Spotlight on clear spirits at the Wine House

When craft cocktails became all the rage several years ago, whiskey figured prominently in most menus. Today that's still the case. However, as bartenders vie to keep up with the next trending drink wave, eyes are turning toward clear spirits.

Vodka, gin, rum, cachaca and pisco are increasingly finding their way to the tops of menus as mixologists discover more about them and how to play up their more subtle flavor profiles in tasty drinks.

Learn more about clear spirits on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Wine House as a group of professional L.A.-area mixologists including Alex Straus, Aidan Demarest and Marcos Tello pour tastes of these underrated liquors and explain their oft-overlooked qualities.

A live band will play and food will be served. Tickets cost $59 and can be purchased online.

The Wine House, 2311 Cotner Ave., Los Angeles (310) 479-3731.

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Bow & Truss to open in NoHo with cocktails by Tello/Demarest

A very busy Aidan Demarest dishes that his cocktail consulting business with Marcos Tello, Tello Demarest Liquid Assets, is currently working on the cocktail program for a new Latin-themed restaurant in North Hollywood called Bow & Truss.

"I think the NoHo Arts District might finally take off," says Demarest, who is also working on launching the cocktail program at Tom Bergin's in Mid-City. "Everybody has been saying that for years, but I think this could be the tipping point."

The feeling is shared by owner and Knitting Factory CEO Morgan Margolis, who also owns the nearby Federal Bar, which opened a little more than a year ago.

Bow & Truss, which is expected to soft-open by Memorial Day, claims Stefhanie Meyers as its chef (Rivera, Playa). Meyers is working on a menu with strong Spanish influences, including plenty of tapas and a nice variety of family-style plates. Scallops with saffron polenta and a seafood pot with sea bass, mussels, shrimp, clams and lobster are among the offerings.

The cocktail list will be "Spanish-Latin influenced, with plenty of sherries and brandies," Demarest says. To create the drinks, he and Tello did plenty of research about the early Spanish influence on California.

Bow & Truss, 11122 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood.

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Photo: The scallops at Bow & Truss. Credit: Bow & Truss

Wednesday special: Spare Room's newest $7 cocktail

The Spare Room, the swank bar-meets-vintage-bowling-alley at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, has a new Wednesday special for the spring: Get beverage director Naomi Schimek's Barbarossa cocktail for $7 and a crispy falafel sandwich for $5, from 8 to 10 p.m. That's along with $3 beer and half-price bowling too.

The Barbarossa? It's black-tea-infused Beefeater gin with tarragon-Meyer lemon shrub and a little Cabernet topped with a splash of soda and garnished with a sprig of tarragon and a pickled Peppadew pepper. How's that for hump day?

7100 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 769-7296, www.thompsonhotels.com.

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[Updated] Tax Day 2012 food and drink specials

Filing your taxes is always a pain, but by the time tax day (April 17) rolls around and the papers have all been filed away, you can finally breathe a sigh of relief. And what better way to unwind than with a soothing alcoholic beverage or cheap bite to eat? Here are a couple of tax day specials to get you through the day:

Pink Taco: From 3 to 7 p.m., Pink Taco is offering $4 Hotel California Margaritas (Hotel California Tequila, fresh squeezed lime juice, agave nectar, orange liquor).

Rock and Reilly's Irish Rock Pub: The West Hollywood pub has declared April 17 "dry tax day," which translates to the following specials, created just for tax day: $6 IRS Car Bombs, $5 Tax Collector Shooters and the Delinquency Burger.

Cinnabon: From 6-8 p.m., participating Cinnabon locations are handing out two free Cinnabon tax day bites.

Street: Susan Feniger's Street is offering diners the classic Street burger (with Vermont cheddar and Yuzo Kosho mayonnaise) or the new spicy black bean veggie burger (with pea shoots, smashed avocado and tomato) for just $4.17.

P.F. Chang's: The restaurant is offering 15% off all online orders for pickup.

Lexington Social House: Get 17% off all food and drink through April 17, including Chef Jared Simons’ new spring menu and the new seasonal cocktail list.

Know of any food or drink tax day specials? Share the wealth in the comments below.

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[Updated at 12:38 P.M. April 16, 2012 A new deal was added]

Stoli's new $3,000 bottle of vodka: Expensive tastes good!

 

"What's that?" you ask.

Oh, this old thing? Just a $3,000 bottle of vodka.

Yup, it may not look like it, but in that glass in the foreground -- the one on the left -- resides a $50 taste of booze. It's the Himalayan Edition of Russian vodka-maker Stolichnaya's Pristine Water Series. I tasted it just the other day at the invitation of mixologist Aidan Demarest, who happens to be in possession of the only bottle currently in the country.

Yeah, that's how I roll. (OK, OK, on the way home I stopped by Vons to pick up trash bags and 10 cans of Fancy Feast for my cat, so my life isn't all glamour all the time.)

Anyway, the Stoli Elit Pristine Water series is a new thing, and the company will release only 300 bottles globally (most of these will end up in my suite at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas).

The astronomical price of a bottle is justified, says Stoli, by the type of water used. This particular water is sourced from the Himalayan mountains, from an underground reservoir that has been pooling fresh melted snow. The water is then combined with 100% winter wheat harvested from Russia's Tambov region. (For those of you sorely out of touch with world geography and wheat-growing regions ideal for producing high-brow alcohol, that's southeast of Moscow.)

As an added bonus, your little nest egg of inebriation comes in a hand-blown glass bottle with a gold-plated decorative ice pick -- handy for poking your eyes out when your next credit card bill comes.

"So, how does it taste?" you ask.

Although you can't afford to know, I'll tell you. It's smooth and crisp -- with a shivery aftertaste, like an angel is giving you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation after your spouse divorces you for squandering junior's college fund.

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The Enabler: Organic beer, self-hypnosis are king at Grateful Fridays at Bardot

This week The Enabler visits Grateful Fridays, a new metaphysical club night at Bardot in Hollywood. The evening features massage, healing, raw food and lots of organic beer, wine and Veev, which the night's founders are happy to point out contributes profits to saving the rain forests.

The Enabler stuck with whiskey, but was tempted by the "shapeshifter latte with handmade local organic coconut cream" that was for sale at the Shaman Shack beside the bar.

We were somewhere around the Shaman Shack on the edge of the dance floor when the self-love began to take hold. The Enabler remembers saying something like, "I feel a bit enlightened; maybe we should dance..." and suddenly there was a hypnotic beat all around and the room was full of what looked like liberated hippies, all swooping and screeching and diving around the dance floor, which was grooving at about a million beats per minute with the lights flashing at Grateful Fridays, a metaphysical club night at Bardot in Hollywood.

To read the full story, click here.

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Photo:V Nixie dances with Evie Voutsina at Bardot during a new metaphysical club night called Grateful Fridays. Credit: Arkasha Stevenson / Los Angeles Times.

One potato, two potato -- Karlsson's makes a vintage vodka

It’s not always easy being vodka. Odorless, flavorless, colorless vodka. What’s a neutral spirit got to do to gain some status?

Well, here’s one way. Swedish potato vodka maker Karlsson’s, whose Karlsson’s Gold already has emerged as the post-vodka-backlash darling of a certain breed of bartender, has introduced its first commercially-available vintage vodka. It’s made from one kind of potato (Gammel Svensk Röd or Old Swedish Red) harvested in the early summer of 2008 by farmer Bertil Gunnarsson in Cape Bjäre in southern Sweden.  

There's a notable difference between Karlsson’s vodkas made from certain potatoes from certain years. This I know because I tasted some of them, made from a 2004 crop of Minerva potatoes, 2004 and 2006 Solist potatoes, and 2006 and 2008 Gammel Svensk Röd (which, I was told, recall the Jerusalem artichoke). Karlsson’s Gold -- developed by Börje Karlsson, the creator of Absolut -- is produced each year from that year’s potato harvest in Cape Bjäre. It's a blend of seven "varietals" made from potatoes grown by the area's co-op of farmers, whose new-season crops are considered a Swedish delicacy (some selling for more than $100 a pound, Karlsson's says).   

I’m not going to tell you that I tasted lingonberries in the ’06 made from Solist potatoes. Or smelled more hazelnut in the ’04 Solist (actually, maybe I did). But flavor and aroma varied from vodka to vodka. According to Karlsson's, the year 2008 was dry and warm, resulting in potatoes more robust in flavor than those from wetter, cooler years. Only 1,980 bottles of the vintage were produced, available in just New York and California.

The Karlsson’s Batch 2008 Gammel Svensk Röd, nicely bottled with a neon-orange label, does make a smooth sipping vodka. It ought to. It’s $80 a bottle. 

Karlsson's Batch 2008 will be available in Los Angeles at retailers Wally's Wines, K&L Wine Merchants and Bar Keeper, and at bars such as Varnish, Bar + Kitchen at O Hotel, Sunset Marquis, SoHo House, Comme Ca, Bazaar and Bouchon. 

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'Destination: Cocktail' is Mezze's Deli Juice

Mezze, La Cienega's Mediterranean small-plates restaurant, is riding bar culture's current savory cocktail wave with a pickle-perfect drink called Deli Juice created by sous chef/mixologist Jonathan Whitener. Like a glass full of garnishes, Deli Juice combines celery, dill, cucumber and mustard with pickle juice and meaty gin for a finger-licking intoxicant that will have you begging for homestyle chips on the side.

Click here for the Deli Juice cocktail recipe. 

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Kosher-for-Passover gin: Bring on the martinis

In 1999, Napa Valley wine producer and entrepreneur Leslie Rudd (Rudd Oakville Estate and Dean & Deluca) discovered an old distillery just off the Silverado Trail on one of his vineyard properties. Established in St. Helena way back in 1882, the distillery was the 209^th to get a permit in the U.S. Why not revive it to make small-batch gin? thought Rudd.

And so he got the distillery going again and decided to call it simply Distillery 209. Rudd's No. 209 Gin is intensely aromatic, with citrus notes, plenty of juniper and other botanicals — the equivalent of a big, bold Cabernet. In other words, not a bit shy. It makes an intense martini and can be found behind the bar at some of L.A.’s best drinking establishments. In fact, I'm planning on sitting back on Sunday night with a dry No. 209 martini to watch the first episode of Season 5 of Mad Men.

But as of a couple of years ago, it also has a fraternal kosher twin called No. 209 Kosher-for-Passover Gin. Rudd and his "ginerator" Arne Hillesland couldn’t use the exact formulation as their original model (the cardamom used in No. 209 gin isn’t kosher, for example, nor is any grain-based spirit). Instead, after much experimentation, Hillesland managed to achieve a similarly aromatic profile by employing a slightly different combination of herbs and other elements. The kosher version is based on juniper from Tuscany, plus eight or more botanicals that adhere to kosher dietary law. These include bergamot orange from Calabria, Italy, California bay leaf, lemon peel from Spain, cassia bark from Indonesia, angelica root from Britain and coriander seeds from Romania. 

Those who keep kosher will appreciate that Kosher-for-Passover exists at all. The rest of us will appreciate it for what it is: a different, but equally valid, expression of gin. 

I can see a test martini in the near future.

No. 209 Gin, $34.99 for 750m1 bottle. No. 209 Kosher-for-Passover Gin, $37.99. Available at wine and liquor stores.

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Photos: No. 209 Kosher-for-Passover Gin. Credit: S. Irene Virbila/Los Angeles Times

Happy National Margarita Day!

Celebrate National Margarita Day at home or in your favorite Mexican restaurant. 

If you choose the former, the Los Angeles Times Test Kitchen has a recipe for a refreshing grapefruit margarita (recipe below) made with freshly squeezed ruby red grapefruit juice, triple sec, and of course, reposado tequila. 

If you're feeling extra festive and choose the latter, Red O Restaurant on Melrose is offering a margarita sampler for $15. 

Included in the sampler are the market margarita (muddled fresh cucumber with honeydew melon, and tequila blanco), la dama margarita (reposado tequila shaken with serrano chile, mango grenadine, lime juice, and pomegranate liqueur), and the Alacaran margarita (Sauza Conmemorativo tequila, Veev Acai spirit, Torres orange liqueur, fresh limonada, and serrano infused syrup). 

Either way, it's an excuse to enjoy a cocktail.  

Red O, 8155 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 655-5009, www.redorestaurant.com.

 

Grapefruit margarita

Total time: 10 minutes

Servings: 4

Wedge of lime
2 teaspoons coarse margarita salt
14 ounces ruby red grapefruit juice, with pulp (about 3 medium grapefruits)
1 ounce lime juice
5 ounces reposado tequila
2 ounces triple sec
4 slices grapefruit or twists

1. Run a lime wedge halfway around the rims of four margarita glasses and dip into salt. Set aside.

2. Combine 7 ounces grapefruit juice, one-half ounce lime juice, 2 1/2 ounces tequila and 1 ounce triple sec in a cocktail shaker. Shake over ice until chilled. Strain into two ice-filled, salt-rimmed margarita glasses.

3. Garnish with a twist or slice of grapefruit. Repeat to make two more cocktails.

Each serving: 174 calories; 1 gram protein; 17 grams carbohydrates; 0 fiber; 0 fat; 0 cholesterol; 2 1/2 mg. sodium. 

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Photo Credit: Beatrice de Gea / Los Angeles Times