Odd Bacchus

The first time I remember reading about Crème Yvette was in the now-defunct Wall Street Journal cocktail column, “How’s Your Drink?”, written by Eric Felten. In this 2006 article, he lamented that no one will ever have the opportunity to taste a proper Blue Moon cocktail, because Crème Yvette “long ago went the way of the Great Auk.” He mentioned it again in 2007, taking the Yale Club in New York to task for using food coloring-rich blue curaçao in its Yale Cocktail (Crème Yvette used to provide a naturally purple color).

Unfortunately, all bartenders had to muddle through with Crème Yvette substitutes, because the Charles Jacquin et Cie liqueur company stopped making the liqueur in 1969. And that was that, for fifty years. I assumed it was lost forever, until I found it listed on the cocktail menu of the newly renovated Four Seasons Chicago. I couldn’t believe my eyes! Crème Yvette was back?

According to a 2009 interview in Imbibe Magazine, Charles Jacquin et Cie’s Robert Cooper had long been fascinated by the discontinued products of his family’s company, including Crème Yvette. On the heels of his success introducing St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur and encouraged by a number of bartenders, Cooper decided to reintroduce this spirit made from dried violet petals, blackberries, raspberries, wild strawberries, blackcurrants, honey, orange peel and vanilla.

This resurrected liqueur doesn’t come cheap, however. Binny’s sells it for $50. Before you invest in an entire bottle, give Crème Yvette a try in a bar. The Four Seasons makes a fine cocktail with it called the A², a riff on the classic Aviation. Here, the mixologist replaces the Aviation’s gin with Journeyman W.R. Whiskey, mixing it with Crème Yvette, Yuzu (a small grapefruit-like fruit) and Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur (not to be confused with fluorescent red “maraschino” cherry juice).

I can’t deny that I felt I shiver of excitement as I tasted the A², my first chance to sample anything with Crème Yvette since 1969. The cocktail had an aroma of purple grapes, a strong, fruity flavor with some tangy citrus notes, and a dry, floral finish. A well-balanced and elegant drink, and well-priced at $14 (bars in many other five-star hotels wouldn’t hesitate to charge twice as much).

You won’t find an A² anywhere but the Four Seasons, but if a bar near you has Crème Yvette on the shelf, ask for a classic Blue Moon (2 parts gin, 1/2 part Crème Yvette, 1/2 part fresh-squeezed lemon juice; shaken with ice and strained).

It will be a taste of history.

Until relatively recently, Italy’s Maremma region was better known for poverty and malarial swamps than fine wine. Mussolini drained the swamps, solving the malaria problem, but the region didn’t achieve much viticultural fame until the 1970s, when Sassicaia hit the scene (now it’s one of Italy’s most well-known and expensive wines).

One little region rose above the swamps, however, allowing vineyards to be cultivated well before Mussolini intervened. Morellino di Scansano had a fine reputation at least as far back as the 19th century, according to The Oxford Companion to Wine. Nowadays the area has achieved DOCG status, a significant vote of confidence for its wines.

On hillsides near the sea, vineyards planted with Morellino (the local synonym for Sangiovese) flourish in “balmy conditions,” notes The World Atlas of Wine, and “a host of outsiders” such as Antinori and Frescobaldi have invested in wineries here. But Maremma didn’t quite turn out to be the next Chianti, and the lack of pedigree along with the economic downturns in the last decade “left many a producer with a large hole in their bank account,” according to the Companion. That has left consumers with some “interesting bargains” on their hands.

And goodness knows I love a good bargain. I wish I could claim to have known about the value proposition of Morellino di Scansano before I purchased a bottle of it at Urban Orchard, but no. I bought the wine because I’d never heard of Morellino di Scansano before, and because it was only $15. That’s a buck or two more than I usually like to spend on an unknown, but hey, it was DOCG, and there were two creepy-looking peasants with scythes on the label. How could I resist?

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Orvieto

The region around the Umbrian hill town of Orvieto produces Italy’s most famous white wine, found on Italian restaurant menus everywhere. What about Orvieto, that ubiquitous, innocuous dry white, possibly be considered unusual or obscure? As is so often the case, we must look back to the 1960s to find the answer.

Before then — indeed, ever since the Etruscans carved wine cellars out of the tufa underneath the city — Orvieto primarily produced sweet wines. These wines were not immune from the tradition-averse 1960s, and as tastes drifted towards dry whites, Orvieto winemakers drifted as well. Today, just 5% of Orvieto’s wine production is sweet.

As their wines became drier, winemakers moved away from the Grechetto variety which had given Orvieto much of its character, using ever more Trebbiano in their blends. And, as The Oxford Companion to Wine notes, “Like most blends with a Trebbiano base produced in substantial quantities…dry Orvieto tends to be a bland, pedestrian product.” Ouch.

But it’s not all bad news. The pendulum has begun to swing the other direction, and in the last 20 years, some Orvieto winemakers have been experimenting with using Grechetto blended with well-respected international varieties such as Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay.

On a recent stay in the area, I had the opportunity to taste some of these newer blends. They weren’t your mama’s Orvieto.

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Austria has an quite an uphill climb ahead of it. When most people think of Austrian wines, should they even think of them at all, I suspect they think of them as basically like German wines, but cuter. Some people perhaps think of Grüner Veltliner, which has become a sort of national grape, or perhaps even fine Riesling from the Wachau.

Almost none of us, myself included, think of red wine. I imagine Austrian reds consigned to the “Other” or “Eastern European” section of the wine shop, next to bottles of cloyingly sweet stuff with mysterious semi-Cyrillic labels.

Fortunately, many Austrian winemakers ignore our ignorance and produce delicious dry reds anyway. I had the fortune to sample a remarkable array of these red wines at the recent “Austria Uncorked” tasting in Chicago, and though I’ve been to Austria a number of times, this tasting was revelatory. A variety called St. Laurent was particularly divine.

I first sampled St. Laurent not in Austria but in the Czech Republic, where the variety is known as Svatovavřinecké. (Don’t worry about remembering that name or trying to pronounce it — you’ll have a hard time finding any Czech wine here in the states.) This direct descendant of Pinot Noir impressed me then, but I can’t even remember trying a St. Laurent (“Sankt Laurent” in German) in the years since. It was a real joy to taste several expressions of this exciting variety all together:

2009 Pfaffl ”Altenberg” St. Laurent: Pfaffl’s Altenberg vineyard lies in the large Weinviertel district north of Vienna. Its proximity to a forest keeps the grapes cool in the evening, according to Pfaffl’s website, allowing the ordinarily quick-ripening St. Laurent more time to develop on the vine. A deep garnet color, this wine smelled of ripe red fruit and iron. On the palate, the flavors moved from fruit to green pepper to black pepper on the finish. Very fun.

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An all-inclusive cruise ship can be a dangerous place. It’s all too easy to overindulge, particularly when certain staff members seem determined to convince you to have yet another glass of wine with dinner. Do they get paid more if they pour more free wine?

When my liver is thus imperiled for a week, I avoid hard liquor and drink only wine (and the occasional glass of water). I did make an exception on this journey with Silversea, when the bartender Marwell convinced me to imbibe a delicious “Grand Champagne Cocktail” one night before dinner. I’d sampled plain ol’ Champagne Cocktails before and enjoyed them, and I was intrigued to see how Marwell would make it “Grand.”

A standard Champagne Cocktail starts with a cube of sugar at the bottom of a champagne flute. Soak the cube with a couple of dashes of Angostura bitters, top off with Champagne, and voilà! A most elegant aperitif. You can also goose this recipe with the addition of a little Cognac, measuring in about 1/5 as much Cognac as Champagne.

But a cruise is no place to show restraint, so Marwell took it yet further with a splash of Grand Marnier. The resulting Grand Champagne Cocktail (also called a “Night and Day“) tastes complex, deep and lively, and it packs a surprising punch. One of these is plenty before dinner.

It’s rare to see Champagne Cocktails on drink menus nowadays, and when they do appear, it tends to be expensive. All the more reason then to give this drink a try at your next party. You can prepare flutes with bitters-soaked sugar cubes in advance, and add the other ingredients as guests arrive. There’s no need to invest in an expensive Champagne for this cocktail; a dry Cava or Prosecco could also work quiet well (but given a choice, I’d opt for Cava, since its bubbles will stand up to the Cognac and Grand Marnier better).

Presented with this cocktail, your guests will surely be impressed and delighted. And because the liquors make the drink surprisingly strong, a Grand Champagne Cocktail will get your party off to a lively start.

Every now and then I like to escape from the keyboard for a while and do a little fieldwork. While I’m away researching Sardinian Cannonau and Minorcan gin, I would encourage you to do a some research of your own. Go into a wine shop you like and ask for something weird but tasty. Often they’ll have some oddball gem they found at a tasting that they would love to share.

Of course, you’ve probably tried a number of odd drinks in the past already, and I would love to hear about your experiences. Feel free to send me an e-mail about an offbeat wine, spirit or cocktail you’ve tried, and I’ll post some of the stories to this blog. You can reach me at contact@oddbacchus.com.

If you don’t have a good story, well, now is an excellent time to make one. Get out there and drink something weird!

I’ll be back on May 5. Cheers!

Last June, I wrote about Ohio’s Lake Erie Islands, which wine critic Frank Schoonmaker highlighted as an important viticultural region in a 1941 issue of Gourmet. But even then, Schoonmaker lamented the lost potential of these islands, which feature unusually favorable terroir for certain grape varieties. Prohibition killed off a number of wineries, and most of those that remained in the mid-20th century were apparently lazy or incompetent. According to Schoonmaker, “Too many – far too many – wines are falsified, are heavily dosed with sugar, or are blended with cheap California wines.”

With significantly declining acreage devoted to vineyards, I had basically written off these romantic-sounding islands. What a pleasant surprise then, to come across a bottle of 2010 Firelands Gewürztraminer from Isle St. George. Also known more prosaically as North Bass Island, Isle St. George achieved AVA (American Viticultural Area) status in 1982, and vineyards currently cover more than half the island.

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It was one year ago that I walked into In Fine Spirits, asked for their weirdest bottle, and came away with a deliciously velvety Jović Vranac from Serbia. That inspiring find pushed me over the edge into hardcore bloggery, and now, 117 posts later, I continue to milk this blog as an excuse to drink any oddball booze that catches my fancy.

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you people who actually read this thing, and to also take stock and see what’s been catching your fancy. Some of my posts are much, much more popular than others, and it’s fascinating to see what drinks people are most interested in reading about.

It was a big surprise to see my post about Becherovka, an herbal Czech liquor which is tasty with tonic, rank at #11. No cocktail posts made it into the top 10, but the posts about Chicago’s Koval Distillery and the “Hidden Gems of Cognac” came in at #6 and #7, respectively.

A piece about the glories of Virginia Viognier made it to #8, but all the other top wine posts — #2, #4, #5 and #10 — were all about wines and spirits from Serbia! Who knew?

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I was about to leave a wine tasting at Rogers Park Fine Wines & Spirits, when I noticed that half the people in line to check out had at least one bottle of Massaya Classic in their hands. Recently, I saw the Massaya Classic appear again, this time in In Fine Spirits‘ “tasting tournament.” It made it to the final four, at least. This obscure Lebanese red blend seems unlikely to remain obscure for long.

I wisely bought a bottle of the 2008 at the Rogers Park tasting, and I finally decided to open it and see what the fuss was about. The nose of red fruit, red meat and black pepper seemed promising, and indeed, it won me over at first sip with big, fruity flavors of cherries and plums followed by a peppery finish. I could see why this wine was so popular.

We paired it, perhaps in error, with some homemade pork tacos topped with guacamole, salsa, black beans, rice, cilantro and cheese. The wine became almost overpoweringly spicy, the black pepper kicking into overdrive. (I’m still working on a good red to pair with spicier dishes — if anyone has had any success beyond Lambrusco, please let me know.)

So what’s going on here? Is Lebanon poised to become a real player in the international wine markets? Although nowadays it’s associated more with Hezbollah and war, Lebanon has produced quality wine for thousands of years. Most of the vineyards (including Massaya’s) grow in the Bekaa Valley, where the ancient Romans erected a temple to Bacchus. Even then, this was major terroir.

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After seeing the beautiful but disturbing Cindy Sherman exhibition at MOMA in New York, I needed a little refreshment, and a candy from the Felix Gonzalez-Torres installation just wasn’t cutting it. We headed to The Modern, MOMA’s superlative restaurant and cocktail bar.

Amazingly, we secured a booth at the bar without a minute’s wait, and before long I was sipping one of my favorite cocktails of the trip: Via Per Le Indie, a drink with an inexplicably half-Italian, half-French name that is nevertheless 100% delicious. Cadenhead’s Old Raj Gin, distilled to 110 proof and infused with a little saffron, serves as the cocktail’s base. This Scottish spirit is mixed with Bénédictine (an herbal and relatively sweet French liqueur), fresh lemon juice, ginger and honey, and served over ice.

For $15, I expected something impressive, and this cocktail did not disappoint. An aroma of honey gave way to flavors of juniper, citrus, ginger, and then honey again on the finish. Complex and delicious, and just what I needed after some serious art consumption.

I had a much simpler version of this cocktail at Thalia, a restaurant/lounge in the Theater District. Their Bee’s Knees cocktail ($11) combined Tanqueray 10, lemon juice and honey, and again I found it to be a most satisfying sweet/sour drink.

I had never tried this gin/lemon/honey combo before, but it has a long history – it turns out that the Bee’s Knees is a classic cocktail from the Prohibition era. The honey, no doubt, served to smooth over the rough edges of the low-quality gins available at that time (you can read more about the cocktail’s history here).

Fortunately, we don’t need to mask our gins nowadays, giving us much more freedom to create a balanced cocktail. Encouraged by the simplicity and ready availability of the ingredients, I experimented at home with various proportions. Here, ladies and gentlemen, is Odd Bacchus’s ideal Bee’s Knees:

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