Another upcoming NW spirits festival — this time whiskey-focused!

WhiskeyFest NorthWest Presented by the Luna Foundation

WhiskeyFest NorthWest is the largest Whiskey-centric festival to ever hit the Pacific NorthWest. On May 11th, WFNW will bring together 100+ local, national and international distilleries to pour samples for Portland’s whiskey-thirsty community. The one-of-a-kind festival will feature whiskey tasting booths, full bars serving up specialty craft cocktails, mixology competitions, back-porch & foot stompin’ live music performances, a cigar smoking lounge, a Bootlegger-themed lounge, fine eats from local restaurants, Portland vendors and some whiskey education to create a truly unique event benefiting CASA for Children.

Join Us May 11th in the shadow of the Fremont Bridge to enjoy the finer things in life: Whiskey, Music, Food and the beautiful Pacific NorthWest.

Full merchant vendor list available online at WhiskeyFest NorthWest.

Tickets are currently available online at WhiskeyFest NorthWest and are $25. All tickets include 3 tasting tokens, access to the all-day festival and live music. Additional tokens will be available for $2 each. This is a 21 and over event.

The above was adapted from a WhiskeyFest NorthWest press release.

The 2013 NW Spirits and Mixology Show brings the craft cocktail world to you. This is Central Oregon’s chance to meet and mingle with the Northwest’s most exciting craft distillers and bartenders. Sample over 150 varieties of Whiskey, Brandy, Liqueurs, Vodka, Gin, Mezcal, Tequila and Rum, representing the Northwest and beyond.

Join Master Distillers, Craft Bartenders and Connoisseurs, and feed your palette and imagination with cutting edge artisan cocktails, distilling education and spirits tastings.

The Northwest Spirits and Mixology Show is it’s own pavilion within the Bite of Bend. Located on Minnesota Street in Downtown Bend.

The Bartender Brawl takes place Saturday, June 29 and features the best bartenders from across the country who have come to compete for a cash prize.

Tickets are $10; available at the door. You can also purchase tickets beginning in June at: Visit Bend, The Source, Sterling Savings Bank, and online through The Bite of Bend.

Your entrance fee includes samples from 50 distilleries that span the globe. You may also enjoy the Bendistillery Martini Lounge where full cocktails are available for purchase, or take advantage of the Feature Bar, where the Northwest’s most famous bartenders will be on-stage.

Additional information can be found at the NW Spirits and Mixology Show website.

You can probably guess with that preamble, that this is probably not going to be one of those clear, almost flavorless faux vodka rums, but instead be funky and strong. You would be correct with that guess. The component rums are distilled in Trinidad and Tobago, and carried to the Netherlands for blending and ageing. The result: Denizen has a ton of personality, if a bit of an odd path from still to bottle.

Nose: Molasses, grassy, vegetal, pungent, sulfur, funky. Somewhat flowery, with sweet, sugary scents mixed with unripe plantains, green papaya, tamarind, and vanilla.

Taste: Has an initial bite, but quickly mellows out to full flavors of dark brown sugar flavor with vanilla and light wood notes. Fairly chewy feeling, with light white pepper, red and green bell pepper, and Vidalia onion, mango, and unripe plantain. Minerals and salts round out the flavors.

Finish: Fairly short finish for the full flavors, with the very sweet notes fading first, followed by the more earthy brown sugar, leaving a woodiness, chewiness, and lingering minerals. Slightly sour, mildly bitter, and slightly warm.

A interesting rum, which I’ve incorporated in some Tiki-style drinks with good effect. Works well also with vermouth, such as in an El Presidente.

Denizen Rum, (Amsterdam (blending), Trinidad, Tobago, and Jamaica (sources) ) $19

On Friday, March 22nd and Saturday March 23rd, the Oregon Distillers Guild presents the 3rd annual TOAST, the largest public tasting of artisan spirits in North America. TOAST will feature more than 50 local, national, and international artisan producers, pouring over 150 different spirits for enthusiasts and industry professionals.

TOAST allows small distillers to showcase their handcrafted spirits, while providing an opportunity for the public to experience the diversity and quality of craft spirits from Oregon and beyond. From Absinthe to Whiskey, virtually every spirit category will be represented.

Hours: Friday March 22nd from 5PM to 10PM and Saturday, March 23rd from 1PM to 10PM

Location: Two World Trade Center. 121 SW Salmon Street. Portland, OR, 97204
Bridge Level 3, Sky Bridge Terrace

Onsite Parking is available for $4.00 per day

This event is restricted to adults 21 and over with valid ID.

For more information, visit the Oregon Distillers Guild.

Firstly, there was the obvious discussion of what is actually blue, as far as unadulterated food and drink. “Nearly nothing” is the actual answer. Even blueberries are more or less purple, rather than blue. But that rarity is why the color blue becomes more interesting than most other colors, when discussing solid or liquid comestibles. It easily generates a cognitive dissonance between expectation and perception.

Similar to how a loud shout and clap will surprise someone and intensify an experience, making a vivid impression, a jarring color combined with a totally unrelated flavor will do similarly. And blue coloration is not alone in this. For example: what exactly is red in the flavoring ingredients of Campari? Nothing at all. But the vibrant color helps make the flavor seem more intense and intriguing precisely because of that cognitive dissonance.

Starting the discussion of how blue in particular came into drinks took us back to the 1850s, and Alexis Soyer, who was more or less the first celebrity chef in Europe. This prolific inventor of kitchen technologies was also known for making (some of) the first bottled sauces and condiments. And related to that, he created the supposed first pre-bottled blue drink: “Soyer’s Nectar” a “sadly non-alcoholic”, beverage, which was apparently a blue-colored pear and cinnamon soda. I consulted the web after the fact and found another reference which describes it as lemon rather than pear, but concurs on cinnamon, and more importantly, the blue coloration. In any event, the original recipe was a secret and is now long lost, but the odd torpedo-shaped bottles marked “Soyer’s Nectar” occasionally can be seen on antique glassware sites.

Over time blue (and red and green and orange) colors began to appear in different flavoring liqueurs.

Of the blue ones, blue curaçao is the one we know now, but before blue curaçao, there was another blue spirit: Bols Crème de Ciel (“Cream of the Sky”). It was suggested* that Crème de Ciel was the other lost ingredient in the Aviation, since it would give it a more sky blue color than the grey-violet from Crème de Violet.

In any event, now blue curaçao is now nominally thought of as one of Bols’ signature liqueurs, and there’s far more made that is colored blue than is left clear, or colored orange.

And for those who want to keep score on the various forms of curaçao out there, we tasted 5: one a new non-colored curaçao from Pierre Ferrand, 3 brands of blue curaçao, and one unfortunately grey fresh-made one. Here are a couple quick comments to guide you:

Pierre-Ferrand Dry curaçao (sadly not blue): crisp, pronounced orange, fairly rich, but dry

Bols: vibrant blue, with a nose and flavor full of mandarin, bright and fruity

De Kuyper: a more turquoise hue with both orange and lemon present, with some cardamom and vanilla notes
Giffard: light azure color with flavors and aromas of orange peel, bitter orange, with hints of vanilla, and a long warm finish.

Combier “gray” curaçao: only oranges, colored with petal extract, and with an aroma of watermelon, with berry and range notes. Frankly, with it’s appearance, if could only be called unfortunate, since I really doubt there will be a future seminar on grey cocktails.

In any event, all of these curaçao variants will be different overseas. The U.S. has its own rules, but “when you travel expect better”.

But what to do with them? Inspiration can come in many forms. “As I was getting increasingly drunk and with 14 extra bottles of blue curaçao, I thought ‘Fuck the Corpse Reviver Number Two, I want a Corpse Reviver Number Blue!’ With that, Jacob’s interest in blue cocktails began. But for others…

Ideas range from the fairly traditional Blue Hawaiian	to Jacob’s Bl’Aviation

Any way you do it, a touch of blue added can give a striking look to a cocktail.

Greeted by one of it’s first drinkers with a cheer of “Maita’i roa ae!” (which roughly translates to “Out of this world! The Best!”), Victor Bergeron’s status in the cocktail world was assured with his Mai Tai. This is the supposed original recipe, or the best approximation we could readily obtain.

The Original Victor Bergeron Mai Tai from 1944

Typical presentation can also include a lime wedge

Since some of the specific ingredients asked for are not (readily?) available, substitutions will have to be made. While I’m not sure what is used in Trader Vic’s these days, Ms. Boozenik and I have had nice success with Denizen rum and with Banks 5 rum, and also using B. G. Reynold’s Orgeat Syrup.

No discussion of curaçao would be complete without a refresher on citrus, in general, and so we began there. Citrus varieties available vary widely and wildly, as citrus cross breeds with great ease. In fact, three original varieties are the source of all modern citrus:

* Citrus medica – which we now call “Citron” originated in the himalayas, and in its original form is a large fruit, with so much rind and so little juice and pulp, that it has few culinary uses.

* Citrus reticulata – which is the “Mandarin”

* Citrus maxima – the “Pomelo”.

And deliberate (and accidental) cross-breeding of each of these have given us all the rest of the types of citrus we enjoy, today.

Another bit of info of which I was unaware is that all citrus remains green unless it has a cold winter, so the traditional Brazilian caipirinha is actually made with a green lemons, not limes. Maybe this also explains some of the confusion and blurring of the names for lemons and limes worldwide?

As for curaçao, in particular, it came from a failure to to grow oranges on the island now known as Curaçao. The unsuitable climate and soil led to what we now call the laraha. A very bitter, essentially inedible green fruit, with the highly fragrant peel which gives curaçao its primary flavor.

Given that the earliest flavored spirits were the “Dutch Occasional” liqueurs, and the Dutch held Curaçao as a colony, it was natural for the flavor to make it’s way back to Europe.

By 1808 curaçao flavoring is in the regent’s punch, and by 1837 it’s in fairly wide use, with a distinction between curaçao and “inferior” orange and other citrus spirits. The first departure from using the “curaçao” in the name, was in 1885 when Cointreau differentiated themselves as a separate spirit, followed in 1895, by Gran Mariner. These diverged very little from their formula pre-branding as a separate spirit, however. By 1905, triple sec, the triple distilled bitter curaçao became considered high points of the distillers art.

Sugar cane is native to probably New Guinea, and while it had spread in the old world, it was not in the New World until Colombus’s second voyage carried sugar cane probably from the Canary Islands. Soon after cane, came rum.

Rum soon became the most popular spirit, as the taste for sweetness prevailed in Europe and the American colonies. Oddly much rum was made away from the cane growing areas, using transported molasses. In the early English American colonies, Massachusetts and Rhode Island were the heart of rum-making and the associated industries, coopering, etc., sprang up to support it. The American War for Independence and the 1812 War forced America to switch from the now embargoed, and thus very expensive, rum to whiskey.

Afterward rum in the U.S. suffered through the “fun” first half of this century, with WWI, Prohibition, and WW2. Only veterans coming back from the tropics and tiki brought rum back to prominence. But the convenience trend, daiquiri-in-a-jug, (the TVdinner of cocktails, with colors not found in nature) and vodka did more damage to rum’s reputation and market share.

But now, 10 years into Tales of the Cocktail, we’re seeing rum drinks made right. Bartenders are using fresh ingredients, and it’s giving rum another big chance to be the big spirit in the U.S.

And now for some very brief tasting notes, from when we breezed through an impressive collection of spirits:

Shellback Silver: clear with slightly toasty, caramel flavors, blended from several Barbados rums

10cane: honey sweet and somewhat silky, with some caramel and vanilla and pear, should be a nice mixing rum for lighter rum cocktails especially where texture would be important. Definitely a nice mojito and rum punch rum

Denizen: a chewy white rum, blended in the Netherlands from 3differnt distilleries: column from Trinidad, and column and pot still from Jamaica. Fruity, mango, papaya, black olive tapenade

Brugal especially dry: more wood and dry sensations, delicate

At which point Paul, taking a sniff, quipped: “my nostrils are insured by Lloyd’s of London… They wouldn’t cover any of the rest of me, though”.

Banks 7: a blend of 23!!! rums from seven nations including Javanese Batavian arrak, which is according to Paul, “like the bitters that make a manhattan a complete cocktail”. This rum is super funky and complex, chewy.

Bacardi 8: blending of some of the massive older stock that bacardi has been saving, dried fruit, brown butter caramel, slight woodiness, toasty, nutty, Paul’s favorite rum old fashioned, “makes you want to run to the fireplace, and stroke the Irish setter”. At this point the conversation turned markedly, and amusingly inappropriate.

DonQ Gran Añejo : see our existing long form review at http://boozenik.com/bottle-reviews/review-don-q-anejo/.

Depaz Blue Cane: big herbaceous, lightly spicy, red bell pepper, grassy, sweetness and fullness, part of the only 3% of all rums that can be called Rhum Agricole.

Diplomatico Reserva Exclusiva: a 12 year, made in a giant facility built by Seagrams, with seven different stills (three pot stills and four column) making a wide variety of spirits, made from cane honey and darker molasses: more floral than others, sweet, w/ banana and pear and nutmeg and a boldness that it shares with some other Venezuelan rums.

Appleton Estate Reserve: pot and column distilled, this is far less funky than most Jamaican pot still rums. The cane harvested without burning, and the taste is honeylike and oddly dry for a Jamaican rum.

Mount Gay Extra Old: single and double distilled rums blended ex-bourbon casks only used three times, from rums that are mostly between 16 and 18 years old. We noticed confectionary flavors and aromas and vanillas showing off the rum and the wood in which it was aged. Sipped straight, and in an old fashioned, this would be a good spirit.

Flor de Cana 18: estate grown cane giving them total control, molasses-based, white oak, obvious example that there is terroir to cane. Honey like, beautiful.

Zacapa 23: one of the very few women distillers and blenders. The spirits industry first press of the cane, high attitude aging, so slower than the rest of the rum makers, solera-style with continuous blending as it ages, rather than only at the end. Tastes of Christmas cake and arancio. Lots of depth.

And I will close, echoing Paul’s lament: “Why oh why are there only 24 million cases of this imported into the us?”

A Workshop “The Making of Liquors” (a.k.a. Franco-Italian smack talk)

This was an amusing and spirited exchange between Alain Royer of Pagès and Matteo Luxardo on French and Italian traditions of distilling, maceration, and flavoring. Like many Tales seminars, you really had to be there to enjoy the show, but I can at least relate some of info which you may or may not know about the personalities and the distilleries.

Pagès began in 1859, now has several distilleries in different parts of France. Their distillate is grape based, and having tasted their 96% alcohol pure distillate, I can attest to their high quality control. This may be because of the steam-heated stills they prefer.

Pagès uses rotating vats to make sure that the fruit does not oxidize and does not ferment. And pressure from an inflatable bladder in the tank gives different results based on fruits being used. Do you want the flavor of the pits, or no? You simply adjust the pressure. Also, depending on the fruit you are macerating, you must use different strengths of alcohol, or you risk cooking the fruit, like lime “cooks” ceviche.

Luxardo is an older family run business, which began in 1821 in Zara (now part of the republic of Croatia). The family fled Tito and the communists in 1947, and the 22,000 cherry trees they use for their flagship products are all clones of the first tree brought from Zara with the original recipe book, back in 1947.

Matteo Luxardo described only the process of making their maraschino. The notable takeaway was the the aging which is performed in huge larch wood vats, for 3 years, and few “flavoring” liqueur makers can afford that much time. Also, Luxardo uses their maceration/distillation leavings as compost, feeding the next cycle.

Differentiating their higher end brands from the inexpensive mass-produced ones, Alain Royer commented “your customers want to know what is in what you make, if you use a $6 or $7 liqueur.” And having tasted rather artificial attempts at some liqueur flavorings I agree. Matteo Luxardo put it more bluntly, regarding the less expensive brands: “you should be ashamed!” to which I also must agree. The Pagès and Luxardo products are definitely worth the premium.

The name’s a touch of an inside joke, but we’ve grown to like this variant on the old Barbarella cocktail. My tweak of adding blue curaçao as a drizzle does add some additional citrus notes, but more than that, makes for a fairly exotic looking drink, befitting the frozen cold of the outer limits of our solar system.

Pluto’s Revenge