Camper English's Blog, page 7
October 18, 2024
Book Review: The Absinthe Forger by Evan Rail
This review first appeared on AlcoholProfessor.com.
Boozy Book Review: The Absinthe Forger by Evan Rail
The history of absinthe is filled with drama. The spirit was created as a medicine but was adopted recreationally, particularly in France in the late 1800s. It became more popular than it might have been otherwise, due to the phylloxera infestation that destroyed vineyards and made wine much more expensive in comparison. But when the wine industry began to recover, an anti-absinthe smear campaign began.
Absinthe is much higher in ABV than wine of course (even though it is designed to be consumed diluted), and its sudden adoption by French drinkers may have brought to light societal problems including rampant alcoholism. The spirit was said to be poison, and anti-absinthe crusaders put on public demonstrations of its supposed toxicity by injecting animals with lethal doses of wormwood oil. A sensationalized murder in Switzerland, supposedly fueled by absinthe, was the last straw, and absinthe was banned in several countries in the early 1900s. It remained banned for nearly 100 years.
That history has been covered in many books at this point, and in The Absinthe Forger: A True Story of Deception, Betrayal, and the World’s Most Dangerous Spirit, (October 15, Melville House) author Evan Rail doesn’t merely repeat it (though he does fill in lots of small, new-to-me details). Instead, most of the book takes place after absinthe becomes legal again.
Meet the Fans and Forger
Due in large part to its salacious history, absinthe inspires a morbid curiosity in people, and communities of collectors have built up around it. Some enthusiasts collect vintage absinthe advertisements; others collect absinthe spoons and fountains and other implements. And some others collect bottles of vintage absinthe to taste, with a particular emphasis on bottles produced before bans went into place around 1910.
It is in the modern world of “pre-ban” absinthe collectors that the book begins. It turns out a trusted absinthe expert who lived in London had been recreating the flavor profile (and the color) of pre-ban absinthe, putting it into vintage bottles, and passing it off as legitimate (and very expensive) bottlings.
It was fellow collectors who became suspicious of all the newly-“found” pre-ban absinthe on the market and started investigating. They identified the fraudster and eventually blew his cover. The Absinthe Forger follows the trail of experts who had tasted enough vintage absinthe to detect something wrong with these bottles, and their homespun investigations into the person committing the forgeries. To accomplish this, other collectors had to figure out how absinthe was originally distilled, colored, and blended by different producers in France, Switzerland, and Spain, how the flavor changes over the decades in the bottle, and how every brand made its bottles, labels, and wax/cork seals. You’ve got to know a lot about the authentic product to catch a fake.
Rail takes us to Italy, France, Switzerland, London, and the Czech Republic among other places as he travels to meet this cast of collectors and sleuths, from distillers to museum curators to dealers in liquid history. He visits towns where absinthe was distilled in mass quantities in its heyday and in much smaller quantities illegally during its prohibition. (This was an exciting part of history with bootleggers and decoy vessels and secret distilleries I’d not heard of previously.) We learn of famous found caches of absinthe such as in old hotel wine cellars, and how people who sold these caches had to both keep their sources secret while also verifying the liquid’s authenticity.
I enjoyed the careful pacing of the book: We learn along with the author who produced pre-ban absinthe in different styles; where and why lost caches turn up for sale at auction; how one person had enough expertise in rare bottles to be able to create fake absinthe (and how others learned enough to detect it); and how all the individual components sourced from all over Europe ended up in the final forged blends. Rail does a great job at building the story and following the trail, piece by piece.
The Impact
A theme that appears throughout the book is betrayal. The forger is not an anonymous seller of absinthe but a trusted expert who many of the players (thought they) knew well. He had been interacting with the rest of the collecting community on bulletin boards and Facebook groups and auction sites, and in private communications with other community members – all people that he later scammed – for many years. Was his motivation purely financial, or was there some dark psychological need to trick people?
As Rail traces the mystery, he introduces us to collectors he met via other collectors, and we soon get a sense of the wide community made of amateurs and professionals across Europe with a common interest in absinthe. Then when the fraud is exposed, we see additional rumors and accusations fly, trust destroyed, and various online absinthe groups fall apart. Beyond the hurt caused to individuals, the forger broke apart a community.
If You Like This
Rail mentions a few parallels of fakers in the wine world, such as the story that was made into the book The Billionaire’s Vinegar. There are also parallels (less forgery, more about finding lost caches) in Aaron Goldfarb’s recent book Dusty Booze, reviewed here on AlcoholProfessor.com.
One thing that differentiates The Absinthe Forger from these other works is that the author was actually able to taste a lot of the vintage absinthe as he met collectors and they shared their bounties with him. Rail, in turn, shares his tasting notes with us, and this made me extremely curious at times. Do I want to hunt down and try vintage absinthe, or is it worth the risk of getting a fake? Who can you trust after all?
October 16, 2024
New Booze Oct 16: Whiskies from Nearest Green, Woodinville, Larceny, and 2XO
Four new whiskies that arrived at Alcademics Global HQ:
Woodinville Bourbon Sauternes Finish (105 proof)
2XO Sneakerhead Blend (not aged in sneakers, I checked)
Nearest Green Tennessee Whiskey (84 proof)
Larceny Barrel Proof (third 2024 edition, 125 proof batch C924)
October 15, 2024
Ice Diamond Class in Los Angeles
I taught about 35 beverage directors and bartenders over three sessions how to carve ice diamonds and other shapes in Los Angeles at a villa that's a brand home for The Macallan scotch whisky. It was a great day!
Here are a few photos I took.
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Ice Class at Portland Cocktail Week 2024
I taught 50 students how to cut ice diamonds over three different one-hour sessions this year at Portland Cocktail Week!
Campari Academy generously sponsored the classes and provided all students with a copy of The Ice Book at the end.
Here are just a few pictures.
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October 12, 2024
The Iconic Starlite Room Shines Again
This story that I wrote first appeared on AlcoholProfessor.com.
A New Era for San Francisco’s Iconic Starlite
In early 2024, Starlite, the top-floor lounge in the Beacon Grand Hotel in San Francisco’s Union Square, reopened after a renovation. In its heyday, the venue was the hottest club in town, but recent iterations have underwhelmed. Now bar-hoppers and scenesters have adopted the spot again, thanks to a redesign and major drink menu relaunch by one of the City’s top cocktail creators.
A Long Line of Notable Bartenders
Starlite has a prime location on the 21st floor of a hotel located up one of San Francisco’s steep hills in the prime tourist shopping area of downtown. It offers tremendous views of the city, and people at lower elevations can look up to see the flashing lights in its windows from far away. Beyond its visibility, the space is iconic for its history of employing San Francisco’s top bartenders stretching back decades.
In the 1970s, a sub-category of the singles bar was the fern bar. The design of fern bars (including TGIFriday’s before it became a family restaurant chain), was a tavern-style look from the Gay Nineties (1890s, that is) with wood and polished brass, Tiffany lamps, and lots of ferns. One of the first of these bars in America was Henry Africa’s, first located in the South of Market neighborhood in San Francisco. The owner was a man who had changed his name to Henry Africa.
One person who worked for Henry Africa was Harry Denton. Denton went on to become a well-known bon vivant and host in the city, and at one point the bar now known as the Starlite was named Harry Denton’s Starlight Room.
Denton employed bartenders including Tony Abou-Ganim, who went on to create the Cable Car cocktail for the space. The drink is a Sidecar variation made with spiced rum. (Hey, it was the 1990s!) The drink became so iconic that pretty much every other iteration of the bar has included at least a nod to it on the menu.
Other now-famous bartenders who worked at the Starlight Room (born as the Starlite Roof in the 1940s) include Marcovaldo Dionysos (inventor of the Chartreuse Swizzle), Thomas Waugh, Jacques Bezuidenhout, and many more. Those bartenders, in turn, have trained many others over the years, so the San Francisco fern bar lineage continues to this day.
During the height of Harry Denton’s reign in the 1990s and early 2000s, the bar was regularly visited by sports stars and models and operated more like a nightclub. Customers ordered bottle service and champagne, and cocktails of their era. In 2005 Bezuidenhout launched a “million-dollar cocktails” program to cater to high rollers, featuring a French 75 variation with 1996 Dom Perignon and1979 Chateau de Ravignan Armagnac for $650. (That was a lot for a cocktail back then, but seems almost quaint today at the apex of peoples’ obsession with vintage bourbon and other spirits.)
Since that high point, the bar has changed direction several times (with cocktail reporters like me dutifully showing up to try each new menu) and the décor has often been redesigned along with it. The last version before reopening as Starlite (called Lizzie’s Starlight), which opened just before and closed during the pandemic, was particularly forgettable.
New Look, New Old Drinks
Starlite reopened earlier this year with another new look (designed by Alice Crumeyrolle) in a range of low lounge seating and mixed patterned fabrics, with yet another great mixologist at the helm. The menu was written by Scott Baird, co-founder of Trick Dog, though he now operates independently. Baird is a San Francisco native well known for using unexpected ingredient combinations in his delicious, crowd-pleasing drinks.
Baird’s menu features many familiar cocktails, transformed to match the modern era. There is a Cable Car updated with Don Q rum, Mommenpop blood orange vermouth, and Chinese five spice powder, which comes garnished with a gold and cinnamon sugar rim plus a flavored “fog” atop the glass in tribute to the City’s famously un-sunny weather.
Other drinks renewed from the 1990s include a Dirty 90s Martini (with olive oil-washed Grey Goose vodka and a blue cheese olive), the top-selling Porn Star Martini (also with Grey Goose, passionfruit, vanilla, lime, cacao, champagne, and glitter dust in the glass), and an Espresso Breakfast Martini (a clever mash up of the two drinks with orange marmalade and espresso liqueur).
There are older drinks too. The Swedish Gimlet combines the house lime cordial with Ahus Akvavit, while the Brown Derby has St. Germain elderflower liqueur added to the typical bourbon-grapefruit-honey drink. The Strawberry Grasshopper is a lighter take on the minty dessert drink, adding rum, lemon, and red bitter to the crème de menthe and crème de cacao combo.
Camera-Ready Cocktails
Baird uses modern techniques such as agar clarification of lime juice to create the drinks. “I’m using the skills learned over the last 20 years of bartending and applying it to these older drinks,” he says. So the cocktail names and flavors may be familiar, but they’re constructed differently and for the modern social media environment.
While the drinks are new interpretations of older drinks; they’re not necessarily more challenging versions of older drinks. Baird says. “Palates are simpler now [after the pandemic]. People want the environment and not complex drinks. They’re more interested in how things look.”
To meet those needs, Baird offers clear drinks that photograph better than ones with cloudy juice bits in them, and glitter-enhanced drinks that sparkle for the camera. Starlite offers these cocktails in expensive stemware, and the snacks, like caviar, baked oysters, and tuna crudo, are also equally photogenic.
Millennial Martinis
The drinks at Starlite reflect a larger trend of cocktails from the turn of the millennium appearing on menus again, often modified or completely transformed. Around San Francisco you’ll find a variation of the Appletini on the menus of trendy Mexican restaurant Lolo and Tallboy in Oakland (that also has a Dirty Martini and Cosmopolitan on offer), a Lychee Martini at The Rabbit Hole, and a Porn Star Martini at Pacific Cocktail Haven (P.C.H.) among others. It seems we are returning to the familiar flavors of the top drinks of 2000, when Harry Denton reigned in the post-fern bar era.
Much like the Starlite itself, everything old is new again – or rather, new and improved.
October 11, 2024
Why Are Spirits Called Spirits?
I wrote my take on this subject for The AlcoholProfessor, where the story first appeared.
Why is Distilled Alcohol Called Spirits?
The word “spirit” has many definitions but most center around either the idea of the conscious self as opposed to the physical body; or an attitude, as in “the spirit of the movement” or “in good spirits.”
But given that this is Alcohol Professor we are concerned with the origin of the boozier definition today; that of “a strong distilled alcoholic liquor.”
That definition comes in at number 21 out of 25 definitions of the noun “spirit” via Dictionary.com. Most of the other definitions have to do with thoughts and feelings or with ghosts and demons (as in Spirit Halloween) and other intangibles. But unlike the rest of the terms, the “spirits” in the form of distilled alcohol are real physical liquids that you can hold in a bottle or pour into a glass.
The Origin of the Word Spirit
Looking instead at the etymology (the study of the origin of words and how their meanings have changed throughout history) of the word, we can see that ‘spirit’ is probably derived from the Latin spiritus meaning "breathing” or “breath” and also the “breath of life" as in the force that animates people; the force that gives them life.
How do we get from the word for breath and the concept of consciousness to the word for whiskey and vodka? The answer is not so straightforward, and we have to go through alchemy to see it.
Alchemy and Distillation
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Doctors and Distillers by Camper English
To be clear, I am not a linguist or etymologist, but I have wrestled with this question as I wrote the book Doctors and Distillers. Or rather, I was wrestling with the concept that distillation of spirits came from the theory and practice of alchemy, and along the way I figured out why the word “spirit” would be used to describe the result.
Alchemy was not (only) a practice of magic or a profession of tricksters and scam artists. It was proto-science before science was formalized, and involved elements of minerology, chemistry, religion, astrology, astronomy, metallurgy, and more. It was an attempt to understand how the world works, and how to improve it.
And just how would they improve it? With distillation. Distillation was one of the most advanced tools of early chemistry, more sophisticated than things like filtration, boiling, corrosion, and dehydration. And it was a tool used to make both the philosopher’s stone and medicine.
The Western-style pot still dates to at least 300 ACE in Egypt, but we don’t have good evidence of distilled concentrated spirits in the West until after 1100. In that millennium in between, the alchemists used the still to separate materials; for example, metals that had been corroded by liquid acids.
Many different, complicated distillations were thought to be required to make the philosopher’s stone; a powder or other substance that would help speed up the supposedly natural evolution from lesser metals into perfect gold. The still was seen as a tool for extracting the intangible part of something to apply it to something else in order to change (or heal) it.
Medicinal Waters
At the same time, alchemists were using the same equipment to make distilled, preserved medicines and perfumes called “waters.” As we know from distilling red wine or yellow grains, everything that comes out of a still is clear, or the color of water. So things like rosewater and orange flower water were distillates from those plants.
Distillation leaves the solid parts behind in the still and imbues the resulting colorless liquid with the flavor and scent – and healing properties – of the original matter. Thus, the alchemists thought of this as creating a “water” with the “active energy” of the original material. And that energy could be applied to other things.
Much like creating the philosopher’s stone meant to ‘heal’ a lesser metal into gold, medicinal waters could heal humans into healthier form. This concept of active, reanimating energy from plants contained within distilled liquid medicine (the breath of life!) seems the most likely origin of the term “spirit.”
The Water of Life
We see real written proof of concentrated alcohol produced from the still before the year 1200 in Southern Italy. The distilled wine, used as medicine, was called the “water of wine” at first, then “burning water” as it could be set on fire, and eventually aqua vitae or “the water of life” when distillation technology improved, and the distillate’s superior healing and invigorating powers were explored further. (It can’t be understated how big of an improvement distilled spirits were to medicine; the alchemists thought they could prolong human life significantly with it.) The terminology became more formalized in writings of the 1200s and 1300s.
These terms were written in Latin, the language of science in the Middle Ages, before being translated into languages like French (where knowledge of distillation travelled from Italy), German, and other languages. “Aqua vitae” becomes “eau de vie” in French, “aquavit” in Scandinavia, and even “whiskey” in English via the Gaelic “uisge beatha.”
At the same time, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “spirit” comes from mid-thirteenth century French, based on the Latin word spiritus. This seems to fit our timeline perfectly – the water of life gives the breath of life to people who ingest it. By the late 1300s the word “spirit” comes to mean “distillate” directly.
Now, the Latin word spiritus also corresponds to directly “breath,” referring to wind and respiration, so could the origin of the word simply refer to the moist alcoholic vapor produced in the process of distilling?
That’s possible, but given the important symbolic medicinal properties of distilled alcohol, my vote is still for the definition of “spirit” as the breath of life, the active energy, or the animating principle of the universe distilled into liquid form.
October 10, 2024
From Salad in a Glass to Centrifuge: A Cocktail Evolution
This story was originally published on AlcoholProfessor.com.
From Salad in a Glass to Centrifuge: A Cocktail Evolution
Recently I was thinking about the early years of the craft cocktail renaissance, and how many of the drinks were quite… chunky. And I realized that we can track a lot of the progression in bartending via the various techniques for pulverizing, liquifying, and clarifying ingredients.
Bartenders in California (more than on the East Coast, at first) embraced farmers market produce and seasonality, but in the early 2000s there were only a few techniques they knew for getting those fresh solid ingredients into drinks. One was infusing things like citrus peels or porous fruit into vodka or other spirits directly. This worked well for some ingredients, and the late 1990s was full of pepper-infused vodka in Bloody Marys and strawberry-infused rum in Mojitos, for example.
Muddling
The other main tool for getting solid fruits, citrus, and other produce into liquid form was by using a big stick: the muddler. Ingredients like tomatoes, kiwi, and every form of herb (those Mojitos were everywhere) were pummeled with muddlers, shaken with ice, then dumped into glasses. The resulting cocktails were often a quarter solid, with mashed up produce in the bottom of the cup.
This style of cocktail with everything muddled together took on the nickname of “salad in a glass,” for every drink came with a full serving of fruits or veggies in the mix. They were sometimes challenging to consume, for all those solids often blocked the hole in drinking straws. One bar even manufactured a “stork” – a straw with a fork on the end- so that people could pick out the chunks and eat them after they were done drinking.
Semi-Solids and shrubs
Obviously, solids are hard to drink, and it didn’t take too long for top mixologists to start experimenting with other methods for transforming these ingredients into longer-lasting liquids. Crafty bartenders learned skills known to cooks and homemakers for millennia – the art of preserving seasonal produce. (While this may sound obvious today, keep in mind that in the 1990s nearly all drink ingredients came in shelf-stable bottled form; a lime wedge was as fresh as it got even in the “good” bars of the day.) Bartenders learned to cook fruit and spices into syrups; they canned jams and jellies; they pickled produce and preserved cherries in brandy.
At one point, bartenders relearned the lost art of making shrubs – vinegar-based fruit syrups. Shrubs were a form of preserved liquids that could flavor nonalcoholic cocktails as well as boozy ones, and for a while the best virgin drinks came with a dose of vinegar. Read how to tart up your cocktails using vinegar.
Old and New Methods
Other old-school techniques used in the early 2000s included the freeze-thaw method used to extract tomato water from tomatoes (for clear Bloody Mary variations), candying with sugar, and making oleo-saccharum from citrus peels. Some bartenders used dehydrators to concentrate the flavors of solid ingredients to use for subsequent infusions, long before the current trend of dehydrating citrus wheels for garnishes to reduce waste. Yet others took on fermentation as a form of preservation and flavor creation.
One technique that bartenders started experimenting with in the early 2010s (that continues to be popular today) is milk clarification. This technique for using milk to clarify and preserve cocktails dates to the 1700s, but was further explored and explained by people like Dave Arnold in his 2014 book Liquid Intelligence.
Clarified milk punches can last at refrigerator/cellar temperature for months or longer. This makes them suitable for batching, which speeds up service at the bar compared with all that á la minute muddling of the previous decade.
Clarified cocktails have very few solid particulates in the liquid, as those solids oxidize and spoil, and clog up tap lines if kegged. Knowing this encouraged bartenders to experiment with other methods of removing solids from even faintly cloudy liquids. Also in Liquid Intelligence, Arnold revealed several methods for clarification. One method was gelatin or agar agar clarification, which is similar to the milk punch method but using a different medium for filtration. Another method borrowed from winemaking is using fining agents that help particulates settle in a liquid.
The Future… Is the Past?
In recent years, the tools and technology have grown more sophisticated. Many bartenders now use a centrifuge to clarify cocktails and cocktail ingredients, often in combination with fining agents mentioned above. Sous vide equipment is often used to speed up flavor integration as well as promote consistency of the resulting syrups and infusions. In countries where it is legal, low-temperature distillation in rotovaps also allows for better flavor integration than cold or warm infusions. And bartenders are reaching for isolated acids (citric, malic, tartaric, phosphoric, etc) to replicate the flavor, and enhance, or extend the volume of citrus juices.
The increasing sophistication of processing methods may or may not have reached a high point, and in many ways we’re now reinventing the wheel. In the 1990s and earlier one could purchase powdered drink mixes made of flavors, sugar, and acids, or bottled “juices” that were essential oils with citrus acids. Rather than serving a guest a Zima or wine cooler, today’s bartender may pump out a clarified low-ABV cocktail from the soda gun or pop open a bottled or canned carbonated drink they assembled the previous month.
Whereas once you’d find bar menus bragging about house syrups and infusions, now those homemade ingredients look a lot like commercially-available bottled lime cordial and sour mix. And while the dedication to lowering waste by using these techniques at the bar is admirable, often it comes at the cost of fresh flavor. Some bars’ drinks now taste like beverage versions of Sweet Tarts or sour Nerds candy as all the ingredients have been isolated and reconfigured into nearly shelf-stable forms.
At some point we’ll need to ask ourselves if our increasingly sophisticated techniques and technology for improving cocktails are making them taste worse than they were in the 1990s. I, for one, would prefer that fresh-from-the-farmer’s-market flavor of 2006-era cocktails. But on the other hand, I don’t miss the chunks at all.
October 9, 2024
Sherry Books, Then and Now
I picked up this newish (2022) book The Book of Sherry Wines by Cesar Saldana from the SF public library.
It's over 400 pages, mostly text, and I think I might need to buy myself a copy. It's not on Amazon but you can find it at various stores online, including my local Omnivore Books.
For a long time the Julian Jeffs book has been the ultimate sherry history. I have the 2004 version but it appears there was a 2014 update. It was first published in 1961!
Here are all the sherry books I own (and one I'm borrowing). The Big Book of Sherry Wines (bottom left) is great for it imagery, and you can still find it used online.
September 28, 2024
World Class Kenya Winner Cites The Ice Book
My news alert brought this to my attention: the winner of World Class Kenya cited some books she used to prepare for the competition and The Ice Book was one of them. I think that's pretty neat.
