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 Here's a delicious cocktail created by Jeff "Beachbum" Berry that appeared in the January/February 2013 issue of Imbibe magazine. The magazine credits Chall Gray of The Magnetic Field, Asheville, North Carolina as the creator, but their website says otherwise. Frankly, we don't really care who first put this together—we're just glad they did! The Sea of Cortez cocktail is something like a simplified version of one of "Trader" Vic Bergeron's creations. Take an El Diablo cocktail, served it up without the ginger beer and you are pretty close. Yes, there's lime instead of lemon, and a little Cointreau, but you get the idea. Perhaps you could more accurately call this a blackcurrant Margarita served up. In any case, we love the drink and will be making these regularly throughout the summer. It's another great reason to get your hands on some creme de cassis.
Sea of Cortez
1.5 oz blanco tequila
1 oz lime juice
.75 oz creme de cassis
.25 oz Cointreau
Add ingredients to a shaker. Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lime wheel.
 The garnish for this drink is a lime wheel. You need to think about that before you juice your lime. Slice it in half across its equator as straight as possible. Keeping the lime halves together, make another cut parallel to the first. Done properly, you should have a nice wheel from the center of the fruit and the remaining halves can be squeezed for the juice.
Depending on how thin you cut your wheel, you may be able to float it on the surface which can look very nice, or you can make a slit from the center to the edge and slip it over the rim. We chose to put ours on the rim, like a shark's fin helping to guide the glass to our lips.
If you already like a good Margarita, this is a nice alternative. It's easier to make than our favorite Margarita recipe and tastes even better. Here, a quality creme de cassis adds an extra dimension that you just don't have in a Margarita, providing additional flavors to mingle with the base spirit. As we have mentioned before, you should be using quality liqueurs. Spending a little extra will make all the difference in your cocktails. In contrast, we chose a more economical tequila. We used Lunazul which is both delicious and easy on the pocketbook—a winning combination for mixed drinks, and it's 100% agave. Sure, a top shelf tequila might raise the bar some, but smoother taste and refined nuances are not always better in a drink like this. A toothier base spirit is going to contribute more to the drink than one that disappears behind the lime and liqueurs. So, don't assume you can't use what you already have. We'll save the fancy stuff for sipping so we can afford to make these over and over!
Sometimes we have to make tough decisions. For example, Derby Day or Cinco de Mayo? As a friend of ours recently said, you don't really have to make that choice—you can have a Mint Julep in the morning and Margaritas all day long! It's good advice, but instead of focusing on Kentucky or Mexico, we decided to break from tradition and feature a cocktail invented in Portland, Oregon with influences all the way from Argentina.
La Yapa is a wonderful whiskey cocktail based on a sour formula with a complex flavor profile. It was created by Jamal Hassan during his tenure at Whey Bar, boozy companion to Portland's Ox restaurant. Ox cuisine is Argentinian inspired, so it stands to reason that the cocktail program would have similar influences. More than one cocktail on the menu
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In our opinion—no, scratch that—this is just an indisputable fact: There's no better compendium of Tiki cocktails than Jeff "Beachbum" Berry's Remixed. So, when we feel like exploring drinks that remind us of the tropics, we look no further. Facing so many choices and a variety of unusual ingredients, we decided to search for a recipe that was fast and easy and didn't require us to buy something new. We settled on the Oahu Gin Sling for it's simplicity.
Historically, a sling predates the classic cocktail and stems from a period before drinks contained bitters. At that time, they also would not have had citrus, except as a garnish, amounting to little more than sweetened spirits. While modern versions with their added fruit juices and seltzer may not adhere to historic definitions, the fact remains that naming conventions are far less important than the flavors in the glass,
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There's a certain level of comfort when it comes to the classics. There was no Tiki movement, no vodka, and folks knew what to expect from a cocktail. By today's standards, times were simpler then, although it's all relative. Still, we think there is virtue in exploring basic, spirit-driven recipes that have stood the test of time—and some that have become lost in it. The Metropole is one such drink.
Originally the house cocktail for the Metropole Hotel in New York City, this brandy based drink has survived since the late 1800s while the hotel where it was created is long gone. It's a common story shared by many classic cocktails, although in our opinion, too few of them contain brandy. It's a simple enough formula, but it has changed somewhat over the years.
Metropole 2 oz cognac 1 oz dry vermouth .5 teaspoon simple syrup 2 dashes Peychaud’s
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As a category, reviver cocktails have long been regarded for their ability to soothe aches and pains after an evening of over-imbibing. Drinks like the Bloody Mary, Corpse Reviver No. 2, or even the Ramos Gin Fizz—all delicious cocktails in their own right—are often consumed in the morning. "Hair of the Dog," as they say, cures the bite with a bit of the fur. The science involved is debatable, but good arguments include curbing the effects alcohol withdrawal, delaying the metabolization of methanol congeners, enlivening the senses by correcting low blood sugar, and of course, dulling the pain with more booze.
If you add nausea to the list of symptoms—a common enough situation—another drink may be the last thing on your mind, especially if your evening concluded with foolishly questionable food choices. That sack
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When we first saw the ingredients for this cocktail at The Violet Hour in Chicago, we couldn't bring ourselves to order it. It seemed just too over-the-top with bitter ingredients. That was our first mistake. When the recipe appeared in Beta Cocktails, a book we recently mentioned in conjunction with the Art of Choke, we thought it might be time to check it out, but we never had the right combination of ingredients—most notably, we didn't have a Blanc vermouth. That was our second mistake. Today, we finally corrected both situations by picking up a bottle of Dolin Blanc and using it to construct one of the most interesting and surprising results we have tasted in a very long time.
Eeyore's Requiem is another recipe we have collected by Toby "Alchemist" Maloney, one of the
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Chances are, if your local liquor store even has absinthe for sale they probably have a limited selection. And by limited, we mean one or maybe two different brands. Absinthe isn't cheap, so when you finally do take the plunge and add a bottle to your cabinet, it's nice to have several options given the wide range of international possibilities these days. Even if you do have several choices, it's not like shops are breaking out their selection to hold absinthe tasting for their customers. So, how to you choose? We were excited to find out that at least one online retailer is doing something about that.
If you start doing a little research you quickly realize that unless you know exactly what you want, buying spirits online isn't any easier than browsing a storefront full of sealed bottles. But the folks at Click here and take a bigger gulp of this article. . .
We heard a rumor that everyone in San Francisco is talking about Locanda's Church cocktail. It's been around since at least last summer, but it can take time for a cocktail to build city-wide momentum. We have family and friends that live in the city by the bay, so this past weekend while they were visiting Portland we asked them about it. They hadn't heard of it. Then we realized that they are all avid readers of Summit Sips and since we hadn't posted the recipe for the Church, how would they find out about it?
We decided to remedy the situation last Sunday by making the Church for everyone to try, and it's definitely worthy of our Drink of the Week. If you happen to live in San Francisco and frequent Locanda, you might already know about it. If not, here's a great drink for summer, or for
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If you ever wanted a drink recipe to show to your friends—one that you reserve for that special person you want to dazzle with something creative—this is it. If you know someone who claims that they don't like gin, but it's clear they have never experienced the wonderful alchemy of a gin-based cocktail, now's your chance to change their mind. For anyone interested in layering basic elements and techniques to create something remarkable in the glass, this cocktail will certainly entertain. The Juliet & Romeo has a fancy presentation yet it's easy to make and is perhaps the most interesting, most refreshing and delicious cocktail we've ever had the pleasure of sharing.
It comes by way of Toby Maloney of The Violet Hour in Chicago, but it has also appeared on the menu at his other bars such as the Bradstreet Crafthouse in Minneapolis. We've been
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Every so often, we have an opportunity to review new products to see how well they might work for the home mixologist. Recently, we had the pleasure of trying the NewAir AI-215SS Portable Ice Maker. For several years now, we have seen similar devices in catalogs and gadget advertisements and and we always wondered how these miraculous machines actually work. It's never obvious just looking at a picture, and even in a store you may not know what to expect. We thought Summit Sips readers would appreciate an honest assessment after some hands-on experience with one of these.
The Shipment It only took a few days once confirmed by NewAir for the shipment to arrive. The unit came nicely packed and very well protected for the journey to our door. Ours is a top-of-the-line stainless steel model, although the top lid is black. The exterior surfaces came with
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