Aug 31st, 2010 by David Flaherty
Forgo the hearty breakfast and start your day with a cocktail before plowing the fields.
Who needs an injection of coffee when Bourbon and mint are on hand? For some hardy southerners in the late 18th century, the Mint Julep was part of their morning ritual akin to shaving and pulling on the trousers.
John Davis, a British author, wrote about his journeys in a book called, Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America which was published in 1803. In it, is the first known documentation of the “Mint Julep,” which Mr Davis describes as “a dram of spirituous liquor that has mint steeped in it, taken by Virginians of a morning.”
Ahh, the early 19th century was such a gas…
Today, we associate the Mint Julep with something entirely different. What is it? Yep, you guessed it: the Kentucky Derby. First said to be served there in 1938, today it is estimated that more than 80,000 Mint Juleps are served at Churchill Downs in a two-day period. That’s a lot of minty greenery clogging the trash cans…
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Tags: Bourbon, Classic cocktails, Genever, Kentucky Derby, Mint, Mint Julep
Posted in Spirits | 1 Comment »
Aug 27th, 2010 by David Flaherty
Better than a stroll through Sag Harbor
Screw summering in the Hamptons. I want to fly my personal jet to Piedmont.
Instead of craning my neck to get a glimpse of the latest bimbo from the Real Housewives of New Jersey gallavanting by on horseback, I want to get lost in the vineyards, dine on Braised Rabbit and sip endless bottles of Barolo.
Undisputedly one of the finest wines that Italy has to offer, the red wines of Barolo (yes, the wine and the region share a name) are the Rolls Royces of the wine world. Sleek, powerful, complex and with a tannic structure built like a jet engine, these wines will blow your doors off.
I’ve been reading Romancing the Vine: Life, Love and Transformation in the Vineyards of Barolo over the last couple of weeks and have built a massive hunger to go there. But since I can’t at the moment, I’ve put together some pics and facts to whet your whistle. Continue Reading »
Tags: Barbaresco, Barolo, Italian wine, Nebbiolo, Piedmont
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Aug 24th, 2010 by David Flaherty
Simplicity = Destruction
I had a roommate who loved car bombs. Let’s call him “Patty”.
It started as something he would do at bars, but quickly became a habit he brought home. Nearly every night of the week for months, Patty was shooting them off in our apartment.
He’d pour some Bailey’s in a shot glass, top with Jameson’s, drop it into a 1/2 pint of Guiness, slug it back and release a rebel yell. I thought the whole thing was pretty strange, and yes, a little sad. Didn’t he see that he was his own victim?
Well, Patty is not alone in his liquor/beer concocting, and the Irish Car Bomb is only one variation of perhaps the most famous beer cocktail in history. Today’s classic cocktail is far from the swanky speakeasies of it’s other brethren. Ladies and gentleman, I give you the Boilermaker.
Exactly where and when this drink was first concocted, no one knows, but my guess is it predates all the other classic cocktails. Why? Well, quite simply, it doesn’t take a genius or a bar chef to put two and two together. Beer = drunk. Liquor shot = drunker. Beer + liquor shot = drunkest.
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Tags: beer cocktails, Boilermaker, Irish Car Bomb, Irish Whiskey, Jameson's
Posted in Beer, Spirits | 2 Comments »
Aug 19th, 2010 by David Flaherty
The Score (pic by Joe Flaherty)
This morning I awoke in Seattle to a foggy morning filled with expectations. Mount Rainier was on our minds as my brother and I prepared for our camping excursion to get lost in her charms.
After a requisite trip to the REI castle here, we hit up Bottleworks, the local craft beer store where we unleashed the geek demons. Led through the store by a trusty employee who embraced us like young lambs looking to get lost in West Coast craft beer, we spent nearly an hour scouring the fridges.
What we walked out with could, frankly, keep a platoon of soldiers content for many a night under the stars. Check this list out and prepare to drool, craft beer lovers. (That or you can meet us at the base of Mt Rainier; we’ll be the ones sitting by the fire and singing Irish drinking songs…)
The Great West Coast Beer Stash
- Firestone Walker, Union Jack IPA, CA (7.5%) – 650 ml
- Ninkasi, Maiden the Shade, OR (6.8%) – 650 ml
- Roslyn, Roslyn Beer (Munich Dunkel), WA (?) – 650 ml
- Green Flash, Imperial IPA, CA (9.4%) – 650 ml
- Hopworks, IPA, OR (6.6%) – 650 ml
- Russian River, Damnation Golden Ale, CA (7.75%) – 375 ml
- Brasserie Dupont, Foret Organic Saison, Belgium (7.5%) – 750 ml
- Hale’s Ales, Kolsch, WA (4.5%) – 12 oz
- Dick’s, Dick’s Danger Ale, WA (5.2%) – 12 oz
- Dick’s, Silk Lady Belgian Style Golden Ale, WA (4.4 %) – 12 oz
- Oskar Blues, Gubna Imperial IPA, CO (10%) – 12 oz
- Avery, White Rascal White Ale, CO (5.6%) – 12 oz
- Victory, Prima Pils, PA (5.3%) – 650 ml
- Dogfish Head, Aprihop IPA, DE (7%) – 12 oz
- Dogfish Head, Punkin Ale, DE (7%) – 12 oz
- Mad River, Jamaica Red Ale, CA (6.5%) – 12 oz
- Sierra Nevada, Tumbler Autumn Brown Ale, CA (5.5%) – 12 oz
- New Belgium, Hoptober Golden Ale, CO (6%) – 12 oz
- Hanssens Artisanaal, Oude Gueuze, Belgium (6%) – 375 ml
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Tags: craft beer, Firestone Walker, Green Flash, New Belgium, Ninkasi, Oskar Blues Brewery, Russian River Brewing, Seattle Beer, Sierra Nevada, west coast beer
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Aug 17th, 2010 by David Flaherty
“Daisy had a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms…of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender….It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy - it increased her value in his eyes.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
I’ve read The Great Gatsby many times over the years. It remains one of my favorite books. The style of the writing, the time period, the heartbreaking blindness of Jay Gatsby and his foolish quest to win Daisy.
The more I’ve read it, the more I care less and less about Daisy. For she is not so much a character as what Gatsby thinks she is. She is a blank palate upon which he places his dreams. He sees himself in her eyes. And if he can impress her, he can love himself. It’s tragic, but we’ve all been there. This week’s classic cocktail is for you, Jay.
The Daisy is not so much a cocktail as a ‘family’ of cocktails. It is a basic formula that the bartender can paint upon, can tweak into a new image, can look back upon and see himself in.
First created sometime in the 1800′s, the Daisy was a spin-off of the Sour (spirit, citrus, sweetener), originally using orange cordial as the sweetener. But that didn’t last long, and the Daisy was swept up by another’s imagination, and by the 1900′s, Grenadine became the sweetening agent of choice.
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Tags: Classic cocktails, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Grenadine, Jay Gatsby, sour, The Daisy, The Great Gatsby
Posted in Spirits | 2 Comments »
Aug 15th, 2010 by David Flaherty
BrewYork #4. Back Row (from l to r): Andy Zenyuch, John Kleinchester, Matt Steinberg, Greg Gallagher, Andrew Maiorana. Front Row: Lee Williams, David Flaherty, Paul Kavulak (Nebraska Brewing Co), Craig Sklar, Adam Sivits (on floor)
“Epic”: very imposing or impressive; surpassing the ordinary (especially in size or scale); “an epic voyage”; “of heroic proportions”
This past Friday night, we embarked on an epic voyage. Like brave conquistadors in search of the riches of the world, our ragtag faction of BrewYorker’s (a group of NY-based homebrewers, probrewers, beer bloggers and all-around geeks of the grain) summoned the beer gods with a diverse offering of liquid bounty.
The fast-becoming-legendary monthly gathering is quite simple in design: each person brings two selections of rare or sought-after specialty beers. Whether you traded them with beer geeks across the country, pulled them from the top shelf of the beer store or stole them from Uncle Jimmy’s Craft Beer Bunker (“don’t fuck with my brew stash for fear of dismemberment” it says on the door), it’s the time to dig deep.
The reward? An educational, boozy journey through the darkest, most creative corners of the craft beer world. It’s a beautifully diverse group of people knitted together with passion, and this month’s bottle list reflects it.
See below for the final list on our Friday night stage. My personal favorites are in bold and with links to take you to websites for more info. Continue Reading »
Tags: BrewYork, Brooklyn Brewery, Captain Lawrence, craft beer, Dogfish Head, Great Divide, Half Acre, Lost Abbey, NJ Beer Company, The Bruery, Three Floyds
Posted in Beer, NYC Events, Reviews | 1 Comment »
Aug 10th, 2010 by David Flaherty
1920-1933. Prohibition sucked the nightlife out of the scene like one does an oyster from a shell.
But the party raged on…albeit behind secret doors and fueled by often dangerous concoctions of bathtub gins and white lightning. And so, many American simply crossed the border to Havana, Cuba where the party heated up in broad daylight.
In fact, they came to Cuba in droves by plane and boat, all headed for the sunny climes where the booze flowed freely and one could enjoy a cold cocktail without looking over their shoulder for the boys in blue.
And what to do if your profession was as a bartender when the dry spell hit? Well, you could always go South, sir. To Cuba! A mere 90 miles from Florida, many barkeeps packed their bag and headed to the Pearl of the Antilles.
It is there, according to Dave Wondrich, that an American bartender named Eddie Woelke who was working at the Jockey Club in Havana created this week’s classic cocktail: the El Presidente.
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Tags: Classic cocktails, Cuba, Curacao, Dry Vermouth, Havana, Prohibition, Rum
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Aug 9th, 2010 by David Flaherty
Home to the longest, uninterrupted stretch of quality vineyards in Europe, the Mosel River is home to Rieslings on such a level of spectacularness that I often place a bib on myself to prevent the drool from soiling my shirt.
The Mosel flows for 150 miles through Germany and, along most of it’s length, is home to sheer cliffs and sweepingly grandiose steep vineyards that house ancient vines which cling for dear life and fight for every last ray of sunshine.
But don’t let my ceaseless drivel do the convincing, because I’ll shut up and let the pictures below speak for themselves.
This is God’s Country, my friends, and the land at the end of the rainbow for any wine lover.
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Tags: German Riesling, mosel, Wine destinations
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Aug 6th, 2010 by David Flaherty
Dearest readers, I am stoked to share some exciting news with you. In addition to my vinous, brewish and libatious duties here at Grapes & Grains, I am pleased to announce that I will be expanding my reach further into the realm of the blogosphere…
I have been invited to join the staff of the New York Cork Report as their “NYC Correspondent”. I will be covering local breweries, urban wineries and NY-state spirits.
Also, my usual forays into underground gambling rings, heroin trafficking, cock fighting and muscle-car drag racing will, of course, continue. Hey, a guy’s got to follow his passions, right? Right?! Who’s with me? All hail the V8 engine, suckas!
If you’re not yet familiar with Lenn Thompson and the crew over at New York Cork Report, you need to get them on your radar screen. For the last two years, they’ve taken home the gold at the American Blog Awards for “Best Single-Subject Wine Blog” because of their solid dedication.
Their writing and reviews are tight, their editorial content is opinionated and challenging, but most of all, they are passionate about showcasing the unique people and products that the great Empire State has to offer. I’m stoked and honored to be part of the team.
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Tags: Local breweries, New York Cork Report, NY Spirits, NY State Wines, Urban wineries
Posted in Beer, NYC Events, Reviews, Spirits, Wine | 4 Comments »
Aug 3rd, 2010 by David Flaherty
Ramos Gin Fizz at Tujague's (Photo by David Grunfeld / The Times-Picayune)
The sight must have been incredible.
A whir of flashing metal cocktail shakers streaked the bar from end to end as the crowd crushed in around you.
There they stood. Thirty-five “shaker boys” all earnestly focusing as their arms screamed from the pain of ceaseless shaking.
It is said that to properly make a Ramos Gin Fizz, you must shake vigourously for two to twelve minutes. And I mean shake like your life depended on it. But, oh the results…because how sweet the outcome.
A now famous name in the cocktail world, Henry Charles Ramos had run a string of cocktail joints in Baton Rouge and Birmingham, plying and developing his trade with a studied eye and a keen sense of style. Upon hitting the streets of New Orleans in the late 1870′s, he was ready for the big time in the Crescent City.
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Tags: Classic cocktails, Egg White, Gin cocktail, Gin fizz, Henry C. Ramos, New Orleans, Orange Flower Water, The Stag
Posted in Spirits | 5 Comments »
Aug 2nd, 2010 by David Flaherty
July 21-25, 2010
The streets of the French Quarter were given a full shake and an Absinthe rinse for the 5-day fiesta that was the 8th Annual Tales of the Cocktail.
Bartenders, barbacks, barmaids, bar wenches and bar geeks invaded New Orleans once again this year for what has become the premier yearly gathering for spirit hounds.
Just to give you a sense of what hosting thousands of fans celebrating at the sacred altar of the cocktail entails, they tallied a brief summary from 2009:
13,884 mint leaves · 14,000 lemons · 11,250 limes · 192 pounds of sugar · 1,824 Driscoll’s Blackberries and Driscoll’s Blueberries · 74 Gallons Lime Juice · 82 Gallons Lemon Juice · 45 Gallons Grapefruit Juice · 21 Gallons Pineapple Juice · 25 Gallons Tomato Juice · 75 Gallons Simple Syrup · 950 Luxardo cherries · 450 cucumber wheels · 10 Gallons Rich Simple Syrup · 5 Gallons Honey Syrup · 3100 Driscoll’s Raspberries · 1400 Tropicana Orange twists · 1200 Lemon Twists · 1250 Lime Wheels · 940 Lemon Wheels · 400 Lemon Wedges · 430 Lime Wedges · 350 Stalks of Celery
Yeah, this list pretty much speaks for itself…it’s an onslaught of hedonistic fun, a celebration of the bartender as true artisan and a chance to honor those who are forerunners in the field.
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Tags: Connaught Bar, Dale DeGroff, Death & Co, French Quarter, Mayahuel, mixologists, New Orleans, NYC cocktails, Spirited Awards, Spirits, Tales of the Cocktail
Posted in Spirits | 1 Comment »
Jul 27th, 2010 by David Flaherty
“Miner’s lady, stranger to blue water. Dark and dusty, painted on the sky. Misty taste of moonshine, teardrops in my eye.
Country roads, take me home. To the place where I belong.” -John Denver
Every country has it’s hillbillies. Its backwaters where the yokels live by their own rules. For Brazil, these people are called “Caipirinha“, but where and how this name became synonymous with the national cocktail of Brazil is anyone’s guess.
But the national cocktail it is, and from the coast of Sao Paulo to the banks of the Amazon, the Caipirnha rages in popularity with the elite and the yokels alike.
Based on the classic “sour cocktail” formula (base spirit, lemon or lime juice and a sweetening agent), the soul of the Caipirinha comes from Cachaça, a liquor made from fermented sugarcane. By far the most popular distilled alcohol in Brazil, in 2007, a whopping 1.5 billion liters (390 million gallons) were consumed.
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Tags: Aguardiente, Brazil, Cachaca, Caipirinha, Classic cocktails, Martinique, Rum, sour
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Jul 24th, 2010 by David Flaherty
Pliny the Elder fan climbs Mt. Everest on beer alone
It’s that time of year again.
The time when the die-hard homebrewers sit back with a cold pint, reminisce over their favorite beers and put pen to paper for a legendary vote of epic proportions.
Bragging rights will be forever held, children will defend the honor of their brewmaster dads in schoolyards around the world and breweries will be invaded by topless groupies looking for autographs from the legends, themselves.
For the past 8 years, Zymurgy magazine has asked homebrewers to vote on their top 20 commercially available beers available in the US.
As I wrote in my post of this ranking last year, if you have any doubt who is best to judge today’s commercial beers other than the homebrewers who tinker away in basements and garages across the country, think again. We are maniacal in our passion, attuned to the finest nuance of barley and capable of smashing bottles with a mere stare.
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Tags: American Homebrewer's Association, Bell's Two Hearted Ale, craft beer, Homebrewing, Pliny the Elder, Rahr & Sons, Russian River Brewing, Top 50 Craft Breweries, Zymurgy
Posted in Beer | 6 Comments »
Jul 20th, 2010 by David Flaherty
Pic courtesy of Dylan Cross for WSJ online (click to view article)
“Oo la la…who is that dashing American in the leather jacket?”
“Why that’s Captain Sidecar, mademoiselle. But you be careful with his kind.”
The Hôtel Ritz is one of the grandest, most opulent hotels in the world. Built in 1898 in the heart of Paris, its bar saw the likes of Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway on a regular basis. Perhaps Jay Gatsby even entertained Daisy in a side booth. Heard the term “ritzy”? Yep, it started here.
When World War I ended, Paris was flooded with victorious and jubilent soldiers returning from all manner of foxholes and unspeakable carnage. The streets were alive with joy and the bars were packed with heros and their newly-freed admirers.
It is rumored that in this prestigious bar of the Hôtel Ritz, the Sidecar cocktail was first created for an American Captain that was whisked around the city by motorcycle sidecar. (But as with many classic cocktails, others claim its origin, and some say it first saw the light at the Buck’s Club in London).
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Tags: Brandy cocktail, Buck's Club, Classic cocktails, Cognac, Cointreau, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Hotel Ritz, Paris, Sidecar
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Jul 14th, 2010 by David Flaherty
$30 (Includes 4 glasses of Riesling)
$15 (Music only)
Prepare yourselves for an event that will change lives, hearts and minds.
Four amazing bands chosen for their high acidity, elegant concentration of fruit and incredible sense of place.
The Bands:
(Click their names to hear why you don’t wanna miss this):
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Tags: Black Hollies, Hearth Restaurant, Himalaya, Knitting Factory, Lights On, Nouvellas, Summer of Riesling, Terroir wine bar
Posted in NYC Events, Wine | No Comments »
