“Reach out your arms, as far apart as possible – one high, one low – then just bend your wrist, but do not look!”, instructed the waitress. “Oh, and beginners like you must stand over the barrel,” she added. I followed her advice exactly but still ended up with a soggy shirt-front and damp shoes, wasting half a bottle.

Even though the cider was cheap, learning to pour it like a local wouldn’t be and accepting I could be thirsty for a long while before I acquired the knack, I invited my hostess to demonstrate proper form. Sure enough, her aim was perfect and my glass was soon two inches deep without the loss of a drop. “Now, drink it! Fast!” she cajoled. “Before it goes flat!”

I hadn’t counted on necking shots of cider at lunchtime, and wondered if I was playing the straight guy in a game of haze the foreigner, but as foamy, appley goodness cascaded down my gullet it started to make sense. Then, after taking my order for broiled razor clams and hake in cider, the waitress turned on her heel for the kitchen, leaving my glass empty. Now eager to drink some more, but reluctant to soak myself further, I reached for the bottle. “No lo mueva!” warned a finger-wagging old guy to my left. “She will pour for you when she returns. And, you should leave a drop in the bottom of the glass. It’s good luck.”

Thanking him for his advice, I sat back and looked around the white-washed room from my seat against the wall. Cut-off barrels half-filled with sawdust littered the blue-tiled floor between tables, along with the usual jumble of crumpled napkins, discarded toothpicks and cigarette ends. Through the open window, small gaily-painted fishing boats bobbed up and down, and their creak and bump as they nagged at their moorings offered a pleasant counterpoint to the hoarse cries of seabirds.

Luarca, on the Asturian coast of northern Spain is still a working port and, the tasca where I sat, the place to enjoy the morning’s catch. From the ruddy faces surrounding me, it was entirely possible that my hake had been landed earlier in the day by a fellow diner. The globe is so well traveled these days that it’s virtually impossible to find anywhere you’re the only foreigner, but in this place, during the off-season, I had managed it. In fact, I was the only guest at the only open hotel in town. An anomaly I was quick to appreciate, because it allowed me to slip into the natural rhythms of local life and prompted me to assume the most humble status, that of being nobody at all. Sure, it removed me from many things, but there’s an advantage to that when all you want to absorb is atmosphere – the feeling that five hundred years could pass in this place and the faces wouldn’t change. What Cees Nooteboom described as “the feeling that everything except time has stopped.“

My razor clams arrived, redolent of garlic and spicy with piperade, followed by tender hake with softened apples, their acidity perfectly balancing the sweetness of the reduced cider sauce. A side of fried potatoes appeared as another two inches of cider found its way neatly into my glass. Lazily enjoying it, happy and relaxed, I barely noticed when it was all gone and the waitress returned. “Postre?” she asked. “Hay queso de cabrales, flan, y frutas frescas, o si usted prefiere, un poco de cada uno.” I opted greedily for the latter, along with a nip of orujo, she returned quickly with a little of each – blue cheese, stick to your teeth caramel pudding, and a pear. “Ningunas manzanas?” I smiled. “Haven’t you had enough apples yet?” she joked back.

Chicken in cider is not necessarily a traditional Asturian preparation, though it might as well be, so while this dish is modeled on the hake in cider I had that day, it is cooked for much longer. Asturian cider is produced from small, tart crabapple type fruit that are no good for eating, the juice of which is fermented for up to six months in oak barrels. It typically registers only 5% alcohol, compared to the seven or eight degrees common in French and English ciders and is rarely carbonated, hence the habit of pouring from a great height to aerate, followed by swift consumption before the froth disappears. Spanish ciders can be found in the US, but domestic varieties like Woodchuck are perfectly acceptable for cooking with. The chanterelles were added to balance out the sweetness of the sauce with an earthy, autumnal boskiness and some slices of eating apple dropped in with five minutes to go offered some crunch and acid to what is a very satisfying dish.

Most Brits associate mincemeat with Christmas – its intoxicating mix of fruit, spices, booze, nuts and mixed peel provide Pavlovian stimuli, stirring memories of cherubic choirs a-caroling, roasted poultry, and the Queen’s speech – whereas I associate it with Easter, because it was always around then that we finally ran out of mince pies. I use the term “ran out” quite deliberately, as mince pies were the kind of thing that, growing up, were considered within the realm of “supplies”, so numerous were they. Every year in early December, my industrious mother would make at least six, but often as many as ten, dozen individual mince pies, fashioned lovingly from homemade mincemeat she had prepared several months in advance.

These seasonal confections then proceeded to appear on the table each and every mealtime, during tea breaks, whenever we had company over and any other time people were sat sitting and might be persuaded to have a smackerel of something, until everyone was thoroughly sick of the sight of them. Towards the end of March, the sight of the poor, battered-looking stragglers, that had been taken in and out their box so many times that their pastry shells were all dented and crumbly, was particularly sad.

The derivation of the word mincemeat, which today contains no minced meat, is Medieval, from a time shortly after Marco Polo had returned from the East, and every cook worth his salt was finding new ways to disguise and preserve rotten provisions with the spices he popularized. Adding cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves to ground meat, dried fruits, candied peel and chopped nuts before soaking the whole lot in high octane liquor must have been a hit at the time, which probably speaks more to the concurrent lack of fresh meat than to whether this was, in fact, a delicious preparation. Either way, it caught the imagination of a nation, and though the ground meat has largely been dropped, the tradition of using these spices to perfume pie filling continues strongly.

Another reason mincemeat was such a hit way back when is because once made, it can be expected to keep, unrefrigerated for as long as 2 years – something my mother bore in mind, as she often made hers over the first weekend of the New Year giving it ample time to “improve” over the next 12 months. Throughout the year, she would occasionally rouse it from its slumbers, turning it over and adding a touch more brown sugar or booze as she deemed necessary. Suffice it to say that by the time Easter came around, and the last mince pies were served, their mincemeat contents was nearing its second birthday, and was so highly perfumed that to inhale deeply close to a warmed mincer was to risk singed nose hairs.

Following my mother’s established tradition, I was well prepared, having put together my mincemeat last January, and fed it occasionally throughout 2011, so that it was rich and boozy by the time the Holidays arrived. Unfortunately, the energetic screams of our firstborn put paid to any intentions I may have had of making batches of personal mince pies before Christmas, so I had plenty of mincemeat leftover to ring in the New Year with. Inspired by a desire to produce something that people would actually eat before the next Christian festival hove into view, I quickly prepared this mincemeat stuffed quince. You could quite equally pair it with a vanilla custard/creme anglaise or, as I prefer, a whisky-laced whipped cream, but I lost my dander somewhere along the way and just shook some powdered sugar over it to evoke the wintry season instead.

I could have used apples in this recipe, but opted for quince largely because it’s one of those fruits that was, coincidentally, first popularized in the UK during Elizabethan times and has, rather sadly, since fallen out of favor. Brought originally from Asia and sometimes known by the moniker “love apple”, quince isn’t dissimilar in taste and texture to the apple — to which it is botanically related and which would make a fine substitute here — but when you’ve got the strains of “Good King Wencelas” with its frosty and feudal lyrics echoing in your mind, quince just feels right. [For more on quince, check out our friend Rachel Eats.]

Oven-baked quince are really, really good: rich, almost custardy in flavor and not overly sweet. A perfect dessert for the Holiday period, providing enough time is taken between courses. It’s probably not worth making a batch of mincemeat just for this purpose, but they are they dead easy and quick to pull together, and will be eaten in no time, allowing you and your family to leave Yuletide flavors safely behind you before the end of January.

We understand from our Colombian friend Juan Camilo (who longtime readers may remember from this podcast) that the Bogota nightlife is on a par with any of the world’s party capitals, and that when it comes to late night boozing, the aguardiente-loving natives of Colombia’s capital are among the most experienced. It should come as no surprise then that they have also spent some time figuring out effective cures to the inevitable DT’s the morning after — something that I am sure Charlie Sheen, with his well-known enthusiasm for the odd briefcase of Colombia’s most famous export, already knows about.

Across South America, hangover cures tend towards the liquid — Peru’s famous leche de tigre (“tiger’s milk”, the citrusy liquor leftover from ceviche preparation) and the shrimp and coconut milk stews of Brazil — and are more similar to chicken soup as a cure-all than the meat and starch heavy plates bleary-eyed North Americans and Brits swear by. In caldo de costilla, Colombians have a dish that may well raise the dead as easily as cure the hungover. An intense beefy broth surrounding hunks of braised short ribs and root vegetables, and garnished with lime juice, chopped onions and, occasionally, aji (a spicy vinegary condiment), it restores dehydrated cells, fills the growling belly, and enlivens the palate in one fell swoop.

As a devoted family man himself, Charlie Sheen might appreciate the nutritive value of such a soup on a weeknight as much as after a 7-day Vegas bender, and indeed, such were the circumstances of our own enjoyment of it recently (the former, not the latter). Worn thin by the fearsome demands of work and family, this soup helped us pull body and soul together on a Monday night and gird ourselves for another grinding week. We may not have leaped out of bed the next morning, but that had more to do with us not having been on a drug called Charlie Sheen than anything attributable to the soup.

Every now and then I’ll sit through one of those “secrets of the ancient world” shows on the History Channel. You know, the ones in which they have modern experts try to “decode” how the pyramids or the hanging gardens of Babylon were constructed using graphics that make you feel like you’re watching B-roll from The Da Vinci Code, and where, before every commercial break, there’s some sort of cliff-hanger like “Coming up, how this building ought never to have stood!”

So it was this past week, when shortly after the birth of our son, I was rocking him gently to sleep with one eye on a TV show about how Europe’s gothic cathedrals were built. Focusing on the massive limestone spires of the cathedrals of Notre-Dame d’Amiens, St. Pierre de Beauvais and Notre-Dame de Paris, this show was among the more interesting of its genre as not only did it deal directly with how modern architects are trying to prevent these houses of God from collapsing under their own weight, but it also brought back memories of our trip earlier this year to the Picardy region of northern France when we visited the first of these.

While the nave of St. Pierre de Beauvais did in fact collapse because of architectural over-reach, which its foreshortened and incomplete appearance reflects, Notre-Dame d’Amiens stands perilously intact as among the largest of its kind in the world. Sitting on the highest point in town, it can be seen, as was intended, from miles around. At night, it is so illuminated by floodlights that the visitor might be forgiven for thinking it is heralding an alien invasion.

When these giants of devotional architecture were being erected, they were in competition with one another for the title of the grandest monument in the country, but if competitive historic structural design isn’t your exactly bag, there is plenty else to appreciate about Amiens, including a feat of construction every bit as daring, but much more toothsome, than those stonemasons of yore managed. For Amiens, as Picardy in general, is famous for its duck products, and in particular for a fascinating multi-meat confection of duck, rabbit, pork and chicken livers all sealed-up crustily in a layer of savory pastry.

In truth, this was my train of thought. Fatigued as I was by several sleepless nights and hungry for something corporeally rewarding, the enduring might of colossal 13th-century cathedrals was far less intriguing than Jane Grigson’s recipe for pâté en croûte d’Amiens. Moreover, I was even more drawn to it because its preparation seemed to be easy enough for my addled senses to follow. Even after butchering and stripping the duck and rabbit carcasses, it didn’t feel like a lot of work, nor did the very basic pastry recipe cause any pain, persuading me, momentarily, that perhaps this parenting lark isn’t so tough after all.

However, pulling the rich, golden-brown terrine from the oven, and hearing my mother-in-law comment that in spite of the recent arrival of our firstborn I was willing to waste time preparing such a dish in place of a easy greasy take-away dinner, I snapped at her rather meanly, that given the level of the strain I was under, and some fried crap in a tray just wouldn’t cut it. I subsequently apologized, and had my nerves not been so frayed by weariness, I would have replied much more civilly, perhaps saying that in this pâté en croûte, I, like the structural engineers on the History Channel, had found a temporary solution to crushing gravity.

In the tiny Cheshire hamlet of Lower Peover (pronounced “peever”) is the delightfully rustic country pub “The Bells”, so-called because one has to literally walk around it to get to the parish church. In fact, so aligned are church and boozer that the two are separated by only fifty feet of graveyard, a low gate and a tall hedge, with the path from the church door leading directly into the pub — demonstrating the weighty tithe rural folk feel to both institutions.

I worked there as a barman in my youth, and over the course of my employment became, as barmen often do, intimate with many of the regulars, who, for the most part, were local farmers and laborers. Every day, at no later than 11.30 a.m., these ruddy-faced gents would pause outside and wash their heavily-calloused hands in the moss-rimmed trough, before propping themselves up at the bar and grunting hellos to each other. Whether their usual was a simple pint of “best”, a black n’tan, a “brown over bitter”, or a pint of “Chinese”, I’d spy them washing-up, and have it ready for them when they walked in. And, though I learned a great deal about their home-lives from their daily grousings — the damp weather affecting their strawberries, the disappointment over their older son’s desire to become a club-singer instead of a pig farmer — I never met or even saw their wives, about whom they grumbled most often. Probably because these tyrannical-sounding women were at home cooking the stout lunch their husbands’ would need if they were to remain erect at the wheel of their tractors after several noontime ales.

Europhile Pretensions Beyond My Station
In fact, the realm of the rural pub, during the daytime at least, was almost an entirely male domain. With the occasional exception of the vicar’s wife popping in mid-afternoon to admonish the regulars about their poor Sunday attendance over “half” a lager and lime, it was only in the evening that the women-folk from thereabouts came in to whet their whistles. And their whistles were whet on a peculiarly vocational basis, with the village shop-workers, almost exclusively, drinking shandies or halves of lager (with or without lime), and the professional and retired classes opting for gin and tonic, or Dubonnet and bitter lemon. The general sense — daytime or evening — seemed to be that real country people drank only beer, whereas effete, French cordials were either for “nancy boys” or the haughty, upper classes with pretensions of continental sophistication.

Being “in” with the regulars, I managed to convince myself that I, quite contrary to my middle-class upbringing, was a stalwart of the working class — even punctuating my, hitherto, mostly uncorrupted English with all kinds of full-bodied rural idioms like, “down at Jim’s mother’s” (somewhere a long way away), “coming down like cow’s piss” (heavy rain), and “‘e couldn’t stop a pig in an entry!” (describing a bow-legged person, of whom there are plenty in rural Cheshire) — and so developed an accompanying disdain for Dubonnet, without ever even having tasted it.

Made Famous by Legionnaires, Royalty
In fact, I shouldn’t have been concerned that enjoying an occasional chilled Dubonnet before dinner would impinge upon my undoubtedly macho self-image, for the drink was introduced in 1846 as the winner of a competition seeking to find effective ways of getting the famously tough soldiers of France’s Foreign Legion to take their quinine. As with several other notable aperitifs, including Kina Lillet and Fernet-Branca, Dubonnet began life as a medicinal beverage that, using fortified wine as its base, combined herbs, berries, spices and peels into a palatable mixture.

For evidence of it credentials as a nostrum, one has to look no further than the British royal family, the Windsors, whose longevity, at least on the maternal side, can be credited to regular libations of Dubonnet. It’s well-known that Her Majesty the late Queen Mother was a devotee of gin — famously having badly scalded her lower half in the bathtub after one too many — but she was also a regular on the Dubonnet, which she liked to drink in a 30/70 ratio with gin and a slice of lemon under the ice. So committed to this was Her Majesty, that she once noted before leaving the UK on a trip abroad, “…I think that I will take two small bottles of Dubonnet and gin with me this morning, in case it is needed…” Similarly, her daughter, the reigning Queen, Elizabeth II, is rumored to take a daily Dubonnet and gin before lunch. Royalty, you see, doesn’t have to work in the afternoons.

The Multi-Colored Belle of the Bar
As we have seen, preparations for Dubonnet abound, including with bitter lemon and with gin, but there are a myriad others, and Dubonnet features in literally hundreds of cocktails the world over. Perhaps this is because it, like Lillet, comes in more than one color — three, in fact — though, in the United States, only two are generally available — white and red, with the latter being by far the most common and widely used. The gold variety can occasionally be found behind cocktail bars of quality.

Now, because it’s red, Dubonnet Rouge adds a certain drama to any cocktail, and can therefore be used in place of Cointreau and cranberry juice in a Cosmopolitan, instead of the sweet Vermouth in a Manhattan, or in place of Campari in an Americano. However, that shouldn’t suggest it is nothing more than a colorant. Dubonnet Rouge can quite easily be the prinicipal in many cocktails, including the fabulously-named Smoking Cat, amongst others. The similarly aromatic Blanc is often used as a substitute for dry Vermouth, in famous cocktails like the Martini, Rob Roy, and the superbly-titled Creole Scream.

Marxist vs. Gastronomic Class-Struggle
If the regulars at the Bells were right, and you are what you drink, then I am, in all honesty, an arriviste, petit-bourgeois Englishman from the provinces with pretensions of epicurean sophistication. I am, I realize, far more closely aligned with the mixed-drink sippers than the hearty beer-drinking peasants of my former place of work. I hereby confess that I enjoy nothing more than an aperitif of Dubonnet rouge over ice and garnished with a slice of orange, as I contemplate the arrival of a savory bistrot luncheon. Similarly, my predilections are more inclined towards a glass of Dubonnet blanc with ice and a slice of lemon ahead of a sole meuniere than two or three pints of best bitter and a plate of Irish stew. Does the fact that my tastebuds contradict my ancestry and upbringing make me a traitor to my class and a bad person? Okay, don’t answer that. Instead, you should give either color of Dubonnet a try in whichever preparation you find most suitable to your sense of self and class identity.

Similarly, in the American imagination, the British are all highly genteel, pale-skinned folk, who sip tea out of dainty bone china cups at exactly four p.m. every day, and take tiny bites out of their cucumber sandwiches to avoid baring their horrific teeth. Of course, most Brits are more likely to be swigging gin or alcopops from a tin mug than Earl Grey by the time four o’clock comes around, but as with French and Mexican stereotypes, these outdated notions retain an element of truth.

In this case, the Victorian era high-tea of, well, tea and various sandwiches and cakes isn’t a tradition that has survived intact. However, the summertime practice of taking ones tea (meaning the meal here) out of doors in a kind of impromptu and slightly lame picnic is still going strong, particularly since the tea (meaning the drink here) is commonly replaced by another Victorian era stalwart, Pimm’s.

As I wrote last year, prior to the industrial revolution, London’s East End and Docklands area was known for the quality of its shellfish. The large tidal range on that part of the Thames revealed great and healthy mudflats at low tide from which bushels of cockles, mussels, winkles, razor clams, and oysters were pulled. This bounty of shellfish meant that oyster bars were as much a part of East End life as rhyming slang, and it was typical for your working man to wash down each mouthful of crustacean with a jigger of dry gin. Now, if you’ve ever drunk cheap London dry gin neat, you’ll know that the bitter flavor can turn even the toughest Cockney’s mouth inside-out and have him clutching the Betty Grable for support.

A Little of the Back Story
So it was that in 1823, East End oyster bar owner James Pimm began serving a drink that mixed gin with quinine, citrus fruit, and spices to make it more palatable. Pimm’s cocktail, or No.1 Cup, as it became known after the small tankard it was served in, quickly became a hit, and before long even the posh folks of London’s West End were quaffing it as “The Original Gin Sling”. So popular was his beverage, that James Pimm introduced two other kinds of Pimm’s cups to London drinkers: numbers 2 and 3, based on scotch and brandy, respectively.

Indeed, by the late 1880s, Pimm’s had established itself such a following that even when the Pimm family sold their business – to no less than Sir Horatio Davies, member of Parliament and (at the time) Lord Mayor of London – the purchaser decided to keep the name. Davies expanded the Pimm’s brand to five new oyster bars around the city and succeeded in making his drinks such an integral part of Victorian life that throughout the empire from Delhi to Khartoum, Pimm’s was refreshing the British troops, tommies and officers alike. And, until the outbreak of the second World War, Pimm’s was the drink of choice for any self-respecting Britisher. This enduring popularity bringing forth a 4th “cup”, this time based on rum.

Pimm’s Gets Groovy
During the 1960s, when Britain, and particularly London – with the arrival of the Stones, Kinks, Beatles, and The Who – became cool again, sales of Pimm’s, which had dipped in the post-war years, took off. Daring to reinvent itself as the drink of the trendy, swinging classes instead of the stuffy, buttoned-up Victorians, the company launched two new cups, numbers five and six, based on rye and vodka, to great acclaim.

Ever the fashion-conscious beverage purveyor, Pimm’s capitalized on the latest era of Brit-pop cool – the mid-1990s – when Blur and Oasis were kings of indie rock, to release its ready-mixed cans of Pimm’s & Lemonade, and in certain places, Pimm’s on tap. Sadly, throughout it’s long, chameloenic history, Pimm’s has been out of fashion as often as it’s been groovy. Between 1970 and 1990, many of Pimm’s cups were phased out, with only numbers 1 and 6 currently still in regular production. The no.3 cup, based on brandy, is still sold but only seasonally nowadays as Pimm’s Winter Cup.

Personal History
In my lifetime, Pimm’s has mostly been associated with watching a cricket match, or watching things float by from a beer garden by the Thames, while scorching my pinkish skin scarlet under sunny skies. However, you don’t have to be British, in Britain, or even interested in British mod-style music to enjoy Pimm’s. Wherever the sun is shining and it’s approaching Pimm’s o’clock, there’s an opportunity to slice-up some fruit (strawberries, apples, and oranges are good), cucumber (not just for sandwiches), and mint leaves, mix yourself a large jug of Pimm’s and lemonade (lemon/lime soda is fine), and watch the sun fall into the sea.

And, lest you wonder why we’re promoting a British drink on America’s no.1 (pun intended) holiday, I should remind you that every year on or around Independence Day I am asked, by more Americans than seems possible, how we celebrate 4th July in England.

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
- William Wordsworth, 1802

The term formative experience refers to an incident encountered when young that shapes an individual’s character later in life, hence Wordsworth’s assertion above that “the child is father of the man”. During my late teens and early twenties, I was very heavily involved in the sport of lacrosse. So much so, in fact, that I earned what I thought at the time to be the distinct honor of representing my country at successive European championships. The first of these tournaments held in Dusseldorf, Germany, was sponsored by the two companies responsible for the, then, new and exciting combination of Absolut Vodka and Red Bull, and, at the tournament’s conclusion, there was a winner’s banquet, also sponsored by said beverage purveyors. It will surprise few who know anything about national boozing proclivities, to learn that throughout the evening my victorious England team and I proceeded to become, shall we say, well refreshed.

Sadly, the combination of exhaustion, dehydration and red bull voddies felled my youthful exuberance not halfway through the evening, and my leaden weight had to be carried back to our hotel by the team doctor and physio. I awoke in the morning feeling dog-rough and swollen, and only after considering my rumpled visage in the bathroom mirror for a few minutes did I notice something out of order - my right eyebrow was missing.

I could go on and relate other tales of febrile misadventure with vodka - including the fateful occasion when traveling in Lithuania that some burly locals kindly decided to take my two friends and I under their wing and immerse us (quite literally) in the mystery of “successfully drinking” their 100 proof – but I’ll stop here, as I’m sure you’ve understood by now the point is that through these and other formative experiences I have developed something of an aversion to vodka, and do not, as a rule, ever drink it.

Good Vodka vs. Tasty Vodka?

It was with a degree of trepidation then, that I approached the research for this month’s drink. In my memory, I associate vodka with pink, bubble-gum flavored fizziness and the humiliation of having to draw my eye-brow back on with my mother’s eye-liner pencil, so I was initially most reluctant to drink it neat, but with you, gentle reader, in mind, I soldiered bravely on.

In fact, this aversion aside, I very nearly discounted vodka as a drink of the month because we’ve become so saturated with it in the last few years. Super-premium, triple or quadruple, pot or batch-distilled vodkas made from champagne grapes, golden potatoes, or white corn are everywhere these days, and P. Diddy’s cheese-dick endorsement of Cirôc vodka is enough to make me avoid all vodka like the plague. However, my enthusiasm was restored by the exciting prospect of a blind taste-test of organic vs. imported premium vodkas.

A perfect vodka, they say, is supposed to be colorless and unflavored. Its crisp, clean taste, supposed to be neutral, neither sweet nor bitter, hence why it not only makes the perfect mixer in thousands of cocktails, but more sinisterly, why it’s often the mickey finn of choice. Indeed, visually, it should be indistinguishable from water. [Vodka actually translates as "little water", a description that appears to describe the relative volumes of alcohol and H2O.]

Booze = Impartiality

So, what did we discover in our taste-testing? Well, contrary to popular wisdom, when drunk neat (no ice, no mixer, room temperature) vodka does have noticeable flavor. Not only that, but there is a considerable difference in taste between the organic vodka we tried (Prairie) and its imported, non-organic counterparts: Kettle One, Grey Goose, and Pravda.

The results certainly surprised us as much as the difference in flavors. You may not be able to decipher our notes - the problem with taste testing hard liquor being that it becomes exponentially more difficult to retain one’s impartiality after more than one shot – but we ultimately, and contrary to our thoughts before tasting, found in favor of the expensive, high-end, ultra-premium imported vodkas. That’s not to say that we disliked the domestic organic vodka, but we strongly preferred the Grey Goose and Pravda over it. The latter pair had noticeable aromatic flavors, in both cases not unlike a mildly scented gin, with the Prairie organic being more neutral-tasting and slightly sweet.

Kettle What?
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of our findings was that Kettle One, when drunk neat at room temperature, is rank – bitter, chemically, and somehow oily in taste. Of course, we don’t drink warm, neat vodka very often, so when chilled and mixed with something, this nastiness will no doubt be disguised, but this knowledge has caused us to rethink our “call” vodka when ordering a mixed drink.

Alcohol vs. Therapy
To summarize our tasting, I think it’s worth mentioning that the Prairie vodka seemed to us to be a “better vodka”, in the sense that it was more neutral-tasting, but our general sense was that in the world of vodkas you seem to get what you pay for. The two expensive imported bottles did taste significantly better than the cheaper organic, as well as the cheaper imported variety, so we would recommend that you stump up if you want to drink it neat, or use it in desserts like granita or sorbet. Of course, buying organic domestic vodka is much more environmentally- sound, and since it is still a very nice drink, you could definitely do worse than getting yourself a bottle of Prairie Organic.

On a very personal level, I feel I have overcome most of my erstwhile aversion to vodka, because now that I know and like (the expensive) vodka(s), I understand that it was the filthy ephadrine-laced Red Bull that was so repellent. Perhaps this weekend’s tasting will henceforth be considered a new, or re-, formative experience for me, and I do feel more liberated to have gotten over this particular issue. Who says alcohol is no substitute for therapy?

The Morning After
Inevitably perhaps, after strenuously exerting ourselves tasting numerous vodkas on your behalf, we were both a little shaky the following morning, and what better than a large bloody mary as hair of the dog? Well, as luck would have it, our good friend Heather of Gild the Voodoolily had recently sent us a jar of her homemade organic heirloom tomato bloody mary mix, which when combined with a liberal dose of organic vodka(of course!) - by virtue of its horseradish and hot pepper tang, gave us the sharp kick in the jacksee we needed. Thanks Heather, you, were there for us in our hour of need.

If you’re interested in seeing some videos on “gourmet” drink-making (including a nice one for a Passionfruit and Chili Martini), check it out here.

Even though mulled wine should remind me of being in the church choir as a cherub-faced youngster and singing Christmas carols with frosty breath overlooking a seasonally-decorated nave and a sea of pink-cheeked parishoners, it doesn’t. In spite of this being the way I was introduced to this most famous Yuletide beverage, my abiding memories of it from childhood (before I ever got to drink any, I should mention) are of a warm cinnamon-scented aroma spiked sharply with the acrid tang of disinfectant and the musty odor of old people. And this, perhaps unsurprisingly, had put me off it until comparatively recently.

You see, as part of the church’s annual carol-singing calendar, we choristers had to visit all the hospitals, hospices and senior citizens homes in town, and my sensitive smell-o-memory was scarred for many years by this revolting combination of smells. That was, until I visited a friend in the French city of Lyon around Christmastime a few years back.

As an icy mistral wind blew down the Rhône valley, vin chaud or hot wine was being served out of a deep cauldron to chilled shoppers perusing the seasonal wares of Lyon’s famed Christmas market in Place Carnot. And I found the atmosphere of seasonal bonhomie, red noses, black tobacco, and warm, spicy alcohol irresistible. I’m not sure whether it was the cold, the booze, or the giant cans of duck confit and cassoulet on sale that so moved me, but from that moment on, I have been hooked on mulled wine.

A Brief History of Mulling

In days gone by, wine went bad pretty quickly due to poor bottling techniques, so during the Renaissance period, spices began to be added – as they were to virtually everything else in that time – to both delay spoilage and make spoiled products taste less nasty. And since young wines were commonly bottled during the early fall, mulling (which originally only meant to ruminate or ponder lengthily) was necessary by Yuletide as some were beginning to turn to the dark side, and hence how the consumption of “mulled wine” became a holiday tradition.

The exact combination of spices varies from country to country and person to person, but, on the whole, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and bay are mixed into claret or another Bordeaux to form the basis of flavors. Variations (and there are many) include the addition of mace, juniper, black pepper, dry citrus peel or vanilla, and substitutions include honey or molasses for the sugar, cardamom for the cloves, and brandy, sherry, acquavit, brenivin, fruit wine or vodka for the red wine.

Mulled wine, aka vin chaud, gluhwein, glögg, vin fiert, vin brulé, quentão, is drunk in most European countries in some form or another around Christmas, but it is particularly associated with German and Nordic traditions where so-called “glogg” parties are a holiday season staple. At these shin-digs, the spiced wine is typically drunk with other Yule specialties including gingerbread, blue cheese and, perhaps rather curiously, rice-pudding.

In my house growing up, however, we only ever had mulled wine when we were expecting company because my father, who has something of an intolerant nose for anything strongly perfumed, can’t abide the stuff, and, it being during the early 1980s, it was accompanied by cheese and pineapple cubes on toothpicks, cocktail weenies (chipolatas), factory-made mince pies, and potted shrimp. All of which is perhaps another reason why I didn’t really catch on to the subtle flavors and myriad charms of mulled wine until I’d left home.

But, of course, now that I have, I’m almost obsessed with making it every year, and so impassioned am I about it, that I’ll frequently pour myself a large glass and then go and stand outside in the cold to drink it to try to recreate the Lyonnaise atmosphere of years ago. Of course, it doesn’t work that well, but it beats the shit out of taking my glass and hymn book to a seniors center and evoking older memories…

Happy Boozy Holidays to you all!

Jonny’s Holiday Mulled Wine (serves 6-8)

Ingredients:

• 2 bottles of red wine
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon of cloves
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 star anise
• 4 sticks of cinnamon
• 12 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1/3 cup of orange juice
• peel of 1 orange
• peel of 1 lemon
• 1 orange sliced in 1/4 inch rounds

What to do:

1. Optional: Tie all spices in a piece of cheesecloth using kitchen twine. You can skip this if you’d prefer to laugh at guests with cloves stuck in their teeth.
2. Heat wine in pot gently with spices/sachet and peel until aromas fill the room (at least 15 minutes). Do not boil, only simmer very, very gently.
3. Stir in sugar and orange juice. Taste for sweetness and adjust if necessary.
4. Place orange rounds in mugs and ladle in wine.
5. Stir and serve with a cinnamon stick and enjoy!

These days, it seems something is always the new something else. You know, Thursday’s the new Friday, brown’s the new black, Palin’s the new devil, Obama’s the new Messiah, etc. But to me, for example, comparing the pain and anguish at dragging myself from bed on a Friday morning after a few drinks the night before, to how relaxed and comfy I am sleeping late on a Saturday after the same number of drinks, makes at least some these kind of comparisons not only facile but downright misleading.The simple fact is that everything that’s around today is not somehow a better, newer and shinier version of something that came before. It’s just not true. There are, however, exceptions to this rule: computers are better than they ever have been, and I think, the same can be said of socks. Socks with lycra in them are so much better than those ridiculous, loose bags of yesteryear that never failed to cause blisters, and somehow managed to work their way down your legs and almost off your feet even as you walked around in shoes.

There are some things though, that have always been good, always been recognized as good, even if only by a few, and whose quality has been continuously improved throughout the years in line with improvements in technology and ingredients. Amongst these is the very delectable French aperitif wine, Lillet.

A Long of History
In 1872, the brothers Paul and Raymond Lillet founded their Compagny des Freres Lillet, and though they didn’t sell their first bottle of “Lillet – aperitif de Bordeaux” until 15 years later, it has been flying off the shelves world-wide ever since. The Deuxieme Empire (2nd Empire, 1852-1870) was a great boom time for France both as an importer and exporter of goods, and it was during this period that Bordeaux first led the world in the wine trade. Not only were the techniques of production and bottling of quality wines being revolutionized, but local vintners began blending these wines with a wide variety of exotic spices and other ingredients arriving from the French West Indies, Brazil and West Africa to make all kinds of tonics, liqueurs and aperitifs that quickly became vogue in French cafes.Made from 85% white Bordeaux and 15% fruit liqueurs juices (sweet & bitter oranges) and quinine, Lillet originally had something of a bitter flavor to it and was promoted under the name “Kina Lillet” as a tonic - kina, or kina kina (or chinchona) is a tree native to Peru and quinine is derived from its bark – with the tagline: “…a potent tonic. It can be consumed, for their utmost benefit, by those with a fragile constitution whatever their age.” Indeed, a double-strength quinine version was sold in the French West Indies and United States for a time and drunk by malaria sufferers.

Popularity Through Advertising, James Bond and Quinine
However, Lillet was really advertised until the turn of the century when it really took off in Paris. To this day, there is a considerable trade in the beautiful Art Deco advertising memorabilia produced at this time with venerable Lillet-branded pencils, fans, postcards, thermometers and posters all still changing hands among collectors. Then, as with pastis, the prohibition of absinthe in 1915 helped increase the popularity of Lillet throughout France, but it only really began to gain an international reputation in the interwar period when English drinkers found that when mixed with gin, in place of dry vermouth, it produced a rather toothsome martini.

In fact, though it was subsequently superceded by the rather more prosaic vodka martini (shaken, not stirred), the Kina Lillet martini, as those of you who’ve watched the recent movies Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace will know, was James Bond’s drink of choice. Three parts of Gordon’s gin, one part vodka, and 1/2 measure of Lillet, shaken vigorously with crushed ice and served in a champagne flute with lemon peel, which Bond names “the Vesper” after his love interest at the time.

And, while Bond may have cornered the market in refined style, Lillet blanc (as opposed to Lillet rouge, a sweeter red version, created in 1962) can be enjoyed in different many ways. Straight up over ice with a slice of orange or twist of lemon is very typical and refreshing, but a number of famous cocktails including the zebra square and Edith’s fizz also showcase Lillet’s talents as a mixer. It’s worthwhile noting that during the 1990s Lillet changed its recipe, and in 1997, after 110 years of following the same ratio of ingredients, the amount of quinine was reduced, and almost overnight, it became the number one drink in Parisian restaurant chain L’Ecluse with 12,000 drinks served that year. Anyone who has drunk neat tonic water can figure out why its popularity suddenly exploded.

With the bitter aftertaste reduced the aromas of candied orange, honey and apple come through on the drinker’s palate like never before, and it’s probably no coincidence that even the rugged James Bond has returned to Lillet martinis now they are a little less astringent. But don’t give in to flashy modern advertising and let some buff dude in a tux convince you to try Lillet, engage your thoughts in the drink’s fascinating history, intriguing flavor profile and retro-bottle design, and you’ll quickly see that la plus ca change, la plus reste la meme.

When you think of Brazil what do you think of? Is it the lazy sway of coconut palms, golden beaches, beautiful, bronzed people, a back-drop of Sugar Loaf Mountain, and soundtrack of relaxing bossa nova? Is it a throbbing samba rhythm, huge, garish paper-mache heads, and crowds of people dancing at carnival? Is it the magnificent graceful style of Brazilian soccer players, shimmying around in their famous yellow jerseys? Is it swampy, vibrant, old-growth rainforest echoing with bird and monkey calls, and the slow, muddy peregrinations of the worlds’ longest river? Or is it, perhaps, scenes of horrific murders and kidnappings, grinding poverty and deprivation?

It could well be all of the above. Brazil is the world’s fifth largest country in geographical area and in population, and has staggering diversity in environment, culture, ethnicity, and geography, as well as staggering economic disparity. In fact, some would argue that perhaps the only things that all Brazilians can agree on are the national soccer team and cachaça (pronounced, more or less, Ka-shass-a).

The former represents the country more famously than perhaps any thing else, as Brazil has won the World Cup 5 times - more than any other nation. But, even more famous than their success is their style of play. The free-flowing, wonderfully skillful, attacking game has endeared a Seleçåo not just to their own people but to millions around the world too. The latter, cachaça, the national drink of Brazil, is less widely known to non-Brazilians, but it’s fame too, is increasing through the successful export of the most popular drink made with it, the caipirinha.

And, for me, it’s the style of the drink that I find so attractive. The rawness of the cachaça, the sharp tang of lime, the sweetness of the sugar, the muddling it all together – all these different flavors and textures speak to me of a vibrant, diverse culture that retains a sharp bite. Meaning (literally) “little hillbilly” (the diminutive form of caipira, or redneck), the caipirinha is Brazil’s most popular cocktail, and is drunk on virtually every occasion in bars, restaurants, and in the home. Of course, there are several other ways to enjoy cachaça, which we’ll get on to shortly.

A Little History

But, before that, let’s learn more about cachaça itself. Basically, it’s a spirit distilled from the cane sugar for which “The Brazils” were primary producers of during Portuguese colonialism, being first produced in the town of Sao Vicente in the state of Minas Gerais (north-west of Rio de Janeiro) in the mid-1500s. The name is derived from the word cagaça, a kind of sour ‘beer’ made from fermented cane juice, first brewed by African slaves brought to work on Brazil’s plantations.

By the seventeenth century, its popularity had grown so much and there were so many distilleries in Brazil, that cachaça was officially banned in order that it not compete with imported Portuguese bagaceira, or grappa. However, in 1755, following the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Lisbon, the Portuguese decided to legalise it and tax it, and in fact, much of Lisbon was rebuilt with this cachaça tax.

While cachaça was widely popular, it was not considered to be refined enough for consumption by any but the lowest classes, including slaves, peasants and urban working class. However, these days that has changed dramatically and all classes of Brazilian society consume cachaça with a passion some might call reckless abandon. Indeed, the average annual consumption in Brazil is around 8 liters. That’s 8 liters of forty head-splitting percent alcohol. Of course, there are different grades of cachaca, in the same way that there are better or worse cognacs or whiskeys, and while there are several large producers (Pitu, Cachaça 51) there are many hundreds of artisanal producers also making all kinds of interesting versions that are either mixed with flavorful botanics or aged in barrels made from exotic tropical woods. Much of the former kind is drunk as a caipirinha or one of several other mixed drinks, whereas the artisanal versions are sipped in the same was as scotch or cognac.

Heady Concoctions

Other than the hugely popular caipirinha, other liver-busting cocktails can also be made with cachaça, including: the bombeirinho combining it with red gooseberry syrup in a popular beverage; the caipifruta mixes cachaça with muddled fresh fruits, condensed milk and crushed ice into a refreshing milkshake-type cocktail; and the capeta or capetåo, meaning “devil”, which is a mix of cachaça, vodka, grape or strawberry juice, cinnamon, red wine and sugar, and is usually served hot. The fumes coming of this latter drink must be intense. The name tells you everything you need to know, I guess.

What does cachaça taste like?

Well, since it’s more or less a colorless rum, it tastes like what it is, and even then it doesn’t really have a massive amount of it’s own flavor. Like vodka in that respect really, although perhaps a little sweeter. However, the aged varieties are allegedly as good as a fine brandy and can be enjoyed as a great digestivo after a meal. That said, artisanal cachaça is hard to find in the United States so you’re much more likely to only be able to find the mass-produced brands mentioned above. Do not despair, as these are pretty good in their own right, and given that they are best drunk diluted with lots of lime juice, sugar and, occasionally, soda water, you don’t need to worry about the taste too much. And, if you’re not looking for a drink that’s as cocktail-ish as a caipirinha, then I would also encourage you to try the confusingly-named rabo de galo, (literally tail of cock), which despite its name is just a mixture or equal parts of cachaça and sweet vermouth. This feels like more of an aperitivo and a little less “hectic”.  

Even the name cachaça is exotic and cool-sounding – just rolling it around in your mouth, like most words in Brazilian Portuguese - it sounds soothing and somehow sexy.  Drinking a caipirinha is a similar experience, and they are as much fun to make and pronounce as they are to drink! Saude!