Northern Lights in the Southern Hemisphere

And now a break from our regularly scheduled programming.

I have been working on a new cocktail and thought I would share. I am calling it the Northern Lights in the Southern Hemisphere. I started with the name and worked it out from there. It started as a genever  and rum drink until my friend Mr. Mustache pointed out that rum really wasn't from the southern hemisphere, Nerts!, to use his expression. So I started to consider my options and moved to pisco, from Peru. This brought me to thinking about the time The Mrs. and I went to the Columbia Room (my cocktail nerd friends just clenched their fists in a jealous rage) but Derek Brown made us a Veiux Carre using genever in place of the rye. It was fabulous.

So as a play on that I have my first real try at it. Please forgive the half empty glass in the photo, I had to decide if it was good enough to share. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free. I believe next time I will try Carpano Antica in place of the Maurin quina, although I like the cherry notes.

Northern Lights in the Southern Hemisphere

1oz Bols Genever (Smoke Glass)
1oz Pisco (I used Demonio de Los Andes)
1oz Maurin
1/2 tsp Allspice Dram
2 light dashes Aromatic Bitters
2 light dashes Peychad's Bitters
2 heavy dashed Regan's Orange Bitters

Shake with Ice

Garnish with cherry (Homemade Maraschino)

Journey to the land of Bourbon Pt.II

One of the draws of the trip was getting to explore Louisville, a city none of us really had any ideas about what it was like. We arrived Friday evening in time to take in the Gallery Crawl they have down town, so we walked down the main drag toward one of the places we had found online and were very excited about. The 21st Century Museum Hotel is a large old office building in the middle of downtown that now houses, not only a hotel but a bar and restaurant called Proof and a large gallery space that holds the owners lard modern art collection as well as hosting traveling exhibits and local art works. As we got close we could see a 20ft tall gold painted replica of Michelangelo's "David", and we knew we had found our spot. We made our way in and to a table in the bar side of the restaurant  ordered a round of drinks and appetizers  and tried to take in all of the art that was right there in the bar. Or favorite being a representation of the Satyr Pan in life size bronze as if he were a bartender serving drinks. All of the food and drinks were very well executed and the fact that they would make a sidecar with my preferred proportions, without really raising an eyebrow, was quite comforting. From there we moved into the gallery space where they were having an opening for a new set of works; some being rotated in from the collection, others by local artists who were on premises for the event. I am not always the biggest fan of modern art but there were some really great pieces from around the world and while not all of them were the most competently accomplished technically were still quite thought provoking. From there we wandered down the street and took in more of the awesome public art before stopping for a bite that isn't really worth spending time on and then, finding our way back to the hotel, crashed out for the night.

The next day we found ourselves beating a path to breakfast that took a rather circuitous route, due to my crappy memory, was it N. 6th street or S. 6th street? But we eventually found our destination, Toast, for an awesome breakfast cocktail and superb comfort breakfast. The star of this meal was the lemon chiffon pancakes ordered by The Mrs. after breakfast we walked back across the street to a shit shop that we had spotted but had been closed on our way to breakfast. This place was crazy, four or five floors of what looked to have been an old school building filled with every bit of crap you could imagine. Tons of furniture, toy collectibles, collectible liquor bottles, architectural stuff; we even found etched photo plates, it was amazing. We spent way too much time there and ended up having to forgo the trip to the Speed Art Museum and skipped to the Louisville Slugger Museum. Yes, where they make baseball bats.

I'm not much of a baseball fan these days, but I am a cabinet maker so I was interested in that aspect of it. We got there just in time for the architectural tour of the facility, which was pretty cool, and then went in for the main factory tour. That is quite a place, they still do some of the old school production but mostly it's done on CNC machines. You wouldn't believe how many suckers will pay 7 bucks to watch people make bats. They had us crammed in there like we were gonna catch a bolt in the forehead at the end. All in all an enjoyable day.

After the tour we walked back to the hotel for a little rest, knowing there would be some more serious eating and drinking in a couple of hours.

Journey to the land of Bourbon pt.1

Last week was The Mrs. birthday and she originally wanted to go to Chicago to drink herself silly and eat at Alinea. This, for a number of reasons, did not happen. We, instead, decided to trek on up to Kentucky to check out the most American of spirits, well, two of the most American of spirits; we have a real soft spot for rye, and there are some great ones up there. We put out a call to see if anyone wanted to join us and, much to our surprise, the intrepid traveler heretofore known as Ms.Furman quickly spoke up. This was quite exciting for us, since we always ask if anyone wanted to come with us and , up 'till now, no one had and Ms.Furman is someone we hang out with quite a bit but have never really gotten to know that well and after almost twenty years there are no new stories to tell between The Mrs. and I, only stories to be written. Getting to know her better on the car ride was definitely a highlight.

Our first day out we left Charlotte in the mid-afternoon, with the goal of making it to Knoxville, TN by 7pm. I had made arrangements to go to a Tiki Bar hidden in a private home there and we did not want to be late. This was a serendipitous find on the interwebs that had occurred just as we were deciding to go to Kentucky which worked perfectly into our plan. The place was amazing, the "proprietors", had been collecting artifacts for years and really did it right. The space was a 250 sq.ft mudroom that had been converted into a tiki paradise. We chatted about cocktail culture and The Mia-Kai (see previous post), where he started an east coast tiki convention some years ago, while we sipped on fruity rum-based deliciousness. After a little while a couple of the neighbors cane by to join us and, I'm guessing, to make sure we weren't ax murderers, hacking their liquor hook up into tiny pieces. The night was perfect, even if it started by knocking on a strangers door and hoping for the best.

Day two had us up and moving early, making a beeline for our first distillery of the day, a four hour drive from Knoxville. When we arrived at Makers Mark we were there for one thing, a bottle. Being one of the biggest names in bourbon we felt we knew enough about the company to skip their dog and pony show in lieu of some of the more intimate tours. So, on The Mrs. Birthday, she got to dip her own bottle in the famous red wax and then sign and date it; and then we left. From Makers we made our way to the rather generically named Kentucky Bourbon Distillers, LTD. makers of the, anything but generic, Willett line of Bourbons and Ryes, as well as a number of other mid and top shelf lines of the same. This, I'm not going to lie, is why we were in Kentucky. We love their products. Also, since they are a smaller distillery that is not on the "official" Bourbon trail our tour consisted of four people and to top it off, since they were in the summer shut down, our tour guide was the master distiller, grandson of the distilleries founder. We got a great tour and tasting, their rule is, if they have it you can taste it. So, we tasted the 23yr rye, why wouldn't you, and then proceeded to buy a bottle. It was delicious. I can imagine I'll be getting a visit from Mr. Whiskey any moment now. Sadly, we did have to move on from there and get to our final tour of the day Heaven Hill. This is a massive operation with a fairly extensive if somewhat disappointing tour, but they have a very informative visitors center for whiskey novices, it was just a little to corporate for my taste.

Makers Mark welcome sign

Dipping bottles at Maker Mark

Kentucky Bourbon Distillers, distillery building

Pot Still at KBD

This is how they weigh the barrels at KBD, to this day it gets certified every year.

Rickhouse at Heaven Hill

I'll end here for now and continue the adventure in a day or two.