Imagine you’ve taken a seat at your friendly neighborhood craft cocktail bar. As you scan the bottles, you see all manner of gins, tequilas, rums, brandies, but only a single bottle labeled “whiskey” – no Scotch, no bourbon, and no rye – just “whiskey.” You opt for a classic Manhattan, made with, of course, whiskey.... Continue Reading →
There’s an old trope about ordering a “dry” martini so devoid of vermouth that the bottle was merely opened in an adjoining room, or that the word “vermouth” was merely whispered nearby. People who think this is clever not only exhibit a huge misunderstanding of what “dry” means, but are also missing out on experiencing... Continue Reading →
Pisco is a spirit that’s taken me a while to wrap my head around. A clear, grape-based spirt from South America, I’ve been enchanted by it since my first sip, and later making my first pisco punch at home. But once you seek to move beyond the Pisco Sour, its many styles and terminology are... Continue Reading →
It’s 11 PM, and after a long day, Mrs. Wonk and I are bone-tired. Yet we’re standing in a large courtyard in New Orleans where despite the late time, it’s still approximately 1000 degrees. On a raised platform some twenty feet above us, a Star Wars storm trooper DJs away. Behind him is an actual,... Continue Reading →
One of the benefits of getting to know your local bartender is figuring out what they’re passionate about and then letting them run loose with that desire. At a recent pisco throwdown at Damn the Weather in Seattle, I learned that Canon’s Dustin Haarstad is a bit of a Pisco freak. Fast forward a few... Continue Reading →
Several years ago, when I was a less-experienced cocktail wonk just starting with my spirits collection, I quickly ran head-first into the confusing category of amaros (aka amari), Italian for “bitter.” Amari are liqueurs created by infusing dozens of herbs and spices in alcohol, then sweetened and diluted to make them consumable neat--assuming you have... Continue Reading →
Cocktail Wonk Rating: 8.5/10 Black Angel’s has three great things going for it: A clever menu, fairly well executed cocktails, and fabulous atmosphere! Easily in the top 10 percent of the coolest bar spaces I have visited. It’s actually a hotel bar, although with its subterranean stone cellar vibe, it doesn't feel like it.... Continue Reading →
Prepping the pre-dinner cocktail. Photo credit: Allison Webber.Last week I was in San Francisco for a tech conference, accompanied by Mrs. Wonk. San Francisco is a hotbed of well-regarded bars and at the forefront of a lot of today’s mixology, so when I saw an announcement that Imbibe magazine, Aviation Gin and locally renowned bar... Continue Reading →
The Hampden Negroni (yeah yeah, I did this one over ice) Next week (June 2-8, 2014) is National Negroni Week, but being impatient, I’m sharing my favorite Negroni variation now. The Negroni is a very common and simple cocktail pattern, but one that offers a near infinite variety of combinations of ingredients that sing together.... Continue Reading →
The "Last Word" cocktail has a certain cachet among the cocktail cognoscenti. Originally a pre-prohibition era cocktail, it came back into mainstream awareness thanks to Murray Stenson during his time at Zig Zag in Seattle. The Last Word is one of those rare cocktails, along with the Negroni and Blood and Sand, that use equal amounts of all ingredients, making it easier to mix,... Continue Reading →
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