Lockdown recipe diary #7: Windrose

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This is, I think, the most recent recipe I’ve posted so far - it’s a drink I created for the menu at the Last Word in 2019. I remember thinking that I wanted to do something like an equal parts recipe (along the lines of a Corpse Reviver #2 spec, or a Paper Plane), mostly because while the whisky I was using wasn’t inexpensive and that formula allows you to block in less pricey ingredients.

Price wasn’t the only motivating factor - the whisky is also pretty lively and more than capable of coming through against other flavours. On paper, I was aiming for something like:

1 part whisky
1 part citrus
1 part fortified wine / aperitif
1 part sweetener

I was set on making a sour-type drink but I wasn’t particularly interested in doing anything too outlandish here so that would be a straight choice between lemon and lime juice. I settled on ginger wine for the fortified/aperitif slot pretty quickly for more or less the same reasons I’d used it in the Alloway (which I posted about two weeks ago, but had put together something like two years before), and I initially left the sweetener slot open to see what worked. I had that down to a choice between an orange curaçao and a carob liqueur we’d made for the Lucky Liquor Co.

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The curaçao was fine but the carob liqueur made the drink a bit more interesting without distracting too much from the other flavours, but I definitely remember the first version of this didn’t work exactly as I’d have liked. It was a little too heavy and needed some lighter, brighter notes so I decided to tweak the formula a little and bring in a little apple brandy, and ended up with:

Windrose

15 ml / 0.5 oz single malt whisky (Bramble Whisky Co. Glenglassaugh 6 yo)
15 ml / 0.5 oz apple brandy (Somerset 3yo cider brandy)
20 ml / 0.66 oz ginger wine

20 ml / 0.66 oz carob liqueur
20 ml / 0.66 oz lemon juice

Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker, fill it with cubed ice and shake for 10-15 seconds. Fine-strain into a chilled coupe/martini or Nick & Nora glass, and garnish with an apple fan.

It’s often the case that there’s a difference between what you want to do and what works best in the glass and the Windrose is obviously no longer an equal parts recipe. There’s three parts of spirit (split between the whisky and the apple brandy) to two parts of each of the other elements but I think it’s a better drink for having broken with my original intention.

Lockdown recipe diary #5: Alloway, Lochfield & Middlecroft

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While looking through some of the recipes I’d previously posted here, I noticed that a lot of them from before this recent hiatus were entries for cocktail competitions and most of what I’ve been posting in the past few weeks haven’t been. There’s a simple reason for this - I don’t do that many cocktail competitions any more - but the thinking behind that is a little less clear.

At a certain point in my career, I would enter just about every competition I heard about. Sometimes I did pretty well and mostly I didn’t but I got to travel a lot (to….uh, London, mostly), meet lots of fun people, all while picking up useful stuff.

I often tell bartenders I work with that the only thing that really gets you good at creating recipes is creating recipes and competitions are useful because they force you to do something new, and even if you don’t do well, you’ll probably learn something that will help you in some way. It might be a mistake you’ve made that you learn from, a new technique you pick up, some feedback from a judge, or someone else does something cool and you flat out rob the idea.

(A solid 70% of me watching a cocktail comp is that GIF.)

It’s also true that competing carries cost - not just in terms of money and nuts-and-bolts stuff like ingredients and kit and glassware - but also in time. Creating original recipes to a specific brief isn’t usually instantaneous and once that’s done, over time, the idea of taking five or six hours out of a day to actually compete became a less and less attractive way of spending my free time. By the time I moved to Australia in 2013, I’d reached the point where I’d generally only enter a competition if I found the brief more interesting than simply creating a recipe or if I could find a way to make my presentations more interesting than just creating a recipe.

One of the competitions where I found the opportunity to do that was the Chivas Masters in 2017. The brief called for three drinks:

  1. the classic way - “inspired by a classic cocktail from New York, with a nod to Scotland,” made with Chivas Regal 12yo, 18yo or Chivas Extra

  2. the local way - “inspired by your local cocktail scene,” made with Chivas 12yo

  3. the Japanese way - “inspired by the land of the rising sun,” made with Chivas Regal 12yo, 18yo or Chivas Extra

Rather than just presenting three separate drinks, I found it helpful to have a common thread running through all three (besides the whisky, obvs) and that common thread ended up being a shared ingredient - ginger.

I think it was ‘the Japanese way’ that got me there (I mean, I guess? This all happened three years ago). As a noted consumer of bad supermarket sushi, I’m pretty sure I wanted to find a way to use gari - pickled ginger - somewhere in that drink, and I ended up making my own to use as a garnish while using the pickle brine as an ingredient in the drink.

From there, my ‘classic way’ drink was a simple twist on a Bobbie Burns, using ginger wine instead of vermouth. Ginger wine is widely available in the UK, it’s usually really cheap and, as far as we’re concerned, it’s pretty much only a thing for a Whisky Mac (Scotch and ginger wine) which is very much a drink that no-one ever orders. I think it’s an underused cocktail ingredient - it’s a fortified wine but it brings a very different vibe than a vermouth or an Italian-style aperitif would.

For the ‘local way’ serve, I didn’t want to do too much to the ginger but I’ve generally found blending root ginger into water gives a more vibrant flavour than muddling it directly into the drink.

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Alloway - ‘the classic way’

50 ml Chivas Regal 18yo
15 ml Stone’s ginger wine
5 ml Benedictine
1 dash Angostura bitters
1 spray Absinthe (from an atomiser)

Pour the first four ingredients into a mixing glass. Fill with cubed ice and stir for 15-20 seconds.
Using an atomiser, spray the inside of chilled cocktail glass with Absinthe.
Strain the cocktail into the Absinthe-rinsed glass, and garnish with a twist of orange zest.


Lochfield - ‘the local way’

50 ml Chivas Regal 12yo
10 ml ginger juice
15 ml lemon juice
15 ml rosemary syrup
10 ml egg white

Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker. Shake briefly without ice.
Fill the shaker with cubed ice and shake for 10-15 seconds.
Fine-strain into a chilled coupe glass and garnish with a rosemary sprig.

Middlecroft - ‘the Japanese way’

50 ml Chivas Extra
10 ml pickled ginger brine
10 ml sencha tea syrup
1 spray peated single malt whisky (from an atomiser)

Pour the first three ingredients into a mixing glass. Fill with cubed ice and stir for 15-20 seconds.
Using an atomiser, spray the inside of chilled cocktail glass with a peated single malt whisky.
Strain the cocktail into the whisky-rinsed glass, and garnish with a twist of orange zest.

Ginger juice
100 g root ginger
100 g water

Wash, peel and dice the ginger. Put the ginger and water in a blender and blend until ginger is fully broken up. Strain out the solids and transfer to a clean bottle.

Rosemary syrup
2 sprigs rosemary
350 g granulated cane sugar
350 g water

Blanch the rosemary sprigs for 3 seconds in boiling water then transfer them to an ice bath. Remove from the ice and reserve. Combine the water and sugar in a pan and bring to the boil on a medium heat. Add the rosemary sprigs and simmer on medium heat for 5 minutes. Leave to cool. Once cool, remove the rosemary sprigs and transfer to a clean bottle. Yields ~500 ml.

Sencha tea syrup
5 g loose leaf sencha tea
350 g water
350 g granulated cane sugar

Heat water to 80 degrees Celsius and add the tea. Leave to infuse for 3 minutes. Once infused, strain out solids and transfer to a pan. Add the sugar and bring to the boil. Simmer on low heat for 2 minutes, then remove from heat and leave to cool. Once cool, transfer to a clean bottle. Yields ~ 500 ml.

Pickled ginger brine
You can buy gari in jars in an Asian supermarket; if you do, just use the brine from the jar. If you want to make your own, this recipe is the one I used.

Lockdown recipe diary #2: Teller of Tales

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One of the fun parts of my job has been working with really amazing people to do super fun things. One of those amazing people is Georgie Bell, Bacardi’s global scotch whisky ambassador (and Whisky magazine’s 2020 scotch whisky brand ambassador of the year), and one of the super fun things was working with Edinburgh Food Studio to create Craigellachie cocktails to accompany a dinner celebrating Burns’ Night back in January 2019.

Teller of Tales

45 ml / 1.5 oz Craigellachie 13yo
15 ml / 0.5 oz amontillado sherry
15 ml / 0.5 oz Martini Riserva Rubino vermouth
7.5 ml / 0.25 oz Cherry Heering
10 ml / 0.33 oz raisin shrub

Pour all ingredients into a mixing glass. Fill with cubed ice and stir for ~20 seconds.
Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a twist of lemon zest.

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Craigellachie

There’s a great many distilleries that haven’t made a lot of their whisky available under their own name, and Craigellachie was one of them for most of its history.

The distillery was established in 1891 and the house style uses unpeated barley dried using an oil-fired heater, bringing a hint of a smoky, sulphurous note to the whisky.

Raisin shrub

150 g raisins
150 g water
300 g granulated cane sugar
150 g red wine vinegar
75 g balsamic vinegar

Combine raisins and water in a large airtight container and leave for at least 6 hours.
Add sugar and leave for at least 4 hours.
Add red wine vinegar and balsamic vinegar. Stir until sugar is fully dissolved.
Strain out solids and transfer to a clean bottle.
Keep refrigerated.

Yields ~400 ml.

A whole barrel of monkeys

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Incidentally, as part of the above inquiry, experiments were carried out on monkeys. Two were used. The first was made drunk with new whisky and was seen to become quarrelsome, no doubt due to the fusel oil (which was well-known for making men fighting drunk), and the second was intoxicated with 'fine old whisky' with the result that it became 'markedly hilarious', the maturity and the lack of toxic ingredients obviously agreeing with the chimp. Once sobered-up, the experiment was reversed, causing the quarrelsome beast to cheer up somewhat and the contented one to become aggressive. The conclusion drawn was that new or freshly distilled whisky did have an adverse effect, at least on monkeys, and that its storage to allow maturation appeared to be beneficial.


From Bad Whisky: The Scandal That Created The World's Most Successful Spirit, by Edward Burns

 

Road Trip: Balmenach Distillery and Caorunn

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Scotland - and it's likely that I'm not the first person to notice - has a long history of distilling. The obvious product of that history is whisky - single malt or blended - but like any country with that kind of tradition, it's not uncommon for producers to branch out into other spirits. Up and down the length of the country, you'll find vodkas, gins, liqueurs, and much more besides, all produced on scales from a single shop to multi-national distribution runs.

All of this became particularly relevant as I accompanied Andrew Kearns from Monteiths, the winner of the Edinburgh heat of Caorunn Gin's cocktail competition, to the Balmenach distillery in Speyside. We travelled up with the Glasgow party, including regional winner David Smillie from the Blythswood Square Hotel and Caorunn's brand ambassador Ervin Trykowski, and met up with 99 Bar & Kitchen's Mike McGinty and the Aberdeen contingent at the distillery.

The word Speyside should be familiar to anyone with an appreciation of single malt Scotch. Of Scotland's whisky producing regions (the others being Highland, Lowland, Islay, Islands, and Campbeltown), it's home to the greatest number of working distilleries - including those of the world's top selling single malts, the Glenlivet and Glenfiddich.

The Balmenach distillery isn't a new addition to the scene; it was established by James McGregor at some point in the early 19th Century (it's often dated to 1824, when it was officially licensed but it's a fair guess that they'd been producing before then). It remained in family ownership through 1922 before changing hands a number of times through the 20th Century, until it's then-owner, Diageo, opted to mothball the site in 1993. Balmenach was taken over by Inver House in 1997 and production started anew in 1998.

Scotch whisky is, as many spirits are these days, subject to a whole raft of legislation governing what may and may not be used in its production, the method of production, length of maturation, and so on. As far as ageing goes, in order to qualify as a Scotch whisky, it must be barrel aged in Scotland for a minimum of three years and one day. If you wanted to bring a single malt to market, you'd be up against a lot of 10 and 12 year old expressions, so you're looking at a decade before you can bottle something and that's before you consider that the age statement on a bottle of Scotch refers to the youngest whisky in the blend (even for single malt). If you want to compete, then it could be upwards of fifteen years before you have the stock on hand to blend a whisky that you could label as a 10 year old.

Ageing whisky is not a cheap process, and so it makes a lot of sense to use the equipment you've got to make something that you can bring to market a lot sooner than, say, fifteen to twenty years and that means white spirits. In the case of Caorunn, the equipment goes some distance to shaping the product; they found two berry chamber stills -they would have typically been used in the production of perfumes.

Essentially, high-strength spirit is pumped into a vaporiser and turned into vapour. That vapour is channeled into the base of the berry chamber and passes upwards through five perforated drawers which contain a loose mixture of the eleven botanicals. Simon Buley, Caorunn's creator, says that the process differs from that used by other gin producers in that all of the vapour comes into contact with all of the botanicals; there's no other way out of the chamber.

The final product sits somewhere between a traditional style gin and newer, more exotically flavoured efforts. There are six traditional botanicals - juniper, lemon peel, orange peel, coriander seed, angelica, and quassia bark - and five Celtic ones - rowan berry (Caorunn is the Gaelic word for rowan), heather, bog myrtle (also famed as a midge repellent), dandelion, and Coul Blush apple (a local variant bred to survive in the changeable climate of Northern Scotland). It's an interesting product to work with, and we headed back to Grantown-on-Spey to see that demonstrated by the three regional finalists later in the evening. The winner was Mike McGinty from 99 Bar & Kitchen in Aberdeen, with drinks called the Haughs of Cromdale and the Celtic Fizz.

The Haughs of Cromdale

37.5ml Caorunn Gin 12.5ml Costacalda Passito Bianco (sweet dessert wine) 10ml Calvados 20ml lemon juice 15ml homemade apple gomme muddled pink lady apples smoked heather bud in boston shaker

Using a lighter, set a sprig of heather on fire. Hold the tin from a Boston shaker over the sprig to capture the smoke. Muddle the apple in the other part of the shaker and add the other ingredients along with cubed ice. Cap with the smoke-filled shaker and shake. Fine-strain into a chilled red wine glass.

Garnish with a slice of apple and a sprig of heather.

Celtic Fizz

50ml Caorunn 20ml lemon juice 20ml pressed apple juice 15ml homemade spiced apple gimme 1 dash egg white topped with Brewdog Punk IPA

Shake the first five ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled highball glass (straight up). Top with IPA.

Garnish with a single star anise.

Thanks to everyone at Caorunn and 3rdparty for making the trip happen!