Author: Micah Lemon

A “global whiskey renaissance”—that’s what the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States is calling the trend in spirits over the last five years. Domestic and international demand for whiskey—bourbon in particular—has forced some of the largest producers to warn consumers of impending shortages, as demand is significantly outpacing supply. U.S. Whiskey exports topped 1 billion for the first time in 2013. What’s behind this whiskey boom? Wasn’t vodka king just a few years ago? Surely Don Draper can’t be single-handedly responsible for a global boom in whiskey…..

Economists don’t doubt that consumption habits of popular screen characters can drive changes in consumer behavior, and Don Draper and his whiskey-swilling co-workers drink a hell of a lot of whiskey. TV shows like AMC’s “Mad Men” and HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire” hit the air right when consumers grew fatigued with endless varieties of artificially flavored vodka, and began looking to explore a historical class of spirits. Cocktail craftsmen in the U.S. and abroad are running with this, introducing customers to classic whiskey cocktails, original creations, and rare, unusual, or just plain delicious whiskeys. Here in town, The Whiskey Jar is our local emporium for aged grain spirits, and it’s been at the tip of the spear of the community’s thirst for all things whiskey. Not being an expert on the topic myself, I thought I’d catch up with the Whiskey Jar’s whiskey buyer and enthusiast Greg Benish to learn a thing or two about trends, the challenges of finding rare bottles and the difference between rye and bourbon.

C-VILLE: How are whiskeys different from each other?

Greg Benish: I like to think of whiskey as a formula with three main variables: water, grain and barrel-aging. This formula gives rise to endless permutations, and it’s this mutability that allows folks like me to vocationally spend hours tasting and reading and comparing them to each other. Quality of water is crucial, as it varies widely in pH and mineral content from region to region. For example, limestone bedrock in Kentucky (historic home of bourbon) makes the water calcium-rich and hard. This means a unique interaction of water with the yeast and with enzymes in the grains than, say, with water used from Virginia. Grain is the foundation of whiskey. The four main whiskey grains are corn, rye, wheat and barley. The rules are simple: If your mash contains at least 51 percent corn, it’s a bourbon; 51 percent rye, you have rye whiskey. If you’re working with 100 percent malted barley, and you’re in Scotland, you have a Scotch. The barrels are made of oak, and are how distillers mellow the rough edges of the raw spirit. American oak, French oak, former wine casks, sherry casks, rum barrels or port barrels can all be used to age or finish a whiskey.

Have you seen a change in the whiskeys consumers are looking for on your shelves?   

Yes, just judging by availability I can tell that education is increasing. I’m actually competing with the locals to get rare and interesting spirits. They fly off the shelves at the local ABC stores. I notice more and more customers know what they are talking about—they ask me for specific things, and appreciate seeing rare stuff on my shelves. It’s great, and it makes me step up my game to make sure I can still be a source of information. I don’t want anyone coming in and the selection not being reflected in the knowledge of the bartender. I think people are intrigued.  They want something other than craft beer. There are true artisans are out there producing excellent spirits, and really putting effort into their craft. It’s nice to see the public respond positively.

Was there a single whiskey that got you into this class of spirits?

I got into whiskey because of Scotch. I think Scotch is the most wonderfully complex spirit out there. Just tasting the difference between four Speyside 12-year single malts is an eye-opening example of how much variance can be present in a single style. Edradour 10-year (a single malt Scotch from the Highlands region of Scotland) sealed my love for whiskey.

Are there any value or must-have whiskeys that you’d recommend for C-VILLE readers’ home bars?

For rye, I would go for Templeton Rye. It is light and sweet and very mild—definitely a crowd-pleaser. For something a little nicer, check out Rendezvous Rye from Utah’s High West, the master chefs of the American whiskey world. Rendezvous is a blend of a 6-year and 16-year rye whiskey.

For Scotch, I’d recommend one of my favorite Highlands, Edradour 10-Year. The nose is flowery and light, while the body descends into a nutty, apricot quality with just a hint of smoke and sherry on the finish.

For bourbon, there are many interesting offerings out there. For something affordable and easily obtainable, Elijah Craig 12-year is great. It is ridiculously complex for the price, with tastes of maple syrup and caramel. If you can find it, get Rock Hill Farms from the Buffalo Trace distillery. It’s one of the most exceptionally balanced bourbons I have ever tried. I think of it as a smoother, more refined Blanton’s.

“Yeah, that’s a Special Order Item. You need to submit a Special Order form.”

“I know, I submitted a Special Order form eight months ago.”

“You’ll have to submit a Special Order form for any Special Order Items.”

“I did—eight months ago—and I’ve been requesting the item every week since. Any progress on that request? “

“Once an item comes in, we’ll call you. In the meantime, you should fill out another Special Order form.”

Being a bar manager at a place with a list of obscure bottles featured on a cocktail menu makes the Special Order process (and other, similar, bureaucratic ABC processes) both a necessary evil and a weekly irritant. On the one hand, the good folks at my local store are dutiful state employees, trying not to annoy their superiors. On the other hand is a set of archaic liquor laws, largely unreformed since the end of Prohibition almost 100 years ago. Nearly a century has passed since the ABC was formed in 1934 and its goal is still that “The return of the saloon, whether in its old form or in some new form, must be prevented.” Furthermore, ABC “should discourage use of hard liquor and give relative encouragement to use of lighter alcoholic beverages.” That might explain the structural propensity to be unhelpful in all things requiring obtaining spirits and making drinks—a process that is a huge part of the local restaurant industry.

Most folks don’t see the rusty cogs of the ABC, or care too much for that matter. The fact is this: The laws are old, puritanical, and still bear the alcohol paranoia of the Prohibition era. Furthermore, penalties for ABC violations are utterly draconian. They make access to craft spirits and liqueurs exceptionally difficult and exorbitantly expensive (compare prices next time you’re in D.C.). They put a great burden on ABC employees trying to simultaneously keep customers happy and keep their own jobs, and similarly burden ABC licensees trying to stay in the good graces of the state.

One of the few glimmers of hope in reforming this ancient machine has been the recent legislation that legalized the practice of infusions (Section 3VAC5-50-60;F). Prior to 2014, if a bar wanted to make its own cinnamon-infused whiskey, it risked a hefty ABC fine. For 80 years—since the founding of Virginia ABC in 1934—this has been illegal. Now, bartenders all over the Commonwealth can dabble with infusions without fearing the excessive fines of an ABC violation.

Here in town, a few folks have been busy at work crafting cocktails that push the creative boundary into this newly legal area of freedom. I checked in with a couple folks who are whipping up some tasty infusions with cocktails to boot.

Liz Broyles, bar manager at C&O Restaurant

House infusion: Black Currant Tea Vodka

For the infusion, add about 1/2 cup black currant tea to 750ml bottle of vodka (type is not important) and steep for 24 hours. Strain and bottle in original vodka bottle.

Cocktail: Honey and Black

Combine 1 ½ oz. black currant vodka, ½ oz. honey syrup, and ½ oz. lemon juice. Shake over ice, serve up with a lemon twist.

Liz’s tasting notes: “The black tea infusion gives the Honey and Black a deep tannic and bitterness, balanced out by the silky sweetness of the honey. Fresh lemon juice elevates the concentrated berry flavor of the dried black currant. A vigorous shake over ice makes the Honey and Black frothy with a slightly creamy texture.”

Justin Ross, owner and sommelier at Parallel 38

House infusion: Barberry Infused Blue Coat Gin

For the infusion, steep 2 oz. of barberries in a 750ml bottle of Blue Coat for two weeks. You can get them locally from Bantry Bay or from The Spice Diva in the Main Street Market.

Cocktail: Faux-Groni

Combine 1 oz. Barberry infused Bluecoat Gin, 1 oz. Aperol, and 1 oz. Lillet Blanc in a single rocks glass over ice. Stir, and garnish with an orange peel.

Justin’s tasting notes: “Our Faux-Groni is a play on the Negroni, a classic cocktail invented in Florence, Italy in 1919. The classic Negroni is made with equal parts gin, Campari, and vermouth. Our recipe uses Blue Coat Gin, which has a soft juniper note that is spicier and earthier than similar style gins. Once the barberries begin to soak up the gin, they plump up and release an amazing crimson color and flavors similar to lemony currants. The Aperol adds mandarin and spiced orange peel, and with half the alcohol and higher sugar content than Campari, it balances the tart apple and honeysuckle notes of the Lillet Blanc. All of these ingredients produce an amazingly approachable aperitif that is both slightly bitter and refreshing.”

Fun arcane ABC law fact

From Section 4.1-311 of the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Act: Moving from North Carolina to Virginia and moving your home bar? Bring six bottles of whiskey back from the Kentucky Bourbon Trail? Buy three growlers of beer from a brewery in D.C.? If you transport more than one gallon of any alcoholic beverage from outside of Virginia into Virginia, you “may be arrested, fined up to $2,500, and sentenced to a year in jail. In addition, the vehicle involved may be impounded and confiscated.”

I’ve done this several times, all with the same result. I hand a patron a translucent, orange-tinged beverage. They look at it curiously and shrug, and I wait for them to take their first sip. First their face wrinkles in confusion. Then there is cautious enjoyment. Then, even more intense confusion. What follows for some is obsession. Milk punch is an odd but classic beverage, one that is baffling many adventurous tipplers into becoming enthusiasts.

Punch, is, of course, notoriously misunderstood. Far from being a sugary, virgin, prom night beverage, classic punch is a boozy but balanced mix of spirit, citrus, tea, sugar, and spice. It dates back to the early 1600s when British sailors first encountered it in India. It’s unclear whether the Indians served it to the Brits as a tourist beverage or if punch was part of Indian drinking culture, but that didn’t matter much to the Brits. They couldn’t get enough of the stuff. Within a hundred years, punch houses were all the rage back in Britain, and the English were mastering the art of punch making. One of the fancier tricks of that day was the curiously crystal clear, shelf-stable tipple: milk punch.

What is milk punch? It is the consommé of beverages: a richly flavored liquid, purged of tint by classic culinary legerdemain. In the case of consommé, a rich, opaque broth is clarified with egg whites, which when gently heated collect all visual impurities in the broth. As the white solidifies the liquid becomes crystal clear. Similarly in milk punch, milk is acidified until it curdles, and the curds transform the left-behind liquid into a confusingly clear but rich beverage. There is one main difference however: whereas the egg whites scrub the broth of impurities and leave no flavor in their wake, the curds in milk punch leave behind a clarified whey that is rich with lactose. This uncommon sugar lends a silky mouthfeel to an already complex beverage. The curds do scrub the liquid of many impurities, so that when they are removed, something bizarre happens: the punch becomes shelf stable at cellar temps. You can store the stuff for quite some time. Charles Dickens had several bottles in his cellar when he died, and so the story goes, it was still delicious and unspoiled when it was later auctioned with the rest of his possessions.

This punch is cycling back into popularity, as history-obsessed bartenders are dusting off the drink and putting their own twist on it. Part of its appeal is, of course, its curious clarity. The other part is that milk punch is damn delicious. It’s a seamlessly integrated beverage that marries spirit, sweet, sour, tea tannins, and the essence of cream in a most harmonious way. It does takes a bit of time to prepare, though. The recipe below takes the better part of a week. 

Micah’s basic clarified milk punch 

Ingredients:

¾ c light rum (Bacardi or
Shellback work nicely)
¾ c aged rum (I like Pusser’s or Appleton’s VX)
1 ½ c milk (whole, non-homogenized milk works best)
peels of 2 limes
peels of 1 orange
¼ c lemon juice
¼ orange juice
peels of 8 lemons
1 c sugar
1 tbsp loose black tea leaves
3 c water

Instructions:

Peel the limes and orange peels, taking as little pith as possible. Add the peels to the rum and infuse overnight. Strain the peels off the rum, and reserve the infused rum.

The next day, heat the water to boil, remove from heat, and add tea. Steep for 10 minutes, then remove and discard the tea leaves. Peel the eight lemons, taking as little white pith as possible. Muddle the peels into the sugar, and let them sit until the sugar draws out the oils from the peels. Add the cooled tea to the oily sugar, and then strain out the peels. Reserve the sweetened lemon tea mixture.

In a saucepan over low heat, bring the milk to 140° F. Promptly remove from heat and add the infused rum and citrus juice to curdle the milk. Gently move the pan to the fridge and store covered for at least 30 minutes to solidify the curds. Pour the mixture gently through a cheesecloth-lined strainer. Add the sweetened tea mixture to the clarified milk mixture, and allow this to rest for one day in a sealed, clear container in the fridge.

After one day, any remaining curds or visual impurities should settle to the bottom, and the liquid above it should be crystal clear. Using a siphon, rack the clear liquid off of the curds, and store the resulting punch. Allow it to rest a few days, and enjoy the punch at your leisure over the next couple of months. Serve with a little fresh grated nutmeg.

The resulting punch should be redolent of tea with milk, lightened, stretched, and fortified over a scaffold of rum and sweetened citrus. The recipe is a great jumping off point for your own experimentation and can be made well in advance of your next party. Happy punch making!

Those of you who know me know that I’m a champion of the little guy. I root the for the apron-clad shop owner, the starving artist who waits tables, and the homebrewer who dreams of running an eight-barrel system. With so many of our world’s products mass-produced out of sight, I find it refreshing to meet and live alongside the folks who make the veggie burgers I eat and the beer I drink.

This growing appetitle for craft is also making for some interesting developments in the world of beverages. As the market share of craft beer continues to increase exponentially, some smart folks are recognizing the enormous thirst for well-crafted, artisan products in other corners of the beverage industry—namely, in spirits. American distilleries followed the same tragic arc as breweries during Prohibition: All but a handful closed and the fermenters and stills were quiet for the better part of the 20th century. In the early 2000s, there were around 60 micro-distilleries in the U.S. Today, there are more than 600, making everything from single malt whisky to absinthe, and American consumers are drinking it up. 

Bicoastal local and Darden grad Lyons Brown, who splits his time between Virginia and California, was quick to notice this trend. A fifth generation spirits distributor, Brown knows the spirits business and how quickly it has changed, as customers began exploring craft spirits and brands that told a story. It was this insight that prompted him to leave Brown-Forman, his family’s 140-year-old wine and spirits company, and focus his newly started distributorship, Altamar Brands, on bringing the products of smaller craftsmen to larger markets. Small-production agave spirits such as tequila and mezcal make up a good portion of Altamar’s portfolio, so I checked in with Brown to see if I could learn a thing or two about agave, the spirits biz, and the challenges of repping the little guy.

C-VILLE Weekly: A big slice of your portfolio is tequila and mezcal. What’s the difference between the two? 

Lyons Brown: Tequila is a mezcal, though the tequila distillers would not like to hear me say that. Like Champagne and Cognac, tequila has been designated a “domain of origin” and operates under strict regulation to ensure quality and consistency. There are more than 100 species of agave, and mezcal can be made from any of them. Tequila can only be made from one agave—agave tequilana, commonly known as blue agave—and that agave can only be grown in one of five states (Jalisco, Guanajuato, Nayarit, Michoacan, and Tamaulipas) if it is to be called “tequila.” If we consider the extraordinary depth and breadth of aroma and flavor we see coming from tequila brands made from one agave, imagine the story waiting to unfold before us as mezcal continues to flower in the United States.

Most folks have heard of “terroir”—the interaction of the soil and climate of a place with the plants that grow there—in reference to wine. What does that mean for agave spirits and how does that affect the flavor of the final product?

We were intrigued to see if “terroir”could be applied to agave plants and to tequila. We found a family with 32 single estates, each with different altitudes in different microclimates in the highlands of Jalisco near Arandas. We began experimenting and found unequivocally that agaves harvested from different ranchos at varying altitudes and microclimates—crushed, fermented and distilled in exactly the same manner—produce compellingly different aromas and flavors. Our brand, Ocho, delivers these annually in vintage dated bottles named for the single estate from which its agaves were harvested. This is unique in the tequila category. No other brand is doing it nor do we believe any will be able to as most distilleries buy their agaves from others under contract.

One of your brands is Kubler Absinthe—is this the “real” stuff?

It does not get any more real than Kubler. This brand comes from the birthplace of absinthe in the Val-de-Travers, Switzerland. It has been in continuous production by the same family, now in its fourth generation, since its inception. The first and fourth generations produced legally, while the middle two were bootleggers, and the recipe hasn’t changed. Absinthe was rumored to be a hallucinogen and an aphrodisiac, and there’s been a lot of excitement and a bit of confusion since absinthe was legalized in the United States in 2007 after a 92-year ban.

At the center of the legend is the herb that grows wild on the floor of the Val-de-Travers called grand absinthium or, more famously, wormwood. When distilled, wormwood throws off a chemical derivative called “thujone,” which was believed by many to affect the brain the same way marijuana does. These legends have no basis in fact, and hence the category was legalized again. The one contrary rumor in the mix—that wormwood was banned from all absinthes—is also not true. Without wormwood, there cannot be absinthe.

Most beverage consumers know small-production spirits aren’t often on the shelves of Virginia ABC stores. Which of your products are currently available in Virginia?

Tequila Ocho, mezcal Pierde Almas, Right Gin, and Kubler Absinthe are all available now by special order in Virginia. They are more or less always on the shelves at the Hydraulic Road and Main Street ABC stores. We hope to have our Cognac on the shelf soon, but it’s a process because we are not looking for statewide distribution yet. We just want to build a base in Charlottesville where we have friends and resources. The State doesn’t seem to get the wisdom of this, so we are special order brands. That means you have to go in and place your special order and generally wait until enough come through for them to place an order with us. 

For more information on Altamar Brands, check out www.altamarbrands.com. 

I distinctly remember the aromas of Tanqueray gin and Myers’s rum from my days as a country club bartender in Lynchburg. Despite their potency, I knew how to make the spirits taste as good as they smelled. Then there was the vermouth—cheap stuff, likely sitting open for years, as dry martini-drinking members from the ’80s had avoided the bottle for decades. Yuck. Every few years, I’d pour a nip of vermouth (most likely out of an old bottle), and it reaffirmed my avoidance of this once-essential cocktail ingredient.

About eight years ago, vermouth started popping up on big city drink menus, and I was baffled. How could something so foul, oxidized, and frequently riddled with fruit flies ever enhance a cocktail? My curiosity finally got the best of me and I got my hands on a fresh bottle of Carpano Antica, a higher-end Italian sweet vermouth. Immediately upon tasting it for the first time, I was a convert. It was rich, round, and sweet, tasting of vanilla and caramel, with an aggressive bitter snap for a finish. It was the perfect complement to whisky—it was the reason why the Manhattan cocktail has, despite being made for years with cheap and abused vermouth, withstood the test of time.

Vermouth is essentially a fortified and aromatized wine: It’s fortified with some higher proof alcohol and sugar, and it’s aromatized with bitter herbs and spices. Vermouth is an Anglicization of the German word “wermut,” which means “wormwood.” Wormwood (also the bitter herb in absinthe) is the bitter ingredient in vermouth that balances the sugar that is added to the base wine.

Vermouth is wine, so if it’s left out on the counter for more than a day or two, it goes bad. For optimum taste, it should really go straight into the fridge after being opened, and should be consumed within a month or so.

A few years after my Carpano epiphany, I met Ben Jordan, a local winemaker at Michael Shap’s Wineworks, who makes a Virginia red wine quinquina in his spare time. He invited me to taste his stuff, and, being ignorant of what a quinquina is, I agreed. Jordan’s wine is a little lighter and less sweet than Carpano, with more of a red wine flavor. “Ever thought of calling this vermouth?” I asked naively, completely exposing what little I knew of aromatized and fortified wines. Jordan, being the mild-mannered winemaker he is, indulged my ignorance without judgment. I sat down to talk about aromatized wines, vermouth vs. quinquinas, and how this forgotten class of mixers is making a huge comeback.

What is a quinquina and how is it different from vermouth?

Like vermouth, quinquinas are fortified and aromatized aperitifs (alcoholic beverages served before a meal) with bitter character, usually bottled with some level of sweetness. They can be drunk alone or used as components in cocktails. Quinquinas feature cinchona bark as an important ingredient, and cinchona should have significant impact on flavor and aroma. Vermouth is, in some ways, a more open category, with primary ingredients and intensities that vary across producers. My experience with both vermouth and quinquina is that there is a lot of stylistic difference out there. This makes both categories fun to explore and difficult to generalize.

What prompted you to make this particular style of aromatized and fortified wine?

I started out working on recipes for vermouth and other aromatized/botanical wines with a winemaker from Sonoma County a while back. It was liberating to be able to play with flavors and ingredients, instead of just grapes, but it was also difficult to get the recipes to taste good. Getting all those flavors dialed in and working together was and still is a challenge. We never did anything on a commercial level with those recipes, but during that time I developed a taste for cinchona, and I decided to make something in the style of Barolo Chinato. I immediately swerved from the Chinato technique, and ended up with this concoction. Quinquina is the closest appropriate classification, since we don’t have a word for “American cinchona bark wine.”

What is a solera system, and why do you use one for making your quinquina?

Solera is a system of aging that blends new vintages or batches with older ones. Sherry is probably the most visible product of this system. Some soleras go back a long time, containing vintages older than 50 years. The technique for blending the wines in a solera is pretty specific, so this thing is pseudo-solera, but the goal is similar. Because I am using red wine that has tannins, new quinquina can be raw and disjointed with the cinchona being too aggressive. The older stuff is generally integrated, sometimes too integrated. I like the way new and old interact, and there are textures and flavors that you don’t get with a single vintage.

How do you suggest consuming your quinquina?

I like it after a meal, chilled as a digestif. I also use it in cocktails as a substitute or in tandem with lower alcohol ingredients like vermouth. I tend to use it in combination with Campari or Gran Classico in a gin or whiskey drink. The bitter/sweet matrix is different than the average sweet vermouth, and I find it adds less perceived sweetness.