Twenty Six: Federação

We've been experiencing a small technical issue, so bear with us. We're trying to find a way to kick off another post about cachaca and, of course, the obvious thing to do is make a joke about Brazil's notable exports - sugar, bikini waxes, footballing humiliation - and follow the punchline with the words "and now there's one more: cachaca." The problem is 1) doing this in a slightly less clichéd manner, and 2) without sounding like a total prick. Don't worry, we've got the guys from Grammar & Syntax doing their thing and we can get things kicked off in just...a couple...of...

...And now there's one more: cachaca.

There are aspects of the spirit that are still to be fully revealed to markets outside of Brazil and while some varieties are available in the UK, I suspect that aged cachacas are one of those categories. Abelha Gold is aged for three years in small barrels made from garapeira - a Brazilian hardwood - which gives the liquid a fantastic golden amber colour. The aroma is reminiscent of an anejo tequila - the vegetal notes are less pronounced, with hints of vanilla, cinnamon and caramel. It's a proper grown-up spirit with a great range of flavour. Being honest, it's the first aged cachaca I've spent much time with, but it's made me eager to try more.

Federação

50ml Abelha Gold Cachaça
2 barspoons sugar cane syrup
1 dash Peychaud's Bitters
15ml pressed apple juice

Place the bitters and syrup in the base of a rocks/old-fashioned glass. Add a couple of ice cubes and stir to thin out the mixture. Add the cachaca, fill the glass with ice and stir. Float the apple juice and garnish with an apple fan.

Twenty Four & Twenty Five: Colisão & Plantação

I've been thinking a lot about cachaca recently. This is not unconnected to receiving a couple of samples from Anthony at Abelha Cachaca the other day. It might be the third most popular spirit in the world, but cachaca is in pretty similar position to that of vodka in the 1950s/60s - there is a global awareness of the product, but the majority of the spirit produced is not exported and it hasn't quite hit the mainstream in the export markets yet. Wikipedia suggests that only 1% of the 1.3 billion litres of cachaca produced annually are exported. While the availability of cachaca outside of Brazil is on the increase, we're still at the stage where there are only a handful of notable brands - Sagatiba, Germana, Ypioca, to name three. This is probably an excellent time to launch an organic, artesanal brand into the UK market. But I tend to be pretty busy most days, what with the working and the not working and the sleeping and the not going to Tales of the Cocktail, so it's helpful that Abelha have been bringing some over for a couple of months now. Both expressions are small batch, artesanal (pot-distilled, as opposed to the column distilled "industrial" style) cachacas - the Silver is unaged while the Gold is aged for three years in small (250ltr) Brazillian hardwood barrels.

I'll write about the Gold in more depth tomorrow, but I was completely blown away by the Silver. On the nose it has those familiar vegetal notes that come with cachacas and rhums agricole, but it also has a pleasant honey scent with a touch of citrus to it. The mouth feel is great - a slightly viscous texture, with a strong finish but without chemical burn of column-still spirit. Esquire just listed Abelha as one of its top three cachacas, but I'm not sure if you need the other two.

Unfortunately, the sampler I got wasn't big enough to try in some spirit/mixer combos, but there was just enough to make up a couple of cocktails.

The first thing I did was based around the other classic cachaca cocktail, the Batida. It's the Caipirinha's longer, more laid back cousin and totally deserving of some of the love thrown at the little peasant drink. I ended up crossbreeding it with a Smash, with the intention of coming up with something fruity for summer.

Colisão

45ml Abelha Silver Cachaca
25ml freshly squeezed red grapefruit juice
25ml pineapple juice
6-8 mint leaves

Shake all the ingredients with ice and strain into an old-fashioned/rocks glass over crushed ice. Feel free to add a touch of gomme/simple syrup into the shaker to taste. Garnish with a grapefruit slice and a mint sprig.

After that, I decided to go old-school. Cachaca tends to be used in caipirinhas and long punch-style drinks and not a lot else, but the Abelha Silver struck me as something that would work really well as an alternative to a white rum. So, I went with a simple mod of a daiquiri.

Plantação

50ml Abelha Silver Cachaca
25ml freshly squeezed lime juice
10ml sugar cane syrup
1 barspoon Maraschino

Shake all ingredients with ice and fine-strain into a chilled martini/coupette glass. Twist a lime zest over the top and discard. Garnish with a cocktail cherry.

And tomorrow? Tomorrow, I'm getting to know the Abelha Gold.

Twenty Three: Reina Amargo

We are on the edge of a great moment in British history. We are in sight of the point at which the great British public see tequila as something other than a shot or a frozen margarita. My friends, the road to that point will be long and hard, but with courage, strength and resolve, we can make this dream our new reality.

Reina Amargo

50ml José Cuervo Tradicional
25ml lime juice
1 barspoon Campari
2 barspoons honey

Shake all ingredients with ice and fine-strain into chilled martini glass. 

Twenty Two: Twice-Shy Negroni

I've been using a bottle of Punt E Mes as my go-to sweet vermouth for a good while now. I'm a big fan of the bitter note it brings to drinks, but I've been predominantly using it as a generic sweet vermouth which has slightly warped my expectations of certain drinks at the bitter end of the scale. Case in point: the Negroni. When I have one in a bar, I can notice the absence of the extra bitterness provided by the Punt E Mes and it takes me an instant to remember that it's my Negronis that are slightly out of whack, not the one I've just bought.

But then it also occurs to me that bitter is a very divisive flavor, and that if I can up the bitter content of a Negroni, surely it's possible to mellow it out a little.

Twice-Shy Negroni

45ml Plymouth Gin
30ml Martini Rosato
4 mint leaves
50ml Campari (in an atomizer)

Give the mint leaves a quick smack to wake them up and place them in the base of a mixing glass. Add the gin and vermouth and stir with ice. Strain into an ice-filled old-fashioned glass. Spray some Campari over the top and garnish with an orange zest and a mint sprig.

Twenty One: Blackberry

If David Embury is to be believed, mixed drinks fall roughly into two categories - cocktails of the sour type, and those of the aromatic type. The former covers drinks that include - surprise! - a sour element like lemon or lime juice while the latter comprises recipes with some kind of aromatized or fortified wine component, such as vermouth. But I don't think that these two categories have to be mutually exclusive. I don't mean drinks that contain both aromatic elements and sour elements - there are some, most notably the Corpse Reviver - more I think that it is often possible to present both a sour version and an aromatic version of the same drink. There will be differences in the two versions of the drink, but the overall flavor profile will pretty much the same.

I'm going to use a Bramble to illustrate the point. It's a gin-based drink invented by Dick Bradsell in London in the early part of the 1980s.

Bramble

45ml gin
25ml lemon juice
10ml gomme syrup
15ml Creme de Mure

Stir the first three ingredients with crushed ice in an old-fashioned glass. Float the Creme de Mure and garnish with a lemon wedge and a couple of blackberries.

*** 

The thing with sour drinks is that they're not actually sour. It's all about that balance between sweet and sour, finding that spot between zingy and refreshing, and avoiding gum-sucking acidity. The immediate hit is something that is going to be lost in the aromatic version, but that doesn't mean that we're going to lose the citrus notes entirely.

Blackberry

50ml gin
15ml dry vermouth
10ml Limoncello
4 kaffir lime leaves
15ml Creme de Mure

Stir the first three ingredients with cubed ice in an old-fashioned glass. Float the Creme de Mure and garnish with a blackberry and a lime leaf.

*** 

And there we go - complementary sour and aromatic cocktails based on a single flavour profile.