Campari - an Italian classic

Campari is not a lesser known liqueur. It's available all over the world in over 190 countries from Azerbaijan (definitely a lesser known country!) to Yemen. There's even a Campari iPhone app where you can mix a drink and have a beautiful woman tell you if you were up to her standards.

But curiously, Campari still seems to be somewhat of an outsider in American tastes. As master mixologist Dale DeGroff describes it in "The Essential Cocktail," Americans tend to make the classic "ick" face when trying a drink that features a bitter aperitif such as Campari "whose flavors differs so strongly from the sweet soda-pop flavors on which we're raised." With the cocktail renaissance America has experienced in the last 10 years, there's also been a resurgence of interest in traditional spirits like Campari, and Campari is truly a must-have cocktail staple in any bar - home or retail. But its bitter flavor will surely prevent it from ever becoming the darling of the vodka and soda crowd.

Bitter, in fact, is even inscribed in beautiful calligraphy on the label, in case you were in any doubt of the flavor of Campari. Campari was developed by Gaspare Campari in 1862 in Milan. It's made up of 86 ingredients, but only the president of the company knows the full list of ingredients. At one time it was colored by carmine dye which is derived from crushed cochineal insects, though I suspect they no longer use it since FDA regulations require it to be listed on a label.

So how bitter is Campari? Well, it is an acquired taste, but it's not as bitter as Zwack, for instance because it's an aperitif and not a medicinal bitter. In fact, it's often drunk in Italy with just soda water or lemonade (and even comes in a premixed bottles called CampariSoda). It has a distinct bitter orange flavor, with notes of rhubarb and quinine.

There are any number of classic and new cocktail recipes that use Campari. I've included the quintessential Negroni, which is a great cocktail to order if you're ever in an unknown bar and are unsure of the quality of their drinks. I've also included a recipe just created for the 10th anniversary of the Tales of the Cocktail festival in New Orleans.

Negroni (adapted from The Essential Cocktail)

1 oz Campari
1 oz Italian sweet vermouth
1 oz gin

Combine and shake or stir. Garnish with orange peel if desire

A Telling Tale (created by Chris Hannah and found in Imbibe Magazine, May/June 2012)
2 oz bourbon
1/2 oz Campari
1/2 oz grenadine
7 mint leaves
1/4 oz fresh lemon juice
2 oz sparking wine
Combine all ingredients except the sparking wine and shake with ice cubes. Strain into an ice-filled wine glass and top with sparking wine. Garnish with a mint sprig.

Campari can easily be found throughout Washington state.

Dimmi - Italian romance in a bottle

There certainly seems to be some overheated rhetoric around Dimmi. Reading the reviews feels at times like you're reading a trashy novel. Lots of comments like "lightweight, velvety textured body" or "soft gentle entry" or "speaks softly in liquid Italian, with the fashionable elegance of a Milanese and the country charm of a Piemontese." Phew. Dimmi must be a real bodice ripper of a drink.

I'll take a more of a "just the facts" approach made famous by Jack Webb in Dragnet. Dimmi is an Italian (Milan) spirit that was developed in 2005 and is based on an old vermouth recipe that includes ingredients such as bitter orange, ginseng, rhubarb and a bit of grappa. It's also infused with apricot and peach blossoms. Taste-wise, it starts off with flavors of vanilla, watermelon and some spiciness and finishes on a lingering floral and apricot note. It's quite nice, not too sweet or too dry, and can make a nice sipping liqueur.

One cocktail recipe I find intriguing is the Culture Club (adapted from Post Prohibition)

2 oz Dimmi,
1 oz Pisco
1/2 oz Lillet
Couple dashes orange bitters
Shake (or stir) with ice and serve

An odd note about Dimmi is that its website seems to have gone dark. I hope this isn't an indication of its future. In any case, there are still a number of places to get it around Seattle.

Incidentally, the bottle isn't empty - the liqueur is just clear.

Danziger Goldwasser - there's gold in them thar spirits

There's a lot of gold leaf in Danziger Goldwasser. In fact, with gold prices over $1700 an ounce, one is almost tempted to filter the gold out to see how much it's worth. But a quick look at edible gold leaf prices tells you that you're better off drinking it rather than trying to get rich off of it.

Original Danziger Goldwasser was created in 1598 (listed eleven times on the bottle so you don't miss it) in the German town of Danzig (present day Gdansk in Poland). It was supposedly a favorite drink of royals everywhere, including the Sun King - Louis XIV. While the exact recipe is secret, it has around 20 ingredients including herbs and spices such as cardamom, coriander, juniper, cinnamon, lavender, cloves, anise, peppermint and thyme. It's surprisingly smooth for an 80 proof alcohol with a good balance of sweet and spicy and a mild finish accented by notes of licorice, lavender and cloves.

While the taste of Goldwasser is quite nice, it's the gold flakes that make this spirit so appealing. There's something fascinating about shaking the bottle and watching the gold sink delicately back to the bottom. It feels quite luxurious actually. Gold was added to this spirit in 1598 because 16th century doctors believed that gold had metaphysical and healing powers. To quote Paracelsus, a 16th century scientist/alchemist "[gold] serves to fortify and cleanse [the human heart] from all impurities." I can't vouch for the healing properties of gold (outside of its wallet healing capabilities) but it's harmless to drink.

About the only Goldwasser cocktail recipe I've come across that was remotely interesting is called the Golden Fleece.

Golden Fleece
1 oz Goldwasser
1 1/2 oz yellow Chartreuse
Shake with ice and strain into a glass.

Danzinger Goldwasser is about as rare as gold in Washington since there are only a few bottles available at the 4th Ave store in Seattle.

Bärenjäger - like drinking liquid honey

Time for some more umlauts, though with Bärenjäger Honey Liqueur, they're at least real since this German liqueur has been around since the 15th century. The story is that Bärenjäger (translated as bear hunter) was based on a mead-like moonshine that hunters used to lure bears. Bärenjäger's label captures that idea with the poor bear falling into a trap laid by the hunter hiding behind the figurative bee hive. Don't do it bear - run away!

Ah well. So much for 15th century values. Honestly, Bärenjäger isn't worth falling into a trap for, though it's not a bad liqueur. It's very sweet, and tastes like liquid honey with a very slight spicy finish that belies that 35% alcohol of this liqueur. The recipe is supposed to be secret, but many Germans make their own honey liqueur, so most likely the ingredients are similar to home recipes which contain cloves, vanilla, good quality honey and vodka. It has a wonderfully whimsical bottle design with a beehive for a cap and woven straw wraparound. Even their website is cleverly done with buzzing bees providing menu options (though there isn't much content - maybe they spent all their marketing money on the bees?).

Bärenjäger is often drunk neat, though Teucke & Koenig ( Bärenjäger producers) recommend you drink it cold. They've also been trying to entice bartenders to use it more in innovative drinks by sponsoring competitions. I actually had a really good barrel aged cocktail at Tavern Law recently which featured Bärenjäger. Here's one recipe that I've tasted which, while not up to the Tavern Law standard, is still pretty good.

Bee Hive

• 1 oz Bärenjäger
• 1 oz whiskey (rye works nicely)
• 1 oz fresh squeezed lemon juice

Shake together with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Bärenjäger is widely available in Washington state.

Plymouth Sloe Gin - finally some high quality sloe gin

Ahh, the halcyon days of college when a roommate decided to get fancy and make a Singapore Sling cocktail. His recipe included sloe gin, powdered sugar, 7-Up and other stuff which I can't recall. It was bright red and tasted like high-octane Kool-aid with a bit of a nasty finish (especially if you drank too much of it!).

That was my only encounter with sloe gin until recently when I came across Plymouth Sloe Gin. Plymouth's regular gin is quite tasty, so I took a chance and brought this bottle to see if sloe gin had improved over the years. And indeed it has. This sloe gin is nothing like the cheap, excessively sweet, cough syrup stuff that is usually found on the bottom shelves of liquor stores. Plymouth uses a recipe from 1883 which infuses the sloe berry (a type of bitter plum) with their Plymouth gin, some sugar and water. The result is a tart yet sweet drink with a hint of almond in the finish. In Britain, sloe gin is often drunk in small glasses during winter months, a bit like port.

As for that Singapore Sling cocktail? Turns out that using sloe gin is a somewhat rarer variant of the drink. Most Slings use cherry brandy. But here are a couple of recipes which do a better job of featuring sloe gin (by which I mean the good quality stuff like Plymouth).

Gin Lane (adapted from 2008 Food and Wine Cocktails)
2 lemon wedges
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
1 oz gin
1 oz Plymouth Sloe Gin
1/2 oz sweet vermouth
1/2 oz Cointreau

Muddle lemon wedges with bitters. Add the rest of the ingredients, shake with ice and strain into a martini glass.

Here's another recipe which I'd like to try just because it has a great name. It was popular in London in the 1990s.

Wibble
1 ounce gin
1 ounce Plymouth Sloe Gin
½ ounce crème de cassis
1 ounce fresh grapefruit juice
½ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice.
Shake with ice and strain into a glass.

Plymouth Sloe Gin is found in a number of Seattle liquor stores.

Pür Geist Bierbrand and Pür Likör Spice- a German liqueur invasion

Pür Spirits wants you to be drinking German, and they're going all out in their marketing efforts to convert you. Starting with their name, Pür follows in the footsteps of Mötley Crüe (which first recognized the coolness of completely unnecessary umlauts) and added their own umlaut to the German word for pure to garner that extra bit of hipness. Next came a Facebook page and fancy website. They then hit the cocktail and award circuit (winning some medals in the 2009 San Francisco World Spirits Competition) while also trying to get into all the right kind of magazines.

Luckily, Pür spirits are at least quite interesting, making their marketing manuevering feel more earnest than strident. All of the Pür spirits come in thin, very stylish bottles that make them stand out. The Pür Geist Bierbrand and  Pür Likör Spice are two of the more recent releases of the 6 varieties they produce. The Bierbrand is especially unusual, being distilled from Märzen beer, a lager that is aged in a chestnut cask. It's quite light and delicate, with a nice malty, even fruity flavor with a hint of yeast in the finish. Pür likens it to Scotch, though it's much more mellow.

Pür Likör Spice is a blood orange liqueur that smells of cloves and cinnamon. It tastes a lot like a very good mulled wine with plenty of spice and a smooth orangey finish. It's only 25% alcohol as compared to 42% for the Bierbrand.

Both alcohols are quite good just sipping by themselves, though Pür has done an excellent job of compiling cocktail recipes that are customized for their spirits. I've included two that I thought looked especially tasty (and have linked to the cocktail listings)

The Purity of her Principles by A.J. Rathbun, author of 'Good Spirits'

• 1½ oz Pür Geist Bierbrand
• 1 oz Benedictine
• ½ oz freshly squeezed orange juice
• dash of Regan's orange bitters

Fill a cocktail shaker halfway full with ice cubes. Add all of the ingredients. Shake well. Strain into a cocktail glass.

Modern Negroni by Pete Gowdy, Bottle Cap, San Francisco

• 1 ½ oz Plymouth Gin
• 1 oz Pür Likör Spice
• 1 oz Dolin sweet vermouth

Stir or shake with ice and serve up.

Both products are mainly found in the Seattle area.

Snap - like drinking a spicy gingersnap

Snap isn't the first liqueur to use cookies as its inspiration - Lazzaroni Amaretto is a delicious amaretto infused with macaroons - but it is probably one of the first that features many of the ingredients of a cookie, as if you were baking up a batch of alcohol instead of cookies. In this case, Snap is baking up gingersnaps, and its ingredients list reads like a cookbook recipe: blackstrap molasses, cloves, brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, rooibos tea and vanilla.

Snap was inspired by the German lebkuchen, so its more spicy than sweet. It has an aroma of cloves and vanilla, is fairly dry, and finishes with a bite, just like a good gingersnap. I think it's probably better as a cocktail ingredient than a sipper on its own. It was developed by the multimedia design firm Art in the Age, released last year in Pennsylvania and has now expanded its reach to Washington. You can view a well-done video on the Snap site about how and why Snap was created.

Imbibe magazine recently wrote an article about Snap which included a few cocktail recipes (not listed online). Here's one that looks quite promising.

Three-Hour Tour

1 oz gin

1/2 oz Calvados

1/2 oz fresh lemon juice

1/2 oz Snap

1 dash simple syrup.

Shake with ice and serve

Snap also comes with a small booklet with recipes. I really liked the taste and simplicity of the Snap Happy cocktail

1 1/2 oz Snap

1 1/2 oz bourbon

Shake with ice and serve.

Snap is found mostly in Seattle, though with the new Washington State law that disbands the state liquor stores, it may be harder to find in the coming months until retail outlets and/or grocery stores decide if they'll carry it.

Alto del Carmen Pisco Reservado - Chilean brandy

Pisco is grape brandy that's made in either Chile or Peru. Interestingly, while both countries have been making pisco for over a century, the style produced by each country varies quite a bit ranging from color (Peruvian pisco is clear, Chilean yellowish) to the types of grapes used. There's some national pride wrapped around each country's pisco, so it's probably not a good idea to order a Peruvian pisco in a Chilean bar or vice versa.

The Alto del Carmen is Chilean and is classified as a reserve pisco, which means that it tends to be more alcoholic (40%) and stronger in taste than regular pisco which doesn't have a particularly strong flavor. The Muscat grape is predominantly used, providing notes of perfume and spicy fruit. It tends to be sweeter than traditional brandies.

The most common cocktail made from pisco is the Pisco Sour, a classic cocktail that's been around since pre-prohibition days. I've included a Pisco Sour recipe from "Bottoms Up," a wonderfully saucy book by Ted Saucier that was published in 1951 and contains hundreds of cocktail recipes along with pinup girls and poetry. Since I'm not a fan of egg whites in my drink, I've also included a more modern recipe from the 2006 Food & Wine cocktail book.

"Bottoms Up" artwork sample

Pisco Sour from "Bottoms Up"
1 1/2 oz pisco
Juice 1/2 lemon (about 3/4 oz)
1 tsp sugar (though I would substitute 1 oz simple syrup rather than use sugar)
1 egg white
Shake well with ice.


Vermouth Sin Nombre from Food & Wine 2006
1/2 lime, quartered
1 1/4 orange wheels (1/4 is used for garnish)
3/4 oz simple syrup (in a small jar, shake half sugar and half water until sugar is dissolved)
2 oz pisco
1 oz sweet vermouth
1 oz fresh orange juice
In a cocktail shaker, muddle the lime with 1 orange wheel and the simple syrup.  Shake the rest of the ingredients with ice and strain into a crushed ice-filled glass.

Alto del Carmen pisco can be found state-wide.

Liquore Strega - inspirational for lovers and witches

While Strega is Italian for "witch," this Italian liqueur was initially marketed as a love potion back in the 1860s when it was first conceived. Supposedly, when two people drink Strega together, they are united forever. So forget the roses for that special someone - go for a bottle of Strega instead. Of course, the united forever part of the equation also has its hazards, so choose carefully with whom you share this liqueur.

For those of you not interested in drinking this as a love potion, you'll find that it's a quite pleasant sipping liqueur. It's made from about 70 different herbs and spices including cinnamon, orris root, juniper, and mint. Saffron is used to color it a light yellow. It's soft and smooth, with a nice complexity to its sweet and bitter disposition. It's meant to be drunk as a digestif over ice or simply by itself. Plus it comes in a lovely bottle with wonderfully old-fashioned labels.

There aren't a lot of cocktails that use Strega, but I did comes across this one from the 2010 Manhattan Cocktail Classic that looks like it's worth trying.

Love Potion #44
(created by Paul Zablocki)
2 oz. Rittenhouse rye
1 oz. Carpano Antica vermouth (I suspect it would work fine with Punt e Mes vermouth too, which is cheaper than Antica)
1/2 oz. Strega
Shake or stir with ice

Strega is available at a decent number of Western Washington liquor stores.

Cynar - artichoke liqueur

Cynar is proof that almost anything can be used to make alcohol. Someone must have tried eating an artichoke and thought that it would be way better as a drink. Of course, that could be true of a lot of things.

Cynar is essentially a light-weight amaro (only 16.5% alcohol) that has been infused with the essence of artichokes along with 13 other botanical ingredients. It starts off sweet and ends with a bitter herbal note. It's made in Italy and is traditionally drunk neat or with soda water.

I find it a tad bitter for drinking straight. A number of cocktail aficionados have begun using it in cocktails, though I think it's definitely a second or third tier staple because there aren't really a lot of recipes for it. If you buy a bottle, be sure to keep it in the refrigerator to preserve it since it's so low alcohol and you'll probably be storing it for a long time. It is, of course, fun to serve this to guests as a novelty item and watch them furrow their brows at the thought of drinking artichoke liqueur.

Here's a quite pleasant cocktail recipe adapted from the book Food and Wine Cocktails 2006 which has a nice twist of bitter and sweet, with the emphasis on bitter.

Amer Mousseux

1 oz Cynar

1/2 oz Campari
1/2 oz fresh orange juice

3 oz chilled Champagne

Shake the first 3 ingredients with ice, pour into a glass or flute and top with the champage. If you're feeling fancy, add an orange twist.

Cynar is available at a decent number of stores state-wide, though only in the 1 liter size.

Briottet Crème de Cassis - classic French blackcurrant liqueur

Crème de cassis is a quintessential French liqueur which was developed in the early 1800s. Most of it's produced in Burgundy, with Dijon being the epicenter of high quality cassis production. Cassis is produced by macerating blackcurrant berries in alcohol and then adding sugar which seems relatively straightforward until you've tasted good and poor quality cassis and recognize that the devil is the details (type of berry used, how it's processed, etc.). Colored a beautiful deep purple-red, cassis has an intensely sweet taste with a lovely tartness to the finish.

Avoid buying the cheap cassis and go for a quality producer like Edmond Briottet or Guyot. The bottle can last a long time, so you may as well be sipping the good stuff rather than choking down cough-syrupy alcohol. Crème de cassis is only 20% alcohol, so it's imperative to refrigerate it once opened to preserve it. While some say it's only good for 3 to 5 months once opened, I've kept a bottle in the fridge for a year or more with little noticeable difference in the taste.

Besides sipping and pretending you're Hercule Poirot, Crème de cassis is also great for getting rid of that cheap bottle of champagne someone left at your last New Year's Eve party. The two most famous cocktails that are made with Crème de cassis are Kir and Kir Royale, both essentially the same recipe except that Kir uses white wine and Kir Royale uses champagne.

Kir or Kir Royale

1/2 oz Crème de Cassis

Wine or champagne to fill a typical wine glass. Adjust amount of wine as necessary depending on if you want it sweeter or dryer.

It's best to use a dry white wine with high acidity. A Frenchman once said to me that Kir must be made with Aligoté,  but since it's hard to find that type of wine in Washington, a crisp, dry wine works fine. For champagne, any dry or Brut champagne will do.

The Briottet Crème de Cassis is mostly found at the better Seattle liquor stores (4th Ave, University Village, Queen Anne).

Pernod - anise liqueur and poor quality absinthe substitute

Pernod is a pastis (French, licorice-flavored aperitif) that managed to survive the decades-long ban on absinthe because it removed thujone from its recipe. Absinthe was banned in the U.S. in 1912 because it was thought that it caused hallucinations and physical impairment, though research has now concluded that factors such as high alcohol content, poor-quality alcohol, over indulgence and other factors were probably much more to blame than thujone. Consequently in 2007, absinthe became legal in the U.S. again, albeit with a strictly controlled limit on thujone in the alcohol. This has lead to a huge proliferation of absinthe labels available in the U.S. as well as much interest among distilleries in creating American absinthe.

So where does this leave Pernod? It still seems to be quite popular, and in Washington state, it's available at most liquor stores. I'm just not sure why though since Pernod is really a poor substitute for many better anise liqueur products. It is artificially colored green rather than colored by its ingredients as are most good quality pastis. It has no complexity whatsoever, having simply a bitter licorice flavor that's not enjoyable, even when water is added (the typical way to drink a pastis). The only thing I can figure out is that tradition and a relatively cheap price keeps people buying it.

So I've been slowly trying to get rid of my bottle of Pernod by making an occasional Sazerac (a New Orleans cocktail) which calls for a splash of a pastis. At this rate, my bottle should be good for another decade or two.

This Sazerac recipe is adapted from Dale DeGroof in his classic "The Craft of the Cocktail," and it deviates from the traditional New Orleans recipe by adding Cognac. I find it adds some nice complexity.

Sazerac
Splash of Pernod (or if you were a smarter buyer, Ricard, Herbsaint or an absinthe)
1 oz VS Cognac
1 oz rye whiskey
1/2 oz simple syrup (you can quickly make simple syrup by filling a small jar with half water, half sugar and shaking vigorously)
2 dashes Peychaud's bitters
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Swirl the Pernod in a glass and discard. Shake the remaining ingredients with ice and pour into the glass you used to swirl the Pernod.

Solerno - intriguing Sicilian blood orange liqueur

The first thing you notice about this liqueur is the amazing bottle. Supposedly inspired by Murano glass artists, it features a wonderfully graceful neck reminiscent of Renaissance style glass bottles. The bottom looks like an old fashioned citrus juicer, and the red color gradient evokes the color of the blood orange, though the liqueur itself is clear.

So is the liqueur worthy of this artistic bottle? Absolutely. Solerno was created by the same distiller who created Hendrick's Gin, and some of the same quirkiness is evident in the way this liqueur is made. Using only local Sicilian produce, Solerno is distilled three times using copper alembic stills. The first distillation is of the blood orange meat, the second of the orange zest and the third of Sicilian lemons. The resulting liqueur has a strong and complex orange and citrus flavor that is nicely balanced between bitter and sweet. It's not quite as bitter as Campari, but it's certainly less sweet than a Triple Sec.

Another fun fact about Solerno is that it doesn't have its own website. What! No photo montages of impossibly beautiful men and women drinking Solerno, looking like they just stepped off a yacht after a short Mediterranean cruise? It seems quite anachronistic in this day and age, but curiously refreshing as well.

There aren't a lot of cocktail recipes for this liqueur yet, but here's one developed by Jacqueline Patterson, brand ambassador for Solerno. This recipe interestingly uses Solerno as the base alcohol (which makes sense since she's trying to get you to drink a lot of it so she can sell you more) though I can also imagine Solerno being used as more of an accent. This cocktail is quite good, though fair warning - it's definitely on the bitter side.

Sicilian Cooler

2 oz Solerno

3/4 oz Campari

3/4 oz lemon juice

2-3 oz soda water

Shake Solerno, Campari and lemon juice with ice, pour into an ice-filled glass and add the soda water, stirring to incorporate.

This liqueur is hard to find in Washington. I picked up a bottle at the 4th Ave South store (2960 4th Ave S - (206) 587-5687), though the WA State liquor website doesn't show any currently available, so you may need to call.

Xanté - Swedish pear liqueur brought to you by the Swedish bikini team

Xanté is all about sex appeal and marketing. It starts with their tag line and description of Xanté as "unimaginable pleasure." It continues with their advertising on the bottle itself, with the back of the label describing the liqueur as a ménage a trois of  results between cognac, French oak, "penetration of pear," and a tender mating process (maybe they actually meant a ménage a quatre since they mention four elements?). Even many of the names of Xanté cocktails listed on the pamphlet that comes with the bottle and their website are double entendres or come-ons: All In, Lady in Bed, XTC, Wild Honey, etc.

It's all a bit over the top and eye-roll inducing. Perhaps it's necessary to get you over the hump of trying to lay down 40 some big ones to buy a bottle (hmm, this double entendre stuff is contagious).

So how does it taste? Well, unimaginable pleasure is hard to live up to. It's certainly quite nice, with a strong flavor of pears married with cognac and vanilla notes on the finish. I wouldn't consider this an essential purchase.

There aren't a lot of cocktail recipes that look particularly inspiring at the Xanté site, though if I were to try one, it would be the Bigger Ben:

• 2 part(s) Xantè
• 2 part(s) Cointreau
• 2 part(s) Lemon Juice
• Fresh Ginger

Muddle fresh ginger. Shake and double strain into a well-chilled glass.

Xanté is available at a decent number of Washington liquor stores, mostly on the west side of the mountains. It seems highly appropriate that it's available at the Grand Mound liquor store in Rochester, WA.

St. Germain - elderflower liqueur and cocktail staple

St. Germain provides a template on how to successfully introduce a new liqueur. Pick an ingredient that hasn't been used much before. Design a mythology around it (this from the marketing pamphlet hung on the bottle - "In the foothills of the Alps, but for a few fleeting spring days, this man will gather wild blossoms for your cocktail."). Put the liqueur in a stylish, somewhat retro bottle. Win a prestigious award (best of show in the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, 2007). Soon bartenders get excited about it, and voila - a modern classic.

St. Germain certainly is a useful ingredient to have in your bar, but you may find like I did that a bottle lasts a long time. Why? Because it's really not a sipping liqueur, as compared to what is, in my opinion, a more versatile liqueur such as amaro. St. Germain is quite sweet and floral, with notes of muscat grape, melon, and lemon. It's really best as an ingredient in a cocktail, and even then you often don't need a lot of it. I bought 2 bottles 3 years ago, and I'm just now getting to the bottom 1/3 of the first bottle.

Here's a really nice cocktail recipe adapted from Food & Wine Cocktails, 2008.

Long Live the Queen
1 3/4 ounces gin
1/2 ounce St. Germain
1/4 ounce Simple Syrup (you can make simple syrup by shaking together 1 cup water and 1 cup sugar until all the sugar dissolves)
2 dashes of peach bitters
4 mint leaves

Shake in a cocktail shaker with ice and serve.

St. Germain is widely distributed in Washington State.

Fair Goji Liqueur - the next big thing?

The first time I tasted this, I thought, "This is the next big thing in liqueurs." The goji berry grows in Asia (this liqueur comes from the Himalayans) and is purported to have enormous heath benefits because of its high antioxidant and vitamin content. WebMD lists an impressive number of these benefits including preventing cancer and heart disease, protecting vision, lowering cholesterol, slowing aging, boosting brain health, protecting against Alzheimer's, increasing mental well-being, promoting happiness, improving athletic performance and making the blind to see and the lame to walk. Okay, the last two I added, but this list of benefits is truly of biblical proportions. Plus it's fair trade certified and handcrafted in France. How could this not be huge?

So I eagerly sought out another taster to verify my view that this liqueur is going to be the biggest thing since Justin Bieber. She took one sip and announced that it tasted like cough syrup. So there you go - one person's super liqueur is another person's cough syrup.

I actually like the taste of this liqueur. It's not too sweet, has lots of berry flavors, especially cherry and some strawberry. And yes, it does have some cough syrup characteristics, but really only in a good way.

I haven't tried any cocktails using this liqueur, though you can find a number of recipes at this annoyingly Flash-addled site. The availability of Fair Goji is quite limited in Seattle since it's only available at 3 Seattle stores (4th Ave, University Village and Crown Hill) and 1 Everett store. It costs about $27 for a 375 ML bottle. Drinking the next big thing isn't cheap.

Limoncello - Black Heron vs. Danny DeVito

Limoncello (or lemon liqueur) is the alcoholic version of the nectar of the gods. Typically made of only 4 ingredients - lemons, a base alcohol, sugar and water - it is Italian sunshine captured in a bottle. A bit melodramatic you say? Afraid to keep reading in case I start reciting bad poetry about the raptures of limoncello? I'll skip the poetry, but it truly is a marvelous liqueur, meant to be sipped cold (from the freezer) on the deck on a warm summer day.

Despite only having so few ingredients, limoncellos vary widely in how they taste and their quality. My gold standard is Danny DeVito's Limoncello. Produced in Sorrento, Italy, it has the perfect balance of sweetness versus tartness, the right percentage of alcohol, and it's all natural with no artificial ingredients or colors. It was unfortunately only available in Washington for a few years, so you'll have to special order it to get it.

Now there's a limoncello made in Washington by Black Heron Spirits located in West Richland. They call it Lemoncello Lemon Liquer [sic], which made me wonder if they were worried that consumers wouldn't know that limoncello is made from lemons and if they forgot to do a spell check. I was still intrigued enough to buy a bottle.

The first thing I noticed is that this lemon liqueur is artificially colored, which is too bad since limoncello should be a naturally pale golden color from the lemons rather than the color of a fluorescent yellow highlighter from FD&C yellow #5. The next problem is that this lemon liqueur, at 74 proof, has the highest alcohol percentage of any limoncello I've seen. This makes it less of a sipper than traditional limoncellos.

But the real issue is that Black Heron's Lemoncello doesn't really taste much of lemons. It tastes a bit like a flavored, slightly sweetened vodka, with some vague herbal notes which are hard to place. If you concentrate, you may be able to find some citrus notes in the finish and nose.

So I'll continue to sip from my rapidly diminishing stock of Danny DeVito's Limoncello and try Black Heron's in some limoncello cocktails to see if works better that way.

If you find yourself with a limoncello that isn't a great sipper, here's a good cocktail recipe from Food & Wine Cocktails 2005.

Pink Panther
1 oz limoncello
1 oz lemon vodka

1/2 oz fresh red grapefruit juice

1/2 oz cranberry juice.

Shake all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice, strain into a chilled martini glass and garnish with a lemon twist if desired.

And for you really adventurous types, you can make limoncello yourself using the Fine Cooking magazine's recipe.  I've tried it a few times, and while it tends to be quite alcoholic, it's still very good.

The Black Heron Lemoncello is available in a number of western Washington stores, and Danny DeVito's Limoncello is available in Idaho and many other fine states.

Dry Fly Washington Gin

Now here's a liquor that's actually distilled in Washington State. Not only that, but Dry Fly was one of the primary instigators to changing the distillery laws in Washington in 2008, helping launch a tidal wave of new liquors. Well, it's not quite a tidal wave yet, but there are dozens of distilleries in line to get the new craft distillery licenses, so we should be seeing many more products in the next few years. Most of the new ventures so far have focused on fairly traditional liquors such as gin, vodka, whiskey, with a few outliers making grappa and absinthe. The craft distillery license is inexpensive and allows distilleries to have tastings and sell their product from their tasting rooms, though it does require that any spirit have 51% of its ingredients come from Washington. 

So how does this pioneering alcohol taste? Certainly different than most traditional gins. While Dry Fly uses juniper, there are also dried Washington apples, mint and hops added to the mix. The juniper is primarily evident in the nose and then fades into a complementary flavor when tasting. There are also notes of coriander and other spices, making for a complex and interesting gin. It is quite good for sipping, and would probably make an excellent dry martini as well as other gin-based cocktails. Here's a classic martini recipe adapted from The Martini Book.

Martini

6 parts gin

1 part dry vermouth

Olive or pickled asparagus as garnish

Dry Fly is found everywhere in Washington, even in the tiny town of Tekoa with its 800 inhabitants amid the wheat fields of eastern Washington.

Domaine de Canton French Ginger Liqueur

This cognac-based liqueur has won an impressive number of awards and high ratings, including the double gold medal (best of show) at the 2008 San Francisco World Spirits Competition. It has a strong ginger flavor, with the bite of a not too sweet gingersnap. It's a tasty sipper all by itself, and it has the extra benefit of being a good digestif since ginger is well known for its ability to aid digestion. I've tried it at various times after a heavy meal, and it certainly does seem to help. The bamboo-shaped bottle is quite distinctive as well.

Here's an excellent cocktail recipe adapted from the 2010 Food & Wine Cocktails book. Since the Canton Ginger liqueur is fairly strong, it's here used as an accent rather than a main ingredient.

Thamyris

2 oz gin

1/2 oz Cynar

1/4 oz Domaine de Canton French Ginger liqueur

1/4 oz St. Germain elderflower liqueur

Shake it all together with ice and garnish with a orange twist if desired.

The Domaine de Canton is currently available at select liquor stores across the state, though only on a temporary one-time basis.

Aperol

The previous posts have focused on liqueurs which are typically only found in Seattle. Aperol, on the other hand, is a liqueur which has successfully traversed the Washington state liquor approval process and so can be found in liquor stores from Yelm to Yakima.

Aperol is an Italian liqueur which was developed in the early 1900s in Padua. It tastes a bit like Campari-lite, meaning that it has some similar bitter orange notes but is less assertive. It is remarkably low in alcohol for a liqueur - only 11%. Ingredients include rhubarb, cinchona, gentian, bitter oranges, and herbs.

There aren't a huge amount of cocktails that include Aperol, but one classic Italian cocktail made with Aperol is called Spritz. It's a wonderful  drink to be enjoyed while sitting at a Venetian cafe next to a canal on a warm evening (or at least pretending that you're sitting at said cafe).

Spritz
2 oz prosecco (chilled)

1 oz Aperol

Sparking mineral water (chilled) to top

Fill a champagne flute with Aperol. Add prosecco and top with a splash of mineral water. Garnish with a lemon or orange slice and serve.