Umami Mart

To heart shaped leaves, Winning personal bets, And faring as well as you this season! – Graeme Robert Jamieson An atmosphere of falling leaves, frosted breathe, houndstooth warmth, and hearty meals demands a cocktail that fits the mood. One’s cocktail should change with the seasons. This is really intuitive because similar to food, a cocktail […]

“Idle hands are the Devil’s tools.” -Some historic hotard It’s a rare thing for me to have down time these days, but after a very frenzied summer, I’ve stumbled upon a bit of unstructured time which quite frankly scares me. Naturally, I found a way to get into some trouble. Today’s cocktail, which I call […]

  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 […]

  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 […]

In the world of mixology, there aren’t many cocktails based on Cognac relative to the other spirits.  I can count less than twenty old recipes off the top of my head, which is really not much, considering a quarter are mere variations of each other, and another quarter or so share the stage with other […]

There’s no two ways about it, I likes me a good Manhattan. I likes me one any time of year really, but I especially likes me one during fall. There’s something about the bracing combination of whiskey and sweet vermouth that warms my soul and embraces my palate like a hug from a fond, familiar […]

“A good Sherris-Sack…ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the foolish, and dull, and crudy vapours which environ it, makes it apprehensive, quick, inventive, full of nimble, fiery and delectable shape, which delivered o’er to the voice which is the birth, becomes excellent wit.”–Shakespeare’s Falstaff It would come as a great surprise to […]

Today’s Happy Hour is the last stop on the Scotch Express. If this is your first time checking in or haven’t been around in a while, we’ve been in full-Scotch mode the last several weeks, sharing numerous classic-yet-unsung Scotch cocktails (by classic I mean recipes that are at least 80 years old). This week’s cocktail […]

It’s Happy Hour once again, and classic Scotch cocktails are in effect as they have been over the past few weeks. Why have I been focusing so much on Scotch lately you ask? Well, firstly, because I enjoy the spirit a whole lot. Besides that, I realized reason alone could not dissuade the purists who […]