posted on 19 June 2009 by tony
I would say it’s likely most folk don’t know about St. George Spirits, even if they’ve sampled their wares. This stems from the fact that St. George doesn’t put their name on a lot of their spirits, instead having various lines of product under different handles. You’ve most likely heard of Hangar One Vodka, arguably the most successful brand they’ve launched. The brand they use to market the liqueurs and eaux de vie, Aqua Perfecta, is much less known. I am going to attempt to fix that. First though, I must give you the requisite background information.
Somewhere in the realm on two decades ago, a youth named Jörg Rupf, hailing from a long line of Black Forest distillers, arrived in the Bay Area of California. Loving the area, he quickly began distilling eaux de vie and showing Americans exactly how it could be done. Sourcing his fruit from up and down the West Coast, Mr. Rupf is able to ensure he is always getting the highest quality ingredients year after year. With a line of products that include vodka, whiskey and a few liqueurs in addition to the eaux de vies, St. George Spirits is one of the best American distilleries out there. Their framboise liqueur is no exception to their standard of excellence.
This liqueur pours a bit viscous, and a particularly dark red. The nose is crazy with raspberries and maybe just a hint of grape. All it takes is one sip to see what’s going on here. It’s essentially an explosion of raspberry juice in your mouth. Sweet, but not sticky, and dry, but not bone dry. The finish is long and smooth, with no alcohol burn to speak of, even though this particular bottle is a respectable 40 proof.
It goes without saying that if you’re eating chocolate and want to pair a liqueur, this is the way to go. I would also advise pouring it over ice cream, waffles or anything else that generally has a syrup added to it. You may also wish to add this spirit to your list of seduction materials, because pouring this on any date is going to increase your chance of closing the deal significantly. Aqua Perfecta is a playful drink for serious drinkers my friends. Don’t miss out on it.
-Out.
Tags: eaux de vie, framboise, ice cream, liqueur, reviews
Category: Spirit Reviews | Comments (1)
posted on 4 June 2009 by tony
Gin and I had a rocky relationship for a very long time. The first time I drank it, at the tender age of (information deleted), we kicked it plastic jug style. Now, as anyone who drinks gin knows, good gin is great, but bad gin is like drinking death. Sadly, when I was a novice, I thought bad gin was representative of all gin. This led me to avoid the spirit for years. However, in the last two years I’ve learned to appreciate and in fact love gin for all that it can be. I like to think that notion is captured in Whitley Neill.
Whitley Neill is a relatively young gin, having only first hit the scene in 2 double aught 4. Inspired by the botanicals of South Africa (you may have read my review of Amarula Cream, also South African in origin), it is a traditional London Dry. London Drys, instead of being what are essentially juniper flavored vodkas, are distilled using various botanicals for aroma and flavor. Whitley Neill adds the essential oils from nine separate botanicals to their copper pot still during the distillation process to give the product it’s unique flavor. I had thought the list would be difficult to unearth, but a little searching led me to the following list: baobab fruit, cape gooseberries, juniper berries, coriander seeds, lemon peel, orange peel, angelica root, cassia bark and orris root powder. These various ingredients are drawn from the world over to produce what we’re drinking today.
Whitley Neill presents a lot of juniper and citrus in the nose, not presenting a lot of alcohol. The flavor profile follows suit, with an even more pronounced citrus taste with a generous taste of juniper in the back end. The finish is smooth, with no real alcohol burn to speak of. Speaking from experience, I will tell you that Whitley Neill makes a serious gin and tonic. I personally believe that this could be the next big gin, following in the foot steps of Hendricks’s. You know what, I’m calling it now. You heard it here first. Whitley Neill is going to be huge. Buy it and try it. You’ll see.
-Out.
Tags: botanical, gin, reviews, south africa
Category: Spirit Reviews | Comments (3)
posted on 3 June 2009 by dan
Dig DrinkBoston’s article on guilty-pleasure cocktails. Good, good stuff, especially the bit where Lauren invites us to stand up and admit to the cocktails we drank to cut our teeth. She goes 1st, offers up Bombay Sapphire dirty martinis. Word. Okay. I remember the first sip of a dirty martini, having ordered one wholly unaware of what “dirty” might mean. And I wasn’t down with olives at the time.
I guess we’ll go 2nd then (or, 47th really, since there’s a whole bunch of comments on the article by now).
Tony and I used to have these theme days, wherein we’d get down with a bunch of drinks revolving around (can you guess?) a particular theme. Our favorite theme? “Girly drinks,” after which we decided that the phrase “girly drinks,” aside from being wildly sexist, is unfair and inaccurate to both women and booze. It takes the most masculine of men to order a Cosmo in a crowded bar. And y’know, frankly, some of our favorite cocktails are fruity and funny colors. That’s just how we go about things. In point of fact, Tony just read over this post so far and told me, “My favorite cocktail color is bright blue.” Then he thought for a second. “Or bourbon-brown.” Sounds about right.
So, anyway… I refuse to talk about guilty pleasures. The cocktails we used to drink? Used to and still do… and I’m damn proud of it. Say it with me now…
But wait! there’s more! Lauren goes on to shout-out her pre-Sapph. days, AKA the days when she wanted to booze but not actually taste booze, AKA the dairy cocktail days, AKA the White Russian and Mudslide days. She calls them boozey milkshakes, which we can dig; another of our themes was, in fact, boozey milkshakes. Real milkshakes. If you’re ever looking for a cocktail for the summer afternoons, get at Tony for our Faretti milkshake recipe, Faretti being an Italian biscotti liqueur. Yeah, biscotti, as in, the cookie.
Just don’t overdo ‘em - we had stomachaches for days.
dJp
oh, also: I just got my own stupid little pun up in the post heading.
Tags: boozey milkshakes, Cosmo, dirty martini, DrinkBoston, Faretti
Category: Spirit Reviews | Comments (3)
posted on 28 May 2009 by tony
What is rum? Ostensibly, it is a spirit distilled from sugarcane by-products, such as molasses. But what is the spirit of rum? Is it that of Hemingway, sitting on a beach, guzzling Cuba Libre after Cuba Libre, staring down the barrel of a shotgun, never knowing years later he would finally pull the trigger in the blasted lands of Idaho? Perhaps the spirit of rum lives in the urban hipster, sipping a mojito and trying to forget how to smile. Maybe it’s all of those things. Maybe it’s none. I do know this however: rum has suffered a bad rap through the years. It is viewed as a party spirit, more built for mixing than for sipping and enjoying. This perception has started to recede in recent times, with fine rums finally being seen in bars and on shelves in stores. Today we discuss quite possibly my favorite rum, Ron Matusalem Gran Reserva.
In the early 1870’s a pair of brothers set sail from Spain to Cuba to establish a rum distillery. Utilizing a closely guarded recipe in combination with the Solera system of blending, Benjamin and Eduardo Camp partnered with Evaristo Álvarez to create the Matusalem brand in 1872. They derived the name from the Spanish proverb ” Esto es mas viejo que Matusalem”, which translates to “It’s older than Methuselah.”
Over the next nintey years, the Matusalem brand grew as Cuban rum gained popularity throughout the world. However, in the early 1960’s, after the family was forced to flee Cuba, the brand began to fragment and stagnate. It wasn’t until the mid 90’s, after a furious legal battle, that the current head of the family, Dr. Claudio Álvarez Salazar, was able to begin re-establishing Matusalem as both a quality spirit and worldwide brand. Today, from the Dominican, using the old Cuban recipe, they are once again putting out fantastic rum.
After all that rambling, I will talk about the Matusalem 15 year Gran Reserva.
Matusalem 15 is aged in French oak casks and blended using the Spanish Solera system. It pours a lovely honey color, with notes of molasses, vanilla and caramel in the nose. The taste is incredibly mellow, bringing more of the vanilla and caramel to the table, with nearly no burn on the backend. A perfect sipping rum, Matusalem also makes the best Dark & Stormy you will ever taste. This is one of the best examples of a high end rum I have ever encountered, easily being in the head of the pack of the sipping rum world. As rum continues to garner respect in the spirits community, Matusalem will almost certainly be at the forefront of the movement.
-Out.
Tags: cuba, reviews, rum, solera, the dominican
Category: Spirit Reviews | Comments (1)
posted on 22 April 2009 by tony
There once was a Scotsman named William Laird who adopted New Jersey as his home. Rumor has it that as early as 1698 he was producing Applejack in Monmouth County, New Jersey. From that moment on, the Laird family has been making Applejack, and a variety of other apple brandies, which I feel are on par with any Calvados. This beverage is steeped in history and legend, having been enjoyed by any number of great people throughout history. George Washington himself requested the Laird family recipe in 1760, and Lincoln was known to serve it as his saloon in Illinois for a whopping twelve cents a half pint, fully half the charge of a full three meals.
Applejack derives it’s name from a freeze distillation process called “jacking”. Apple juice is fermented, and then left to freeze. Since alcohol freezes at a lower temperature than water, the water will freeze first. You then remove the ice that has formed, and you’re left with a concentrated form of the alcohol. Do this enough times, and you are left with the apple equivalent of moonshine. The spirit isn’t going to taste the best, laced with impurities as it is, but you’ll have made yourself a rough approximation of the original Applejack from the early 1700’s. Today Applejack is produced in a more modern style, in a pot still with a rectifying column. Furthermore, the product known as Applejack is not pure apple brandy, but a mixture of 35% apple brandy and 65% neutral grain spirits. The Laird family produces several other products which are 100% apple brandy, but Applejack is the most well known.
While a number of classic cocktails call for Applejack, I will, as always, drink it straight for this review. It’s a little lighter than whiskey, looking quite a bit like the apple juice it was born from. The nose is very heavy with alcohol, but apple definitely shines through. Before I describe the taste, I will say I’m a bit biased towards this spirit. I have been in love with Applejack for years now, and I think everyone should drink it. Anyway, here goes. It’s taste, like it’s color, is fairly reminiscent of whiskey, just heavily tinged with apple. Once the initial alcohol dissipates, you’re left with an after taste that is almost purely apple, with a pleasant burn accompanying the taste. I can’t say there’s a lot of heat coming back up either. Applejack drinks smooth straight, and is also a serious mixer. Some of the first cocktails were made with this stuff, and it can be subbed in for whiskey in a number of others.
Well, that’s that. Applejack gets my vote every time. Grab a bottle of it and give it a go round. There is some fascinating reading on the spirit, and if you swing by shop I’ll tell you a story or two. If you’re curious, take a look at the recipe for the Widow’s Kick, which will get you well on your way to making drinks with the oldest of American spirits.
-Out.
Tags: applejack, calvados, reviews
Category: Spirit Reviews | Comments (1)
