Light, Bright Brandy Cocktails at Bar Agricole

More brunchtime cocktails, though if you really want to explore the kaleidoscopic variety of fine brandy drinks at this beautiful SoMa restaurant, go for dinner. (The bar opens at 5:00.) But on to the beauties I had Sunday morning.



SLEEPYHEAD
Brandy, ginger, mint, sparkling wine. A chalice of tiny golden stars. So soft and elegant, it was like I stayed in bed.



SUPREME
Apple brandy, lemon, orgeat, grenadine. Not merely a Jackrose with orgeat, this is made with a glorious, slightly higher-proof calvados they brought back from France, giving this both richness and snap. Pear and caramel notes in the spirit complement the big, earthy orgeat.

Many thanks to Colin for his charm and grace behind the bar and to everyone at Bar Agricole for making my visit a memorable one.

MxMo LXXVII: Smoke!—Smoky Mountain Boogie

It’s time again for another Mixology Monday. A big Fogged In thank-you to our host Elana of Stir and Strain for a theme close to my heart, a flavor I crave intensely—smoke. There’s any number of exciting ways to work with smoke in cocktails. For this round, I thought of an ingredient I like a lot, smoke beer. Today I’ve used a favorite oak smoke doppelbock by Schlenkerla in a riff on a classic bourbon cocktail that normally calls for champagne, the Seelbach Cocktail. The original version is a house specialty of the Seelbach Hotel in Kentucky.



Smoky Mountain Boogie

• 1 oz bourbon (Buffalo Trace)
• 1/2 oz Cointreau
• 7 dashes Regans’ No. 6 Orange Bitters
• 7 dashes Bar Keep Baked Apple Bitters
• 5 oz smoke beer (Schlenkerla doppelbock)

Stir bourbon, Cointreau and bitters briefly with ice and strain into a chilled pokal or other slender pilsner glass. Fill with smoke beer. Orange twist.
ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Smoke, fruit, spice and refreshing bitterness. Both bitters are perfect complements to the doppelbock.

Swingin’ Brandy Cocktails

Fruit is among nature’s purest, most virtuous wonders—especially when distilled. For those unaccustomed to drinking fruit spirits, just remember that if you can mash it, you can distill it, which makes for a rich variety of cocktail ingredients. These are all fruity in aroma but dry on the palate, and they are all identified as eau de vie or brandy, though we tend to use the former term for the unaged types and the latter for the brown stuff. To further complicate things, brandy by itself usually means aged grape brandy, like cognac, and the apple brandies and so on are forced to explain themselves every time they enter a room. And then you’re supposed to understand that none of these should be confused with the sort of liqueur with brandy in the name, like apricot brandy or blackberry or whatever, as brandy in that case merely means brandy-based. (Sometimes they tell you the brandy used for the base. Often they don’t.) Those drinks have sugar in them and are not the same sort of thing at all. Still with me? Would a drink help?



Mr. Rosewater

• 2 oz cognac
• 1/2 oz lemon juice
• 1/4 oz grenadine
• 1/8 tsp rosewater
• 1 1/2 oz soda

Shake all except soda with ice cubes. Strain into a double old fashioned. Add soda and fresh ice cubes.
ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Now there’s a brandy drink with a familiar brandy. I could’ve used a California one of the same general type but it wouldn’t be cognac. Only brandy from the wine-growing region around Cognac is called cognac, so you know what you’re getting. French brandy, like all agricultural products from France, is departmental, and a handy thing that it is, too.

The other big aged grape spirit in those parts but from the southwest is armagnac. (If French sounds make you nervous, the gn is just like the one in cognac. That both brandy regions should have the same ending is kind of cute.) It’s a similar sort of spirit but from a different department and with a character of its own. Like cognac, armagnac is easy drinking, delicious and good in Sidecar cocktails. In the recipe below, I’ve combined it with a totally different type of brandy, a pear eau de vie. This spirit is known as Poire William or Poire Williams, after the Williams pear, a Bartlett. There’s a very nice liqueur by the same name but it’s not brandy. (We’ll ignore the question of whether it might be a brandy-based pear liqueur.) Also note that the Cointreau in my recipe is a brandy-based orange liqueur, but we never ever call it orange brandy. Sometimes it’s better not to ask and just keep drinking.



Armagnac-Poire Sidecar

• 1 1/2 oz armagnac
• 1/2 oz Poire Williams eau de vie
• 3/4 oz Cointreau
• 3/4 oz lemon juice

Shake with ice cubes and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Eau de vie tends to come in pricey half-bottles, but it delivers a fairly concentrated blast of fruit aroma and can be used sparingly in mixed drinks. The fruit spirits combine very nicely for symphonic effects like you get with multiple rums in Tiki. Some fruit brandies are snappy like applejack; others are lush and round like cognac. You can pair them for the best of both brandies.

More Sherry: Jasper’s Corner Tap and Kitchen

Another fun bar visit and another awesome pair of sherry cocktails. Jasper’s Corner Tap and Kitchen is an oasis in San Francisco’s downtown hotel district where the harried can stop hurrying and get something really nice to drink. Still collecting sherry cocktails, I was excited to find these two by bar manager Kevin Diedrich, one wine-based, the other with scotch.

To The Window, To The Flor is a subtle balance of oloroso and Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao lightened with Lillet, served up. I wanted another but it was the perfect prelude to the Smoked Peach, an impossibly elegant combination of different whiskies and sherry, peach and honey on the rocks. I’m already wondering how soon I can get back for more.



Special thanks to Adrian for his grace and vitality behind the bar, and to everyone at Jasper’s for a great visit.

The Ferryman

More fun with St. George Spirits’ Dry Rye Gin, one of the grooviest things out of Alameda since the China Clipper. And here’s another Cynar-fueled vegetal cocktail. I’ve said before that I can’t do cucumber drinks for my housemate, but the Cynar-celery combo is really working for him. This one has ginger too.



The Ferryman

• 1 1/2 St George Dry Rye Gin
• 1 oz Cynar
• 1/4 oz Canton Ginger Liqueur
• 1/2 oz lemon-lime juice
• 2 dashes celery bitters

Shake with ice and strain into an old fashioned. Ice cube.
ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Strawberries and Absinthe: Brunch in North Beach

An interesting variety of options on a brunch cocktail menu is so important. (I’ve always been a morning person.) And for those of us asking for something besides a Mimosa or a Bloody, the choices are getting increasingly inventive. This morning in North Beach, I had two totally different strawberry-absinthe combinations, each at a very different and equally enjoyable establishment.



SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN, PARK TAVERN
Hophead Vodka, Ninkasi IPA, strawberry, absinthe. Everything supports the strawberry in this pleasantly dry treatment. The refreshing tartness of the beer made me ask if the strawberry was syrup or shrub. (The former.) No straw, which is just as well or it would be gone all too soon.



FAMOUS FIZZ, 15 ROMOLO
St. George Absinthe, strawberry-thyme shrub, cream, egg white, seltzer. A magical sort of 19th-century pink absinthe milkshake that’s almost a brunch in itself. I asked for a little taste of the shrub neat, and finished it. The Famous pairs well with the nifty Waffle Shot. My-oh-my.

Tempus Fugit Liqueur de Violettes

This is a fine, Swiss-made violet liqueur from a company in Petaluma, California. Their media points out the lower sugar content of this product compared to crème-style violet liqueurs, and how this showcases the delicate florals. I’d probably care more if I were drinking the stuff neat except to taste a bit. That said, a sip is definitely intriguing. There’s a subtle musk note I keep chasing but never catch up with. The color is interesting too, and appears to be from the flowers, a lilac-pink. Let’s try a cocktail with the stuff.



Erik Satie Cocktail

• 1 1/2 oz St. George Dry Rye Gin
• 3/4 oz dry vermouth
• 1/2 oz Tempus Fugit Liqueur de Violettes
• 2 dashes absinthe
• 2 dashes lavender bitters

Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Lemon twist.
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The liqueur is based on a French recipe from 1868, and has something both old and Old World. I composed the above cocktail from the Violettes’ logical compliments, the other tastes of the Belle Époque, with which it goes perfectly. The mauve—“pink trying to be purple,” as Whistler would say—turns rosé in the company of dry vermouth.