Whisky Advocate Runs Feature Story on White Whiskey by...Oh, Hey. Me.

You have to look at white whiskey 

on its own merits. 

If you judge it 

compared to aged whiskeys, 

it fails. 

Every time.

~ Darek Bell

Corsair Artisan Distillery

Shea Shawnson pours Double and Twisted light whiskey at Elixir

The current issue of Whisky Advocate magazine has a feature article on white whiskey by yours truly. [Edit 12/9/12: scroll down for a link to a PDF of the article.] White, light, unaged, minimally aged, and "raw" whiskeys are growing in popularity. Not everyone — including those who make it — agrees on what it is, so when editor Lew Bryson asked me to take a run at white whiskey, I made some phone calls, packed a sandwich, and hit the road to talk to distillers who make the stuff and drinkers who down it.

As grain spirits come off the still, in- dustry insiders call the heady, limpid distillate new make or white dog. Every whiskey distiller in the world makes it and almost all of it is destined for barrels. Some, though, trickles out to the public. Lately, distillers and consumers alike have taken to calling it white whiskey. Marketers trumpet it as a hot new thing. In truth, the wheel has been around longer. And fire, of course. But new make was old hat when Johnnie Walker took his first wobbly steps. 

What is novel is that until about 2005, few dreamt a market still existed for the stuff.

My travels brought me up the west coast of the United States. From tiny sheds up dirt roads to a distillery in an old Air Force hangar, I met with men and women making, selling, drinking, and mixing white whiskeys.

Bars and restaurants from New York to Seattle offer white whiskeys as a matter of course, even pride. White Manhattans and albino Old Fashioneds abound. If whiskey cocktails unblemished by oak are insufficiently exotic, trendy tipplers can ask for them “improved” 19th-century style with a few dashes of absinthe. 

Despite growing awareness and acceptance, the category is dogged by three recurrent questions. Two are worth addressing in passing: (1) Is white whiskey moonshine? and (2) Is it any good?

I tackle those in about 500 words, but the third question, the one people should be asking and which fills the bulk of the article, is what do we do with it? Pick up the Winter 2012 issue of Whisky Advocate for some of the answers — including arguments that the way many white whiskeys are made is completely wrong — or download a PDF of It's a Nice Day for a White Whiskey here.

Interviews, insight, and recipes from Thad Vogler of Bar Agricole and Shea Swanson of Elixir in San Francisco, Darek Bell of Corsair Artisan Distillery (and author of Alt Whiskeys), Jim Romdall of Vessel in Seattle, Ian and Devin Cain of American Craft Whiskey distillery, barber and distiller Salvatore Cimino, 13th generation master distiller Marko Karakasevic from Charbay, and, midwife to the modern tiki renaissance, Jeff "Beach Bum" Berry.

Here's a bonus recipe that didn't make the article from bartender Rhachel Shaw whom I ran into as a customer at rum bar Smuggler's Cove. Shaw pays tribute to Elizabeth Taylor (whom one can only presume guzzled staggering quantities of raw whiskey) with a drink named for the late movie star's perfume:

White Diamonds  

1.5 oz. Koval Chicago Rye
.75 oz. Cocci Americano
.5 oz. Maraschino
1 dash Bitterman's Grapefruit Bitters 

Stir on ice. Strain. Garnish with grapefruit peel.

My Dad's Onion Rye Bread

Butter is not optional.

For as long as I can remember, my father has made onion rye bread, three loaves at a time, mostly in cold months. The first loaf we eat while it’s almost too hot to handle, rivulets of melted butter besmearing our hands; the second is half gone before it cools to room temperature; and the third, more often than not, is deployed in ham sandwiches. With 24 hours, not a crumb or crust remains.

Not long ago, I jumped at the chance to bake a few of these dense, moist loaves with him. Since snow recently had fallen, we cooled a pot of hot milk and sugar in the white stuff while the yeast proofed in the warm kitchen. Turning one’s back porch into an extension of the freezer is perhaps the only part of Winter I truly miss.

Cooling hot milk in the snow

When it came time to pull the ingredients together, I was amused that he regards aromatic elements in recipes — even his own — as I do. Only three tablespoons of caraway seeds in the recipe? Meh, sprinkle in some more until it looks right. One cup of chopped onions? We could probably put in a bit more without upsetting anyone.

Slightly misshapen, but so damn good.

Mind you, we both inflate the volume of those kinds of ingredients in the first place when we transcribe  recipes, so we might easily end up using twice the spices and aromatics as whatever the recipe called for before it got to us. The ingredients below are what’re on his written directions. If you want more onions or caraway, then you’ve got a baseline.

Our family isn’t shy about slathering butter on almost every slice. You shouldn’t be, either. Because the tops of these loaves are strewn with coarse salt before baking, though, stick with unsalted butter.

Onion Rye Bread

2 cups milk
¼ cup sugar
4 tsp salt
¼ cup vegetable oil
2 packages active dry yeast
1 cup warm water
6 cups all purpose white flour
3 Tbl caraway seeds
1 cup chopped onions
2.5 cups rye flour
Corn meal
q.s. cream
q.s. coarse salt

Scald milk; stir in the sugar, salt, and oil. Cool to lukewarm. Soften yeast in the warm water and when it’s foamy, add this yeast mixture to the lukewarm milk.

Blend in all of the all purpose flour, mixing well. Add caraway seeds, onions, and 2 cups of the rye flour.

Sprinkle the remaining rye flour on a board or counter and knead the dough until it’s smooth. Put the smooth dough into greased bowl, cover, and allow to rise in a warm place until doubled in size. Punch down and fold dough from edges to center.

Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let the mass rise again until doubled. Divide into three equal loaves. Put each into a greased pan sprinkled with corn meal. Brush the tops of the loaves with cream, then strew liberally with coarse salt. Cover with a clean towel and allow to rise again until doubled in size.

Bake at 350ºF/175ºC for 45 to 60 minutes. Remove from pans when they sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. Cool on wire racks (unless you plan to tear into them right away, then just grab a board, a knife, and a boatload of butter).

Charles Bukowski Stamps

Somewhere in storage, I've still got an armload of Charles Bukowski books, most of them autographed. Over the years, I've given some away as gifts. Others just languish in the dark. I thought at one time that if I ever had trouble paying rent, I could pawn them off on Hank Chinaski enthusiasts for some extra scratch. Held onto some very old Lovecraft books and autographed Burroughs, too, for the same reason.

There was a time when I was enamored of his writing. Jaw-dropping amounts of booze, gambling, and desperation. Loose women and soul-draining work. During long, snowbound Midwestern winters, the Southern California he described, even with its bums, drunks, adulterers, addicts, and assorted losers, held an almost aching grip on my imagination.

Here's the deal about Bukowski, though: once you've read ten of his stories (any ten: pick 'em), you've pretty much read his entire oeuvre. Despite his sometimes mesmerizing use of English, there's only so much I can read about an alcoholic's inside take on bleeding ulcers, distended livers, and drunk-tank vomit before I wonder...what else have you got?

So I stopped buying Bukowski books. Stopped reading the ones I own. I still got a smile today, though, when I was digging through old papers and found my long-lost Bukowski stamps.

These aren't supposed to exist.

Bukowski spent nearly 15 years working for the US Postal Service. His novel Post Office is an autobiographical take on those awful years and remains perhaps his best-known work. Although one hears occasional rumblings about the possibility of an official USPS Bukowski stamp, that hasn't happened. These stamps are a bit of subversive art I picked up in New York back in the 1990's and made to look like actual postage stamps, complete with a little Glassine sleeve. They are an homage to America's most famous real-life postal worker, if not our most celebrated alcoholic.

Maybe I'll trade them for a bottle of Thomas H. Handy rye. I'm pretty sure he'd approve...

Goes well with:

• I've always enjoyed pseudobiblia, the books and ephemera from our literary past said to exist, but sprung entirely from an author's imagination. Lovecraft's Necronomicon, for instance, falls into this category, as does The Courier's Tragedy, a fictional Jacobean revenge play written by the equally fictional Richard Wharfinger in Thomas Pynchon's very real The Crying of Lot 49. In the novel, ancient secret rival postal services operate under the very noses of us hoi poloi. Had anyone actually affixed Bukowski stamps to envelopes back when postage was only 29 cents and mailed them, they would've fit right in the paranoid world of Miss Oepida Maas. 
• What Do You Want from the Liquor Store?, a bit I wrote about Ted Hawkins' fantastic song Sorry You're Sick after hearing it on This American Life. Hawkins' performance and links included. 

Remember the Maine? Hell, I Barely Remember the Walk Home.

Treat this one with the respect it deserves, gentlemen.

~ Charles H. Baker, Jr.

Charles H. Baker, Jr. — bear with me, drinks people; I know you know this, but others may not — is a towering figure in cocktail literature. His 1946 two-volume The Gentleman’s Companion was one of the first serious cocktail books I bought almost twenty years ago. Because bars sometimes base cocktail programs on his recipes more than half a century after publication, a passing familiarity with them helps tipplers navigate options at bars that trade in old-school drinks.

This weekend in Portland, I was pleased to recognize Remember the Maine, one of his classics, featured at Teardrop Lounge. It's not unlike a Manhattan, but with an absinthe kick, you wouldn't mistake one for the other. The drink's name refers a popular slogan that decried the sinking of the battleship USS Maine in Havana's harbor, thus sparking the 1898 Spanish-American War. Baker invokes the slogan in his typically florid and heavily-capitalized prose: 

REMEMBER the MAINE, a HAZY MEMORY of a NIGHT in HAVANA during the UNPLEASANTNESSES of 1933, when EACH SWALLOW WAS PUNCTUATED with BOMBS GOING OFF on the PRADO, or the SOUND of 3" SHELLS BEING FIRED at the HOTEL NACIONAL, then HAVEN for CERTAIN ANTI-REVOLUTIONARY OFFICERS

His original recipes reads: Take a tall bar glass and toss in three lumps of ice. Onto this foundation donate the following in order given: one jigger good rye whiskey, ½ jigger Italian vermouth, one to 2 teaspoons of cherry brandy, ½ tsp absinthe or Pernod Veritas. Stir briskly in clock-wise fashion -- this makes it sea-going, presumably! —turn into a big chilled saucer champagne glass, twisting a curl of green lime or lemon peel over the top.

That "cherry brandy" has caused some confusion — or at least room for interpretation — among bartenders since both Cherry Heering (a dark, sweet, cherry-infused brandy) and Kirsch or Kirschwasser (a clear distillate of cherries, nearly double the proof of Heering) may be used. I find the lower-proof Heering rounds out the drink nicely, but feel free to experiment. The drink doesn't call for much absinthe, but tread lightly if you're unsure whether you enjoy the taste; its presence is not a subtle one.

Remember the Maine (modern adaptation)

2 oz rye
.75 oz sweet vermouth
2 bar-spoons Cherry Heering
½ bar-spoon absinthe

Stir briskly with a bar spoon in a mixing glass with ice. Strain into another glass and serve up.

Goes well with: A stop at Teardrop if you're in Portland. In fact, it's one of the reasons to visit.

Teardrop Lounge
1015 Northwest Everett Street
Portland, OR 97209-3117
(503) 445-8109
http://teardroplounge.com

Try to Drink Some Kentucky Bourbon Now and Then

Today’s the last day of the American Distilling Institute’s annual conference in Louisville, Kentucky, home of horseracing and whiskey. Naturally, I wasn’t carrying any horses (that’d be just silly) but airport security stopped me for the other thing.

See, not only do I like Tuthilltown Spirits, I like the distillery’s packaging—squat, thick-glassed, cork-topped little 375ml bottles. Of course, I prefer the bottles full (or almost so), but even empty, they’re great containers for the odd little infusions, macerations, decoctions, bitters, syrups, and other cocktail weirdness around the Whiskey Forge. So, I snagged an empty Manhattan Rye before it was thrown out after tasting.

I’m not the only one who likes them. In a surprise category, the judging panel for this year’s conference awarded the New York state distillery its best packaging award for its Manhattan Rye Whiskey.

That is what stopped the security line. Again. After inspecting the offending bottle to assure it was indeed empty, the TSA agent inspected the label as well. “Gardiner, New York, eh? Man, if it’s bacon or bourbon, I want it. Of course, I like to support the local boys as much as I can.”

He repacked my New York whiskey bottle, zipped my carryon, and looked up at me, suddenly stern. “Let’s try to drink some Kentucky bourbon now and then.”

Yes. Yes, indeed. Let’s.

Scoffin' the Law

I want to be a scofflaw
And with the scofflaws stand;
A brand upon my forehead
A handcuff on my hand.
I want to be a scofflaw,
For since I went to school,
I hate to mind an order,
I hate to keep a rule.

~ anonymous poet C.W.
in Franklin P. Adams’ column
New York World, Jan 16, 1924

Delcevare King was a staunch prohibitionist and big mahoff with the Anti-Saloon League during Prohibition. His story is old hat to linguists and cocktail mavens, but the rest of us could use an introduction for his contribution to the drinking arts. In October 1923, he wrote a letter to the Harvard Alumni Bulletin (he was class of 1895) protesting the Harvard Glee Club’s singing of Johnny Harvard, the “most drinking of drinking songs…that comes pretty near to scoffing at the prohibition law.”

Even prohibitionists sometimes can have a point. Given some of the song’s lyrics, a reasonable person might conclude that alcohol—illegal for beverage purposes at the time—might figure subtly into undergraduate life at the university:



Drink,
drink,
drink,
drink,
drink,
drink,
drink,
drink,
drink,
drink,
drink,
drink,
drink,
drink,
drink,
drink,
drink,
drink,
drink,
drink,
drink.
Yes, drink.




King took umbrage and launched a national contest to come up with a new word describing those who flaunted their disregard of laws banning beverage alcohol. A $200 award was to be dispensed for the word “which best expresses the idea of lawless drinker, menace, scoffer, bad citizen, or whatnot, with the biting power of ‘scab’ or slacker.’”

There were something like 25,000 entries. Also-rans, according to the Boston Herald, include; vatt, still, scut, sluf, curd, canker, scrub, scuttier, dreg, drag, dipsic, boozlaac, alcolog, barnacle, slime-slopper, ell-shiner, still-whacker, sluch-licker, sink, smooth, lawless-ite, bottle-yegger, crimer, alcoloom, hooch-sniper, cellar-sifter, rum-rough, high-boozer, and law-loose-liquor-lover.

Whew. Lawless-ite ranks up there with deadites from the Evil Dead movies for words that hurt my ears, but I quite like bottle-yegger and even scuttier has a ring to it. Next time I'm giving someone the high hat, I might have to use that. I wonder—is there still a stash of submission letters somewhere? Some Boston-area archives?

Of the 25,000 entries, two contestants came up with the same term: scofflaw. The prize was split between Henry Irving Dale and Kate L. Butler. Within days, Harry’s Bar in Paris was offering a “Scoff-Law Cocktail.” The cocktail faded for a while, but the word stuck. A shame about the fading drink, though: it really does deserve a spot in your repertoire.


The Scofflaw Cocktail

1.5 oz rye
1 oz dry vermouth
3/4 oz lemon juice (freshly squeezed, please)
3/4 oz grenadine*

Shake with ice in a shaker for a slow count to ten, then strain into a cocktail glass and, if you like, add a lemon twist.

Yes, drink.

* Lagniappe: Make Your Own Grenadine

The cocktail crowd over at eGullet has an ongoing discussion of how best to make one's own grenadine from fresh pomegranate juice rather than relying on the scarlet corn syrup we knew growing up. If you want that bright Shirley-Temple-Cocktail red, then a brand such as Rose's would turn the trick. But it's worth experimenting with sugar and pomegranate juice to come up with your own house version. Here's what I do:

1 cup POM pomegranate juice
1 cup white table sugar
3-4 dashes of orange flower water

Put all the juice and sugar into the container in which you will store it—a plastic squeeze jar, a repurposed vermouth bottle, or even the POM bottle itself after using half the contents—and shake the hell out of it. Once the sugar goes into solution, add the orange flower water, give it a few swirls, and store in the refrigerator.

Note that this version, while red(ish), is much more dark and even slightly muddy-looking. The taste it great, but it's emphatically not the stuff of Kiddie Cocktails.


Goes well with

• The Harvard Song Book
  
• Predicting New Words: The Secrets of Their Success by Allan Metcalf
• Metcalf has been the long-standing executive secretary of the American Dialect Society
• David Wondrich's Imbibe!, a modern classic in mixology and the stratigraphy of cocktails
• Miller's Crossing, a script by Joel and Ethan Coen
  

.