Umami Mart

Do you remember my pickle pear liqueur, which turned out to really be called sickle pear liqueur?  Making fruit liquor is pretty easy. In Japan, when green plums (unripened plum) are available in June, many people make their own umeshu (plum wine). I know Mitsuwa market in New Jersey has the whole kit (plum, liquor, […]

Admittedly, I’ve always had a much easier time coming up with cocktails than coming up with names for cocktails. But every now and then, after concocting something I consider worthy of sharing with you all (you should see the pile of cocktail recipes that didn’t make the cut), a fitting name reveals itself without too […]

  For a long time I’ve been hounding my local wine merchant, T.B. Ackerson, to stock some vermouths in order to save me the constant pilgrimage to Manhattan’s Astor Wines, which is one of the few places that stocks a variety of quality vermouths–and I go through a fair amount of vermouth rather quickly.  My neighborhood is sort of up and coming (though […]

New York has always been a great city, but this week its greatness gets bumped up a notch, as the first annual Manhattan Cocktail Classic rolls into town, along with some of the country’s best and brightest mixological minds.  Accurately described as “part fête, part conference, part cocktail party,” it will be a balls-to-the-wall 5-day orgy […]

  It’s that time of year again folks! That’s right, it’s Cinco de Mayo, or as some call it, “Cinco de Drinko,” which is Americans’ favorite Mexican holiday that most Mexicans don’t celebrate. Contrary to popular belief, Cinco de Mayo is not the day of Mexican independence.  That would be September 16.  Rather, Cinco de […]

  Every few years or so it seems the brains of the folks down in Arizona (aka God’s underwear chafe) burst with a brilliant idea that seems to justify the rest of the world’s perception of them as backwards ass, gun-toting, cactus-chewing clodhoppers. In the early 90s they decided they’d rather not recognize the Martin Luther King, […]

  I have yet to come across a cocktail that epitomizes the adjective rustic like the Caipirinha does.  Derived from the Brazilian Portuguese word caipira (meaning “country people”), even the drink’s name references its rustic nature.  Some refer to the Caipirinha as the cousin of the Mojito.  My liquor-warped brain sees it slightly differently. To me […]

  Of all the names one could choose for a cocktail, the Blood and Sand is one of the oddest. It sounds odder when you consider the stuff that goes into the drink–Scotch, cherry liqueur, sweet vermouth, and orange juice, all in equal proportions.  But of the relatively few classic Scotch cocktails out there, the […]

Looking for an angle when writing about a cocktail is for me the most time consuming–and sometimes agonozing–aspect of blogging.  Well, today I’m dispensing with the longwinded introductions about the reasons for talking about a particular cocktail, and instead featuring a cocktail for no reasons other than it’s deliciousness, and the fact that it’s a drink […]

Classic cocktails make frequent appearances here, as dedicated readers are well aware. Since many of you aren’t cocktail geeks like myself, I do my best to keep that in mind when I write, particularly in terms of tone and content—believe me, we can get pretty esoteric if you let us. I’ve also come to realize that some […]