Summer Cocktail Masterclass
So summer is officially here and with it come the quintessential summer past times - long days in the park, balmy evenings in the garden and of course a nice tipple to get the party started. Summer is definitely the time of year to enjoy a cooling cocktail, but do we really know what to make, and more importantly, how to make them?
We may love to sip a sweet cocktail in the heat of the summer sun, but when it comes to making it ourselves, what are the vital ingredients? Thankfully, professional help is at hand with top mixologist and cocktail expert Ben Reed - Ben certainly knows his Tom Collins from a Monkey Shoulder.
With refreshing recipes, like the Disaronno Cranberry Cooler or Amarula Frozen Springbok, which are guaranteed to keep you cool as the heat rises, you’ll be able to create that foreign holiday feel, even if you’re not going away this year. So, if you want to develop your cocktail making skills, then log on to the live and interactive webTV show to find out how to ensure your party shines this summer.
Mixologist Ben Reed joins us live online at http://webchats.tv/chat/summer_cocktail_masterclass on Friday 17th July at 15:00 BST for tips on making perfect summer cocktails.
Explore The Delicious And Varied World Of Rum With A Webtv Show
Show date: Wednesday 15th July
Show time: 15:00 UK Time
One of the world’s most versatile drinks, rum is also intrinsically linked with the history and culture of its origins in the Caribbean. The earliest references to sugarcane spirit production in the region date back to 1647, and through innovative techniques like oak barrel ageing, rum quickly gained a foothold in global markets and earned its place as a highly sought-after commodity during the golden age of piracy in the years 1690-1720.
Throughout the islands of the region - from Belize right across the Caribbean Sea to Barbados - there is a grand tradition of rum production, with traditional family-owned brands practising a variety of methods of fermentation, distillation, casking and blending just as intricate and distinct as the Scotch whisky industry.
In recognition of this a new three-tiered Authentic Caribbean Rum marque has been established as an assured sign of quality and provenance and as a proud symbol of a heritage stretching back four centuries.
Varieties such as St Lucia’s Chairman’s Reserve, with its rich aromas of chocolate, raisin, spice and vanilla, or El Dorado 15 Year Old, made in Guyana using a unique wooden Coffey still, are ideal for sipping ’straight-up’ or over ice, mixing in cocktails, or with your favourite mixer. In 2007 the Beverage Tasting Institute of Chicago awarded the latter the accolade ‘Best Rum in the World’, achieving the highest score for any rum ever - 98 points.
Helping us to explore the world of authentic Caribbean rum is Ian Burrell, host of the WebTV show but mostly known as ‘Mr Rum’. A well-known London mixologist and organiser of the 2007 UK Rum Festival, there is no-one better equipped this side of the Atlantic to give us an inside track on producing, appreciating and mostly importantly drinking a drop of the good stuff.
Ian Burrell joins is live online at http://www.webchats.tv/chat/an_authentic_taste_of_the_caribbean on Wednesday 15th July from 1500 to 1530 (UK time) to discuss Rums of the Caribbean
Click here to submit questions before the chat http://www.webchats.tv/chat/an_authentic_taste_of_the_caribbean
For more information visit www.truerum.com
Cocktails with Sparkle
Over on Spittoon I’ve just posted some tasting notes on the value-packed Griffith Park sparkling wines. Both the pink and the white versions are excellent value for not-too-complicated fizz. Nicely frothy, not too dry, which means they make for excellent party wines.
And excellent bases for cocktails, as these two recipes demonstrate. More cocktail recipes are detailed on their website.
Sparkling Cobbler
½ tablespoon lemon juice
½ tablespoon Curacao
Thin slice of orange
Chilled Griffith Park Sparkling Rose
Half fill a large goblet with cracked ice. Add lemon juice, Curacao and orange slice. Stir and fill glass with Griffith Park Sparkling Rose. Stir again gently.
Rose
Several drops Pernod
1 tablespoon Cognac
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons Curacao
Griffith Park Sparkling Rose
Add the Pernod drops to a Champagne saucer, turn to coat the inside of the glass. Pour in the Cognac. Soak the sugar in the Curacao until the sugar has dissolved, then add to the Cognac and stir gently. Fill the glass with Griffith Park Sparkling Rose.
Snooth’s Food and Wine Pairings
Snooth, the world’s largest wine site, has launched its Food & Wine pairings application for My Yahoo!, the most popular personalized start page with more than 40 million worldwide monthly visitors.
My Yahoo! users are now able to peruse thousands of recipes from leading publications such as Food & Wine, Cooking Light, Real Simple and Health, among others, and get automatically generated wine pairings based on each individual dish.
The app will also highlight the most popular recipes, pairings, and wines of the day, with links to purchase the corresponding bottle.
For example, for a Tomato-Chicken Pasta dish, Snooth’s digital sommelier recommended “Fontaleoni Vernaccia di San Gimignano 2007? with the rationale, “This mineraly white offers nice acidity with a medium bodied feel, allowing it to partner perfectly with this meal.”
The functionality was hand built using Snooth’s database of the world’s wines and the decades of accumulated wine knowledge among Snooth’s employees, particularly that of Gregory Dal Piaz, Snooth’s Community Manager. Snooth’s expertise in systematically analyzing and categorizing wine data was transferred to analyzing and categorizing recipe data in order to create the complex pairing algorithm.
“This algorithm is an interesting combination of our backend tech functionality, as well as the human expertise of our resident wine guru Gregory Dal Piaz,” said Philip James, CEO of Snooth. “We’re trying to democratize the wine experience and make finding good wine easier, and now everyone has access to a top-tier sommelier with the click of button.”
Since its inception in June 2007, Snooth has grown to be the world’s largest wine site, with over 500,000 users per month, 1 million wines and prices from 11,000 merchants and wineries worldwide. The site currently handles over 2 million searches per month and has over 125,000 registered users.
Three Storm Flip
Marco Pierre White last week crowned Ryan Chetiyawardana of Bramble in Edinburgh, Scotland the UK’s best bartender in the final of World Class 2009 – the Oscar’s of the bartending world. Held at the exclusive Kent House in London’s Knightsbridge, Ryan dazzled the judges by showcasing his exceptional mixology skills as he triumphed over competition from fourteen of the country’s top bartenders.
In a day-long trial, Ryan and his fellow finalists were tested to the limits in a competition which saw them take part in rounds covering bartending knowledge, mixology and an innovation challenge where they had to prove their creativity against the clock. After 15 bartenders were whittled down to the final two, Ryan went head-to-head with Andreas Tsanos from Zuma in London to battle it out for the grand prize where the two bartenders had to create their final bespoke cocktail and present it to the panel of judges. After a highly competitive and tense round, Ryan was declared the winner with his impressive and delicious Three Storm Flip cocktail (recipe below).
Alongside Marco Pierre White, the infamous Michelin-starred chef, the competition was judged by some of the country’s foremost experts in taste, style and bartending, namely Andy Pearson, TV Mixologist; Bill Prince, Deputy Editor of GQ; Ian Cameron, Managing Editor of Theme (one of the bar industry’s leading magazines) and Barrie Wilson, Reserve’s Head of Brand Ambassadors.
The Rum Raspberry Cocktail
Not long ago, I was trading emails with someone from Flor de Caña about the company’s Nicaraguan rum. She sent me a recipe for what sounded like a delightful summer cocktail called the Flip Flop. Even more delightful, the recipe called for a Chamomile tea infusion. I agreed to give it a try and post my results here.
My contact promised to send a bottle of the Flor de Caña 4-Year-Old Gold rum that’s called for in the Flip Flop (the pleasures of being a cocktail writer). Wen I opened the box though, I found not Flor de Caña 4 year old, but the brand’s Grand Reserve, a 7-year-old medium-bodied rum. Not being one to waste a spirit I had not had the chance to try, I decided to turn my “lemons” into “lemonade”.
Now lots of rum cocktails, especially the refreshing summer variety, are made with light or gold rum. Darker rum often plays a supporting part, or is reserved for sipping. I personally love the stuff in cocktails. A good dark rum adds body and boldness to the drink’s flavor that I really enjoy. When short of lighter varieties, I’ve been known to substitute a dark rum in a daiquiri, with good results.
For this project though, the dark rum would be the star, and my idea was to keep with the theme of summer freshness and refreshment. As it happened, I’d just whipped up a batch of raspberry syrup, having taken it into my head to try the Belmont cocktail. And that’s how the Rum Raspberry was born.
Rum Raspberry
- 2 oz Flor de Caña Grand Reserve rum
- 1/2 oz fresh lime juice
- 3/4 oz raspberry syrup
Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Truth to tell, my cocktail turns out to resemble a sort of non-frozen raspberry daiquiri, The raspberry aroma and flavor is vibrant, and balances nicely with the Flor de Caña’s molasses and maple flavors.
The raspberry syrup, by the way, is incredibly simple. I found it on the Gourmet site, along with the Belmont. Bring a pint of raspberries, 1/2 cup sugar, and 1 tablespoon water to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, and cook 15 minutes, stirring ocassionally. Let the syrup cool. Use a fine mesh strainer to separate liquid from solids. You’ll need to press the solids quite a bit, and your yield should be about 1/2 cup.
E.H. Taylor Returns to Buffalo Trace
Spend any time touring bourbon country, or reading its history, and you’ll quickly learn that distilleries and brands, long-lived though they may be, do not operate under constant ownership. A brand with a historic tie to a distillery might move to another company, or a conglomerate might acquire or sell a famous brand. And all of this can happen several times in a whiskey’s life.
Buffalo Trace has acquired the E.H. Taylor brand, along with its product inventory, from Beam Global. E.H. Taylor the distiller, first produced E.H. Taylor the bourbon in what is now the Buffalo Trace distillery in Frankfurt, KY. so this shuffling of brand and barrels amounts to a homecoming. Taylor, a great nephew of 12th US president Zachary Taylor, purchased the Frankfurt distillery in 1870 and eventually named it OFC, for Old Fire Copper. though Taylor eventually sold the distillery, the brand continued under new ownerhip. In the small world of Kentucky bourbon distilling, it has now come full circle.
Wine sampling synched in live World Web Wine tasting
One of Australia’s most renowned wine brands, Penfolds, is hosting a vertical tasting of Penfolds Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz on 22nd June 2009 from Vinexpo in Bordeaux, France. Lead by Chief Winemaker, Peter Gago, the same wines will be sampled simultaneously across the globe, via an interactive webcast.
Six different vintages of Penfolds Bin 389, often referred to as ‘Baby Grange’, will be tasted at events in the US, Germany, Australia, the UK, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sweden, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea. Attendees will assess for themselves the longevity of this quintessential Australian blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz with vintages including 1976, 1985, 1991, 1998, 2002 and 2006.
“New World winemakers have often strayed from convention in the way wine is traditionally made, so it stands to reason that we are doing the same with this original mode of wine tasting,” says Peter Gago.
“Throughout this webcast, people across the world will collectively - in real time - be sampling six different vintages of one of Australia’s most iconic wines, Penfolds Bin 389, which has only just been vintaged for the 50th consecutive year. And yes, it’s symbolic that we’ll be broadcasting the tasting from Bordeaux, the heart of Old World Wine. Ideally, participants will witness the graceful aging of a New World wine style.”
Wine lovers will have the chance to view the footage from the tasting from 23rd June.
World’s Best Single Malt - Highland Park 21 Year Old
According to the World Whiskies Awards, Highland Park 21 year old is the World’s Best Single Malt.
“An irresistible mix of dark grungey smoke and light sweet fruit. If you could barbeque a tin of Del Monte exotic fruits this is what it would taste like. Stunning.” Dominic Roskrow
“Big, fruity nose, dried fruits, dried herbs; waxy mouthfeel, sweet taste, crystalline sugar; mouth-cooling. A cracker!” Charlie MacLean
“Sun heated pebbles. A marine and spicy breeze. Hints of soot. Oysters with a dash of Tabasco. Powerful, uncompromising, wild. Superb.” Martine Nouet
And, as if that wasn’t enough, the same judges at the same awards voted Highland Park 40 year old the World’s Best New Release.
“I guess these awards say something about the entire Highland Park range; the two newest expressions have won these prestigious and significant awards. Talk about a squad with strength in depth.”
For more information about the World Whiskies Awards visit www.whiskymag.com/awards/wwa/
Naked Wines Captures 20,000th Customer
New UK online wine retailer www.nakedwines.com has recruited its 20,000th new customer just 6 months after launching.
Kevan Evans, from Fife, Scotland, signed-up to become a Naked Wine Angel, a scheme which allows customers to sponsor indivudal winemakers looking to break into the UK market.
“Naked Wines is really rather different to any other wine retailer I’ve come across before, and very refreshing!” explained Kevin. “I’ve ordered from Laithwaites and Tescos.com in the past, but often found myself confronted with un-expected cases turning up on my doorstep, full of wines I didn’t choose. Naked Wines allows me to set aside a small amount of money each month, which I can spend when I feel like it, on the wines I want. Kind of like a personal bottle saving plan! I also like the idea of buying from smaller producers.”
“Kevin was sent a case of champagne in celebration, and we’ll be popping the champagne corks too,” said Rowan Gormley, founder of Naked Wines.
To find out more about Naked Wines, who offer Next Day Delivery throughout the UK for £4.99, visit www.nakedwines.com or call 01603 281 800.
Naked Wines offerings have featured on Spittoon recently, including two new Australian wines and the wines from Chilean producer Angel’s Share.
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