Angostura bitters rationing, scary headlines, cocktail trends and you

I almost wrote on Facebook "Oh nos!!!!!1 They're takin' our Angostura bitters away, hide the women and children!!!1" in response to a friend linking me to a Gothamist post basically similar to an earlier Eater post on the Angostura bitters shortage that was posted the day before. However, I've realized over the years that sarcasm doesn't really carry all that well on the internet sometimes.

At the end of a long work day the headlines were alarming since this is something threatening the supply a good cocktail. However, I still chuckled at William Tigertt's funny tweet: "Panic! Angostura bitter plant shutdown. NYC distributors rationing 3 bottles per account. Hording begins as cocktail doomsday clock hits 11."

Yes, if Angostura were to disappear off the face of the earth, it would be tragic, but luckily that wasn't really the story. Angostura bitters will not never exist, ever, you're probably just going to have to wait a bit for it. In fact, guys, it's January! The Bitter Truth folks announced that their line bitters will be available in the United States starting this month (and y'all can stop hitting up Stephan Berg).

Of course, I won't poo-poo just how much of a pain this is going to be for bartenders and managers. But at the same time, if you're a regular reader of Nation's Restaurant News (wink wink nudge nudge) when it comes to day-to-day operations, shortages, discontinuations, hiccups, or any number of things are all part of being in the industry and the controlled chaos that is the back of the house.

If anything, from talking with bartenders who work in the bars and establishments that a shortage of this nature would affect, I always got the impression they also juggle with this sort of thing all the time in different scales. Two words for you: seasonal fruit. In fact, if we want to start up some widespread rioting and the looting of fruit stands and produce sections across America in the impending Cocktailopocalypse, let's talk about cold weather in Florida threatening citrus crops. (My next blog entry title, "Yo Angostura, imma let you finish bringing the supply back up, but the lack of citrus due to unseasonably cold weather is what will clearly spell the doom of cocktails for all time. FOR ALL TIME" or "I have no lemons, but I must squeeze").

Though, honestly, with my years of watching horror and disaster movies, I'm going to have to take a quick break here to knock on wood simply because displaying this sort of naysaying is how most of these movies start: "Pffft, a volcano? In Los Angeles? Please, I'm going to go about my daily life despite ominous talking heads on the morning news warning me about...OH GOD I JUST STEPPED IN LAVA. WHY."

Joking aside, on a day-to-day basis, there are many things on cocktail bar's menu that can go wrong. Ever sit at one of the city's fine cocktail establishments and order a drink only to have your bartender tell you, "Oh, we actually didn't get [cocktail ingredient] today, but I can make you a variation using something else" or "We're out of [cocktail ingredient], but if you're interested in this particular spirit/flavor I can also whip something up for you."

Angostura is irreplaceable, of course, however, let's not forget that our greatest weapon in the fight to stave Cocktailopocalypse isn't any one ingredient or an inanimate thing. It's bartenders and their knowledge. You know, sort of like how the proverb goes: "Give a man a fish..." etc., etc.? Except, it's more like, "Well, who's going to fish the fish if there's no one around who knows how to fish anyway?" One of the things I've heard a couple of times is that one of the biggest hits to cocktail culture recovery after Prohibition was the diaspora of the skilled people who worked behind the bar. Not having good aged spirits around didn't help either, but even with great products we need those who know how to use it.

I truly do hope that bartenders will be able to get through the inconveniences and this shortage is only temporary.

At the same time, as we talk of bitters, we should also keep in mind that there are people out there who work hard to try and recreate incarnations of other bitters of the past and others experiment in creating bitters and flavorings all their own. So even in times hardship and shortages we also have people always working towards innovating and creating.

Manhattan Cocktail Classic Preview is looming on the horizon

As most of you probably know by now, New York finally has its own cocktail extravaganza.

Tickets for the Manhattan Cocktail Classic preview (Oct. 3-4) went on sale on Labor Day. According to Manhattan Cocktail Classic founder and director Lesley Townsend, tickets for Sasha Petraske's seminar on the home bar sold out in a blazing three seconds.

However, I've been hearing it through the grapevine that there are still some tickets available, especially with certain details got hammered out a little later than others. For example, tickets are still up for grabs for the late add-on barware seminar with Don Lee, Alex Day and Greg Boehm .

You can still buy tickets to pick Phil Ward's brains at Mayahuel, hear about Prohibition in cool accents from Charlotte Voisey and Simon Ford, and party and rub shoulders with folks at the Gala.

Seriously, though, three seconds? Even last week's much hyped pre-sale of tickets for the first of Pavement's reunion shows didn't sell out that fast.

"It was really really fun to watch," Lesley said over the phone about tracking ticket sales. "The first 10 minutes were absolutely ridiculous. I was laughing and screaming the whole time."

If you note, the word "preview" is in the title. So to alleviate any confusion that might still be out there, this is a preview of the Manhattan Cocktail Classic. The actual Classic is taking place May 14-18. Funny story: Lesley said that at first the plan was to make it a sister event with San Francisco's Cocktail Week, but too many people wanted to celebrate drinking and drink-making on both coasts, so the date was shifted by a whole week. There's still a small overlap, but enough of a buffer.

"I certainly didn’t think it’d get this much attention. The whole point of preview initially was to drum up media attention for the main event," Lesley said.

It's not hard to see why the preview itself is such a big deal. It's the anticipation. With the history and current cocktail and bartending millieu in New York, it sort of makes you go, "Why wasn't this organized before?"

Exactly the thought that Lesley had when she sent out an email about a year and a half ago, innocently asking the folks who now make up the advisory board why New York didn't have its own event like Tales of the Cocktail or San Francisco Cocktail Week. Next thing you know, a chain of emails started.

"Every time I saw any of them over the course of the next year, they’d kick me in the shins. And I finally just realized if I didn’t do it right now, it was going to happen. It was only a matter of time because there was such a desire and a need for this to happen," Lesley explained. "Truthfully the cocktail community in New York is so strong...for us to not have our own event? It was long overdue."

The preview is supposed to be a little taste of what the real thing will be like. It's a little bit of education and a little bit of the New York bar experience. There are seminars, but also several of the city's bars and cocktail lounges, like the Clover Club and Pegu Club, are part of "Stories from Behind the Bar." For the "Stories" series of events, people can purchase a ticket to hang out in some of the bars on Saturday afternoon to see the place when it's not packed and doing business and get a chance to talk to the people working there. And, of course, sip on some drinks.

The idea is not only to break down any preconceptions of exclusivity that might keep some people away from visiting these bars and encourage them to go out and enjoy the establishments in New York, but also to acknowledge some of the blurring of lines between the consumer and professional world when it comes to New York and cocktails.

"There will always be a big consumer aspect to this. In NY there’s this huge degree of overlap between the enthusiasts and the cocktail geek community," Lesley explained, and trying to separate the two is not a necessarily easy task. However, for the Classic proper there are still some plans in the works for more specialized skill and trade seminars to help further educate other bartenders in the city who want to learn more about their craft.

Gin and musing about cocktails and drinks in general

After Tales, I needed a break from the blog. A month-long one sounded about right. I guess most people announce they're going away for a sabbatical or some such, but that's if they decided ahead of time to take such a break. For me, it was more like I was simply elbow-deep in NRN.com as we continue to make things better and shinier for folks. Yes, some of you might forget I have a day job. Well, I guess this too is part of my day job, but I mean day job as in duties I handle proper when I'm not out there breaking it down on this blog with what's popping with cocktails.

It's events season. Is there really a season for events? I don't know, it certainly feels like it though. You kind of notice an ebb and flow of things.

For one thing, I've been in Madam Geneva way more times than you should be able to count in the past week. About two weeks ago, I met some folks representing Oxley gin, a new small-batch gin that is coming out. I couldn't help but note that it went back to the trends panel at Tales, where folks basically were talking about gin becoming the new vodka. More varieties, different producers and the like. And also, just how this sort of local, organic, whatever church of food you go to way of thinking that people have nowadays is also definitely making a mark on alcohol. People paying attention to more of the small-batch, independent or even local joints that are making their own thing.

You even see it in how some of the larger spirits brands are marketing themselves to consumers. They still highlight the beautiful young people living it up, but there's definitely a noticeable spin on that they're going for a certain image whether you want to credit that to the steady rise of craft cocktails, trying to convince people of something being worth a luxury during times when people are trying to spend less or the popularity of "Mad Men" and their retro drinking habits and tastes.

For example, Tanqueray has had new ads that both talk about the type of fun-seeking cosmopolitan sophisticate that would drink their product and also the crafted mix of botanicals and ingredients that go into their product.

Ketel One has its GQ-looking versions of the "dudes' night out" commercial trope that seem to be playing on a modern version of dapper "Mad Men" attitude.

Or how about Bacardi, which recently started airing commercials talking about the brand's place in history? Right down to the detail at the end with a beautiful bar with a marble top being tended by mustachioed gentlemen who is supposed to be the master bartender of yore, but in all seriousness looks like half the dudes I know working behind the stick.

These ads come about from trend spotters noticing which wave to catch that will grab the attention of those spending money out there. More people nowadays are aware of crafting sophisticated drinks. The bombs and kamikaze club crowd isn't going away any time soon, but there is a growing crop of sophisticated consumers with a certain edge to it. Beer geeks, cocktail geeks, whiskey afficionados, what have you. They're young DIY-ers expecting more and wanting to learn more when they walk into your bar, or quite possibly they're coming in already armed with some knowledge of their own.

The democritization of cocktail geekery isn't really new. Just tracking the careers of some of the folks in the game nowadays can show you that. People who had day jobs not having to do with bartending or the nightlife at all, yet are in the biz thanks to passion for the trade; the folks I've met when I started this thing two years ago that shot up into the stratosphere in that span of time easily; and even the constant waves of new people I meet. It's both exciting, and...just crazy how all of this is blossoming right before your eyes. The feeling that I can probably date myself to a "generation" of New York night life is just ridiculous to contemplate. Though I guess the people nowadays waxing nostalgic about Palladium and The Limelight and seeing James St. James guest on "America's Next Top Model" might not have anticipated this themselves in the 80s-90s.

And now I feel like there's a new generation coming up. Last night I was at Madam Geneva again. This time Tomas Delos Reyes, who recently started bartending there, sent me an invite for a Nirvino event sponsored by Tres Generaciones. Nirvino is basically a sort of community for drink and bar reviewing. The crowd was a mix of people in the biz and amateur afficionados.

As jokes passed around about having 50+ friends in common with people on Facebook and the idea of tweetups, all of the sudden I found it kind of funny I had started rereading "No Country for Old Men." I began to hear Tommy Lee Jones' voice in my head sounding something like:

I started writing this blog when I was 23. Just two years after Uncle Sam says you can start drinkin. But he was no uncle of mine. Got to know a lot of bartenders in my day. It's always been a community. A town of sorts that existed along the river beds of bar tops where booze flowed freely, but you needed to pay to get across for a sip. Like that Charon character I remember readin about in a textbook in the fifth grade. Had my first sip of gin then. Thought that was probably pretty close to what the Styx would taste like. But nowadays these kids got technology. I had a notebook and a pen. A digital camera if I was lucky. I guess luck had everything to do with it. I reckon though most people make their luck nowadays...

Not that I mean that I felt like I need to quit before I get shot in the back during a drug deal gone bad or a "get of my lawn" kind of way. It was more just the similar sentiment of awe in seeing a new model of doing things just unfold. It reminded me of back when I interviewed Dave Wondrich for a story in our NRN 50 special issue about food and beverage industry survivors. Talking to him about cocktails and how they've survived ups and down throughout the years, I had to ask Dave how he felt about the future of cocktails. He said (part of the quote ended up closing out my story) that sure, maybe the whole thing was trendy, maybe interest would cool a little, but it'd never go away. It certainly wouldn't disappear like it did during Prohibition. There's just too many people with the knowledge out there, and too many ways for people to share it.

Blogging Tales of the Cocktail post Tales, finishing things off

WITH PHOTOS!!!

Click here for full-screen slideshow and captions

Blogging Tales of the Cocktail 2009 post Tales: Day 2

So I got back and I've finally recovered and got some time gather my thoughts on Tales. They really shouldn't end Tales on a Sunday just for the people who have to head back to regular 9-5 jobs after the whole, but I digress.

July 9

Some seminar highlights worth mentioning:

"Mixologists and Their Toys"
Moderator: Erin Williams, Cointreau brand ambassador
Panelists: Don Lee, PDT; Evan Wallace; Xavier Herit, Daniel; Fernando Castellon

This seminar was packed. Don quickly demonstrated his atomizer stencils (previous mention), then peaced out to go back to work with the apprentices. For anyone interested to in making their own stencil laser cutting, check out thingiverse.com to get the files necessary for the PDT logo stencil to try out. The little lines you see breaking up the logo are little bits of plastic necessary in the stencil to hold it together, so Don advised that the more complicated the image, the harder it would be to make it look good AND have it all in one piece on one stencil.

Fernando Castellon and Xavier Herit both talked about spherification.

"Everything you see, you must taste it...quality should be first, looks second," Fernando said about using new mad scientist techniques for cocktails, before going on to show off the Cointreau caviar he created when Cointreau approached him to make a cocktail with gold inside for Cannes.

Just looking at the set up on the table like beakers and magnet stirrers, you could tell how crazy scientific things were going to get.

Fernando made sure to tell those attending, "Everything you see you must taste it...quality should be first, looks second."

Using a gelifier that reacts to a calcium bath, Fernando made his spheres that he explained were more capsule like with a sort of burst of flavor/liquid in the middle.

Water, juices, any liquid works well as long as the ph isn't too low, but gelifier doesn't mix too well with liqueur or spirits. So, he mixed a gelifier (sodium alginate) with water, but also mixed it with maltrodextrin to help with the texture. He then mixed that mixture (one part sodium alginate to 3 parts maltodextrin) using a magnetic stirrer adding the gelifier powder mixture little by little to not make clumps, and added the Cointreau and gold flakes (obviously, edible 24 karat gold flakes) right before making the spheres.

While calcium chloride has been used plenty of times for this type of process for the calcium bath, Fernando said he found calcium chloride to be a bit aggressive as well as leaving an aftertaste, so instead he prefers to use calcium lactate.

One protip Fernando offered was that using a syringe to make spheres causes a small problem. The first liquid you drop into the calcium bath is going to sit in the bath longer than the last drop, becoming harder and harder. Also, it's a little time consuming when you have to make a whole bunch, so he found out that he could make a whole bunch by putting the liquid into a pearl dispenser, or in layman's terms, a parmesan cheese dispenser. The if you mixed the gelifiers properly, the liquid should be thick enough (and not clumpy) for droplets to rain into spherification ready droplets out of the cheese dispenser's holes.

Next was Xavier Herit, head bartender at restaurant Daniel here in NYC. He was also showing off the strawberry pearls he makes over at Daniel used in the Strawberry and Pearls, which is a strawberry margarita served with the pearls.

On thing that stood out to me about what Daniel was saying was his enthusiastic announcement that, "I'm here to show you that you can do it."

Xavier began serving the pearls a year ago, and he's been able to serve this product in an actual working bar. Daniel also added that it definitely helped with garnering attention as well as publicity for the bar.

"People would say, 'Oh, did you see the bartender with the syringe?'"


"Chemistry of Cocktails (How Alcohol Works and Its Implications for Mixology)"
Melkon Khosrovian, Modern Spirits

I think the most interesting bit I got out of this, and I think several other people from the seminar would agree with me, is the role of the proof of a beverage and the fat content of the food when it comes to pairings.

I have to admit, I'd never personally given that much thought when it came to cocktail and food pairing situations.

I mean, yes, things like flavor, portion, temperature and the complexity of flavors make a difference as well, as Melkon explained, but some people forget to think of proof.

The fact is that the higher to proof, the better the drink is at cleansing the palate of fatty foods. Melkon explained in depth about how fat is hydrophobic, so it repels water. Wine usually does not have enough alcohol to absorb and cleanse the mouth of some fattier foods.

To illustrate that point, everyone got a bit of cheesecake with two small glasses, one was just vodka, and another diluted. In a side by side comparison, I could tell that the full strength vodka definitely cleared up the mouth almost like an astringent to an oily teenager's face.

Our (wo)man in New Orleans

July 8
As I sat in Laguardia airport after my delayed flight was canceled, I thought to myself, "Man, maybe I wasn't meant to go to Tales of the Cocktail this year."

Somehow the ineptitude and just plain terribleness of an airline that shall remain unnamed I found myself on one of the last flights out of NYC to Atlanta...where I'd, I guess, just stick out my thumb and hope a plane takes me to New Orleans in the morning.

Compared to the last time when I flew down to New Orleans last flight down, I found myself on a plane to Atlanta stuck behind a little girl who kept trying to sublimate herself into the airplane seat, and a row before her, a kid trying to sneeze his entire endocrine system out at 2 minute intervals, and a seat that stiffly wouldn't move back at all, I was in my own personal hell. And if that wasn't punishment enough, three hours of sleep at a dingy hotel/motel that had me worried I'd wake up covered in insects of some sort.

Luckily, in the bright light of day, with a breakfast of four Krystal sliders at the airport, things started to look up. I managed to find a seat on the first flight out of Atlanta and I arrived in New Orleans in time to attend the first session of Tales of the Cocktail, Big Trends 2009.

With moderator Ryan Magarian, co-founder of Aviation Gin and president of the cocktail consulting firm Liquid Relations, the panel included im Meehan, co-owner of the cocktail lounge PDT in New York, Michael Waterhouse, proprieter New York's Dylan Prime and Devin Tavern, and Simon Difford, owner and editor of Sauce Guide Publications.

Fresh and seasonal fruits and veggies as ingredients, as well as the popularity of gin were discussed as the group on stage talked through different trend worthy elements for 2009.

While the panel agreed that gin was big, the panel had differing opinions on what other spirits are on the rise. Jim mentioned how mezcal and tequila seemed to be something to pay attention to from what he's seen in New York, naming Death and Co. alum Phil Ward's new tequila and mezcal cocktail lounge Mayahuel.

Jim also thought that rye whiskey was the "giant white elephant" in the room. Even without a lot of innovation with the spirit itself, "you can't help but be astounded by the success of rye whiskey this year."

“We can't keep it on the shelves."

Simon though, commented that in Europe, rye whiskey is still something behind the bar for the bartender, and that general consumption by the bar going public isn't up there yet to be considered a trend there.

Waterhouse said that while mezcal wasn't a spirit that has a big call in the type of operation he runs, definitely tequila and gin are

More importantly, people are beginning to take notice of smaller artisan distillers. "It's green, it's small, it's local it's homemade, people are looking for this...People love that there is someone handcrafting products. People love that. You see these little soda companies. That's the big thing in spirits that I find."

Being proactive and taking control was the theme for the panel discussion on managing costs.

“My initial gut reaction to that is we're all living in this recession, which is the biggest bargaining tool I've had all my life. Especially in wine. There are a limited amount of buyers and a lot of wine going unpurchased. If you're not out there negotiating prices as a mult-unit chain you're doing yourself a disservice,” said Tylor Field, vice president of wine and spirits at Morton's Steakhouse.

“A lot of people put the ix-nay on new products or development coming in. For those people that are forward thinking and are ready to go when the turnaround hits, those are the people that are going to see the results of keeping the development flying,” Kathy Casey, president of Kathy Casey Food Studios and Liquid Kitchen said.

I was still tired after my almost 16-hour trek to New Orleans, but made an effort to stop by the reception party hosted by Beefeater Gin in order to see who I could run with.

Don Lee and John Deragon were heading up the apprentice program this year. With a lot of the juicing outsourced to kitchen staff, the plan was to give apprentices more time actually batching and preparing the different drinks and attending seminars. At the reception Don told me that this year the group was definitely larger than the last with more than 30 people on the apprentice list.

I saw Daniel Eun, who now lives on the West Coast studying law, but he still finds time to bartend.

A lot of last year's apprentices, like Daniel, returned for a second go around. Folks like Cassie Fellet, LaTanya White, Thomas Waugh and Jacquelyn Leon.

I saw some new face working the events as well like Nicholas Jarrett from Apothecary in Philadelphia.

I walked around saying hi to folks when I found myself at a table Stephen Beaumont and his wife Maggie were stationed at. The last time they'd seen me was when I almost mowed them down drunkenly stumbling out of the phone booth as I was leaving PDT quite a while back. I was sheepish to say the least.

Stephen Beaumont said, "I've been telling several people...this year is the year Tales goes huge."

Not that last year or the year before weren't huge affairs, but this year it definitely seemed...well...just humongous. I was curious as to what this year was going to be like.

Some photos from the World Cocktail Day party

or Ain't no party like a MOTAC party, 'cause a MOTAC party don't stop

May 13
I almost didn't make it to this party at Pranna, since I found myself working late, but I still decided to make it down there only to find out once again, that really, people in the bar industry don't know anything like late, or going on too long. So even though I'd walked in approximately 2 hours late, the party was still going strong.

Wait...is that John Hodgman? Why would John Hodgman just be chillin'here...

Anna Jovovice of handcrafted PR informed me that indeed, I was looking at John Hodgman, and that John Hodgman and Dave Wondrich are friends.

"Of course they are," I thought myself. For some reason I was not surprised at all by this revelation. In fact, if someone had told me that the cocktail historian wasn't friends with the guy responsible for crafting "The Areas of My Expertise," I would've been highly disappointed.

Bartenders worked as teams at Pranna's bar, each shift's team making drinks using a sponsor's ingredient. In all honesty, I didn't get a drink for like the first hour because the bar was 2-3 people deep. I eventually managed to grab a Pisco Punch (pisco, pineapple syrup, gum arabic, fresh lemon juice) from Naren Young when he was at the bar with his team of bartenders. I also tried an Old Fashioned that Tal Nadari made. It tasted different, not just because it had genever in it, but there was something else. Tal fessed up that he'd accidently used aloe rather than simple syrup in the one he gave me. I smacked my lips for a second or two. It actually wasn't a bad mistake. So I went on drinking.

I've been told that one way to get out of being in photos is to volunteer to take photos. Which is exactly the technique Don Lee used on me in this photo here, so now *I'm* in this photo, and I'm usually uncomfortable about being photos. From l-r: An uncomfortable me, Tal Nadari, Jeff Grdinich, Joaquin Simo


Dave Wondrich: cocktail historian and friend of John Hodgman


A Pisco Punch


Naren Young making the above-mentioned punch


An Old Fashioned with Aloe, created accidentally by Tal Nadari