that features drink specials at El Lopo and other bars in town. Drinkers can try to complete rows of the card in order to win prizes.
It wasn't a great week in America given the presidential election, but for those recovered (or seeking community in challenging times), there is still time to join for shenanigans until November 10.
It seems that El Lopo is doing everything possible to get you to come into the bar and try some of their delicious sherry and Spanish food, so I think you should probably get in there and do just that.
November 4, 2024
All Aboard the San Francisco Sherry Express
San Francisco has two main sherry bars (at least that I know about, now that Bellota is closed), and though one is in the Lower Polk and the other is in Potrero Flats, you can take one bus between El Lopo and El Chato.
Actually it's a choice of bus: the 49 Van Ness or the 27 Bryant!
Might be a great way to knock out some of the spaces on your Sherry Week Bingo Card.
It's Sherry Week!
In addition to other major events happening this week in America, it's Sherry Week all around the world. Check the site to see what's happening in your city.
Many bars and shops are hosting educational events and tastings, so it's a great week to learn about the category or just drink lots of different stuff. I love sherry (as delicious as it is fascinating in its production) but I don't always want a full glass of one - I want a small portion of 4 different sherries instead.
Here in San Francisco, the Polk Street bar El Lopo is hosting the now-annual Sherry Week Bingo. Drinkers can complete a row of the card, prove it by posting photos to Instagram, and win prizes. It begins today so if you're into winning drinking contests, you had better get going. See the instructions on El Lopo's website for rules.
And if you find yourself distracted with... other events this week, it's good to keep the list of bars on hand for the next time you have a hankering for sherry.
I even made you a map. You can view it online here.
