As anyone who has suffered through more than three minutes of conversation with me knows, I am from the desert—the Mojave Desert, specifically, and I consider it to be the most beautiful place on Earth. Not beautiful in the way people usually talk about their favorite celebrity crush or Ansel Adams calendar, but beautiful—the kind that is weighted with a reverence and love that language will always fail. It is my spiritual and physical homeland, and though it is my greatest hope that I die on a glacier somewhere in the Arctic Circle, the desert is where I will be buried. Here, let fellow desert rat, shitkicker, and all-around visionary Ed Abbey say it better than I ever could:

I am here not only to evade for a while the clamor and filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus but also to confront, immediately and directly if it’s possible, the bare bones of existence, the elemental and fundamental, the bedrock which sustains us. I want to be able to look at and into a juniper tree, a piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as it is in itself, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities, anti-Kantian, even the categories of scientific description. To meet God or Medusa face to face, even if it means risking everything human in myself. I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with a nonhuman world and yet somehow survives still intact, individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock.

That’s part of it, but not even close to all of it, and that will have to do for those that don’t get it. Simply, and rather crudely put, the desert doesn’t give a shit, and it doesn’t pretend, or let you pretend, any different. It is what it is, and given the nature of it, it is nearly impossible to pretend otherwise.

So what does all of this pseudomystical, Heideggerian horseshit have to do with gin? Plenty, boss. Gin is uncompromising, unwilling, and unconcerned. Despite all attempts to pacify it, dilute it, tame it, make it hip, and replace it with vodka made from grapes, gin perseveres. There it sits, every day, on the shelves of my work, gathering dust, while the hordes of unwashed mommies in white capris scoop up lesser spirits by the cartful. Sure, gin gets love from the cocktail geeks, bartenders, and octogenarian alcoholics, but really, it is the perpetual underdog. There’s something about the botanicals, the forest floor funk of gin, which makes it cranky, unapproachable, and occasionally unlovable. For most people, anyway.

Me, I love gin, and I get a little pissy when it’s debased, whether it is by callous bartenders with unripe limes and crappy tonic or by sloppy distillers out for a quick buck. So when North Shore Distillery sent us not one, but two American-made gins, I was more than a little skeptical.

North Shore has two gins on the market: the No. 6, a ‘modern’ dry gin designed to appeal to the unconverted, and the No. 11, a gin made for classic gin lovers. Both are made in small batches in Chicago (GO BEARS!) by Master Distiller Derek Kassebaum, his wife Sonja, and one more part-time employee—this isn’t exactly Brown-Forman we’re talking about here. So how do these spirits stack up against household favorites like Martin Miller’s and Beefeater? Continue →

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you will have seen the name Dr. Cocktail, as well as the title of his book, Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails, which sadly went out of print last year. If you haven’t been able to secure a copy of the original or are perhaps hearing about it for the first time, do I have good news for you!

On July first the expanded-and-improved Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails will hit the shelves of bookstores and discerning cocktail bars around the world. There will be much rejoicing and tippling when that happens, and you can prepare for that day by pre-ordering your copy from Amazon right now.

It’s another Mixology Monday, and your well-lubricated friends at Sloshed! are taking a break from our usual Monday diet of Proust and Miller High Life to participate in the time-honored tradition of smelting classic cocktails and reshaping them in our grotesque images. And it just so happens that this week’s MxMo is helmed by RumDood (whom apparently believes his nom de plume is so singular as to be exempt from traditional grammar…like Cher), so our involvement is nearly mandatory.

Our friend Matt—rum aficionado, bearded alchemist, devourer of exotic meats—has a really bad habit: he leaves booze over at our house. It doesn’t Matter (look, I’m an advertising hack!) whether it’s TV night or a gathering of friends old and new, he never arrives with less than four bottles and always leaves with nothing. While we here at Sloshed! have abided this naughty behavior (not mention other unspeakable acts of generosity and antiquated manliness), the line in the proverbial sandy beach has been drawn, and our revenge—naturally, in the form of a highly intoxicating cocktail—is at hand. Behold the El Centro Cooler, forged in blood, named after Matt’s hometown, and made almost entirely from the still-warm corpses of ingredients he has thoughtfullylessly orphaned at our bar. Proceed if you dare! Continue →

I can picture the meeting now: after a dozen sleepless hours trying to come up with a marketing gimmick that will appeal to both the Cosmopolitan-swilling urban female and the more discerning alcoholics among us, a young man in a pastel shirt jumps up from the table and says, “I got it!” His comrades, other young hacks with artfully disheveled hair, perk up. For hours, no one has been able to come up with anything clever, sexy, or seductive about a gin that doesn’t taste like gin. All the old saws have been pulled out and discarded; the familiar strategies of plunging necklines and speakeasy nostalgia exhausted. The man pauses for a moment, enjoying the warm glow of epiphany like a rattlesnake on a hot rock, and then unleashes the proverbial dragon: “Gin. It ends in ‘in’. How many words begin with ‘in’?” Blank stares around the wooden veneer. The man continues. “Invigorating? Inviting? Insistent?” Still, no one bites.

He folds his hands, and then spreads his fingers slowly part, indicating the enormity, the uncoiling serpentine length of this brilliant idea. “How about Ginvigorating? Ginviting?” He pauses again, allowing the proper time for this to sink in. The eyes flicker with recognition of the potency of a great hook. “We begin as many words as possible with gin! Think of the possibilities! So no matter how much this gin doesn’t actually taste like gin, we can use language—insanely clever language—to insist that it does!” The table hums, and then explodes with ginormous calamity of this fortuitous, gindustrious breakthrough.

I know, I know—it’s fish gin a barrel to make fun of the often preposterous marketing gimmicks of advertising agencies when it’s the spirit itself that really matters. So how about that spirit?

G’vine Gin is made from grapes; Ugni Blanc grapes from the Cognac region of France, to be precise. The neutral grape spirit is ginfused with nine botanicals—ginger roots, licorice, green cardamom, cassia bark, coriander, juniper berries, cubeb berries, nutmeg and lime—to give it the right gintessence.

You might be thinking, then, “Huh. So it’s like wine?” You’d be wrong though, because this is gin. How do I know? Because it smells like gin! Rosemary, juniper, the usual suspects. You might respond, “Oh! So like a flavored vodka?” Wrong agin, cowboy. This is gin. Made from grapes. That doesn’t really taste like gin.

What does it taste like? Well, when I was 15, I had bad skin, and I was sensitive about it. We didn’t have enough money for that fancy ass Clearasil stuff, so my Dad, ever sensitive to maintaining the delicate balance between economy and social humiliation, bought me a giant bottle of witch hazel from the old apothecary. I applied this daily to my face, and thanks to an unwieldy spout, managed to shoot myself in both my mouth and ocular cavities a few times. My acne didn’t go away, and neither did the taste of witch hazel. G’vine bears a remarkable similarity to witch hazel, but a bit fruitier and more expensive. Unfortunately, my mouth does not have pimples, so G’vine is of little use as an astringent.

I also gindeavored to make a cocktail with G’vine. I chose the coyly named “G-Spot” from their website. This saucy little cocktail features G’vine, sweet and sour mix (I subbed lemon juice because I blew all my sour mix making El Niño Margaritas from Chili’s last night), and Chambord. Sadly, this excursgin failed to produce any discernible flavor (outside of sweet), to say nothing of a face-melting, whole body orgasm that may or may not exist. A sad day in Mudville, gindeed.

There are people that G’vine will appeal to, however. They are called vodka drinkers, and there are more than enough of them at your local meat emporium to keep this thing afloat for another year or two, provided the marketing catches on. As a gin though, well, this is a ginsul…it isn’t very good. Pass.

45/100

In 2006, I ran a post entitled “The Setup,” meant to be a primer on developing a home bar. I’ve been thinking about that post recently as I contemplate our ever-increasing stable of bottles. There has been a pretty hefty spike in home bartending lately, and I field more questions about liquor, equipment, books and bitters than I used to. It seems the increased profile of classic cocktails, the availability of better quality products and the questionable economy have all conspired to bring the home bar into clear focus for many people who hadn’t considered it before.

As such, I think it’s time to revisit the home bar setup and give you the SLOSHED!-approved basic bar, 2009 edition. In my original post, I wrote:

You should spend money on your bar.

This doesn’t mean you should spend a lot of money on your bar, but think of it as an investment. If you are going to go so far as to develop an actual entity you are going to refer to as your bar, take some pride in it. This is an endeavor for you, by you, and you should work at making it worth your time.

You can set up a small, reasonable bar for a reasonable investment. I have heard before, and would agree, that a fair expectation for a “good” home bar will cost you somewhere in the neighborhood of $200-300, depending on your tastes. A bar on a smaller scale will, naturally, result in a smaller bill.

As to stocking your bar, the bargain basement selection I am willing to entertain in liquor is whiskey and gin. Most people will include vodka in this—and I won’t necessarily disagree—but you can’t call it a bar unless you at least have whiskey and gin.

I still agree with most of this, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that you must have whiskey and gin to call it a bar. The best advice that I can give on starting up a home bar is this: buy quality products and start with what you like to drink.

If your favorite drink is a vodka Martini, start by purchasing good (not necessarily the most expensive, but good quality) vodka, vermouth and olives and work on learning how to make the absolute best vodka Martini that you can. Once you have mastered that, you should branch out into other, similar drinks—a Gimlet, Vesper, gin Martini, Gibson, or Aviation. This approach means you won’t be stuck with a bunch of bottles of liquor you don’t use very often, as well as building up your liquor cabinet gradually. The ingredients for a single cocktail like a Martini will usually be in the neighborhood of $30-40.

If you keep the focus on a drink or two that you especially like and gradually branch out into new cocktails and spirits, you will find it easier to develop an appreciation for spirits that are not in your repertoire and it will allow you to slowly build up your bar without damaging your bank account or overwhelming your palate. Most cocktailians that I know all have some deep, dark secret drink we don’t like to discuss that started us on this path, so there’s no shame in being a novice. It just means there are lots of surprises waiting for you.

This, of course, is the reasonable and measured way to approach a home bar. If, on the other hand, you prefer to jump straight into the pool rather than dipping a toe in first, here are my overall recommendations for building yourself a classic cocktail bar, updated and improved. My original thoughts are included for comparison, with revised notes below each quoted passage. Continue →