The holiday season is a time for punch. But not your standard pirate’s fair of Caribbean fruit juices and rum. The cold weather of Christmas and New Years beg for something rich and luxurious. For many, that means Egg Nog. Egg Nog can be a delightful holiday drink (Jeffrey Morgenthaler of Portland, Oregon’s Clyde Common has mastered it). But most Egg Nog comes pasteurized, with no alcohol and a horribly chemical flavor. As with any craft cocktail, fresh ingredients are best.

An alternative to Egg Nog that will impress your guests is the Tom and Jerry. It’s a dairy-based hot punch made with dark rum and brandy, with the traditional holiday spices that will make it seem familiar and comforting even to people who have never had the pleasure. Unfortunately, it’s also an involved process to make, more akin to baking than most bartenders care to hazard.

A holiday punch alternative to Egg Nog that I’ve always liked is a very old Scandinavian mulled wine called Glögg. First, the name is great. Second, while the holidays offer a variety of mulled wine and cider drinks, Glögg is unique for it’s heavy does of cardamom and the inclusion of raisins and almonds. Lastly, wine-based holiday punches are accessible without carrying the risk of knocking your guests out with hidden alcohol.

My preferred Glögg recipe comes from punch master Dan Searing and his book, The Punch Bowl. His recipe includes:

Glögg
3 cardamom pods
2 750 mL bottles of red wine (cheap and dry is best)
1 cinnamon stick
6 whole cloves
3/4 cup demerara sugar
1/4 cup vodka
1/2 cup blanched almonds
1/2 cup raisins

Instructions:
1. Using the flat side of a knife, smash the cardamom pods, reserving the shells and seeds.
2. In a large pot set over medium heat, mix the wine, cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom pieces. Simmer 5 minutes, then turn off heat and let the mixtures steep for at least 2 hours. Strain, if desired.
3. Return pot to a low simmer, then slowly add the sugar, stirring constantly. Turn off the heat and stir in the vodka.
4. To serve, put a scant tablespoon each of almonds and raisins into a mug, then pour 6 ounces of Glögg on top. Serve with a teaspoon so guests can eat the almonds and raisins as they drink.

The following is from a post on Greene’s seminar on Hemingway cocktails:

From “Islands in the Stream,” guests enjoyed the Green Isaacs Special (named for the Isaacs Islands, just north of Bimini), and read from the novel:

“Where Thomas Hudson lay on the mattress his head was in the shade cast by the platform at the forward end of the flying bridge where the controls were and when Eddy came aft with the tall cold drink made of gin, lime juice, green coconut water, and chipped ice with just enough Angostura bitters to give it a rusty, rose color, he held the drink in the shadow so the ice would not melt while he looked out over the sea.”

Green Isaacs Special

2 oz Hendricks Gin
4 oz green coconut water (Vita Coco, available at Whole Foods)
1 oz lime juice
4 drops Angostura Bitters (or “just enough Angostura bitters to give it a rusty, rose color”)

Build in Collins glass.

I haven’t had this with Hendricks myself. I prefer my Green Isacs Special with a London dry gin like Beefeater.

Also, if you haven’t read Islands in the Stream, I highly recommend you give it a read. It’s semi-autobiographical, or at least very clearly inspired by Hemingway’s own life. The main character, Thomas Hudson, does some epic drinking of Papa Dobles at port in the book and spends time sport fishing on his beloved boat. It’s a great book, though somewhat heart-breaking. Definitely worth reading for Hemingway fans out there. And if you don’t like reading Hemingway, at least enjoy one of his cocktails.

Tonight I accidentally opened one of them. I can’t decide if this is an EPIC FAIL or an EPIC WIN.

First, the wine: Santa Carolina Herencia Carmenere 2007 from Peumo, Chile. It’s Santa Carolina’s icon wine and it retails around or above $100. It was given to me by the Wines of Chile after I won their #TweetChile trip and blogged about it extensively. My fiance and I had been saving it for a special occasion.

How did the accidental opening happen? I came home after a truly exhausting day at work and an equally tiring workout at the gym. I was wiped out. I didn’t really feel like wine, but Lori, my fiance wanted a glass with our very casual and completely unremarkable dinner. Now, I’d recently received a big shipment of wine from Garagiste and our little wine fridge is completely full with wine that we can’t drink for at least a few months. Lori looked for a bottle to open, but told me, “I don’t think we have anything we can open.” I said, “Nonsense, why don’t we open this bottle of carmenere?” We’ve consumed a ton of Chilean carmenere over the last year and I honestly had forgotten that this was the one bottle we were saving for a nice occasion. I was tired and ready for a glass of wine. I wasn’t really thinking.

It wasn’t until we opened the bottle, realizing in the process that this was a large, substantial and clearly more expensive than usual glass container, that Lori says, “Hey was this the really expensive carmenere that we were saving?” Eep.

Now here’s the good news. This wine is fantastic – one of the best carmeneres I can ever recall drinking. It’s also in the prime of its drinking life, according to the experts.

Before I get to a review of the wine, here’s a quick poll. Was accidentally opening a very expensive wine a fail or a win?

Tasting Notes
Herencia is a deep, dark purple. On the nose there’s strong spice, dark cherry, and tobacco. The first taste hits of red pepper typical for good carmeneres, as well as bright vegetal and herb notes, with an earthy undertone. It has a tangy-sweet finish with some peppery spice and fairly bright tannins. The finish is long and the balance between sweet and savory notes is truly impressive. I’d initially marked this down as a 90-91 on my scale, but that was before it had really breathed at all (again, when we hadn’t realized what we were drinking). After letting it breath for an hour or so, I’m upping my rating to a 93-94. It’s a picture-perfect representation of what great Chilean carmenere is capable of achieving. This is a fantastic wine and definitely worthy of it’s icon status for Santa Carolina. While I can’t see myself buying another bottle simply because I don’t often spend this much on any spirit, I wouldn’t have been disappointed had I purchased this myself.

Bourbon Punch by Gina Chersevani
1 bottle of bourbon (I used Bulleit)
1/2 bottle of St. Germain
32 oz of fresh grapefruit juice
1/3 lb of 10x powdered sugar
16 oz of fresh squeezed lemon juice
10-15 dashes of the Angostura bitters
4 oz of mint
16 grapefruit peels or segments (garnish)
32 oz sparkling water

In a bowl, whisk grapefruit juice, lemon juice, and powders sugar together until sugar is dissolved, then add bourbon, St Germain, bitters, sparkling water and stir. Then garnish with peels and mint. Let stand with an ice block in it for about 10 minutes or serve over ice.

I actually find this recipe starts off a bit too tart and dry for my tastes, so I gradually increase the sweetness with extra sugar and St. Germain until it gets to where I want it.

Bourbon is a relatively modern American spirit, so it probably isn’t the perfect fit for this century’s old holiday. Thanksgiving cocktails would probably be best served with rum, but this punch is too good to pass up.

What are you drinking on Thanksgiving?

Bittermens founder, Avery Glasser, pretty clearly thinks the answer to that is a resounding no. At a recent visit to Amor y Amargo, Avery and I spoke about tonic. Avery’s theory is that because both bottled tonic water and tonic syrups don’t have alcohol in them, they are limited in bitter (or how “tonic-y”) they can be. Bittermens’ solution is the Commonwealth Tonic Cordial. By having a cordial with 21% alcohol, they can use more bitter and less sweet in the tonic. Boy did they succeed. This carries with it a hearty dose of quinine, making it bitingly bitter. That’s only a problem if you want to drink it on its own (and I’m sure there are some members of the Cocktail and Spirits Writers Online Group who will anyway).

The recommended recipe for a Gin and Tonic with the Commonwealth Tonic Cordial is:

1.5 oz London Dry Gin
0.75 oz Bittermens Commonwealth Tonic Cordial
5 oz soda water

This is a remarkably light and refreshing Gin and Tonic. Because there is more bitterness, there is less sugar needed and thus less sugar present. That makes the drink light, but bitter. I think it’s a great improvement, especially over anything involving a conventional tonic water.

But what I really like to use the Commonwealth Tonic Cordial for is a recipe from Bittermens’ site that plays on a Vesper.

Eva Green – Mayur Subbarao’s interpretation of a Vesper

2 1/4 oz Plymouth Gin
3/4 oz Cocchi Americano
1/2 oz Bittermens Commonwealth Tonic Cordial

Stir and serve up in a coupe glass with a lemon twist

The Eva Green has already put a significant dent in my stock of Commonwealth Tonic Cordial and just about cost me all of my Cocchi Americano. Seriously, this is a cocktail that is for you if you like gin, bitter, spirits-only drinks.

As for the Commonwealth Tonic Cordial, I definitely recommend it. There are lots of good choices for tonic water or tonic syrups these days. But if you want a crisp, light tonic without the extra sweetness, the Bittermens bottling is for you.

Carmenere is actually one of my favorite varietals. It has ranges of red fruit, berries, and spice, with some good vegetal notes. It should have a decent amount of tannins, but at its best remains very drinkable. It’s great with flavorful food, but is also mild enough to drink on a warm summer night. Seriously, if you haven’t tried Carmenere, seek it out, it’s a great grape to bring into your wine rotation.

The tasting by Wines of Chile included a good range of Caremenere. What I love about horizontal tastings like this is you really get to see how much terroir and the choices of the wine makers influence taste. Eight bottles from of the same grape, many from the same part of Chile, tasted unique. We tasted the following wines:

• Emiliana Natura Carmenere 2010
• Casa Silva Los Lingues Gran Reserva Carmenere 2008
• Santa Rita Medalla Real Gran Reserva Carmenere 2008
• Montes Alpha Carmenere 2008
• Carmen Gran Reserva Carmenere, 2009
• Santa Carolina Reserva de Familia Carmenere 2009
• Concha y Toro Marques de Casa Concha Carmenere 2009
• Haras de Pirque Cabernet Sauvignon/Carmenere 2007

I was familiar with half of these wineries going in, both from my trip to Chile earlier this year and from the wide availability of some of these wines on the US market. All of the wines tasted were under $25 and most represented a good buy.

My two favorites of the night were the Santa Carolina Reserve de Familia and Concha y Toro’s Marques de Casa Concha. The offering from Santa Carolina had a strong vegetal nose, layered with blueberry and alcohol. The first impression on the tongue is strong dark plum and red pepper. The finish was spicy blackberry and strong alcohol. It was the strongest wine we tasted, but it had a really big fruit flavor to balance it out.

The Marques de Casa Concha Carmenere was also very fruit forward, with purple fruit and blueberries on the nose. There was a strong plum flavor up front, followed by rich, oaky tannins and a thick mouthfeel. While not as multidimensional as the Santa Carolina, it was still really enjoyable.

We had a large group over to taste the wines and opinions variety widely as to which were the favorites. One thing was clear, though, even with a room full of people who had largely never had Carmenere before, the wines were a hit.

Matt Robold, aka Rum Dood, has made it the final 5 candidates in Tommy Bahama’s Rumologist contest. You can vote for him once per day on Facebook and I highly encourage you to do so.

As a reward for making it this far, Matt has created a delicious Daiquiri variation. Enjoy!

TBD Sour

2 oz Rhum Agricole Vieux
1 oz Lime Juice
.75 oz Chai Tea Syrup (2:1)
.5 tsp Maraschino

Shake with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Dust with fresh allspice and garnish with a mint leaf.

Awesome video about Brad Estabrooke’s process of starting the Breuckelen Distilling Company.

Amor y Amargo is a bar by Avery and Janet Glasser, the founders of Bittermens Bitters. It’s located on in New York’s East Village, just a few doors down from Death & Company on 6th Street. It consists of a General Store, with the full line of Bittermens Bitters, as well as other bitters, cocktail tools, and books. It’s a nice selection, especially since finding good bitters can be hard. But things get really impressive when you turn towards the bar.

Amor y Amargo is a cocktail bar focused on vermouth, aperitifs, potable bitters, and, given who runs the place, non-potable bitters. While there are scores of these various spirits, the bar keeps a small stock in other base spirits. The focus is on the bitters.

One of the coolest things about Amor y Amargo is that they have their homemade sweet vermouth and an Americano cocktail available on draft at the bar. The Americano is one of my favorites and as a matter of principle I had to have it first. It comes out deep red, with less carbonated water in it than I usually drink. The emphasis is really on the vermouth and the Campari and it’s frankly fantastic.

From there, Avery made me a Gin Rickey variation using a lime citrate. Amor y Amargo doesn’t have fresh fruit juices, so this was an interesting substitute and a pretty tasty cocktail as well. I got to try a number of Avery’s original creations made special for the friends I was there with (who, wisely, have become regulars). The range and depth of the selection of amari and other potable bitters and aperitifs from France, Italy, Germany and other parts of the world was staggering. I’m at a point now where I’d say that the only two categories of spirits I’m really continuing to collect broadly is rum and amari; the differences of styles, brands, regions, and flavor profiles is incredibly interesting to me and every bottling seems to offer something fairly different.

I was at Amor y Amargo on a Monday night, which is when owner Avery Glasser works behind the stick, with his wife and partner Janet helping keep the house in order while he works. It was great to finally meet him and Janet in person. It’s hard to fully capture the importance of Bittermens Bitters in both my becoming interested in craft cocktails and the growth of craft bartending more broadly. From my perspective, some of the first cocktails I fell in love with were drinks with Bittermens Xocolatl Mole Bitters made by bartenders at Death & Company. The Conference by Brian Miller was the drink that got me hooked, but St. Columb’s Rill and the Oaxaca Old Fashioned by Philip Ward are also outstanding drinks that feature the Xocolatl Mole Bitters by Bittermens. The problem was that in early 2008 when I got to know these drinks, Bittermens was not commercially available for sale. It wasn’t until they took a circuitous path through Germany and a partnership with The Bitter Truth that American consumers could find these special bitters available for home use.

Bittermens is now producing their bitters entirely on their own in Brooklyn, NY. The line includes some really interesting bitters, though the Burlesque Bitters are my favorite, as they’re a great addition in summery gin and rum drinks. In the near future, they’ll be doing some other cool stuff that geeks like me will be very excited about, but I won’t discuss now. Just stay tuned…in the mean time, if you’re in NYC, check out Amor y Amargo. You won’t be disappointed.

Via Doug at The Pegu Blog, I see that Matt Robold aka RumDood is one of 20 finalists in Tommy Bahama’s First Rumologist contest. You can vote for Matt after liking Tommy Bahama’s Facebook page. Oh and you can vote once per day, so vote early and often!