National Moscato Day

Moscato Margarita

The Walking Dead Cab Sav 2016

This was actually quite good, and I intend to get another bottle for this Sunday’s episode.

Winemaker’s notes:

Don’t let this wine catch you unaware, The Walking Dead Cabernet Sauvignon opens with notes of blackberry with nutmeg and mocha spices. This full-bodied wine reveals flavors of dark cherries and currants which pool on the palate, giving way to notes of mocha and spice. Fine, chocolaty tannins hold the long smooth finish.

This website, Lot 18 has individual Rick, Darryl & Negan bottles.

Rosé and Red Bull

Scenes from a Friday night in Jamestown, N.Y.

  

More Rosé & Red Bull:

• A brunch video! (2012)
• A blog post about The Rosé Bull cocktail! (2010)
• Bros and Rosè = Brosé! (2014)

Happy Birthday, Lauren Bacall

Today is Lauren Bacall’s birthday and I wasn’t expecting to find a cocktail named after the actress, but then I stumbled across this gem posted by a WordPress site called Wine Cocktails.

  
We’ve got a nice rose at the bar where I work, so I’ll definitely be trying this out later tonight.

Maybe if I get time I’ll search online later to see if there’s a Dark Passage cocktail. 

  
From what I can tell from Wine Mixology’s post, this cocktail is an original drink that two of their contributors came up with earlier this year — and I hope they don’t mind if I re-post their recipe. But for anyone reading here On this blog bout this drink for the first time, please click over and check out the original post!

From Wine Mixology:

This cocktail is a play on three classics with its own distinctive twist. One classic is obviously Lauren Bacall herself – the sultry actress of the Golden Ages of motion pictures. This cocktail also puts a twist on the classical gin and tonic as well as the “Greyhound” with its splash of grapefruit. It is very refreshing without being too heavy in body. 

INGREDIENTS

• 2 oz Pol Clement Rose Sec (French Sparkling Rose Wine)
• ½ oz Uncle Val’s Botanical Gin
• ½ oz Triple Sec
• 2 oz Organic Pink Grapefruit juice
• ½ oz Honey Syrup (1/2cup honey; ½ cup boiling water, stir)
• Top glass off with Tonic
• Grapefruit and basil for garnish

PREPARATION

Fill a Collins glass with ice and add in the rose, gin, triple sec, grapefruit juice and honey syrup, and then top the remaining room left in the glass with tonic water. Garnish with grapefruit and basil.

Still Thirsty For More?

—Got a minute-and-a-half!? Here’s a cute, quick video on how to make the Lauren Bacall.

Update:

I’ll be updating this post later tonight after I take a picture of my Lauren Bacal drink I’ll be making.

Can’t Wait For Morning

Had quite a few drinks tonight (and did a lot of swimming), but I’ll blog about those libations later.

Time for bed and then coffee in the morning:

 

And they serve wine!

July 4th, 2015 — Recap

Having the Fourth of July on a Saturday this year felt pretty great (as Saturdays are like Fridays for some of us in the service industry).

All-in-all, it was a great few days.

I drank beer.

I drank wine.

And I camped out:

  

In terms of liquor, I drank something pretty basic on Saturday that I’ve never had before— gin and ginger ale.

Sure, it’s summer and blah blah blah gin and tonic. But I surveyed what we had on hand and the gin and ginger ale is what I ended up with. I almost went with whiskey & ginger ale (and there was actually a lot on hand to choose from), but I really wanted gin for some reason — which is a spirit I like, sure. but never really reach for. And I think this summer is going to be a turningpoint for me in that regards.

After the basic gin and ginger ale, I cracked open a bottle of Sipp Ginger Blossom and made two cocktails — one with gin for me, and one with Captain Morgan for my mother-in-law:

  
This flavor of Sipp had the bite of ginger beer, but also had vanilla and lime notes which softened and sweetened the drink. I’m sure it would make a great Dark ‘n’ Stormy. And I was afraid that mixing it with Captain Morgan would be overkill on the vanilla, but I didn’t hear any complaints.

And, finally, I love this photo I took Sunday night:
  

I was drinking a Great Lakes Burning River and tried to get a group shot without getting out of my chair. What ended up happening was a photo burst of several pics that created a weird vortex around my father-in-law. I didn’t digitally enhance it to look that way or blur it on purpose at all. 

Fourth Of July Wine

A bottle of white table wine from Oregon for the Fourth Of July:

 

Borealis
The Northern Whites
2014 Willamette Valley
39% Gewürztraminer 
33% Muller-Thurgau
16% Pinot Gris
12% Riesling 

Weekend Wine Tasting & Antiquing

On Saturday I scored a copy of the Esquire Drink Book from 1956:

My wife and I went to North East, Pa. with her folks and not only hit up some antique shops, but also bought a couple bottles of wine along the way.

Here in Jamestown, we live near the Lake Erie Wine Trail — so weekend tasting is a regular part of summers in Chautauqua County.

We started at South Shore Wine Company, which is a winery located in North East that’s part of the Mazza group of wineries. Mazza has two other locations, both in Chautauqua County, my favorite of which is right across from Johnson Estate Winery — but more on that in a bit.

The South Shore location was a great place to visit because the main room is in an underground, cavernous, stone room that’s just neat to experience. And even better, there’s wine to taste while you’re taking in the history.

I tasted two wines and three meads, their Gruner Veltliner and Noiret for wines — and also their honey mead, raspberry honey mead and a carbonated mead called “Hops & Honey,” made with hops and more.

The gruner veltliner was very good and I wish I would have gotten a bottle, but the appeal of having some honey mead was more appealing. Not getting a bottle of the gruner veltliner just means I’ll have to go back soon, and I wonder if the other Mazza locations sell that same gruner veltliner that South Shore was selling.

Wine Links:

— Lake Erie Wine Country

— Chautauqua Wine Trail

— South Shore Wine Company

— Johnson Estate Winery

Tasting Bar:

Earlier I mentioned that one of the Mazza sites is located right across from the Johnson Estate Winery.

Those two sites are located right on Route 20 in Westfield and are a couple of my favorites because they offer more than just wine to taste — they have spirits.

The Mazza location has its own distilled spirits to taste, made and marketed under the Five & 20 name. The Johnson Estate Winery doesn’t distill spirits, but it does have what it calls a “New York Statr Spirits Tasting Bar.” Basically, there’s a second station in the winery’s tasting room where you can taste boozes which were made in New York State.

I tasted three whiskies there Saturday:

Whiskey Tasting :

• Bootlegger 21 New York Bourbon Whiskey — 

• Hudson Double Charred Whiskey — 

• 77 Whiskey Rye & Corn —

At Mazza, in addition to wine and spirits, there’s a launch party for their brewery’s first beers this weekend — making Mazza and Five & 20 the first combination winery, distillery and brewery in the state.

The New York Sour

Whiskey, sugar, lemon juice and red wine — the New York Sour is simple, classic, has an interesting history and appeals to both wine drinkers as well as whiskey cocktail fans.

I made a brief mention of the New York Sour when writing about Buffalo Proper last week.

My wife ordered the restaurant’s New York Sour, which was made with with Old Overholt, fresh lemon juice and a Rioja.

I’ve made more than a few of these from behind the bar at Forte. Here’s how one of mine looked the other day:

  

There’s a real beauty of a blog post about the New York Sour online here at Food 52.

The writer cites David Wondrich about the drink’s Chicago roots:

Drink History via Food 52:
According to cocktail authority David Wondrich, the New York Sour is not actually from New York, but rather from Chicago, where, in the 1880s, a bartender began dressing up his sours by adding a “snap” of claret.

But it was particularly popular in New York during Prohibition, when the wine, lemon, and sugar were handy camouflages for the not-so-hot whiskey of the era, and at some point, the name stuck.

Whatever its origins, you could drink a New York Sour anytime, anywhere, and it would feel right. But we’re partial to it for early fall, the way the puckery lemon swirls together with spicy rye and dark, warming red wine.

Also, this post on Serious Eats cites Wondrich’s book Imbibe! on the fact that the drink was also known as a “Continental Sour” and a “Southern Whiskey Sour” during the 1880s, with the name “New York Sour” mostly settled on by the early 1900s.

What wine to use?

• Wondrich says Claret.
• Food 52 says Malbec or Syrah.
• Buffalo Proper serves it with Rioja.
• At Forte we use Cabernet.

Further Reading:

— Liquor.com recipe no. 1 and no. 2

— Liquor.com’s video recipe.

— Bon Appetit & Epicurious

About This Cocktail:

For my New York Sour pictured above, I used a California Cabernet — medium-bodied with notes of raspberry, plum skin & black currant and a velvety smooth finish. It complimented the drink nicely. Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 2 oz rye whiskey or other whiskey of preference. I actually used 1.5 oz of Knob Creek bourbon, which is 100 proof and has a spicy rye-like bite.
• .75 oz simple syrup
• .75 oz fresh lemon juice
• .5 oz red wine

Preparation:

Add all ingredients except the wine to a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake and strain into a lowball glass filled with fresh ice. Using the back of a spoon, slowly pour the red wine into the drink — and if done carefully it should float for a short time on top of the whiskey sour. Garnish with a lemon wedge or wheel or twist.

Some recipes call for an egg white, as a lot of old sours recipes do… I like the recipes which list egg white as “optional.” I didn’t use egg white in the drink pictured above, but you’ll find it listed in some of the recipes I linked to in this post.