A Cocktail Seminar in NY
I recently attended the Gourmet Institute in New York. It was a whirlwind weekend of classes and eating and more classes and more eating! One of the sessions that I chose, that I thought would be one of my favorites, was called Celebrating the Season with Cocktails and taught by Nick Mautone. Nick has been in the hospitality business in one way or another for many years. He’s been responsible for beverage programs at places such as Gotham Bar and Grill and Gramercy Tavern. He currently has foodservice consulting groups and as part of that consults to Grey Goose to create cocktails that showcase their products. So his experience looked like a great background for this topic.
I had been thinking of purchasing his book Raising the Bar: Better Drinks, Better Entertaining. Since it’s release in 2004 it’s landed some good reviews. And, he has a new book coming out soon, so I was anxious to see what he had to offer. I was amazingly disappointed. Not just a little disappointed but amazingly - with the whole session. The drink concepts were interesting but the resulting cocktails just didn’t make the cut.
The first cocktail had all the right elements: citron vodka, rosemary, lemon, white wine. But the proportions were out of whack. The recipe called for a sweet white wine as well as sugar or simple syrup, pushing this into the slightly syrupy category. And that was my favorite drink of the group.
I found all of his cocktails to be out of balance on the sweet side. I thought this was very interesting considering that he must know that the sort of people who attend this event are a bit older and probably have fairly sophisticated tastes in both food and beverage. The drinks he demonstrated would all fall into the category of what I call “starter” drinks - those that people who are just learning to like spirits might be attracted to. And while there is nothing wrong with that, you need to know your audience, which apparently he did not.
After each cocktail taste he would ask the audience what we thought. I don’t think there was one drink where even close to half the people indicated they liked it.
I will give him a bit of leeway in that the drinks had to be made up ahead of time and apparently couldn’t be kept chilled. So everything was served at room temperature which will tend to bring out the sweetness in a beverage. And, as mentioned, his concepts were good. So I’ve kept the recipe handout that came along with the class and at some point will tinker with them to see what can be done with them. Especially since each of the recipes was shown as both an indivudual drink and as a batch to serve 8 - 10, which is a great idea for the holidays.
But, as for recommending this book or another session with Nick? I just don’t think I can do that.
