Liquid

’Tis The Season

 

There’s nothing that can lift us out of an old-man-winter slump quite like the sight of this season’s gray-leather stacked-heel Chloé riding boots (hear that, Santa?). Well, that and a perfectly crafted — and much more wallet-friendly — glass of eggnog. There’s something about the decadently sweet drink that makes us want to cozy up on the couch and sip our way through the snowy nights. And now some local restaurants are celebrating by adding the cold-weather pick-me-up to their seasonal cocktail lists. For starters, there’s the eggnog ($14) at Excelsior (272 Boylston Street, Boston, 617.426.7878), a classic combination of cinnamon, Myers’s rum, and a hint of coconut cream. If you want to kill two cravings with one drink, opt for the white-chocolate eggnog ($14) at RumBa (InterContinental, 510 Atlantic Avenue, Boston, 617.747.1000), where housemade eggnog is blended with spiced rum and Godiva chocolate liqueur and finished with whipped cream and a piece of white chocolate. And for an Italian twist on the drink, try the Botticelli cocktail ($12) — an elixir made with Absolut Vanilla, Faretti Biscotti liqueur, and eggnog — at Da Vinci Ristorante (162 Columbus Avenue, Boston, 617.350.0007). There’s just one minor catch: we actually have to kick off our slippers and head out into the cold to enjoy these cocktails — which is where those Chloé boots come into play.

Deliverance


Danger on the wine trail




I expected to be arrested. Or fired at. Or set upon by dogs. I was driving down a semi-rural road at a speed that would have been mocked by passing toddlers, stopping every few dozen meters to peer at mailboxes, gates, and doorways. A few shouted imprecations came from behind closed shutters and I hurried along, unable to understand the words but quite clear on their meaning.


Northern Exposure

Champagne Dreams

Have your bacon and drink it, too

Believe it or not, bacon is working overtime, spending mornings on breakfast menus and nights on cocktail lists. ìBacon should be its own food group,î says Don Yovicsin, owner of Jake’s Dixie Roadhouse (220 Moody Street, Waltham, 781.894.4227). ìAnything you put bacon on, it just gets better.î So he put his theory to the test and infused Absolut vodka with bacon to create drinks like the Bacon: My Greasy Lover ($6), a bacon-flavored screwdriver garnished with a Slim Jim. Paul Westerkamp, beverage director at 33 Restaurant & Lounge (33 Stanhope Street, Boston, 617.572.3311) and STIX (35 Stanhope Street, Boston, 617.456.7849), is combining bacon with its smoky-liquor counterpart — Woodford Reserve bourbon — to create the cocktail equivalents of our favorite breakfast indulgences. Which begs the question: is drinking bacon as delicious as eating it? Our bacon vodka taste-testers had some pretty animated responses after taking a few swigs: ìYou could pour it on your eggsî; ìIt’s like the taste of an after-bacon burpî; ìIt’s like a bacon memory. The STIX bacon-and-bourbon cocktails conjure up in our taste buds memories of crisp fall mornings eating pancakes with sticky maple syrup, bacon, and eggs. Smoky-sweet bourbon, muddled blueberries, and maple syrup mix surprisingly and seamlessly in the Woodford Blueberry Pancakes with Bacon cocktail ($14), and a pineapple garnish adds a fruity layer to the Woodford Bacon and Eggs with a side of Pineapple ($16) — a modern version of a flip, topped with bitters. But bacon, if this whole cocktail thing takes off, promise us you won’t quit your day job.

Fall For It: Local Bartenders Think Seasonal

On a chilly November night two years ago, an old friend and I slid into a booth in a quiet, candlelit New York bar for what was to be a quick drink and a chat. Several hours later, we slid out, in tears and in love — drunk on the potion that was hot buttered rum.

Our Daily Wine

I might be the last person qualified to answer a question I hear an awful lot: what’s a good everyday wine? Everyday? Every day? I’m so far gone into wine geekery that if I have the same wine twice in a single month, I start to get twitchy.

But sure, I realize that most people don’t want to stalk the wineshop wilds in search of ever more exotic prey. Those who aren’t me usually think it would be nice to have a few bottles they can rely on, bottles that will be there for them after a hard day. Comfort wines. Faithful or cats that will sleep on your lap and purr, rather than spiny, fivetoed albino lizards that might swallow your fingertip in the middle of a yawn.

Tonic For What Ails You

Not just gin anymore

Ready ... Set ... Mix!

Maybe it’s because of Olympics fever, but on a Tuesday night in early August, there’s a palpable sense of anticipation and anxiety, those trusty bedfellows of competition. Dandies, swells, hipsters, and a motley crew of cocktail enthusiasts pour into Green Street. Some carry boxes of glassware and make their way upstairs. Some read to themselves from tightly clutched scraps of paper, glancing up to greet familiar faces. They’ve come to drink, to be sure, but this is to be a night when conversation will intermittently stop and all attention will be fixed. This is mixology as a spectator sport.

More and more, liquor companies are turning to the experts — the worldwide bartending community — and inviting them to apply their fluency in the fundamentals of bartending and innovation to invent a drink, often using a designated product. But more than just an exercise in originality and resourcefulness, cocktail competitions, which are becoming something of an industry standard, provide a forum where the spotlight, which all too often shines most brightly on the finished product, shifts to the execution of intricate techniques and the bartenders themselves. You might call it the Iron Chef–ization of the bar, but talk to enough drink wizards who take the time to formulate new recipes for submission to various contests — and Boston has its fair share — and you uncover a basic fact: when you dare a mixologist to invent a drink, the most indispensible ingredient is imagination.

Label Chaser

One of the most useful college lessons is that an awful lot of what you thought you knew was wrong. Sometimes, it’s just an everyday loss of innocence — the discovery that the world is a lot more complex than you’d thought back in high school — but sometimes, it’s a dawning realization that you’ve been — gasp! — lied to by people you’d trusted.

Of course, there’s also the sort of lying intended to separate people from their innocence … but that’s Jeannie’s column, not mine.

Wine, too, has its shades of gray, its misleads, and its outright lies. Take wine labels. You probably think you know what’s in a bottle of 2005 pinot noir from the Russian River Valley, right? Guess again.

Eight is Enough

Punch drink

The bar manager at Dalí (415 Washington Street, Somerville, 617.661.3254) boasts that he serves the best traditional sangria ($6) in town, and after a few sips, I’m inclined to agree with him. Fruit marinates in a sea of a light-bodied red wine, brandy, and a splash of triple sec, which gives the concoction just enough of a citrus kick without overpowering the subtle spice of the alcohol. It does, in fact, remind me of time spent in Barcelona, sitting at an outdoor café and watching the hustle and bustle of tourists, street performers, and locals, all mingling under the Spanish sun. Dalí also offers a delicious cava sangria ($7), made with a base of pineapple juice, mango purée, and peach schnapps and finished with Spanish sparkling white wine.

To mix things up, I hit Myers+Chang (1145 Washington Street, Boston, 617.542.5200), Joanne Chang and Christopher Myers’s Asian-fusion lovechild, next. The white sangria ($9) is made with sake, which actually makes perfect sense, since the rice spirit mixes divinely with fruit flavors. In this case, ginjo sake — a light and fruity variety — provides a delicate backdrop for white peach and guava juices. The red sangria ($9) is divinely mellow, incorporating blood orange, cherry, and ginger. Here, a full, dry cherry flavor takes center stage without overpowering its fellow ingredients.

Keeping the basic recipe the same but playing around with the fruit components can add entirely new dimensions and personality to sangria. At 33 Restaurant and Lounge (33 Stanhope Street, Boston, 617.572.3311), the raspberry sangria ($12; $45/pitcher) is incredibly harmonious, especially given its number of ingredients. Until I knew exactly what was in it, I would have sworn that it was a basic red sangria recipe, maybe with the addition of raspberry purée. But those masterful drink wizards tricked me again: it’s actually Nashoba Valley raspberry wine, merlot, brandy, Bacardi Razz, Cointreau, and orange juice. Have one out on the patio for the perfect mesh of urban landscape and summertime country flavor.

When sisters Carla and Christine Pallotta decided, after two decades, to close their salon and try their hand in the restaurant business, it was a true family affair. Nebo (90 N. Washington Street, Boston, 617.723.6326) serves up authentic Italian dishes whose recipes the Pallottas learned from their mother, who still swings by to help out in the kitchen once in awhile. Venetian sangria ($12; $32/pitcher) is based on a sort of homemade wine cooler that the family would drink during the summer; it’s essentially prosecco with pear juice. The children, Carla says, would drink pear juice with a little splash of prosecco; as they got older, the ratio of wine to juice gradually increased. The Nebo homage to this beloved beverage is outstanding, made with, naturally, prosecco, pear juice, brandy, strawberries, nectarine, and fresh mint. Mama must be proud.

The absolute must-try at the Savant Project (1625 Tremont Street, Boston, 617.566.5958) is the oddball Mangria ($7; $30/pitcher), a spicy right hook that’ll pound your lips to a pleasant pulp. Sauvignon blanc meets Yukon Jack (Canadian whiskey), triple sec, and jalapeno peppers, which, our waitress says, sit in the bottom of the brew for a while so the liquid can be thoroughly infused. This sangria isn’t for the faint of heart (or taste buds), but it pairs fantastically with food, especially some of the cold small plates like tuna tartar ($9.50) and chicken fresh rolls ($8.50). If the thought of jalapenos and wine is a little too much for you, try the Sake To Me sangria ($7; $30/pitcher), a less potent blend of Gekkeikan sake, citrus vodka, ume (Japanese apricot) liqueur, and mint. (We’re told that the recipe may shift a little to incorporate green tea.) Purists with a sense of adventure will undoubtedly enjoy the seemingly straightup red sangria ($6), that’s actually a surprising combination of red wine, Licor 43 (a Spanish citrus liqueur), Apfel (apple) liqueur, cinnamon, and ginger.

Of course, homebodies can whip up their own version of the Spanish punch, suited to taste. All you need is red wine, superfine sugar, and the liquor and fruit of your liking. Throw it all together, let it steep for a while, and enjoy it over ice. Summer just got a little sweeter.

Sweet 100: 2008

Twist: Back to our roots

Bitter sweet