LUPEC Boston’s SNOW BALL

Looking for a fun way to round out the month of January? After how much I’ve been working lately, I am definitely in the need of a party.  This Monday night, January 30, join me and many other Boston imbibers for a winter prom for a good cause.  LUPEC Boston has organized its first winter prom, THE SNOWBALL.  Donned in festive attire, we will dance the night away to tunes by TJ Connelly, sip delicious cocktails by guest bartenders Josh Childs and Beau Sturm, and get nostalgic by posing for photos.  And all of this fun will benefit local women’s charity On the Rise, a Cambridge-based day program for women who are homeless and living in crisis.

Check out LUPEC’s website for more information, but here are the basics:

Monday, January 30th, 7-11 p.m.
Silvertone, 69 Bromfield St, Boston, MA (617) 338-7887

Tickets: $10, first come, first served [100% of ticket proceeds will be donated to On the Rise]

Drink tickets allotted for clothing & other donation items***
Spiked punch and cocktails $5-7 each

Creative prom attire encouraged – dress to impress!

***Items acceptable for donation include:
Thermal undergarments in all sizes
Backpacks
Flashlights
Whistles for emergencies
Charlie Cards in denominations of $5
Durable winter boots and winter shoes
Multi-packs of NEW undergarments like sports socks, sports bras, and underwear in all sizes

I hope that I will see many of you Monday night.  Let’s have a little fun for a good cause! Cheers!

Drawing with beer

Even my day job surrounds me with boozey libations.  This is a drawing made with beer. For opening week at the Gardner Museum (where I spend my days), Italian artist Cesare Pietroiusti led visitors in a drawing project in which ordinary materials like beer, tea, coffee, ink and salt water were used to create magical works of art.   You’d be surprised how beautiful these ordinary liquids can be.  Impermanence is a theme of the project.  Each visitor creates a drawing, but they must then leave it for another visitor to take.  He/she then takes a drawing created by a previous day’s visitor.  And each drawing has a condition under which it must eventually be passed along.  This one reads: the holder of this drawing commits to give it away, three months after having received it, to a person of their choice who lives south of them.  So, you never know, any friends living south of Massachusetts just may get this drawing one day.

The reopening of the museum with its new addition by architect Renzo Piano has kept me quite busy these last few months– hence the infrequent posts.  A couple benefits of the last couple weeks of working long days were meeting and watching Bill Cunningham do his thing and hearing YoYo Ma play.   The museum is now open.  I will rest up and be back up to more cocktail adventures very soon.  Cheers!

And here's the drawing I made

Nips, nips and more nips!

Yesterday while at my brother’s for a post-Christmas brunch, I discovered that he has a collection of over 90 nips!  Most of these are from Dad’s collection which he started early 1970s and includes many standards but also some unique finds.  Considering I am the booze expert in the family, I am not quite sure how this amazing collection went primarily to my older brother and partly to my younger sister.  Hmmmm….

I thought I would share some of my favorites.  The collection includes lots of fairly standard bottles of products that are popular today.  These are 20-30 years old, so its neat to see how packaging changes over time (or in some cases, doesn’t change much at all).

CANADIAN CLUB

BEEFEATER

DRAMBUIE

Some fun mixers like OLD MR. BOSTON SOUR MIX

 Some things I have never tasted like MANDARINE NAPOLEON

Developed by French chemist and friend of Napoleon, Antoine-Francois de Fourcroy in the early 1890s, this Belgium liquor is made with a cognac base flavored with herbs and the extracted oils of Sicilian tangerines. I’ve never tasted this, so cannot comment on its flavor, but one cocktail blogger likened the flavor to Sunny-D.

And then things get really fun

I absolutely love this adorable bottle of BOLS CHERRY BRANDY in the shape of a pig

GALLIANO

“Fond of things Italiano? Try a sip of Galliano.”

LIQUORE STEGA

Made in Benevento, Italy, a legendary gathering place for witches, this liqueur is named for the legendary tale; strega is the Italian word for “witch.”

VANDERMINT, the chocolate and mint liquor from Holland

The opaque white bottle with blue windmill images is reminiscent of Delft tiles and the top is shaped like a tulip.

And now my absolute favorite:

HOUSE of KOSHU, RAINBOW LIQUEUR

Sets of these mini-bottles of flavored Japanese liqueurs were popular in the late 1960s.  The bottles, featuring wooden Kokeshi-style doll head, each contain a different liqueur, in a rainbow assortment of colors.   The bottle below is Sumire (a violet liqueur); the others in these sets were Sakura (cherry), Mizuiro (blue curacao), Mikam (mandarin orange), Banana (banana), Reishu (melon), Midori (menthe).

And that is my brother’s fabulous bar top in all these photos. Cheers!

What I’m drinking this holiday season: Sangre de Cristo

At this time of year, I crave rich, spicy, warm flavors in my cocktails.  And so begins my love affair with the Sangre de Cristo, featured in Imbibe magazine’s recent piece on spiced cocktails for the holiday season.  The cocktail draws inspiration from the flavor profile of a traditional mulled wine and is a gorgeous deep red color (hence the name, “blood of Christ”).  Featuring sweet vermouth infused with ginger and cinnamon, combined with red wine and honey syrup, this drink meets all my criteria for a holiday cocktail—lusciously spiced, rich and complex flavor, yet also light (holiday parties can be a marathon, no need to be wearing a lampshade as a hat after a couple drinks).  I served this as a punch at my holiday party (huge hit!), have been sipping the infused sweet vermouth on its own, and enjoyed this cocktail as I finished my holiday wrapping.

Infusing the sweet vermouth is super simple.  Combine 1 liter of sweet vermouth (I used Martini and Rossi) with 1 ounce of peeled and diced ginger (about the size of your thumb) and two cinnamon sticks broken into pieces.  Steep in an airtight container overnight (I did 2 nights actually).  Fine strain and store in refrigerator.  And this infused vermouth is absolutely delicious on its own over a couple rocks.

Sangre de Cristo (by Alon Munzer, Heather Mojer and Ned Greene, Hungry Mother)

2 oz ginger & cinnamon-infused sweet vermouth

1 oz Grenache

½ oz honey syrup (equal parts honey and water)

2 dashes orange bitters

Stir together in a rocks glass over ice. Garnish with cinnamon stick.

Happy Holidays to you and yours! Cheers!

Coming Soon: backbar in Union Square

Soon Union Square will offer imbibers a new bar to sidle up to.  The folks behind the Journeyman are creating a cocktail bar behind their establishment appropriately called backbar.  I recently sat down with bar manager (and my favorite bartender), Sam Treadway to chat about his plans for the bar.

When Sam left Drink a little over a year ago many Boston imbibers were quite disappointed.  But after a year at the Waikiki Edition in Hawaii, we happily welcome him back and are excited about what he’s creating at backbar.  As with many of his previous jobs, Sam credits this current opportunity in part to his friend Ben Sandroff (his talent obviously had something to do with it as well) who connected him with the folks at Journeyman.  While paradise was a nice place to live, the opportunity to open a brand new bar, as well as his familial and friend connections brought him back east.

Having spent many hours across the bar from Sam, I know first-hand the value he places on hospitality.  He credits his first bartending gig at a local tavern in Northfield, Minnesota with instilling this value in him.  Back in those days he wasn’t mixing Sazeracs (speaking of which, he admitted that the first time he sipped a Sazerac he hated it; his palette just wasn’t quite ready yet) or serving up cocktails with infused syrups and bitters; he was pouring beers and whiskey for his regulars.  It wasn’t what was in the glass that had an impact, but rather the relationships he developed with his regulars.  And that’s the kind of environment he wants to cultivate at backbar—one where every customer, regular or not, feels like they are being welcomed into a friend’s home.  Simply put, he says, “I’m creating the bar that I would want to go to.”

This is Treadway’s first foray into starting a bar from the ground up.  While some aspects like formulating his cocktail menu, visiting antique shops for décor, and picking out glassware engage his creativity, others, like design of the bar space, take him outside his comfort zone.  But both seem to be a welcome challenge for the 27 year old who is excited about the opportunity to not only create yummy cocktails, but also be the vision behind the place.

And what about the drinks?  Since his days pouring draughts in Minnesota and that first unappealing Sazerac, Sam has come to appreciate both the simplicity and complexity of mixing drinks.   To that end, the menu will organized into four sections—classics (his opportunity to “recreate history in a glass”), new creations (a place to experiment with ingredients and techniques), specials/seasonal (following suit with the Journeyman’s approach in the kitchen) and “the tradesman.”  This final section will feature what bartenders like to drink when they are out.  To this end, I learned that Sam prefers beer (something light and drinkable like Blue Moon), a gin & tonic, or straight whiskey.  Since I have enjoyed countless cocktails made by Treadway, I have no doubt the menu will be fantastic.

I have it on good authority that backbar will open very, very soon.  See you there. Cheers!

Boston Shakin’ it Up

Last Sunday night the Greater Boston Beverage Society transformed the House of Blues with spirits of all kinds and lots of festive activities (Who doesn’t love an old school photo booth?) for the fabulously fun Shakin’ It Up.  Formed earlier this fall by Alexei Beratis from Of the Spirits Beverage Consulting and Jamie Walsh of Stoddards, the Greater Boston Beverage Society is a not-for-profit organization that aims to preserve and promote Boston’s cocktail culture and spirits history while also giving back to local and national charities.  Shakin’ It Up was a precursor to next October’s Boston Cocktail Summit.  Its about time we had our own cocktail celebration!

There were so many spirits to taste and some many cocktails to enjoy, I can’t possibly share them all with you, so here are a few highlights seen through photographs taken by my friend Ashleigh Stanczak.

Any event with a Fernet Branca van is guaranteed to be a good time.  We couldn’t resist.

My favorite drinks of the night were at the Four Roses bar, and its not just because the space was staffed by the double charm of John of Citizen Public House and Noon of Umami.  The warm Autumn Breeze punch made with squash infused bourbon that Noon was serving was fantastic.  Imagine a boozy mouthful of perfect fall flavors.  It was so good I went back for a second taste.

The Autumn Breeze

Wash and slice into 2 inch wedges of 1.5 lb of each squash (Butternut, Kuri Squash, Carnival or any seasonal variety)

Combine with:

2 cups Local Raw Honey
2 cups Orange Juice
1 cup brown sugar
3 pods of Vanilla
8 Star Anise
8 Cinnamon Sticks
Peel of 2 oranges
Toss in a deep bottom roasting pan. Roast at 400F for 50- 60 minutes

Pour 4 bottles of Yellow Label Four Roses Bourbon over while still warm. Let cool. Keep the squash infused for 2 days.
After 2 days, strain out the solid from the infusion.

Serve the infused bourbon slightly warmed up with a few drops of Chocolate bitters. De-licious!

The most unique thing I tasted was the Old Potrero 18th century style Rye  Whiskey served by the Origin Beverage Company.  Produced by AnchorSteam in San Francisco, this 100% rye mash is distilled in a small copper pot stilland then aged in handmade oak barrels.  If you want to know what our whiskey drinking predecessors were drinking, try this stuff.

There were a number of photo booths around the event, and I was drawn in over and over again by the fun sunglasses.  Here’s a favorite pair:

Stay tuned for more info about Greater Boston Beverage Societies activities.  See you at October’s Cocktail Summit. Cheers!

Photos by Ashleigh Stanczak, Ashleigh Stanczak Photography http://ashleighstanczak.com

On the Bar

For Boston imbibers, making a decision about what bar to go to on any given evening just got a little bit easier.  If you are like me, bartenders are a very important part of your drinking experience.  You want to know if someone will be able to make your favorite drink.  And perhaps even more intriguing for me is whether or not he/she will suggest something new based on my preferences that will soon become a new favorite.

Well now, there’s a way to know when your favorite bartender is “on the bar” with a new free app (for iPhone and Android) created by TJ Connelly and Ian Stanczyk.  The app is called On the Bar (www.getonthebar.com).

The concept is simple: Bartenders sign up and when they are on shift, they “check in.” Users (like me and you) can then “follow” our favorite bartenders to get notification when they are working; you can also scan the list of bartenders and bars at any time to check out what’s happening.  Be sure to check out the descriptions of the bars–you just may notice a familiar name amongst the authors.

So, if you’re a bartender in Boston please sign up so your fans can follow you. And if you’re a cocktail enthusiast, get the app and start showing your favorite bartenders some love.  A recent piece in the Globe introduced the app to the city, so get on board. Cheers!

Speed Rack, Boston

Old school tunes like Rob Bass and DJ E-Z Rock’s Joy and Pain were playing. The crowd was cheering while sipping almost ten different punches and nibbling on food from Toro, Coppa, Myers+Chang, Citizen Public House, Trina’s Starlite Lounge and Eastern Standard.  Sounds like a fun event, right? And I didn’t even mention that there were eight of Boston’s fabulous female bartenders shaking and stirring up a storm.

This was the scene last Monday as a whole bunch of us cocktail enthusiasts and industry folk came together to cheer on Boston’s best female bartenders and to raise money for breast cancer research.  Speed Rack, founded by LUPEC New York’s Ivy Mix and Lynnette Marrero, is a speed-bartending competition with an eye toward precise cocktails.  Each round four judges choose a cocktail for a pair of competitors to make.  Time is only one factor.  Upon tasting the drinks, a judge can add or subtract to a bartender’s time based on their judgement of the  quality and accuracy of the cocktail.  So, these ladies need speed and precision.

Round after round the competition thinned from eight to two.   It finally came down to Kelly Unda (Harvest) and Sabrina Kershaw (Citizen/Noir).  It was close, but in the end Sabrina was victorious.   She’ll have a chance to compete against winners of other city’s events (look out Portland, LA, DC, Vegas, San Francisco, Houston, Denver and Chicago) for the title Miss Speed Rack.

Thanks to the ladies of LUPEC Boston and LUPEC NY for creating a great event to raise money for a very good cause that has touched the lives of way too many of us.  To making strides towards a cure– Cheers!

And the winner is...Sabrina Kershaw with MC Chris Patino (Photo courtesy of Chris Snyder)

A few of the barbacks sporting the ladies racer-back tanks. I couldn't resist sharing this. Love it. (Photo courtesy of Chris Snyder)

Just another Thursday evening at The Citizen

I have found a new favorite place in Boston—the comfy, cozy leather bench-seat at the end of the bar at The Citizen.  Just a 10 minute walk from my office, for two weeks in a row I have retreated to The Citizen with friends to relax from the stress of work.  And that fabulous seat at the end of the bar has awaited and welcomed me with open arms—is it possible to fall in love with a chair? As a short woman who has issues with bar stools, this is a perfect perch for me—no chance of falling off this thing (yes, I did fall off a bar stool once and no, I was not drunk when it happened), it is pretty comfortable, and I get a great view of the entire bar from this end.

But a bar is of course about more than seating.  John satisfied my request for something bitter and rich (it was quite a damp day here in Boston today, so I wanted something with intense flavors) with a cocktail called Johan goes to Mexico (a creation by Drink bartender Josey Packard).  Paying homage to Dr. Johan Siegert, the 19^th century doctor who created Angostura bitters, this drink includes a half ounce of Angostura (yum!) alongside Mezcal Vida (hello, Mexico!), lemon juice and demerara syrup.  Wow, what a fabulous drink!

Your whiskey club card is like an adult library card

And then I took the leap and joined The Citizen’s Whiskey Club.  The concept is simple: explore the wonders and variety of whiskey by trying about 100 options on the bar’s list. And when you’ve made your way through the list, you get a special single barrel Four Roses bourbon and an engraved glass to use on each visit.  Its important to have goals, right?  I started off with Black Maple Hill.  Made in Bardston, Kentucky, this small batch bourbon is aged for an average of 8 years in oak casks.  The result is a butterscotchy sweetnesss which makes this go down pretty easy.

If in the months to come you are looking for me, check the leather bench-seat at The Citizen and most likely I’ll have a whiskey in hand–I do have about 90 more to try.  Cheers!

Happy Hour in DC

Last week I was in DC visiting my sister and her family.  In addition to some fabulous family time, I was happy to have the chance to spend time with my friend Paula who has recently moved to the Capitol.

Our first stop was PS7 where we quickly became fans of the daily happy hour punch made with gin, allspice dram, grapefruit juice and Peychauds bitters.  It was light and refreshing while also providing a rich mouthful of flavor.  It was the perfect way to relax after a long afternoon of wandering the hall of the National Gallery looking at fabulous works of art.

Under the direction of Gina Chersevani, PS7’s cocktail program takes inspiration from the farm.  The menu features drinks with ingredients like coriander, cilantro, rhubarb and pickled asparagus.  I was immediately drawn to the B&B (&b)—Maker’s Mark bourbon, beet syrup and bitters.  Before I say anything about the taste, check out the gorgeous deep red color.

I loved this drink. It didn’t taste as “beety” as I imagined it would. Instead the beet syrup functioned to bring an earthiness that mellowed the boozy taste of the bourbon, while producing a slightly viscous quality.  Vanilla used in the creation of the syrup adds a sweetness that rounds out the flavor.  Earthy, sweet, and rich—this was a uniquely delicious drink.

We then moved on to Proof.  The first drink on the cocktail menu caught my eye—the Root Cocktail with Partilda Blanco Tequila, Ramos Pinto White Port and Chartreuse.  I was intrigued by the combination of three ingredients that each have quite a bit going on on their own, but they all played nicely together sharing the class as cleverly and collegially.  It went down quite easily as I chatted the night away with Paula and nibbled on amazing sweet potato gnocchi.

Cheers to DC and its cocktails! See you again soon.