Death’s Door Gin

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death's door gin

Death’s Door distills gin, vodka, and white whiskey in Wisconsin – their gin winning a silver medal at the 2012 San Francisco World Spirits Competition. This is one of the “cool new American gins,” and I’ve heard great things about it lately.

In contrast to gins which tout their long list of botanicals, Death’s Door uses only three: juniper, coriander, and fennel, all distilled in a wheat base. The bottles are labeled with the particular juniper harvest that goes into the bottle – mine’s 2010. Death’s Door is a London Dry, so juniper is the king in this gin. It’s very straightforward, serious, and unapologetically tied to its short ingredient list, I’d call it the London Dry-est London Dry I’ve tried.

If you prefer softer, complex gins like Hendrick’s, Aviation, or Bluecoat, you may want to pass. This is not a citrusy gin or floral gin, though the straight-ahead juniper makes it a pretty great cocktail base. Try this drink with Death’s Door:

Gentleman’s Club (pictured above)

  • 1 1/2 oz gin
  • 1 oz brandy
  • 1 oz sweet vermouth
  • 1 oz club soda
  • combine in an old fashioned glass, on the rocks

1792 Ridgemont Reserve Bourbon

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1792 ridgemont reserve bourbon

1792 Ridgemont Reserve is a premium bourbon in a wide and stout bottle, the neck wrapped in burlap, and a large carved stopper.

1792 is really meant for sipping but it’s a good cocktail bourbon as well. It’s just over 46% ABV, and I usually take my bourbons on the rocks when I drink them straight. There’s a bit of sweetness present in this bourbon and it brings a great deal of balance to the flavor of 1792. It’s not the sweetest bourdon on the market, nor the spiciest. It’s very smooth, and has the complexity and quality you’d expect from a premium bourbon.

Overall, Ridgemont Reserve is a great middle-of-the road bourbon as it’s flavors are well balanced, and it is certainly as smooth as you’d expect a premium bourbon to be.

Dandy Candy Cocktail

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candy dandy cocktail

I adapted this recipe from Bulleit’s Facebook page. It’s low-volume and quite easy to drink.

Dandy Candy Cocktail

  • 1 oz bourbon
  • 1/4 oz sweet vermouth
  • 1/4 oz triple sec
  • 1 dash Bitter End Jamaican Jerk bitters (buy from Cocktail Kingdom), or other bitters of choice
  • stir with ice and strain into a small cocktail glass
  • garnish with an orange twist

Sub Rosa Saffron Vodka

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sub rosa saffron vodka

Unfortunately, the sweet (sometimes creepy) flavored vodka category is the #1 seller at the liquor store nowadays. Aside from the philosophy attached to this, let me remind you that vodka is still a legitimate cocktail ingredient, and occasionally, vodka flavors are great additions to the liquor shelf.

Exhibit A: Sub Rosa Saffron Vodka. Distilled and infused at a small Oregon distillery along with a tarragon vodka, it escapes all the trappings of modern “flavored” vodkas, aligning itself more with gourmet cooking than with Katy Perry’s bra.

Sub Rosa has designed a beautiful and simple bottle to showcase the electric-yellow saffron vodka within. Saffron is the world’s most expensive spice at $500-5,000 per pound, and this vodka is rich, aromatic, and savory. Intense flavor like this is usually found in gins, not vodkas. On first taste, I thought about potential cocktail partners for such a unique flavor, and both lemon and olive came to mind. A martini variation is a good start:

Saffron Martini (by Greg Mays)

  • 2 oz Sub Rosa Saffron Vodka
  • 1/4 oz lemon juice
  • 1/2 oz olive juice
  • shake with lots of ice, double-strain into a chilled cocktail glass
  • olive garnish

Crater Lake Gin

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crater lake gin
Crater Lake Gin is a straw-colored gin from Bendistillery in Bend, Oregon, who also makes several varieties of vodka. While its label calls it “Handcrafted American Gin,” one of those words can be misleading: American.

I’ve said before that my personal gin preferences lie with London Dry gins, though I love nearly all gins I encounter. American gin, or “western gin,” as it’s sometimes called, usually has another botanical flavor that’s supreme over the juniper that London Drys are known for.

Not so with Crater Lake. For my personal taste, this gin makes the best-tasting martini I’ve ever had. It’s a juniper-lovers gin, with a bit of spice in the finish. It’s silky and smooth, and I’ve nearly drunk half the bottle making strictly martinis. Tasted neat, the spice is more obvious, and the gin is a bit more potent when it’s not ice-cold.

Crater Lake, which was known previously as Cascade Mountain Gin, and can be found throughout the U.S. at retail, or online for about $30. Make it in a martini like this:

Martini

  • 2 1/2 oz gin
  • 1/2 oz dry vermouth
  • olive garnish
  • stir with lots of ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass

KGB Naranjo, Bourbon, and Absinthe

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KGB Naranjo, Bourbon, and Absinthe

KGB Spirits in northern New Mexico has some new releases in their spirits catalog: Naranjo Orange Liqueur, Taos Lightning Bourbon, and Brimstone Absinthe.

Naranjo is a high proof orange liqueur, 45% ABV where most other triple secs are only about 20%. This means it’s not too sweet and Naranjo works well straight up, as a digestif. Naranjo’s orange flavor is very subtle, though, and you should think twice if you’re considering dumping this into a pitcher of margaritas. The color is pale orange, and the scent of citrus is very muted, but it’s all there on your taste buds.

Taos Lightning Bourbon shares it’s name with KGB’s Ryes-a historical throwback to 1800’s western whiskeys-and it’s sweet, spicy, and smooth. I found myself thinking about it all day after tasting it. Taos Lightning Bourbon is very balanced in it’s flavor, and the expected toasted-wood spice finishes it off.

Finally, Brimstone Absinthe has two unique qualities: first, KGB uses a potato base in their distilling process – just like their vodka and gin, which adds a minty, earthy flavor. Second, Brimstone is bottled at a pretty low proof, the lowest proof I’ve ever seen for an absinthe. Absinthe is typically known for it’s high (60-70%) proof, but Brimstone is a mellow 45%. Because of this, you can actually drink Brimstone on the rocks with no water or sugar added. The lower proof makes it a more viable cocktail ingredient, too.

KGB Spirits are available at retail shops around New Mexico.

Jack Daniel’s Unaged Rye

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Jack Daniel's Unaged Rye

Arriving in an inconspicuous box, I got to have my first taste of Jack Daniel’s Unaged Rye Whiskey, slated for a limited release in early 2013 for $50 a bottle.

This crystalline liquid is significant because Jack Daniel’s has not modified the ingredients in their whiskies for the past 100 years. Jack and its sub-brands like Gentleman Jack all contain exactly the same recipe of corn, barley, and rye, with the only difference in the varieties being their aging or filtering processes. But that changes now as the distillery has come up with an 80% rye recipe, some of which they’re bottling unaged as a “distillers run.”

Rye is a popular whiskey nowadays, and with unaged “moonshines” also on the rise, you can’t fault Jack for jumping on the bandwagon. Unaged ryes are not very common, however, especially those with the distribution level that Jack already enjoys. Drinkhacker talks about this being a stopgap and buzz-building release as the “real” Jack Rye (or whatever it’ll be called) sleeps in barrels until 2015.

As for the flavor, there’s a sweet, fruity aroma to Jack’s Unaged Rye. As wood aging imparts spice to booze, and rye itself is spicy, it’s a surprise to experience sweetness in there. There is also a pungency and grittiness to the flavor, which also tend to fade with barrel aging. Think about the difference between a silver and an aged tequila, and you get an idea what I’m talking about.

This is a rye to try as it has a huge historical significance, plus it’s a limited release.

Absinthe Cocktails

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tenneyson absinthe

Absinthe, a high-proof herbal liquor, is most traditionally served straight under a water drip with a perched sugar cube. Because of absinthe’s strong anise (black licorice) flavor, cocktails featuring it are few and far between.

I decided to use Austin-based and French-distilled Tenneyson Absinthe Royale to make these cocktails. Tenneyson is a bit more mild than other absinthes (Lucid comes to mind) because it’s bottled at a lower proof (53% alcohol vs. Lucid’s 64%) and because the typical anise flavor is less pronounced in the taste. Here are the 2 simple absinthe cocktails I made, with a bonus recipe at the end:

Sazerac
This recipe can seem overwhelming, but the detail is actually in the ritual of preparation, which most consider essential to making a proper Sazerac.

  • fill an old fashioned glass with ice water to chill
  • in another old fashioned glass, muddle 1 sugar cube and 3 dashes of Peychaud’s Bitters
  • add 2 oz rye whiskey
  • top with ice and stir
  • empty the ice water from the first glass
  • splash in absinthe, rinse the glass with it, pour out the excess (I found Tenneyson to be mild enough that I just left the “splash” in the glass)
  • strain the sugar/bitters/rye mixture into the absinthe-washed glass
  • twist and squeeze a lemon peel into the glass
  • either discard the lemon peel or drop it into the cocktail, according to your preference

Obituary (the Absinthe Martini)
Tenneyson is especially great in this drink as the presentation is crystal-clear.

  • 2 1/2 oz gin
  • 1/2 oz dry vermouth
  • 1/4 oz absinthe
  • stir over ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass
  • garnish with lemon twist

Bonus recipe: Death in the Afternoon
This recipe was created by Ernest Hemingway.

  • pour 1 oz absinthe in a champagne flute
  • top with 5 ounces chilled champagne
  • drink 3 to 5 of these slowly

2 Black Eyes Cocktail

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2 Black Eyes Cocktail

Moonshine nowadays is another name for an unaged whiskey, sometimes also called silver whiskey or white lightnin’. Here’s a simple moonshine recipe for the fighter in all of us:

2 Black Eyes (by Greg Mays)
  • 3 oz moonshine
  • 1 1/2 oz blackberry liqueur (I used Clear Creek)
  • 4 dashes of Fee Bros. Whiskey Barrel Aged Bitters (buy at Amazon)
  • stir with ice and strain into 2 chilled cocktail glasses
  • garnish with brass knuckles and a switchblade

Make sure you make 2 of these. Otherwise, you’ll just have one black eye, and what’s the point of that?