New & notable: Purgatory Vodka

Yes, a vodka. This is a category I usually don’t have much to say about. (“Um, crisp and clear! Tastes like ethanol.”) But this vodka, made in Alaska, is distilled from a mix of 20 percent denatured hemp seeds from British Columbia, and 80 percent barley. I assumed this was yet another marketing gimmick, something to convince stoners to put down their bongs and try a cocktail.

But…. it’s actually quite good. (It won the convention's “best new product” as voted by the media attending.) One of the issues I have with vodka is that I find it often lacks depth — it’s all surface taste. Yet Purgatory had layers and performed some curious acrobatics in the mouth without denying its vodka roots. (I’ve had other interesting vodkas, but the makers were imitating rum by playing up a carmelized, butterscotch note.) I brought back a bottle, and will be endeavoring to learn more about what to do with it in cocktails in the coming days.

[Note: this is one of a series of posts arising from the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers convention, held in Las Vegas April 2 to 5, 2012. For an overview, read this.]

Future foretold: Liquor worth noting (and not) in 2012

It’s been a little over a week s since I flew back from the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers convention in Las Vegas. And it’s taken about that long to process what I saw. It’s a massive event — there’s the sprawling exhibition floor, then catacombs of hospitality suites hidden off muffled hallways, and all this is topped by the meringue of some 30 floors of smaller hospitality suites in the hotel tower above. All serving copious amounts of liquor.

I managed to see and occasionally sample about half of the thousands of liquor items being pimped here. I stopped by dozens of suites, and I walked down the aisles of the main exhibition hall with a studied briskness, always scanning out of the corner of my eye for any new products of note. Walking through a convention hall without making eye contact is a very technical skill. Highly trained booth minders have developed fierce and uncanny stares, which hypnotize and draw in the unwary like sunlit morning dew luring insects into a Venus fly trap. The unwary then end up hearing a 20-minute sales pitch for Original Lithuanian Flavored Vodka. Not that this happened to me.

The WSWA show is by and large a speed-dating affair. Spirits producers — both new microdistillers from North America and representatives of major producers from abroad hoping to crack the U.S. market — flock here to attract the miserly attention of distributors, to get them to fall in love with their product and put it on the shelves of every liquor store in the land. It's sort of like a convention of unpublished authors tending booths hawking their brilliant novels  — the brilliance of which is sometimes discernible only to themselves — intent on finding a publisher to bring it to an audience larger than their immediate family.  Again, not that this has ever happened to me.

There was lots of wine as well, but, really… who drinks that? What is that, like old grape juice? I focused on spirits, and along the way saw far too many novelty liqueurs and pre-packaged cocktails. Plus a lot of vodka, and a lot of tequila in nubbly bottles. In short, the noise-to-signal ratio is pretty overwhelmingly in favor of noise.

I spent two full days browsing and sipping and seeing what was out there, what was worth paying attention to, and what was best ignored. Over the next few days I’ll post about some of these discoveries. First, I’ll focus on “Best of Show,” or what I thought to be new and good. Then I’ll post some examples of a category that might best be called “Did You See How High That Shark Jumped?”

Whiskey shoot-out at the WSWA corral

The main exhibition hall at the liquor wholesaler's convention in Las Vegas last week was filled with makers and marketers of spirits looking for love (or at least distribution agreements). Among them were folks from a company called Western Flavored Whiskey. Their bottles have a round, frontierish look, and the labels are like old western wanted posters, except that the wanted are apparently naughty cowgirls, some with pneumatically enhanced breasts that could stop a steer. The whiskey is offered in four flavors: honey pepper, peach, amaretto and orange.

Of course cowboys drank flavored whiskey. You must have missed that day in seventh-grade history class. But like it or not, you’ll be seeing more flavored whiskey on the market. The cocktail revolution will not be un-flavorized.

The next morning, walking way on the other side of Caeser’s Palace, I passed a hospitality suite for a company called Real American Whiskey. It sells flavored whiskey. It's sold in round, frontierish bottles, and has labels with a western theme and a pair of comely rodeo cowgirls, who it turns out are mother and daughter. It's offered in four flavors: honey pepper, peach, amaretto and orange.

I mean, what are the odds?

So I stepped inside and asked a company employee about the link between Western Flavored Whiskey and Real American Whiskey. She blinked a few times and looked confused, then poured me a shot of orange-flavored whiskey. What other company, she asked? Really, the exact same flavors?

How embarrassing! It’s like two people showing up at the Academy Awards in the same Versace.

Just to make sure, she hollered across the room to a man in a suit, who wandered over. I asked about the other company, and his eyes narrowed to slits. These slits said, wordlessly, “Oh, them.”

It turns out that one of the partners in RAW whiskey had worked with WFW as a consultant. Or so they claim.

As often happens in the liquor trade, they had a falling out. And so the consultant and his partner decided to go off on their own and launch their own brand of flavored whiskeys. Using the exact same flavors of his former client. Including honey pepper. Side note: What the hell with honey-pepper? I tried both honey-peppers whiskeys, and I’m here to tell you they both tasted off-the-charts wrong, although in bizarrely different ways.

One other thing also seemed clear: the cocktail revolution will not be un-litigated.

Mardi Gras goes year round with King Rex Spirits!

“Our product has been out for only an hour and a half!” enthused Diane Svehlak, the president of King Rex Spirits.

Just that morning her company had rolled out a series of New Orleans-themed spirits at a splashy WSWA hospitality suite at Caeser’s in Las Vegas. Green, gold, and purple beads were draped about the room like a St. Charles Ave. oak, and a guy who evidently received the “wear-your-Blues-Brothers-outfit” memo was blowing on a saxophone.

New Orleans spirits?

Well, yes… rum, vodka, and bourbon, sold in are elaborate Mardi-Gras themed bottles. But let’s let the press release do the heavy lifting:

The designs include unique crystal jewels, but also feature an interesting shape face showcasing an intricate colorful painted texture mask seen at Carnival. The exquisite bottle capsulation is as regal as any King's crown with each bottle neck painstaking design for the ultimate ease to speed pour. Each designer bottle identifies the category of spirits by their Carnival color of purple "Justice" King REX Ultra-Premium Vodka, green "Faith" King REX Ultra-Premium Silver Rum, and gold " Power" King REX Ultra-Premium Bourbon.

But, wait, there’s more! Press a button on the bottom of each bottle, and they light up with little LEDs in the base — purple for vodka, green for rum, gold for bourbon. The light will supposedly run for 40 hours. I thought this was just a cool novelty, but I was told it was a “value proposition.” Just when I think I’m getting on top of this liquor trade, I find I have much to learn!

(But I have a long memory — King Rex is apparently hubristic enough to venture where late liquor magnate Sidney Frank failed to tread. He rolled out fancy LED bottles with his Coyopa Rum in the early 2000s, but had to abandon it when customers started returning them to liquor stores for refunds when the lights ceased to function. This is not a way to endear yourself to the front-line retail troops.)

Svehlak — who’s based in California but “loves New Orleans” — explained to me that the company wanted a mask on the bottle, and it came down to choosing a Venice theme or a New Orleans theme. They opted for New Orleans.

The company is a essentially a marketing company that sources spirits from wherever. The vodka, she said, is from “the midwest” (Archer Daniels Midland? MGP?).The bourbon is from “back east” (my guess: LDI in Indiana.) And the rum is from Puerto Rico.

I sampled each. The bourbon (a blend of six- and eight-year old whiskeys) was fine, if unexceptional. The white rum was hot, one-dimensional, and undistinguished. The vodka was mid- to bottom-shelf vodka, which is to say, without character.

One of the cocktails they’re promoting is the SazeREX: Absinthe rinse, bourbon, sugar, Peychaud’s, lemon twist but no slice. Fine so far. But then, like an unwelcome surprise ending in the remake of a classic movie, there’s this: it calls for a garnish of dried jicama, fennel, and peach chips.

It turns out that Svehlak is also president of Dress the Drink, which “produces artisanal gourmet garnishments and blends that are unique in visual and flavor profile for the food and beverage industry and Home Entertainment industry.” Dress the Drink sells a $49 cocktail garnishing kit. This may explain, but does not excuse.

Those of you chomping at the bit to get you some King Rex will need to keep chomping. Although Svehlak told me she'd lined up distributors in 12 states in the first 90 minutes since announcing (with a goal of soon being in 30 states), getting into the stores will take a little time. The public kick-off will be in July, and Svehlak expects the product to be on shelves by August. She also said she'd be hosting at a tasting room at Tales of the Cocktail in July to give New Orleans a glimpse of what’s coming. (The folks at Tales seemed mystified by this when I asked them to confirm.)

Also, start saving your pennies now. The expected retail price per bottle: $69.99.

Press releases I didn't finish reading

“For the past ten years, Van Gogh Vodka (www.vangoghvodka.com) has been considered a pioneer in the world of flavored vodkas thanks to their constant innovation and ability to create vibrant and authentic flavors.  Crafted in small batches in Holland, Van Gogh is most famously known for their unique Double Espresso flavored vodka.
 
“Now, Van Gogh Vodka is proud to introduce their own take on an American classic – PB&J – transforming its timeless flavor into a delightfully smooth peanut butter and raspberry jelly flavored vodka.”

Trend watch: Krugy, the first commercial sperm cocktail

"Hello y'all, my name is Krugy."

The annual Wine and Spirits Wholesalers Association convention, this year in Las Vegas, is where producers with new products try to hook up with distributors, who will make them famous and rich. Like the guys behind “Adult Chocolate Milk,” which I mocked two years ago and now taunts me from behind the cash register at my corner supermarket and dozens of other places I shop. I'll report more fully about the convention when I catch my breath, but for now, a mention of the most unique product I found.

It's called Krugy. It's a vanilla-caramel cream liqueur (15% alcohol). It comes in an indivudual serving container. And that container is a goofy looking plastic sperm. The head has two beseeching eyes, the tail is trasnparent so you can see the creamy white substance jiggle about when you move it.

I know!

It’s amazing to me, too, that it's taken this long for someone to come up with this.

I can't yet report on how it tastes. In fact, I may never be able to — at least not until I figure out if the psychotherapy should come before or after I drink it.

Field Trip: Herbs & Rye, Las Vegas

Are there any specials on steak tonight, I asked the bartender at Herbs & Rye a couple of nights ago. No, he reported mournfully. We'd missed the first happy hour. And we were too early for the second.

It was 10:30pm. On a Saturday night.

A few things you should know about Herbs & Rye. 1) Happy hour runs from 5pm until 8pm, and then again from 12am until 3am. That's when you can get deals on steaks. 2) It's located well off the Strip on an unlovely bit of strip mall highway. Draped across the front is a banner with the Coors Light logo. 3) You can order a 120-ounce steak. It costs $320, but if you eat the whole thing by yourself they'll give you $200. And 4) It has the best drinks in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas is trying to figure out how to integrate craft cocktails with mass cocktails. Mostly, you get mass cocktails in the city, and these are never drinks to write home about. Also: they're really expensive on the Strip. A few places are upping their game, mostly because they know that customers flying in from New York or Los Angeles or Chicago are expecting more than sweet, overpriced slurries. Some are starting to succeed. (More about this later — I hit about a dozen Vegas bars two months ago in the course of research for a forthcoming magazine story.)

Herbs & Rye gets it. It was opened in 2009 by Nectaly Mendoza, who had tended bar elsehwere around town and wanted his own place where he could do his own thing. The interior has done up in a sort of steakhouse-bordello-speakeasy style — although nicer than you'd expect from the exterior. The menu is one of those Charlton-Heston-Ten-Commandment-sized tomes in padded faux leather. A lot of the offerings are steak-related — although the best deal may be the $10 flatbreads, which we ordered. They were sizeable and tasty. (The food got a really bad rap here when it first opened, but I've been plenty satisfied with what I've eaten on two visits this year.)

But, the cocktails? The list fills three glorious folio-sized pages of the menu. And it's one of the best curated, best designed lists I've seen. It's done by era — starting with the Gothic Age of American Drinking (up until 1865), then on through the Golden Age (1965-1960), the Old School Age (1890-1919), Prohibition (1919-1933), Years of Reform (1933-1945), Dark Ages of American Drinking (1949-1999), and the Revival of American Drinking (to present). Note: No drinks are offered from the Dark Ages.

We started with some classics — a Clover Club and a Scofflaw. They were perfectly crafted and well-executed: coupes were placed on black cocktail napkins before us on the bar, then poured from outsized shakers. (Why is it that I like it when bartenders place one hand behind their back when they pour a drink with the other? Maybe it's just a positive feedback loop from past experience.) Then a Ford cocktail, made with gin, dry vermouth, Benedictine, and orange bitters. It was almost perfectly clear and I feared he'd forgotten the Benedictine, but the taste came shining through, nicely balanced. It nearly made up for missing happy hour(s).

The only unsettling thing: the two wide-screen TVs behind the bar were playing the movie Casino. And that scene where mobsters barge in and shoot up the bar with machine guns? It somehow lodged in my subconscious, so that whenever anyone walked in the door, I flinched and eyed the exits. But that was a small price to pay for fine drinkery.

Herbs & Rye, 3731 W. Sahara Ave. (702) 982-8036. Our cocktails were $9 each.

Field Trip: Anvil Bar & Refuge, Houston

Sometimes you luck into the right drink at the right spot at the right time.

I was the happy beneficiary of such happenstance last weekend on a BoBos in hell swing through Houston. It had been a long day — I was in Galveston with my wife on assignment for a couple of nights, then we decided to head up to the city for an evening before driving back to New Orleans.

We first spent some time developing chronic museum leg at the amazing Menil Colllection, then trolled a half-dozen or more antique shops along Westheimer looking for bargains. (Success: a 1950s bamboo couch for $300.) Late in the afternoon, we set out for one last bit of errand running.

Some shopping experiences you should never attempt at the end of a long day. This was one of them. Two words: Meatballs. Lingonberries. That, and lots of dishware, bedding, lighting fixtures, kitchen stuff etc., all with unpronouceable names involving umlauts.

Then: Anvil. We arrived around 10pm. And the refuge part of its name was possibly never more deserving. It's situated in a late 1950s former Bridgestone-Firestone tire store, but not that you could tell. No car lifts or tire racks. It's open and airy but still has a certain intimacy — and it's been furnished with a lot of funky reclaimed material, like an old freight rail track for the bar's foot rail, and a meat locker door leading to the rest rooms.  

The idea behind the bar is to recapture the flair of the classic era of drinking, without being beholden to any narrow concept of classic. The cocktail menu has many familiar friends — Pimm's Cup, Pisco Punch, and a Sazerac ca. 1840 (made with cognac rather than rye). The rest of the menu was mostly classics-inspired originals, broken out by base spirit. These included something called the Paper Airplane (Swedish punsch, Fernet, lemon, ginger beer, orange bitters), and Pliny’s Tonic (London dry gin, lime, cucumber, mint, habanero tincture). Let's just say that those inclined toward amari and bitters will not have a dearth of choices here.

I went with the Black Betty, made with fenugreek-infused rye, Bonal, Campari, and Xocolatl mole bitters. It wasn't nearly as bitter I thought it might be, but walked the tightrope over the valley of bitter death with much aplomb.

But my wife hit the trifecta with the Turtle Blues — right drink, right place, right time. It was a tall drink, built around Flor de Caña rum, lengthened with lemon, honey, jasmine, and thyme. On the menu it sounded a bit like a Grateful Dead concert in a glass, but it avoided wallowing in the herb garden. It was light, refreshing, and utterly without cloy. The menu touted it as “spring in a glass,” and that was pretty much spot on.

The long day was quickly reduced to a smudgey spot in our rear-view mirror. And I'll give it this: the Turtle Blues is even a cure for that low-grade, lingering mental paralysis that afflicts BoBos who've had to chose between the Svalka and the Rättvik wine glasses.  

Anvil Bar & Refuge, 1424 Westheimer Rd.,Houston, TX, (713) 523-1622, www.anvilhouston.com. Drinks about $8 to $10.

Mullet home bars, Deco-style

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Last week I was in Houston and happened upon this antique store on Westheimer Rd. It majors in Art Deco and minors in home bars. Cool home bars. The kind that fold in upon themselves like Transformers and hide their liquid stores and shakers and glassware from prying eyes. What you got in there? Who needs to know? It's just ordinary, innocent furniture. Prohibition? Never heard of it.

These are the ultimate mullet bars: Business up front. Party in the back.

Someday I will buy one. Last Sunday was not that day.

Added bonus: The store is just a few blocks from Anvil Bar & Refuge.

Pride and Joy Antiques, 1727 Westheimer Rd., Houston. (713) 522-8435.

Portland cocktail cart update: now legal

Last October I posted a short dispatch about the first legal cocktail cart in Portland, Ore. (pictured at left). It was a trial project and was set up by the Oregon Bartender's Guild to promote Portland Cocktail Week. The idea was to set a precedent and calm jittery nerves among Portlanders fearful of hipsters vending lurid drinks at every corner, unsteady bikers weaving in and out of traffic, high school kids reeking of vanilla from Captain Morgan, etc., etc.

Well, the evil plan seemed to work. The first long-term license for a cocktail cart was just granted. You can read about it here. Capsule summary: the license covers beer only, and it doesn't mean every one of Portland's 700 food carts will be able to get a license. If anything, it means that a cart can sell liquor if it agrees to no longer be a cart, and is willing to set up a hard, policed perimeter for consumption.

This is a great step forward for Portland. But as a New Orleanian who does not live under the jackbooted tyranny of open container laws, I don't see this as a huge step forward globally. Me, I'd take stationary bars and go-cups over mobile bars and a monitored imbibing zone any day.