The Pomme Sauvage, made with Pink Lady apple puree and hibiscus syrup. Photo: Ritzy Ryciak
October 2007 | Healthy Living
The 100-Mile Cocktail
These days, it’s all about the homemade, local, organic, artisanal “elixir”
by Amy Pennington
Thought “artisanal” was strictly a term for fancy breads and pedigreed cheeses? Think again. As the local and slow foods ethos takes over the way we eat, consumers are increasingly seeking the best and brightest ingredients and flavors — at the cheese counter, or the local bar.
The popularity of the hundred or so American craft distilleries is on the rise — in part, due to their small-scale, “boutique” appeal. “Oh, it’s a huge trend from Manhattan to San Francisco,” says Matthew B. Rowley, San Diego-based author of the book Moonshine!, which charts the history of fine distilled spirits. “Expect to see home distillers absolutely everywhere you found craft brewing ten years ago.”
Regarded as distilling renegades, these small batch craft makers turn out unique flavors by using infusions during the distilling process. In Portland, Oregon, House Spirits Distillery infuses anise, Indian sasparilla and lavender into their top-selling Aviation Gin. House Spirits’ Lee Medoff says the herbs, sourced locally from Oregon Spice lend Aviation Gin its “heavier, rich and herbal character.”
Up in Maine, the Thibodeau brothers, Don and Lee, are the only known national vodka distillers who oversee the entire vodka production — from planting and harvesting the potatoes on their property, Green Thumb Farms, to bottling the vodka.
Artisanal and organic vodka makers are growing in numbers and momentum. “The craft distilling industry is [still] very tiny at this time, but it has doubled in the last seven years,” says Bill Owens, President of the American Distilling Institute.
Just this summer, Peak Spirits Farm Distillery in Colorado launched their organic vodka, CAPROCK. The vodka joins their initial organic line of peach and pear aperitifs, various eau-de-vies and grappas. The Sunshine Vodka at Vermont’s Green Mountain Distillers is made from grains grown on a family farmer-owned co-op and distilled with local spring water. And at Square One Vodka in Marin County, co-founder Allison Evanow takes sustainability one step further, using easy-to-remove labels made of bamboo, bagasse (a byproduct of sugarcane production) or cotton, so bottles have continued use as vases or home décor. The vodka itself is made from mashed North Dakota organic rye — the byproduct then turned into grain feed for local organic dairy farms.
Month in the Making
While most of these craft distillery gems are available regionally, you need only go as far as your own kitchen to stock up on rare and specialized spirits. Bitters are “easy to make, but hard to make good,” admits Maggie Dutton, blogger for The Wine Offensive — a website billing itself as “the surly, dissonant voice in opposition to the glossy magazine culture of food and the moneyed critocracy of wine.” Dutton is blending her own bitters at home “in a pickle jar with some tea bags and some string.”
Bitters, often used as digestif, are made by dissolving or steeping herbs and citrus in alcohol. With seltzer, they’re the perfect cure for an upset stomach; their flavor can also make or break a classic Manhattan. “I steep flavors in Japanese tea bags because I can take them away or add them when I want, like Ginseng which can’t stay in there steeping the whole three weeks or it will taste awful,” tips Maggie. All the botanicals she uses are sustainably-grown, foraged or organic; many, like the mint and sage, from her own garden.
Alice Waters’ cookbook Chez Panisse Fruit contains a recipe for a bitterish homemade Vin de Pamplemousse — a concoction of white wine, vodka and various citruses and vanilla bean that sits for about a month before it’s ready to serve. Ratafia — a French-born liqueur being billed as “the next Sangria” — is made from fruits, vegetables or herbs steeped a month before serving. Varying in taste from cucumbers to plums, it’s meant to preserve the peak of harvest season in a bottle.
Mix and Mingle
If you’re hopeless in the kitchen, never fear; there’s little doubt your friendly neighborhood mixologist is already hip to this trend.
Take Chicago’s Violet Hour. Visitors to this new Wicker Park addition are confronted with thirty or so blue glass eyedroppers lined up on the back bar — each containing a different tincture. The tinctures — which vary from hickory infusions to Danish liqueur — have an intense flavor without added sugar. It’s a conscious move away from the overly sweet confections of cocktails past. To give their drink menu a sugar-free kick, San Francisco’s Aziza muddles spices like peppercorn or cardamom. And Sambar, an intimate lounge in Seattle, accents their concoctions with the sweet hint of seasonal and rare fruits.
“At the moment I’m having a particularly good time with pineapple guava [or Feijoa],” says Sara Naftaly, co-owner and head mixologist at Sambar, of her recent experimentation with a fruit native to South America. “It’s a combination of floral and fruit with a bubble gum aroma and I’m very excited about it.” So excited that she actually planted a pineapple-gauva tree in her own backyard with the hopes of sourcing the fruit locally someday. Sambar also features flavor-scented sugars and often muddles hard Washington fruits, like apples and pears, for their patrons.
Cocktails have officially grown up. “As people are becoming more and more involved with what they are eating and where it’s coming from, there is more interest in organic farming and how animals are raised and kept,” concludes Moonshine’s Rowley. “An extension of this has gone into spirits. People are coming from a [foodie] angle where they want to eat and drink interesting things.”
We’ll toast to that.
Amy Pennington is a food writer and vegetable gardener in Seattle. Her favorite cocktail is a gin martini. Up, with an olive.
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