Ben

Archive for the ‘Boozing’ Category

Barrel Strength: 2011 Four Roses Small Batch Limited Edition Barrel Strength Bourbon

In Boozing, Bourbon, Special Offers on June 14, 2012 at 2:35 pm

Why drink another man’s water? 

Especially if you’re trying to drink bourbon.  I’m talking about the concept of proof, meaning alcoholic strength.    

40 proof?  Bahh!  Aqueous persiflage acculturated for turgid doryphores!  Barrel Strength bourbon is what you need.  You need Four Roses’ 2011 Small Batch Limited Edition (LE) Barrel Strength Bourbon. 

Why barrel strength you ask?  And I reply: 

Most piscine bumpkins are raised on the concept of not tasting alcohol – they are ladykins whose nebbish cocktails never graduated beyond the sweet-sixteen party.  But you and I know differently.  When the wheels come off our bus the destination is flavor country.  And water ain’t flavored. 

Most bourbons are watered-down.  Meaning off the still they are around 40-60% alcohol, climbing in strength about half a degree per year if matured south of the Mason-Dixon line, and then, once fully mature, are WATERED DOWN and bottled.

But wait, let us not be engleimous ignoramuses.  Our drinking is nuanced.  As nuanced as E.B. White sliding into a martini before starting Talk of the Town.  Barrel Strength is not about taking shots and going “Over the Top” a la Stallone.  It’s about control, meaning we control what we drink. 

Some Bourbons need a little water to express themselves.  Or a cube of ice, or a rim of icelets, languishing like altocumulus clouds nictitating amongst golden rays of sun.  They “open”, become charming, shying into a muscular flex from the morning after.  But when someone else waters down our Bourbon that pleasure is gone.  We get the morning after but not the Night To Come.  And that sucks.     

But with barrel strength, the pleasure is all ours. 

The goal is not higher alcohol.  The goal is stronger flavor.  And with Four Roses 2011 LE Barrel Strength, we have achieved it. 

This is a completely mellow spirit, greeting the avuncular imbiber with aromas of honeysuckle, mandarin orange zest, sour cherry pie, cookie dough and almond toffee.  Do I add ice?  Yes – just one cube for every three fingers.  And you will feel this: the ice cuts down the palate, carving a line between the fruit flavors of dried apricot, port soaked plums, black cherries spiked with black pepper, and over-ripe white peaches.  On the other side of the tongue: spice resolving into candy-like marzipan fondant, sweet yet nutty, savory and a cheek-pinch of bitter, evolving into caramelized brown sugar and cream.  Combined – the finish: mellow and suave.  You will feel more sophisticated even though you have not put on the Ritz.  Hard hitting?  Yes.  But don’t fight it.  You’re not a baby struggling through green bean puree – you know a good thing when you taste it, even if your palate has to learn the new taste.  Languish.  Take a load off.  Get comfortably numb.  Let the romance begin.  This is what makes bourbon great: when dancing with a sexy partner, even if you don’t know the steps, the night will be extraordinary.     

Is it high in alcohol?  Yes, its 55.1%.  Will you get hammered?  That’s up to you.  But very few bourbons (or you) will ever achieve this high again.

 

2011 Four Roses Small Batch Limited Edition Barrel Strength Bourbon

Release Price:  $99.99

Sale Price:  $64.99

P.S. – and frankly, all apologies to Cabernet, this is the perfect Father’s Day gift. 

 

Be aware – this is called LIMITED EDITION for a reason – only 3,792 bottles were produced and even though we have Wisconsin’s entire allocation there is a good chance this will sell out.

We will not be tasting this spirit on Friday from 3 to 7 pm.  We will be tasting six glorious (!) wines of Friday from 3 to 7 pm.  And unfortunately, the Cabernet special from earlier in the week has sold out.   

All orders must be secured with a name, credit card number, and phone number.  All orders will be available at the time of purchase. 

When the spirit is ordered your credit card will be charged.  The spirit will be held in climate controlled conditions until you are ready to pick it up, free of charge.  Offer is good while supplies last. 

Gloria St. Julien wrote this article and Tim Hansen edited it.

And as always…

 

Friday’s FREE Wine Tasting

This Friday 3-7:00 pm, $FREE – Open House Format

 

This Friday, and every Friday, Waterford Wine offers up a casual, open house wine tastings.  Come in after work, stop by with friends, and enjoy the taste of some great wines!

Glenmorangie Discovery Pack

In Boozing, Scotch, Special Offers on May 10, 2012 at 2:30 pm

Moonshine, White-Dog, Water of Life – call it what you will – all whiskey begins as crystal clear, fiery-potent spirit.  Yet we associate bottled whiskey, particularly high quality scotch, with rich amber hues reminiscent of caramel and smooth lingering flavors of vanilla and honey. 

This change, from fresh, fiery new-make spirit into rich, drinkable libation is not due some sorcerer’s magic but rather, the barrel.  That’s right – the wooden staves of oak that are bent into cylindrical shape, bound with iron, and then charred inside: the barrel.

In fact, most scotch distilleries estimate that approximately 80% of the entire flavor of the finished spirit comes from the barrel.  So where that wood comes from, how it is coopered, and what seasoned the wood is vitally important to the flavor of the scotch.  And no distillery has put more effort into their barrel program than Glenmorangie.

Almost two decades ago Glenmorangie started down a revolutionary and two fold path with their cooperage program.  First, they exactly know where their barrels were coming from, right down to the forest.  Second, they embarked on a then unheard of program of extra matured scotches exploring how barrels can “finish” the taste of their scotch. 

Today, we are the beneficiaries of Glenmorangie’s pioneering efforts.  Allow me to explain: 

Glenmorangie’s Original, their 10 year old, shows the great care taken with its first-fill bourbon casks as citrus and peach aromas greet the nose with hints of vanilla.  On the palate these flavors continue, being rounded out with honey and buttered toast.  The aftertaste is clean, yet still fruity.  This is not a scotch of aggressive harshness.  Rather, it is elegant, alluring, and smooth. 

The distillery uses this 10 year matured scotch to create the next three offerings.  First is Nectar d’Or, a scotch that spends the next two years of its life in a Sauternes barrel.  These barrels are first emptied of the Sauternes wine and then refilled with Glenmorangie 10 year.  The resulting spirit is a harmony of flavors with aromas of sultanas and dates joining the citrus notes of the 10 year.  Coconut, almond, ginger and warm spices linger on the palate bringing a deep white chocolate to the after taste.    

But there are two more: Quinta Ruban switches the Sauternes for Port, and Lasanta finishes the spirit in Sherry casks.  The Quinta Ruban opens with aromas of dark mint chocolate, tangerines and Seville oranges before giving way on the palate to roasted nuts, cream, and coco.  Lasanta sherry cask takes the Glenmorangie Original’s notes of citrus and melds them seamlessly with butterscotch, caramel, and toffee.  The palate is warm and complex, finish with the lingering taste of chocolate covered hazelnuts.

In short: the barrel matters.  And nobody does this better than Glenmorangie. 

But Glenmorangie doesn’t want to leave you in doubt.  They know that tasting the scotch makes all the difference (as I am feeling right now).  To that end they created their Discovery Pack – a full 750 ml of The Original followed by one 50 ml bottle of each: Nectar D’or, Quinta Ruban, and Lasanta.  Further, they have packaged them all together in a handsome Discovery Pack Case (normally I hate this sort of gift-packaging, but I have to admit that this one is kinda cool). 

My advice?  Get yourself four glasses and discover what great scotch is all about.    

 

Glenmorangie Discovery Pack

Release Price:  $59.99

Sale Price:  $29.99

Pack includes:

1 750 ml bottle Glenmorangie 10 Year Original

1 50 ml bottle Glenmorangie 12 Year Nectar d’Or

1 50 ml bottle Glenmorangie 12 Year Quinta Ruban

1 50 ml bottle Glenmorangie 12 Year La Santa

1 rather handsome case (perfect for all those Scotch drinkin’ Mamas for Mother’s Day)

 

Make Your Easter Brunch Better: The Waterford Bellini Champagne Cocktail

In Bellini, Boozing on April 5, 2012 at 3:17 pm

Perhaps nothing is greater than the Champagne Cocktail, be it Mimosa, Bellini, Buck’s Fiss, Kir Royal or French 75; for it gives satisfactory corollary to obtuse doryphores that drinking in the morning may be the greatest thing achievable among the sardoodledom of pothering in-laws.

Sadly, the Champagne Cocktail typically suffers from two maladroit flaws, correctable instantly with the administration of Waterford’s Apricot Bellini.  To explicate the flaws and dénouement:

First, most Champagne Cocktails have about as much impact as a four-year old’s practice sky-diving session on the family couch while watching MacGyver.  Yes, they get you started on the hair-of-the-dog but with the mansuetude of a ladykin.

Second, most Champagne Cocktails rely on juice (fresh squeezed, of course).  “Fresh-squeezing” is a post-meridian activity.  While some may find the application of a pronated brachioradialis upon the common citrus fruit enchanting in the morning I do not.  In fact, I hate “the morning”.  Further, I deny its existence.  If you are one of those eldritch souls whose puerile agnosticism allows for life before 11 am, keep your beliefs to yourself.

All of these flaws are easily correctable, and here is how:

Get some sekt.  Good sekt.  Most people don’t get enough sekt in their lives and now is your chance – the Austrians have bottled it as “Punkt Genau” and made it street legal (On the Dot, as they say).  It’s tasty, its bubby, and it comes in a screw cap (which is funny on so many levels).

Don’t squeeze anything.  Austrians, in addition to having a lot of great sekt, make amazing liqueurs.  Maybe the two are related?  Instead of all that fussy-fresh squeezing just pour in some Klosterneuberger apricot liqueur and kiss “the morning” good-bye.  Which leads to the next point:

Now your cocktail has enough alcohol kick that the doddering autochthons of the Depends crowd may parachute gracefully into the Easter table, inebriated yet none the wiser, exaggerating the hardships of walking up paradoxical inclines, mellowed to a plane slightly lower than the table and spinning yarns of antediluvian nonage.

And one final note of complexity which proves your authoritative fidelity as a mixologist: grapefruit and hibiscus bitters – it perks the palate and pops the apricot.

The results are astounding to the point of stupefaction – ripe apricot and Anjou pear aromas dance and intertwine together, carried in a cascade upward via the sekt’s caressing bubbles.  Just enough delightful sweetness tantalizes and stimulates, leaving the alcohol balanced, vibrant and fresh.   A grace note of grapefruit brightens all the other fruit aromas, leaving a teasing hint of the tropical.  It is, of course, a Champagne cocktail, and leaves your taste buds – as well as the mood – lifted and lively, just as all Champagne cocktails should.

Yes, the Waterford Bellini does this all – it tastes great, it’s easy to make, and it provides a built in excuse to drink on Easter morning (and every other morning).

You need this cocktail in your life.

 

Waterford Apricot Bellini Champagne Cocktail

Package Includes:

1 bottle Punkt Genau Sekt

1 bottle Rothman & Winter Klosterneuberger Apricot Liqueur

1 bottle Bittercube Grapefruit bitters

Suggested List Price of Package:  $49.99

Special price via this email:  $39.99

 

All orders must be secured with a name, credit card number, and phone number.  All orders will be available at the time of purchase.  When the package is ordered your credit card will be charged.  The package will be held in climate controlled conditions until you are ready to pick it up, free of charge.  Offer is good while supplies last.

This piece was written by Gloria St. Julien and edited by Tim Hansen.

Whiskey Advocate’s Single Malt Scotch of the Year: Bruichladdich’s The Laddie Ten

In Boozing, Scotch, Special Offers on February 16, 2012 at 4:17 pm

There are bad, dark yesteryears in the history of scotch.  But the bleak times teach us to appreciate our current wealth, and no distillery currently offers us a greater warmth of spirit then Bruichladdich.

Founded in 1881 by three brothers Harvey, Bruichladdich became renowned for its elegant, floral and lightly peated rendition of Islay single malt.  It was Robert Harvey, youngest of the three brothers, who built and installed Bruichladdich’s tall, narrow-necked stills that are thought to give its signature expression.

But the twentieth century was unkind to both the brothers Harvey and Bruichladdich.  Like so many other distilleries, the founding family lost control and a series of closures, sales, repossessions and consolidations mark Bruichladdich for the next hundred years.

And then, in 2001, something magical happened. Control passed back to a local Scotsmen, Jim McEwan, and the soul of Bruichladdich was reborn in the form of “new make spirit” – what would become the Laddie Ten.  And now, a decade later, we are finally privileged to taste this expression of Bruichladdich.

The Laddie Ten opens with a clear and forceful declaration of soul: this is not corporate, spreadsheet made whiskey.  All the classic floral tones of Bruichladdich are here: heather, chestnut honey, primrose, and orange campion melding with a sense of the Hebridean and an underlayment of butterscotch.

The Laddie Ten is not peated and this cuts two ways.  For those of you who fear being smoked out by your scotch this is not that dram.  For those of you who need enough peat to make your gums bleed rest assured, Islay is not betrayed nor forgotten by the Laddie Ten.  Which is to say:

The nose is amazing, but the palate takes the scotch to a whole new dimension.  Harmonious, seamless, supple, smooth – these adjectives don’t come close to describing the resilience of flavor and elegant grace on display here.  Nutmeg, toffee, almond and candied fruit all mingle together rising to meet the promise inherent in the nose, finishing with tradition, the savor of Islay.  The effect leaves you needing a cigarette, or at least some time alone to contemplate what just happened.

To sum up, there is a reason Whiskey Advocate named the Laddie Ten Islay Single Malt of the Year: it’s f**king great scotch.  I’m drinking it right now and perfectly agree.

 

You may ask why this offer comes now, especially if you are attending the Bruichladdich tastings at Waterford later this month.  The reason: the Laddie Ten just won Whiskey Advocate’s Islay Single Malt of the Year.  I was told by the powers that be that spirit would sell out immediately and be gone to places like L.A., New York, or DC and simply not be available here.  I didn’t want to let that happen.  I took a jump and I forcefully suggest you do the same: buy a bottle of the Laddie Ten.  You will not regret it.

 

Bruichladdie “The Laddie Ten”

Distillery Release Price:  $57.99

Sale Price:  $39.99

 

They didn’t make a lot, and it took ten years to get here.  I believe this will sell out.  If it doesn’t we will be offering a small taste on this Friday.  Slainte!  

 

The Whiskey Advocate review can be found here:

http://www.whiskyadvocateblog.com/2012/02/09/whisky-advocate-award-islay-single-malt-of-the-year/

 

We also currently have lots of other fascinating Bruichladdie drams available.  In the Uber Provenance series: The Organic and the 2004 Islay Barley; in the Concepts The Black Art 2 and Fino Sherry 15; as well as Port Charlotte PC7 and Octomore 4.1.  Come explore!

 

But also, on Friday we will be pouring a comparison of New World and Old World Burgundy Varietals.  Stop in and join us!

 

All orders must be secured with a name, credit card number, and phone number.  All orders will be available at the time of purchase.

When the wine is ordered your credit card will be charged.  The wine will be held in climate controlled conditions until you are ready to pick it up, free of charge.  Offer is good while supplies last.

Ben Christiansen wrote this article and Tim Hansen edited it.

 

Getting Wet and Dirty: A Valentine’s Day Martini

In Boozing on February 9, 2012 at 3:37 pm

I am dating your grandmother and my suit profits handsomely.

So it was with raised eyebrow and stiff proboscis that I greeted her repine prognostication that I am not “dirty” enough.  A Martini that is, “the American invention as perfect as the sonnet.”

And she’s right; with qualifications: I am no tender-footed gink snuffler nor prurient vodka embalmer of the Appletini crowd.  “Dirty” so often means truculent piss-water-gin made palatable with the dalliance of questionable olive “juice” whose tenure at the bar transcends that of the nuclear maraschino cherry but reveals its’ qualifications only upon exit – mainly your precipitations containing a funky savory note not quite identifiable as human or fungus.  Why not just drink the dregs of a sour-kraut barrel?  At least it ferments purposefully instead of through neglect.

To take a stance: I avoid the dirty martini, unless it’s mine.  But my job is not to obfuscate – I will not leave Grandma high and dry.  This Valentine’s Day I’m going to do what every male college sophomore is attempting to do, but better – I’m going in wet.  To be clear:

I am going to make your Grandma wet.  A wet martini that is. 

You fear me and the tension cuts both ways.  First are the timid lutists who “can’t handle Gin’s taste”.  Second are the Brahmins of the Stiffy who believe Gin’s purity is sacred and structural intensity rules above all.  We shall deal with both via description:

This Wet Martini glides in smooth and subtle, suggesting all the flavors of gin, but with more grace and elegance than your ex-boyfriend.  This is Old Tom Gin and our secret recipe. 

You see, “Old Tom” Gins are a touch off-dry.  No, they aren’t sweet.  They are the classic, pre-prohibition style of gin.  The idea is that there is flesh on the bones, something to ride on, mud-flaps for the dually.  The “kiss” brings forward softness in the botanicals, coupled here with caramelized orange peel and wildflower notes from the vermouth. 

But really, the beauty is its wetness: the palate, while tasting of gin, is like no other gin drink you have ever had.  Gin can be soft and mellow; it doesn’t need maladroit “flavorings” like cucumber to make it smooth.  Every flavor here is in harmony, tasting of itself yet combining to make a greater whole.  It gives, and gives generously as you roll it around your tongue and swallow.  It remains, as all gin drinks do, a heady, intellectual cocktail – yet this one with a warm glow of dotage.     

This Valentine’s Day do as I do: remain sophisticated, but not dry; go in wet but not dirty.  And always remember – while you’re chasing Cosmos across sadly out-dated Prix-Fixe menus I’ll be right where the action is hottest: serving a wet martini to your grandma.

 

The Wet Martini Package

1 bottle Hayman’s Old Tom Gin

1 375 ml bottle Dolin Dry (Green Label) Vermouth

1 bottle Bitter-cube caramelized orange bitters

Suggested List Price:  $59.99

Sale Price:  $44.99

 

All orders must be secured with a name, credit card number, and phone number.  All orders will be available at the time of purchase. 

When this package is ordered your credit card will be charged.  The wine will be held in climate controlled conditions until you are ready to pick it up, free of charge.  Offer is good while supplies

 

 

Directions:

Coat Riedel Vinum O Series tumbler with ¼ tsp of Bitter cube orange bitters.  Load a shaker with ice.  Pour 3 oz. of Hayman’s Old Tom Gin into shaker followed by 1 oz. of Dolin Vermouth.  Shake murderously hard as drink should be served stingingly cold.  Pour into glass neat or with cubes (your choice).  Garnish with olive and orange zest.  Get cocky and garnish with grilled olive stuffed with candied orange zest.  Serve!

 

The Blessed Thistle Negroni

In Boozing, Negroni, Special Offers on October 21, 2011 at 6:32 pm

Vodka’s greatest achievement is an etiology into the complete lack of veridical hornswoggling that takes place by liquor purveyors everywhere.  Spelunking down the back bar will not help you – Absolut, Belvedere, Chopin, Grey Goose, Ketel One, Skyy, Smirnoff, Stoli, Three Olives – and even, if you do so please, DOT AU, Xan, Orloff, Viru Valge, Русский стандарт – are, in fact, all evanescent inventions, the more expensive, the more meretricious their pother becomes, concealing the fact that they are simply watered down ethanol.  They should be bio-diesel for city buses but, in Orwellian twist, they are sucked down with such propensity that even Hades feels the flood.  In ad campaigns reminiscent of Two Minute Hate they boast of how flavorless this ichor is – “double distilled, triple distilled, smooth” – and then chortle like an ambassador from The Great Gazoo while making 500,000% margin on a product that costs a buck fifty.  Your hard won green-backs serve to gold plate some Tartar’s chamber pot and his houri’s pasties.  And by the way, there is no such thing as a vodka martini, this is merely Olive Abuse, and I will report you for it.  You wonder why there are so many flavored vodkas?  Because vodka itself is flavorless.  Open your palate, you are tasting water from the wash-back, and paying dearly for it.  Buy yourself and Evian and skip the pate busting hangover.

But by far, Vodka’s most adroit inveigling is served to its honorable competition: gin.  Where vodka stops, gin begins, and this drink, a Blessed Thistle Negroni, is going to do everything your ex-boyfriend wouldn’t. 

The Blessed Thistle Negroni is four parts heuristic eruption, one part wet cinchona love, and one part slap in the face.  You’re going to love it. 

Junipero gin provides the mysterious and arousing mix of gentiana, rubiaceae, juniper, orange peel and quinine.  Interestingly enough, it also serves as a class I antiarrhythmic agent, but don’t quote me on that.  This pungent mix may confuse some jungle explorers, but its London Dry style will leave their palates crisp, clean, and wanting more.

Wanting is never enough – a stimulated palate must make amends.  And so, bitters.  But not just any bitters, Blessed Thistle bitters.  Originally a treatment for the Bubonic Plague, the estate of Bosca, in Piedmont Italy, has been making it for seven generations.   Ah ha!  You say – this drink is more Cyn Cin than Negroni!  And you just might be right.  But wait—

Wet love: Cocchi’s Americano Apertivo, a mistelle, an infusion of herbs, cinchona, and gentian with Moscato.  In the Negroni, it rounds the palate, giving a classically “wet” drink.  I use wet not as opposed to “dry”, but in opposite to sweet.  I use love to describe the mouth feel, lush and rich, in a word, wet.

And a final perk to both harmonize and salicylate: cinnamon and vanilla, as introduced via cherry.  Bittercube’s cherry bark bitters meld all of these ingredients together.  Invisible on its own, but subtle and clarifying in the mix.

Conquering your doddering vodka addiction is easy when confronted face to face with a Negroni.  This Friday, and every cocktail hour thereafter, panegyrize gin with the Blessed Thistle Negroni.

 

Blessed Thistle Negroni

Package Includes:
1 bottle Junipero Gin
1 bottle Cardamaro “The Blessed Thistle”
1 bottle Cocchi Americano Apertivo
1 bottle Bittercube Cherry Bark bitters

Suggested List Price of Package:  $89.99

Special price via this email:  $69.99

The Blessed Thistle Negroni Instructions:

Recipe:
2 oz Junipero Gin
½ oz. Cardamaro Blessed Thistle Bitters
½ oz. Cocchi Americano Apertivo
¼ tsp.  Bittercube Cherry Bark Bitters

Method:

Place the cherry bark bitters in a Riedel Viognier O Vinum Tumbler.  Roll the glass until the bitters coats the inside.  Smell the glass and enjoy pronounced aromas.

Fill a shaker with ice.

Combine the Junipero gin, Cardamaro and Cocchi Americano in the shaker.  Shake like the blessed Nyjinsky.  Shake hard.

Pour mixture into prepared Viognier Tumbler.  Garnish with lemon.

Friday Nights at Waterford

In Boozing, Drinking on October 14, 2011 at 4:43 pm

Title: Friday Nights at Waterford
Location: Free Wine Tasting, 3- 7 pm
Description: What better way to kick off the weekend than stopping by Waterford for to taste some wine and socialize with friends? Join us each and every Friday between 3 and 7 pm for a free sampling of some of our new arrivals, current specials, and staff favorites!

See you Friday!
Start Time: 3:00
Date: 2011-10-14
End Time: 7:00

The Exceptional Dram: Edradour Scotch

In Boozing, Scotch, Special Offers on September 27, 2011 at 2:11 pm

You have heard of micro-breweries.  And small-batch bourbons.  And certainly every winemaker in the world claims that their little plot of land is unique, if not the best. 

So where is hand crafted, small batch scotch?

True – producing, maturing and selling scotch is a capital intensive operation.  Not only are the stills enormous, sometimes stretching several stories high, but the cost of waiting eight years, twelve years, even twenty years before your inventory is ready for sale is monstrous.  Could it be that scotch simply isn’t suited for small batches made by craftsmen?   

It’s also true that most scotch is owned, bottled and produced by large corporate conglomerates – the largest of whom are not Scottish and never have been.  There is a vast fiction throughout most of these companies, stretching all the way from quaint tasting rooms and fan clubs advertising a piece of Scottish earth to the role of the “master distiller” in production.  The fiction is that their Scotch is based in rich traditional methods, flavored by the purity of local loch, distilled by a seventh generation master, and blended to perfection in the most handsome barrels possible.  But when your producing 30,000 liters of spirit a day (Glenlivet and Glenfiddich) that scenario is simply impossible. Scotch is big business, and in big business the decisions get made by a banker and the balance sheet – not because the palate of an expert craftsman is at the helm. 

But there is an exception: Edradour. 

When a big company’s market department romanticizes Scottish culture, its history of spirit production, and the beauty of its rolling heather fields they should look no further than Edradour.  At Edradour nothing has changed for 186 years – the washbacks, wormtubs, the still and all its pipes are the exact same as they always have been.  It is the smallest distillery in Scotland and its spirit – all of two casks produced each day – are watched over and tended by three men.  And unlike most other distilleries, these three men make a small-batch, hand-crafted scotch, and it shows. 

Edradour’s scotch opens with aromas of orange blossom, almonds and honeysuckle.  This is a true 10 year scotch – it’s not gussied up with caramel like so many others – and the aromas show off its treatment.  Toffee, vanilla bean and toasted brioche notes mingle with its initial fruit aromas.  The palate is smooth, finishing warmly with a lingering baked apple aroma.  Not many ten-years are this complex, because not many ten-years are produced in this way.  It is a perfect autumn dram to accompany a sunset constitutional.   

Edradour is a small spark in the beginning of a Scottish revolution – a revolution not based on mass- produced brand-driven “labels”, but on hand-crafted, small-batch scotch.  Cheers and Alba gu brath!

 

Edradour 10 Year

Suggested List Price:  $59.99

Sale Price:  $39.99

 

But wait!  There’s more!

Friday at Waterford!

3-7 pm, a free wine tasting

Join us this Friday at Waterford Wine as we taste our most recent wine specials as well as some new arrivals to the store.  The Edradour 10 year will be included in the tasting as well as five other wines.  Stop and in and join us for a good time.  Cheers!  

 

 

All orders must be secured with a name, credit card number, and phone number.  All orders will be available at the time of purchase. 

When the wine is ordered your credit card will be charged.  The wine will be held in climate controlled conditions until you are ready to pick it up, free of charge.  Offer is good while supplies last. 

Tim Hansen edited this article. 

 

The Birth of the Sour: The 8-2-1 Up Daiquiri

In Boozing, Cocktails, Daiquiri, Rum, Special Offers on August 10, 2011 at 3:02 pm

We live in an age of vast incompetence.  I speak not of budget ceilings, Mohammad Karzai, or Ned Yost.  I speak of a cocktail: the Daiquiri.

The Daiquiri.  That foo-foo, jejune concoction whizzed to brain freeze consistency via the maladroit excesses of the Osterizer.  Your fears have been realized.  Waterford is going down the tubes and just traded its License to Ill for a check from the Big Liquor House. 

But allow me to explain – for while the wen torpor of the common incompetent Charoian bartender will pour you a Daiquiri of nebbish neutrality gussied-up in garish garnishes, it need not be so.  In fact, the Daiquiri is one of the noblest of all cocktails.  It is the birth of the sour, and like Miles Davis in 1957 it’s about to re-write all the so called “rules”.  No more shall we endure incompetent daiquiris.   

I offer a qualification: I do not mind a frozen daiquiri – even the Quarterback likes to play with pom-poms every once in a while.  I once accidentally drank myself sober on the stuff.  But what I can’t abide is the prurient sardoodledom dominance of column still feints made palatable via bath-tub inoculations.  I strike a fillip into the recrudescence of the craft cocktail.  I offer you a true up Daiquiri, ratios set 8, 2, 1.   

8 is Rum. 

Good Rum will make you feel hot.  Hot in the trouble-causing, crotch watching, whistle peeping, mollydooker-pan-handling, stewing-in-your-own-sweat kind of way.  Any rum that fails to arouse must immediately be impounded to the big blender in the sky; its impotence shredded like a common eunuch during the Ming Dynasty.

Smith & Cross Rum avoids this trap.  S&C is traditional Jamaican Rum through and through: like great Bourbon it’s poured off the pot-still low and matured high.  This tot is Navy Strength, and worthy of tapping the admiral.  Many a wanker won’t be able to muscle through its cocksure, pounding sense of flavor – this rum is pure sugar cane, and just one taste moves you to a white sand Jamaican beach, sunning yourself as Helga massages your tired adductors and the Atlantic’s salt spray mists by.  No regular rum can do this, because no regular rum will do.

2 is Falernum.      

Dr. John D. Taylor’s Velvet Falernum to be exact.  Like many things in the boozy world, Falernum is a lost art, sacrificed at the altar of simple syrup, the common fool tarlatan at a loss for what to do with a regional specialty.  But you are no fool: why lose flavor through sugar when you can gain it in ingredients?  And thus, as the first sailors to Barbados knew Falernum: rum liqueur, limes, clove, nutmeg, and almonds.  Don’t be afraid. 

1 is lime juice.  Fresh squeezed – accept no substitutes. 

And finally, a secret weapon: coat the glass with lemon tree bitters.  A fourth dimension completing the greatness of your Daiquiri.

It’s time to splice the mainbrace, and serve this Daiquiri Up.  The first hit will be hard and this is exactly as it should be. 

Cocktails, especially Daiquiris, are never sweet.  They do not bow to the “I don’t want to taste the alcohol crowd”.  These juvenile pretenders should simply not be drinking.  If you don’t want to taste the alcohol go home: Sam’s-mart will soon be delivering another palate of Zima to your door.  Every drop of alcohol is a poison deserving to be savored like the drip from a Black Widow’s fangs or the final chords of Every Rose Has Its Thorn: your choice. 

You would never cover up a great ingredient in cooking: tenderloin, truffles, caviar, dark-chocolate; all demonstrate their aesthetic power.  And so too with Daiquiris, no whipping, no ice, no syrup, no nuclear cherries as garnish: raw flavors, honed to the edge, sharpened on the still, and cut to pure sugar-cane.  Refreshment like never before.  The 8-2-1 Up Daiquiri.

 

8-2-1 Up Daiquiri

Package Includes:

1 bottle Smith & Cross Jamaican Pure-Pot Still Navy Strength Rum

1 bottle Dr. John D. Taylor’s Velvet Falernum

1 bottle Lemon Tree Limited Batch Bitters

1 recipe card with exact measurements and directions 

 

Suggested List Price of Package:  $67.99

Special price via this email:  $49.99

 

We will be tasting this drink on Friday and Saturday. 

All orders must be secured with a name, credit card number, and phone number.  All orders will be available at the time of purchase.  When the package is ordered your credit card will be charged.  The package will be held in climate controlled conditions until you are ready to pick it up, free of charge.  Offer is good while supplies last. 

This piece was written by Gloria St. Julien and edited by Tim Hansen.

Recipe instructions will also be listed on the website.

 

If you have read this far you deserve another special offer:

The 8-2-1 Up Daiquiri drinks best in Riedel’s Viognier Wine Tumbler.  They are normally $29.99 per set of two.  Our sale price: $19.99 per set of two.  For your pleasure we will be using these glasses on Friday and Saturday.

What Fathers Really Want for Father’s Day: The Manhattan Cocktail Mega-Kit

In Boozing, Bourbon, Brandy, Cocktails, Manhattan, Scotch, Special Offers on July 19, 2011 at 2:48 pm

What every father needs this Father’s Day is not a tie, coffee mug, or a set of 24 Craftsman wrenches.  What all fathers need this Father’s Day is a drink. 

Consider this:

The overflowing poopy-diaper, duly removed from the wailing premises as the wife gnashes her teeth at yet another proposed night of working late; the sore derrière, forced into tractoring around the lawn, chewing up the grass while the errant teenager once more ducks out on family chores; the incredulous mind, attempting to shake lofty angst off the farouche high-schooler whose oppression finds puerile solace in poor grades and a dimmed future.  And finally, the sore noggin, rubbed one more time in the wonderment of “where does she find them?” while being told not to interfere.  Is this not proof beyond a doubt of what every father needs this Father’s Day? 

Welcome to the Manhattan Cocktail Mega-Kit. 

Mega-Kit: three different Manhattan Cocktails combined into one large Father’s Day present.  All the booze, instructions and bitters that dad can handle.  While the Mega-Kit is best enjoyed in full, each component / cocktail may be purchased separately.  See offer below.

As Manhattan (New York) consists of many neighborhoods, so too should the eponymous cocktail have many mixes.  Fathers, this Father’s Day leave your P-Js on, go down to the man-cave, turn on ESPN and make YOUR day count – drink.

Start in Little Italy

You are king of your house, and Barolo is king of all Italian wine.  Starting with Cocchi Barolo Chinato, the Little Italy Manhattan builds into one of the world’s best digestivos, perfect after a steak dinner or a hard night of Rambo-movie marathon.  Chinato is Barolo wine fortified with the gentian violet flower, rhubarb, hints of quinine, cardamom and orange.  Not only will it protect you from scurvy on long sea voyages, but its bitter, sweet and tangy flavors will lift your mood and palate.  Made since 1891 of the highest grade Barolo, it is so sensationally prized in Piedmont that it rarely makes it to these shores.  But thanks to Waterford, now it will be a vital tool in your liquor cabinet.    

Finishing off the Little Italy is Maison Surrenne’s Petite Champagne Coganc and a bitters of hibiscus and grapefruit.  As Barolo is wine, only spirit from the grape can complement the Chinato.  The resulting cocktail is an encomium of your magnificence, writ large upon all the high-ball, Collins, and coup glasses every adroit bartender owns. 

Now, to the Far East Side

Partition happened in 1947, but that didn’t stop Amrut from making single malt whiskey.  Amrut is India’s premier single malt distiller and before you runaway with the xenophobic shakes consider that Jim Murray of The Whiskey Bible named them 2010 Distiller of the Year, stating that their whiskey is “brain-exploding, complex and multi-layered … a cracking delivery and entirely unique in form”.  See what drinking a Far East Sider can do to you?

The Far East Sider makes other Manhattans taste as flat as so many stale crystals of sugar free Kool-Aid from the days of Scooby Doo.  Building upon the Amrut’s moist rum cake and spiced papaya aromas is Saint Elizabeth’s Dram.  Dazzling the palate with notes of clove, cinnamon and nutmeg a juicy fleshiness is introduced via vanilla bean and cherry bark bitters.  Call it a Rob Roy if you will, but The Far East Sider sizzles; and even though it’s pure alcohol, it’s as easy to drink as a peach smoothie had poolside – yet far more salacious.       

Finally, the Perfect

Honey, this drink is not named after you.  It’s named for its mixture of vermouths: equal parts dry and sweet. 

Perfects have a sense of savory swagger about them, like a farceur dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit, houri hanging off the wallet chain, unshaken in a lofty drunkatude by such feeble poisons as a job, adultery, Eliot Spitzer or the sonata form.  Here this sense of fillip derives from Dolin, the only vermouth in the world to attain AOC status.  But it’s not all vermouth.  Redemption High Rye Bourbon fills in the palate with bold bourbon richness.  A bitters of black pepper and ginger sets the drink off.  In weak moments I garnish with an olive.           

You will note: these are not bombastic boonswaddling drinks of saccharine knock-off low rent schnapps mixed with Tang like some sophomoric doddering sardoodledom.  They are pure beefsteak, mixed and stirred for the man-of-the-house: you.

So come one, come all, fathers or not, and drink these Manhattans! 

 

The Manhattan Mega-Kit

Mega-Kit Includes:

1 bottle Maison Surenne Petite Champagne Cognac

1 bottle Cocchi Barolo Chinato

1 bottle Amrut Single Malt Whiskey

1 bottle Saint Elizabeth Dram

1 bottle Redemption High Rye Bourbon

1 375 ml each Dolin Blanc and Rouge Vermouth

1 bottle each Bittercube Jamaican #1, Jamaican #2, Cherry bark vanilla bitters

1 recipe cards with exact measurements and directions

Suggested List Price of Package:  $259.99

Special price via this email:  $199.99

 

But wait!  You can also buy the Manhattans separately!

 

Little Italy Manhattan

1 bottle Maison Surenne Petite Champagne Cognac

1 bottle Cocchi Barolo Chinato

1 bottle Bittercube Jamaican #2 bitters

Suggested List Price of Package:  $102.99

Special price via this email:  $84.99

 

Far East Sider Manhattan

1 bottle Amrut Single Malt Whiskey

1 bottle Saint Elizabeth Dram

1 bottle Bittercube Cherry Bark, Vanilla Bitters

Suggested List Price of Package:  $87.99

Special price via this email:  $69.99

 

The Perfect Manhattan

1 bottle Redemption High Rye Bourbon

1 375 ml bottle each Dolin Rouge and Blanc Vermouth

1 bottle Bittercube Jamaican #1 bitters

Suggested List Price of Package:  $87.99

Special price via this email:  $59.99

 

We will be mixing and tasting these drinks on Saturday.  

When the package is ordered your credit card will be charged.  The package will be held in climate controlled conditions until you are ready to pick it up, free of charge.  Offer is good while supplies last. 

Gloria St. Julien wrote this article and Tim Hansen edited it.  

The Greatest Two Minutes: a Julep Cocktail

In Boozing, Bourbon, Cocktails, Special Offers on May 19, 2011 at 3:07 pm

Like a man courting at a bucolic woman’s club of yore, or a denizen of the demi-monde; I have a
revelation of uncommonly sagacious penetration: we need to drink more Juleps.

Mint Juleps that is, the Derby J, the cocktail of the
Greatest Two Minutes in Sports, a timeframe which perfectly matches another
lascivious activity that I do not enjoy enough of.  Let’s face the facts: life is just a little touch sweeter if the clapper-clawing of the workday is softened by a cocktail, and if diversity is the spice of life, why not this one?

Allow me to present my latest ratiocination: The Julep.

Yes, it’s true: those Derby hats are a touch blue, making me
yearn like a street boy engorged with raucous crudity.  And a Julep should first and foremost amplify this condition.  Some may say Genever, but in fact Bourbon is the key to a Julep. Rowan’s Creek Bourbon.  Cut to 101 Rowan’s lays down a foundation of sweet and salty caramel; like a Schweddy’s gourmand popcorn ball, intermixing flavors of chocolate nibs, Madagascar vanilla bean, savory pretzels, sweet home-spun butter and toasted marshmallows.  This dramatic complexity is to be exploited with adroit fidelity, and here is how:

But first, for all my buncombe dithyrambs I must say: Senator Henry Clay, the supposed inventor of the Julep, was wrong.  His elephantine loutish thrusting cannot put one over on me – a janissary of taste and character would never offer a lady a smash.  Truculent “mulling” – I speak of Mint – is louche and should be cast off like a cross eyed south-Georgia tramp.

Juleps are neither smashes nor slings, flips or coolers; they derive from the ancient Persian Golâb, a love-potion of flowering rose-hips. Juleps are delectably sensual, smooth as a lover’s caress up the spine, lips resting on the nape of the neck, mutual body heat warming the core like a shot of fine Bourbon.

Comparatively a mulled drink is a freakish discharge, brought about by the accidental application of a garbage truck to the wrong end of a slaughter-house; whose putrid, nebulous vaporings can only be concealed with the gooey ferment to which all newbie bartenders retreat: simple syrup.

Lo and behold!  This honest bard’s tale is made plain: discard the mint, discard the syrup, and remember Scheherazade!  It was she that made our bullish ukases clear: a liqueur from the flowering rose hip, whose sensuous aromas beguile as well as stimulate – rose petals and brandy wine tomatoes, lutists and fantees; grabbling, groping, grasping and groaning, all on top of the Bourbon for a thousand and one nights or more; nicely solving the aforementioned two minute problem as well as making a good cocktail! (Oddly enough, such a liqueur is made in Chicago.  I’ll take a good tool wherever I can find it.)

And finally, to climax: a squirt of allspice, ginger and black pepper:  a bitters from Jamaica – the Bittercube Jamaican #1 bitters!  The palate needs refocillation as much as the body needs stimulation and I shall not be the one to disappoint.  Like music in syncopated time our Julep is completed by juxtapositions, neither conquest nor conquistador: pepper punctuating vanilla, allspice playing with rose, ginger mounting caramel; a morning in dishevelment, pure bliss whose titillating whiskers greet the fallow dawn – this is the experience of a great Julep.  And you deserve it all: 400 thread count sheets, satin nighties, down blankets; only the best, and the Waterford Julep.

It is a bitter and sad Ginsberg howl that claims this drink arrives late, be it may that the Derby was two weeks ago, your pleasure knows no season: the Waterford Julep.

 

The Waterford Julep

Julep Package Includes:

1 bottle Rowan’s Creek Bourbon

1 bottle Koval Rose Hip Liqueur (375
ml)

1 bottle Bittercube “Jamaican #1”
bitters

1 recipe card with exact measurements
and directions
Suggested List Price of Package:  $74.97

Special price via this email:  $59.99

Taking Manhattan: The Waterford Manhattan Cocktail

In Boozing, Brandy, Cocktails, Manhattan on April 15, 2011 at 3:35 pm

Some misguided individuals may take Manhattan, or the Bronx, and even Staten Island too.  But me, I’ll take Milwaukee.

I don’t trust wanky, Yankee, hucksters who can’t make their namesake drink.  Those troglodyte ignoramuses hailing from the rotten Apple could never withstand the flirtatious charms of Milwaukee in the springtime: the taunting sensuality of a 40 degree change from one day to the next, a soothing jaunt across construction battered I-94; or the serene agreeableness of running into last year’s pot-holes, long covered in snow and forgotten like a precious phylactery.  I’ll pass on Manhattan, except when I’m drinking.

I’m talking about booze, the drink you may commonly refer to as a Manhattan, a drink that pop-culture has adroitly blemished, besmirched, and bedraggled into a near radioactive concoction that resembles last winter’s snow pile, melting on top of a plate of mud; revealing chewed on straws, charred limp cigarette filters, grease-soaked degrading pizza boxes and the occasional brush with benighted hope – a moss encrusted mitten, forgotten in the drunken rush to a taxi, thrown onto life’s miserable street like a vacuous, stolid, nugatory, yet for-some-long-forgotten-reason-obligatory garnish; of which the Manhattan explicitly needs none.

I’m incensed, and it’s time to dispense with all the pleasantries. For God’s sake, this Easter make your Manhattans in the Milwaukee style, with so much ritzy panache that even Sinatra’s thirst would be slaked.

Here is how:

Avoid the Original Sin, vermouth.  I’ll cut it straight for you: vermouth is rancid wine.  You doubt me?  Smell your bottle of vermouth, the one you keep in your cupboard, just behind Grandma’s fruit cake from last year – yeah, vermouth is perishable.  It needed to be refrigerated.

But wait!  For those D.I.Y mixologists out there you can make your own vermouth!  Simply open a bottle of white wine right now and put it out in the sun.  Sure, with the cork out ladybugs, the occasional bee, wood tics, brown-recluse spiders, and a leaf or two may find its way into the bottle.  That’s ok – you’re in Flavor Country now.  Add some ethanol, microwave for 3 minutes, and serve!

Stop, stop, stop.  Stop with the vermouth.  Give it to some unsuspecting uncle who doesn’t brush his teeth.  Replace the vermouth with Maraschino Cherry Liqueur, Luxardo’s Griolamo Torregua Maraschino Liqueur.

Torreglia, a city in Northern Italy, has a 400 year history of using the Marasca cherry as a distillate, and if God himself ordered up a bowl full of cherries from the Italian Government, they would give him a shot of this.  Yes, there is a reason you have never seen this liqueur before – the Italians try and keep it all for themselves.  This replaces vermouth.

While I stand ready to throw out the bath-water of vermouth there is no reason to throw out the baby.  That baby is brandy, and only aged brandy brings out the citrusy, sex-pot, “too-easy-to-drink” sensuality that every Manhattan needs.

Brandy’s complex and time honored interactions between spirit and barrel cannot be rushed. Germain-Robin, a California producer, knows this.  Their brandy expresses a rich array of flavors with fruits leading the palate: apricots, nectarines and peaches, and progressing all the way to aromas of butterscotch, hazelnut, vanilla and marzipan.  Cheaper, caramel flavored neutral grain substitutes – like the leading “brandy” brand I could mention – drinks like coal-fired power plant run off.  Throw it out with the vermouth.

Finally, a high note to send off the palate: orange, coriander and cardamom; distilled into a bitters, floated in at the end to provide succulence, a certain savory antagonism, an evocative flourish that says “I took Manhattan, and if you aren’t careful, I’ll take it again”.

A Manhattan needs no garnish.  Like silver cufflinks, diamond earrings, or a dainty and cleverly worn ascot, a Manhattan garnishes you: a janissary about town who understands not only great booze but also obscure references to Rogers and Hart songs.

Take Manhattan, the Waterford Manhattan:

The Waterford Manhattan

Package Includes:

1 bottle Germain Robin Craft Method Brandy

1 bottle Luxardo Torreglia Maraschino Liqueur

1 bottle Bittercube caramelized orange bitters

1 recipe card with exact measurements and directions

 

Suggested List Price of Package:  $86.99

Special price via this email:  $59.99

We will be mixing and tasting this drink on Friday and Saturday.

When the package is ordered your credit card will be charged.  The package will be held in climate controlled conditions until you are ready to pick it up, free of charge.  Offer is good while supplies last.

 

Directions:

For one cocktail:

1.5 oz. Germain Robin Craft-Method Brandy

1 oz. Luxardo Maraschino Cherry Liqueur

1/4 tsp. Bittercube Carmalized Orange Bark Bitters

In a shaker mix brandy and liqueur with ice.  Strain into a Riedel O Viognier glass.  Float bitters in glass.  Serve.

 

And our Old Fashioned is still available!

http://www.waterfordwine.com/2011/02/10/i-want-to-date-your-grandmother-or-a-true-old-fashioned-our-valentine%e2%80%99s-day-special/


Crafted Shots: Four Roses Small Batch Bourbon

In Boozing, Bourbon, Special Offers on March 17, 2011 at 2:59 pm

51 barrels a day. 

Eleven million one ounce shots. 

An enormous quantity of booze.   

This is, in fact, the exact quantity of the smallest of the “small batch bourbons”.  Yes, that’s right, this is where the malodorous, sloganeering haruspices of the current bourbon world have taken us – right back to the beginning of post-prohibition history when Canuck blends ran cocksure and hard like the constant din of a subway express through the cerebral cortex, blowing the mind out with rancid hogo.

Eleven million shots ain’t no Small Batch – it’s open warfare.  And it’s time to fight fire with fire, bring the thunder, raise the roof, discard the timorousness yolkery of drinking by “brand”; it’s time to belly up and ratiocinate at the bar, get serious, get real, tune in, turn on, and get drunk. 

But only on the good stuff. 

And Four Roses Small Batch is where it’s at. 

Small Batch Whiskies were once revered.  In the post Prohibition US, foreign based neutral grain spirit producers rushed to capitalize on an underserved market.  US producers who had maintained the amber colored faith couldn’t jack up supply fast enough to meet demand while maintaining quality.  Minting the term Small Batch, US producers differentiated the real thing from neutral foreign imposters. 

Small Batch.  Meaning touched by human hand and born out of thirsty intensions:  freshly malted, pot distilled, matured in new wood, raised by those who produced it, vatted and cut with adroit fidelity.

But like most things whiskey, Small Batch pulled a Fonzie and jumped the shark, landing right in the cesspool of market share, receiving a thick coat of advertising shellac on the flush down into overproduction and balderdash, sucking ichor like the receiving pump of a Port-A-Potty.    

But no more.  Faith may be shaken or stirred but it doesn’t die.  It’s time for the good stuff again.  It’s time for Four Roses Small Batch Bourbon.

Four Roses Small Batch isn’t just from one small “batch,” it is from four tiny vattings – four individual runs across the still with different mash bills and different yeast strains.  This is the secret of its flavor complexity and the true meaning of small batch.  Within the vattings two are Rye heavy, drawing out rich fruitiness and malty spicy sweetness.  Two are Corn heavy, bringing in a red berry fruitiness and floral notes.  Married together the best runs are aged in new charred barrels for seven to ten years.

The results are a spirit of true small batch character.  Sweet maize, violets, and honey greet the nose upon the glass.  An underpinning hint of rye solidly holds firm to Kentucky, keeping the aroma from going the direction of some kind of wanky Canadian.  But that’s not to say this isn’t smooth – it is.  The palate announces itself – this whiskey is set slightly higher at 90 proof – and it is clear and concise, directing its flavors with force.  But every good conductor knows how to resolve a crescendo and this is where the craft of small batch blending comes in: throughout its persistence, its lengthy finish, its demanding personality, Four Roses Small Batch remains sweetly mellow.

For those who aren’t interested in taking eleven million shots a day, it’s time to drink hand crafted, producer matured, Small Batch Bourbon: Four Roses.

Four Roses Small Batch Bourbon

Suggested List Price:  $29.99

Special price via this email:  $23.99

And, for those who want to get really naughty:

Four Roses Small Batch Bourbon Limited Edition 2010 

Suggested List Price:  $79.99

Special price via this email:  $59.99

All things being Waterford-y, this is a Rye heavy, 15 year, set at 110 proof.  It gets the job done.  

We will taste these spirits Friday and Saturday, along with Raymond Field Blend and Le Pupille Morellino. 

All orders must be secured with a name, credit card number, and phone number.  All orders will be available at the time of purchase.

When the spirit is ordered your credit card will be charged.  The spirit will be held in climate controlled conditions until you are ready to pick it up, free of charge.  Offer is good while supplies last. 

Tim “whatever it takes” Hansen joins us again via Blackberry, phone, hard-copy, photo-copy, sleet, snow, bourbon, wine, woman and song over at the editing desk.  Thanks!

I Want to Date your Grandmother, Or a True Old Fashioned: our Valentine’s Day Special

In Boozing, Cocktails, Old Fashioned on February 10, 2011 at 5:22 pm

I want to date your Grandmother.

In a time before swizzle sticks and puerile, tawdry garnishes; when merely glancing at the Vermouth was a wet Martini; when Cosmos were understood to be garish flapdoodle and Vodka was recognized as a drink for nebbish, mountebank swindlers of low society; a time when a cocktail was a cocktail and a woman of a certain class, stature and a touch of naughty lasciviousness drank Old Fashioneds, True Old Fashioneds, without all the bosh, mulled, turbid rubbish mucking up the drink and nulling the flavors of the booze; that woman, that saucy little tart, made a bad boy out of me.

And while you’ve been ignoring, I’ve been romancing, stroking the hot fires of love.  But I’m a nice guy, not incommoded by your neglect and willing to share my sagacious secrets of persuasion.  This Valentine’s Day I’m going to date your Grandmother because I’m Old Fashioned.

You see, it’s all in the booze.

You’re used to having bad Old Fashioneds – watered down with club soda or worse, 7-Up; tarted up like a cheap floozy with sugar cubes or simple syrup, and garnished to the point of distraction.  But Grandma’s beyond all that – she’s not attending a frat party looking to hook up via the machinations of a tank of whopatooli.  She’s got a young buck coming for her who knows how to make the good stuff.  And here it is:

Like a great Chef, starting with great ingredients, an Old Fashioned is a harmony of flavors – Bourbon, orange, and cherry.  It is an orchestration of these flavors brought together into a single, assertive taste.

Up North I am willing to take the Brandy exception, but down here the key ingredient is Bourbon, and in Old Fashioneds the Bourbon should be Rye.  In fact, it needs to be Willet Straight Rye.  Rye has a malty brown sweetness that broadens across the palate.  But Rye needs an expansive auditorium of high proof to flex its muscular richness.  And Willet, set at 115, gives it up.

Combining with and complementing the Willet is an XO Orange Cognac.  XO because it’s held in barrel for 10 years giving the spirit a citrusy high note.  And orange because it’s macerated with orange zests. When blended together the Rye is lifted up, releasing its cinnamon, clove, cardamom and baking spice flavor elements that delicately combine with the raisin and citrus notes of the Cognac.

Already I am wooing your Grandma with an Old Fashioned like no other.  But allow me to explicate further:

Mixing off the sour teat of the rail, many a mixologists retreat to simple syrup, i.e. sugar, to hide the despicable concoction they refer to as an Old Fashioned.  Sugar is a crutch, making the drink taste vague, like alcoholic tap water from the prep-sink at a Turkish restaurant.  It is completely unnecessary if your ingredients are of the highest quality.

And my ingredients ain’t cheap, and Grandma is going to taste that.

Here is how an Old Fashioned should be finished off: garnish with one, and just one, real maraschino cherry.  I said REAL cherries.  Not the hot pink Xanadu kind found in grocery stores that taste like diesel fuel.  Maraschino cherries provide a foundation for the rye and cognac to rest on.  Do not mull the cherry.  A garnish should be like punctuation, a simple guide to the structure of the thought, not its raison d’etre.

Finally, a bitter note to stimulate the palate into action: Bittercube’s cherry bark bitters.  This bitter provides focus and intensity to the rye making the palate smooth and supple.  Like salt in a well-made sauce you can’t taste it, but it lifts all the other components into harmony.

This is a True Old Fashioned – a cocktail that announces itself and leaves the Cosmo crowd crying for soda pop.  It’s boozy and bold, making you wondering why you would drink anything else.  Welcome back to a true cocktail.

So this Valentine’s Day, while you’re chasing tail and getting caught; while you’re once again neglecting one of the greatest women in your life; I’ll be there, drinking an Old Fashioned.

The Waterford Old Fashioned

Old Fashioned Package Includes:

1 bottle Willet Straight Rye

1 bottle Mathilde XO Orange Cognac (375 ml)

1 jar Luxardo “the original” Maraschino cherries (the real kind)

1 bottle Bittercube cherry bark bitters

1 recipe card with exact measurements and directions

 

Suggested List Price of Package:  $89.99

Special price via this email:  $69.99

 

 

~Old Fashioned~

2 oz.
Willett Family Single Barrel Rye

½ oz.
Mathilde Orange XO Cognac

1
Luxardo “The Original” Maraschino cherry

¼ tsp.
Maraschino cherry syrup

¼ tsp.
Bittercube Cherry Bark Bitters (per glass)

~

In a
shaker mix rye, cognac and syrup with ice.
Strain into a Riedel O Viognier glass.
Place cherry and float of bitters in glass.  Serves two.

We will be mixing and tasting this drink (in small quantities, but you don’t really need allot of it to get the job done) on Friday and Saturday.

When the package is ordered your credit card will be charged.  The pacakge will be held in climate controlled conditions until you are ready to pick it up, free of charge.  Offer is good while supplies last.


Scotch: BenRiach

In Boozing, Scotch, Uncategorized on December 7, 2010 at 5:29 pm

Title: Scotch: BenRiach
Location: Friday, December 17, 3:30 – 6:30 pm, FREE!
Description: BenRiach, located in the Scotch heartland of Speyside, is presently one of the most expressive and innovative of Scotch houses. Presented by “White-Dog” Serrano this tasting explores BenRiach’s current distinctive offerings from unique barrel treatments to sophisticated usage of their own floor maltings. Significant discounts on all BenRiach’s products will be offered on this day and the tasting is absolutely free! It is an event the scotch lover should not miss!
Date: 2010-12-17


If it’s Not Scottish its Crap! GlenDronach 12 Year Scotch & a Sneak Peak at Our Thanksgiving Pinot Noir Special

In Boozing, Scotch, Special Offers on November 19, 2010 at 10:59 am

The very usquebaugh that runs through and unites Scottish culture; the same Aqua Vitae that emboldens the Highlander’s martial prowess, the very Whisky that used to be raised in every Scottish household before British colonization; yes the elixir known as Scotch –  is not made by Scots.

That’s right.  Most distilleries in Scotland are owned by the French or British – not Scots.   

This doesn’t necessarily mean their spirit is shiite.  It does mean the spirit is produced with a set of goals that may not have anything to do with your palate’s enjoyment of the dram.   

Take the GlenDronach distillery as an example.  Under foreign ownership its floor maltings were decommissioned, its coal fired stills were torn apart, and its barrel regime was changed from pure sherry to fifth pass bourbon cask.  Instead of making the vanilla and rasiny rich Scotch it was famous for the distillery made neutral grain spirit to be hammered into blends. 

Is neutral grain spirit tasty?  No, but it is cheaper, far easier to produce, and makes more money.

So it was a blessing in 2008 when the greenhorn interlopers decided to cask off this great distillery and mothball it.  A blessing because someone who cares about the taste of the dram itself was able to snatch it up and return it to its former stature.  That person is Billy Walker. 

Billy is a master distiller and he knows how to raise a spirit up and give it full expression.  Immediately after the purchase, Billy has rotated production back to 100% sherry cask.  His newly released GlenDronach 12 Year shows the strength of his decision: rich cream sensations meld with citrus fruits, mulling spices and ginger.  The initial aromas draw the taster in – malt, hazelnut and ginger mingle with touches of tangerine and bay.  Untroubled by the drive to produce volumes of neutral spirit Billy set the proof of the 12 Year a touch higher, letting the finish broaden into a long and complex toasted cinnamon pecan note.  The entire taste is round, warm, and a perfect match for Thanksgiving Turkey.  That’s right, drink the scotch with the Turkey – you deserve it.   

GlenDronach is on the far side of Speyside, past The Glen Livet and Macallan, albeit much smaller.  But just because it’s smaller than its neighbors doesn’t mean the spirit isn’t as expressive.  Now in the right hands, Scottish hands, GlenDronach shows itself to be an alluring and formidable dram. 

GlenDronach 12 Year Scotch  

Suggested List Price:  $56.99

Special price via this email:  $39.99

And a little sneak peak….

Thanksgiving is just around the corner and your entire family is about to descend!  You need some wine to make the Turkey Day meal happen smoothly and we at Waterford have just the thing – Brandborg’s Oregon Pinot Noir!

Brandborg’s Oregon Pinot offers rich strawberry fruit oriented with softer, silkier and smoother tannins then some of its California Pinot brethren.  It works as a cocktail but also fits right in alongside the turkey, sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce.  It is the perfect match for all your T-day needs!

We will send out a more detailed email on Brandborg next week but we do have it in stock now!  Cheers!

Brandborg Benchlands Pinot Noir

Suggested List Price:  $19.99

Special price via this email:  $12.99

We will be tasting this Scotch (and the Pinot!) on Friday afternoon and Saturday all day (unless we sell out of it!)  Stop in and give it a try!

All orders must be secured with a name, credit card number, and phone number.  All orders will be available at the time of purchase.  Half case (5%) and full case discounts (10%) do apply to this special offer.

When the wine is ordered your credit card will be charged.  The wine will be held in climate controlled conditions until you are ready to pick it up, free of charge.  Offer is good while supplies last.