• Via the Atlantic: The Era of Copyrighted Cocktails.
  Oh, my. Everyone is talking about this. The most interesting point I’m drawing from this is: at what point can a drink be said to be a new, discrete drink?
• Via the Awl: Heavy drinkers outlive nondrinkers, and, Why you pour 88% more alcohol into a short glass than a tall one.
  I’ve linked to the Daily Mail. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
• Via Edible Geography: Gilpin Family Whisky.
  Once you get past the “Eew” factor of whisky made from the urine of Type 2 diabetes sufferers, there’s an interesting point in there. I’m pretty sure you can’t actually buy it.
• Via Edible Geography: Spaces of Prohibition.
  Which has pretty much sold me on Daniel Okrent‘s Last Call.
• Via the Atlantic: Which came first, the brewpub or deregulation?
  Or, was Jimmy Carter the father of America’s craft brewing scene?
• Via Google News: Here’s to the genius who created the Treacle; How Erik Lorincz became a winning mixologist.

There are hundreds of whisky distilleries secreted around Scotland. Balblair might not be one of the immediately recognized ones but its heritage is undisputed. Established by John Ross in 1790 on the shores of the Dornoch Firth, it’s the oldest working distillery in the Highland region and one of the oldest in Scotland. After changing hands a few times over the years, the distillery was sold to Inver House Distillers in 1996 and three years ago, Balblair took the decision to only release vintage single malts.

It’s a brave decision. While most distilleries release vintages at some point, usually as special or limited editions with a matching pricetag, making them the entire basis of a portfolio is virtually unheard of in Scotch producers. The key difference between a vintage single malt, say from 1998, and a 12 year old malt is that right now, in 2010, the former is no younger than twelve years old, nor any older, while the latter contains a blend of liquids at different ages, all of which are at least twelve years old.

It’s hard to separate the idea of a vintage whisky from that of a vintage wine. A vintage wine offers a liquid record of the year in which the wine was made, whereas because of the differing methods of production involved, a vintage whisky doesn’t have that immediate relationship to the time of its creation. Instead, we get a snapshot of a particular spirit at a particular point of its development with all the detail that often gets blended out.

Along with some proper journalists and media guests, I was lucky enough to be invited to the National Museum of Scotland to try some of Balblair’s vintages and enjoy an exclusive performance by the Scottish jazz vocalist Niki King. While I’m never one to turn down free whisky, the reason behind the combination of classic jazz and vintage single malt was the launch of Balblair’s Vintage Lounge, with events planned for Paris and New York later in the year. The music was predictably awesome, and the three vintages we tried – 1997, 1989, and 1978 – were equally good. It was a fun evening, a chance to meet some interesting people – including the Balblair distillery manager, John MacDonald – and raise a toast to this, and other, good years.

The basic idea behind Hunch is that instead of generating recommendations based on what you’ve previously bought, it derives its suggestions from the answers you give to a wide range of questions. This leads to insights such as those who believe in the existence of UFOs tend to prefer Pepsi over Coke, and holders of an MBA like blue pens over black ones. Once the site’s generated enough data from your answers, it can offer you recommendations for things as diverse as blogs, laptop bags, and, of course, cocktails.

It’s a neat idea and it can link into cocktail service. Every once in a while, a customer will ask a bartender to come up with a drink that isn’t on the menu. If this happens, I usually try to gather a couple of important bits of information – what spirits they particularly like or dislike, if they’d prefer a long or a short drink, any allergies – that will provide the overall shape of the drink, and then I ask the customer to name their favourite band or musician.

If they say Beethoven or Mozart, for example, then I’ll opt towards something more classic in style. If they go more pop, then I’ll swing toward the brightly coloured, fruity end of the spectrum. An Oasis fan may seem quite rock’n'roll, but perhaps they won’t be as willing to be challenged in the same way as a Radiohead fan might while someone who names John Cage could be happy with something from the bleeding edge of mixological innovation. At best, it adds a personal touch and a bit of theatre to the transaction. At worst, it’s a conversational dead-end and we move on.

Back to Hunch, and after answering a bunch of questions – way more fun than I thought it would be – I checked out the “cocktails” category first. My number one recommendation?

The Old-Fashioned.

The internets know me so well.

• Via Bartender: Are cocktails too complicated?
• Via Art of Drink: No.
• Via Bitters & Twisted: Why drink cocktails? and, A Little Bit of Favouritism.
• Via BoingBoing: Nope. High fructose corn syrup does not cause pancreatic cancer.
• Via cocktail virgin slut: notes about eggs. (Starting to see some details of presentations from this year’s Tales of the Cocktail, which is good and interesting and another reminder that not being able to pop over to New Orleans for week is pretty frustrating for a cocktail geek.)
• Via Barbore: there’s only one place where a confession about straining technique could turn into a discussion of the history of the daiquiri and the place of the blender in the modern bartender’s toolkit.

• Bottles, it seems, are all the rage right now. Chambord had barely announced their redesign before they were thoroughly upstaged by Brewdog releasing the strongest, most expensive beer in human history – packaged in your choice of stuffed animal.

• Over in New Orleans, it’s time for their annual celebration of fantastic liquids that aren’t necessarily served in preserved rodents, and the 2010 Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards. UK winners included Sagatiba‘s John Gakuru, the Connaught Hotel in London, the Merchant Hotel in Belfast, Hendrick’s Gin‘s Charlotte Voisey, CLASS magazine, and the Connaught’s Agostino Perrone.
• Via alcademics: Camper English gets through…a whole lot of drink at Tales.
• Via the Bar Blogger: homeless man breaks into a shuttered bar and reopens for business.
• Via The Awl: Starbucks will make America a great wine country.
• Via just-drinks.com: how the screw-cap is killing the Iberian lynx.
• Via Off The Presses: the news that Ted Breaux is bringing three absinthes to the US market is the perfect opportunity to revisit his attempts to bring it back in the first place, from WIRED in 2005.

There’s an easy way of doing seasonal, and there’s the other way. The easy, logical way is to incorporate fresh, seasonal produce into a recipe. The more obscure path would be to think of what drinks represent a particular season and build out from there, and so: summer. Long evenings and lazy sunsets and all you really want is something long and refreshing. Outside of cocktails and spirit-based mixed drinks, there’s one drink you’ll see on terraces and porches all through summer – the white wine spritzer.

Sure, it’s refreshing, but does the humble spritzer represent an appropriate template for a cocktail? Perhaps not, but in this particular instance, maybe it does.

There’s a question over where we start the story. We could go with the 1960s and the international launch of Licor 43. It will go on to become Spain’s most successful export liqueur, available in 55 markets worldwide. We could go back to 1924, and find Diego, Angel, and Josefina Zamora Conesa taking over a small distillery in Cartagena, Spain, and – with Josefina’s husband – starting to make a liqueur built on the heritage of Liquor Mirabilis, an ancient recipe that had endured in secret through centuries of political shenanigans.

In 228 BC, the Carthaginian general Hasdrubal established a new capital on the south-eastern coast of modern-day Spain. The founding of Cartago Nova – New Carthage – marked the first step in the creation of a private empire used by Hasdrubal and, later, his brother-in-law Hannibal as a staging post for an audacious invasion of the Mediterranean’s other nascent superpower: Rome.

The transformation of small town once known as Mastia into a major port and the centre of Carthage’s Iberian territories gave rise to a number of opportunities and local alchemists wasted no time in combining local herbs and spices with those imported from North Africa and using these botanicals to flavour wine. Of these pre-distillation liqueurs, Mirabilis was said to be the most popular.

The old saying about all good things held true. In 209 BC, Scipio Africanus brought Roman retribution to Cartago Nova. Whether it was through an idealogical crusade, or simply the over-enthusiasm of victorious conqueurors, the local wineries were smashed and Mirabilis was driven underground. The recipe was passed between locals and kept alive as Cartago Nova passed from Roman rule in 409 and through no less than twelve different regimes until it was conquered by the Kingdom of Aragon in 1245. From the Carthaginians to the Romans to the Aragonese to the Zamora family, wine is a major part of the heritage of Mirabilis and Licor 43, and so, maybe it’s fitting to look to wine for inspiration.

Luminoso Y Elegante

25ml Licor 43
25ml Greenall’s Bloom
1 barspoon Maraschino
1 dash Fee Brothers Peach Bitters
10ml Champagne

Stir the first four ingredients with ice and strain into an ice-filled wine glass. Top with Champagne and garnish with a lemon zest and a cherry.

The old saying about all good things still holds true. There’s no Spanish holiday for me, so congratulations to Tigerlily‘s Joey Medrington and thanks to everyone at Licor 43 and Wray & Nephew for setting up the comp, and to the lovely guys at the Raconteur for hosting.

• After much debate, we’ve decided on the 2010 Old Town Alchemy official cocktail of summer.
  Feijoa Southside

  50ml 42 Below Feijoa
  25ml lime juice
  15ml orgeat
  8-10 mint leaves
  Shake all ingredients with ice and fine-strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with a single mint leaf.

• Diageo have crowned Erik Lorincz from London’s Connaught Hotel as their World Class Bartender of the Year for 2010. Second place went to Do Hwan Eom of the Ritz-Carlton in Seoul, South Korea, with (cocktail blogger and all round nice bloke) Max La Rocca from Sheen Falls Lodge Relais and Chateaux in Kerry, Ireland. Congratulations all round.
• NYC’s Painkiller turn their tiki-research eye toward the Pina Colada.
• Not boozy, but still a wonderful piece – the Last of the Seltzer Men.
• Red wine just keeps getting better for you.
• Age statements – yea or nay?
• What could lead to a beer “as bitter as the mood in Cleveland”? LeBron who?

• Ever wonder what your favourite drinks look like under a microscope? Wonder no more.
• Scotland’s difficult relationship with alcohol.
• Two interesting notes from Robert Simonson – Bombay Sapphire extend their range for 2010/11; the number of kosher single malts is up by two – to two.
• Great post from American Drink on where the bartender fits into our lives.
• And finally, England’s secret weapon in their World Cup Campaign? Beer. It’s been so effective, they’re going to try it against the Germans.

Despite launching in 1998, Broker’s isn’t a particularly well-known brand in the UK. Their initial focus was on the US market where they’re now available in 40 states and have garnered a wealth of awards, including the top ranking in the Gin category at the 2010 Ultimate Spirits Challenge. Remarkably, Broker’s is still an independent brand, operated by its founders Martin and Andy Dawson. It’s always refreshing to see products flourishing outside of the major multi-nationals, and it’s also impressive to see them putting the effort in to expand outside of London. Edinburgh was an obvious choice, apparently. It’s believed to have the highest per capita consumption of gin of any city in Europe.

There’s something essentially English about Broker’s. Each old school, square bottle wears a little bowler hat – as does Andy when he’s on the clock – but that philosophy also extends to the contents of the bottle. It’s unashamedly classic in style with juniper front and centre, complemented by rounded spice notes and sharpened with a touch of citrus. To put it in context, it’s somewhere between Tanqueray’s full-blooded robustness and the lighter flavours and textures of Bombay Sapphire. The botanical mix contains no non-traditional ingredients, which sets Broker’s apart from the majority of new gins and it’s difficult to fault that strategy. There may – and some might argue it already has – come a point when the addition of flavours like raspberry or coconut or whatever comes next becomes less about creating a great product and more about defining a brand gimmick.

Broker’s are supporting an imminent competition, to be held at the Raconteur in early July. The rules are pretty tough – four ingredient maximum, which must be easily available or replicable, and all recipes have to presented with a story as opposed to the traditional here-I-am-and-here’s-what-I’m-doing approach. I’m not going to be able to compete, but if I were, I’d be hard pressed to find a more appropriate story than two guys with a dream that’s still going strong a dozen years later.

The City & The City

50ml Broker’s Gin
15ml Creme de Mure
10ml Fernet Branca
20ml Champagne

Stir the first three ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled flute. Top with Champagne – not too much – and garnish with a lemon zest twist.