The Advocate Cocktail Series #6: American Werewolf
American Werewolf
Each year when quince comes into season, we order a case and make syrup for one of our favorite spring drinks at Comal, the Quince Essential, and every year we never make enough. By the time we’re ready for another batch, the window for fresh quince has closed, and we’re forced to shuffle the menu and wait for next year. This time I planned ahead and ordered two cases, which in retrospect may have been a bit much. The end result was 60 liters of quince syrup that would last us through the dog days of summer, when berries and stone fruit abound. Bringing half to the Advocate was more of a house-keeping decision than shrewd menu planning. Joanna, Comal’s bar lead, emerged from the walk-in refrigerator one day, handed me a large container of quince syrup on my way out the door, and said something to the effect of: “here, get this out of my way and use it for something.”
Always up for a challenge, I began to think about gin, and the limitations one runs into when only using rum or agave spirits in cocktails. The Advocate doesn’t face these obstacles, and I remembered wanting to try a botanical spin on Comal’s smokey, spicy, quince cocktail with gin and Chartreuse: basically a locally-sourced, seasonal Last Word.
Tarragon always infuses nicely into gin, and adds a slight anise flavor, offsetting the floral notes provided by Meyer lemon juice - we substituted Meyers for the usual Lisbon lemons called for in a traditional Last Word cocktail as they are currently in season, locally abundant, and delicious. The quince syrup lends depth to the cocktail, providing warmth and roundness, with a touch of earth and spice to ground the high-toned accents of herb and citrus.
When considering the predominant flavors of a fruit as subtle as quince, I reconsidered it’s earthiness as it relates to terroir. The drink already included locally-sourced ingredients, so it made sense to try it with a gin made from locally-sourced botanicals-and it worked. Lance Winters from St. George spirits got the idea for his Terroir gin from numerous hikes in the East Bay hills - an epiphany I can relate to as Comal’s redwood bough-infused rum cocktail was devised on those same trails. The distinct smell of bay laurel, eucalyptus and redwood is one of those childhood olfactory imprints so vivid it can transport me to a place in time in an instant. Tasting Lance’s gin is the closest liquid approximation to these memories and I love it. Countless batches in, he still harvests fresh bay laurel, along with other botanicals, from Mt. Tam himself - as much hands-on quality control as an excuse to get out of the office.
Chartreuse is one of those irreplaceable cocktail crutches every bartender uses because it’s impossible to replicate, and lends itself so well to anything herbal or botanical. And while much has been written about its ancient recipe made by monks sworn to secrecy, or that the liqueur predates the color it’s named after, I’m more impressed by its irreplaceable flavor and myriad uses. Much like Campari, Heinz Ketchup or an Oscar Meyer hot dog, you almost don’t want to know the complete recipe because attempting to create that exact flavor is a fool’s errand - I’ve tried. Chartreuse is best utilized as a flavor bridge: connecting fruit, spice, citrus and heat in such a way that the individual elements can’t be discerned immediately, but leaves the palate guessing as the drink hits all corners of the taste spectrum. What makes the Last Word a modern classic is its simplicity of build compared to its intricacies of flavor; our locally sourced, seasonal derivation aims to be just that, simple, nuanced, and most importantly delicious.
Matthew McKinley Campbell
The Advocate Cocktail Series #5: Sopchoppy Sling
Sopchoppy Sling
Sugar is a polarizing commodity these days, and those of us behind bars are increasingly getting calls for cocktails devoid of any sweetening agent; which is akin to asking a chef for a really nice steak with no salt. As bartenders continue to focus on craft spirits, local produce and house-made ingredients in their drinks, they’ve become equally concerned with what is used to balance out these flavors, what actually makes a cocktail a cocktail by definition: the sweet stuff. When Chef Joe brought in a sample of his family’s cane syrup, pressed and kettle cooked from raw cane in the Florida panhandle (in Sopchoppy, to be exact), I’ve never seen a group of bartenders “ooh” and “aah” over something so delicious, yet would send your average Atkins dieter into an impromptu juice cleanse.
The flavor of Mt. Beasor Farm’s cane syrup is akin to roasted agave: earthly, vegetal, rich and unlike any cane syrup I’ve tasted from St. Barts to Brazil - it’s decidedly down home. The challenge in creating a cocktail to showcase such beautiful, subtle flavors, is of course to not overshadow them with layers of needless ingredients. A lime driven, caipirinha-styled cocktail seemed the best way to accent Mt. Beasor’s labor of love as both cachaça and cane syrup are made from pressing raw cane into juice once a year, at peak ripeness. While rum is made from molasses, a byproduct of manufacturing sugar, whole pressed cane spirits like agricole or cachaça convey the unique flavors of the environment where the cane was grown, ensuring no two are exactly alike. Avua cachaça is made four hours from Rio in the south of Brazil and smells unmistakably of bananas: waxy and green, with a touch of sweetness. In order to amplify the nose of the spirit, and tie into the terroir of the cane syrup, we chose a French-made liqueur of Brazilian bananas and spiked it with coconut to round out the tropical undertones.
At this point I realized we were one step away from an electric-colored frozen beach beverage a la the Piña Colada, but didn’t want to go full blown tiki as once again the aim was to let the cane flavor shine through. Since opening the Advocate in August, we’ve been sitting on a lemon verbena infusion from GM Corin’s backyard that never found a home on the initial drink menu, and this seemed the perfect place to insert an herbal component to balance out the predominating fruit flavors. Slightly bitter, but overwhelmingly bright at the forefront, verbena provided the perfect compliment for the sweet, mellow flavors of banana and coconut.
The result is a cocktail that passed our time-honored test for quaffability with flying colors: namely, could you easily down it in one go if you were about to miss your train? Tart lime and rich, earthy syrup balance the initial attack of un-aged sugar cane spirit, giving way to softer notes of tropical fruit through the mid palate, all tied together nicely by the bright herbal bitterness of verbena to finish.
Matthew McKinley Campbell
Advocate Cocktail Series #4: Calle Ocho (Trending Up)
This week, as we prepare for the new year while simultaneously getting bombarded by 2015 round-ups and “best ofs”, I’ve been contemplating why we feel the need to distill an entire year into a few bullet points that will inevitably define much of what we remember. The only conclusion I could draw was that it creates a mental bookmark, so in twenty years when we see someone drinking a mezcal margarita with half of their head shaved we can remark “that’s so 2015”.
I recently read an article highlighting 6 predicted cocktail trends of 2016; and while I put little stock in gazing into a crystal ball, two of the six jumped out as they pertain directly to our NYE cocktail, the Calle Ocho. Obscure Mexican spirits, and a re-embracing of mainstream liquors are apparently on bartenders’ minds for the coming year, and I am delighted. It used to be that, when creating a cocktail menu, bartenders would include one outlier, the weird drink designed solely for the 400 level imbiber. We’re now in a time when the mezcal offering on our menu outsells its vodka counterpart three to one, and my dad is ordering bacanora old fashioneds when we go out. We have officially embraced agave nationwide, and it transcends just those in the know with ironic mustaches and vintage suspenders.
At some point along the way, as folks began to take cocktails seriously, the cosmo became uncool, and with it went Midori melon liqueur, St. Germain and pretty much anything blue. St. Germain is an elderflower cordial that has been called “bartender’s ketchup” as you can pour it on anything and generally make it taste better. Despite its detractors, I have made a point to proudly display it on menus throughout its prolonged period of uncoolness; and this is by no means a subtle dig at cocktail snobbery - I just think it’s delicious. If the cocktail crystal ball is right, 2016 should be a fun year; I look forward to less obscure, herbal bitters and more approachable, delicious drinks.
The Calle Ocho was originally created for the brunch menu as the lone sparkling offering, but we always had plans to bring it into the dinner rotation, and New Year’s Eve seemed like the perfect time to drop it as both occasions call for bubbles. Another trend we saw gain steam this year was a return to classics and riffs on long-standing recipes. The Calle Ocho is just that: built on the platform of an Old Cuban cocktail comprised of rum, mint, lime, sugar, bitters and sparkling wine - simply substituting a blend of mezcal and elderflower for rum and adding ginger for brightness. The drink takes its name from a Miami neighborhood dubbed “Little Havana”, paying homage to its classic cocktail origin. This New Year’s Eve, whether reflecting back or looking forward, come raise a Calle Ocho with us and toast to 2015.
Matthew McKinley Campbell
Advocate Cocktail Series #3: The Ashby Swizzle (Pirates Make Bad Record Keepers)
The history of cocktails is not surprisingly an oral tradition as it’s hard to find someone to take good notes in a bar. Stories are told, and then retold over a few Mai Tais, and undoubtedly multiple versions surface over the years. The first time I had a rum swizzle I asked my colleague as to its origin and was told: “It’s a tiki drink on crushed ice with rum and citrus, I think they stir it with a tree branch.” Good enough for me, no need to fact check.
After serving various iterations of the drink for 6 years, I finally got curious enough to ask Google and was instantly comforted in the sheer vagueness of its history - the only commonalities amongst the stories were rum, lime, sugar, ice and the swizzle stick. This is exactly why I like ramen, it’s a basic platform for endless creativity - and the base is delicious. Swizzles have become my avenue for guilty pleasure ingredients and substitute for a frozen daiquiri machine, so it was hard to envision an opening cocktail menu for the Advocate without including our take on an island favorite.
The Ashby Swizzle is one of the few drinks we’ve come up with that had a name before a recipe; all that had been decided on was ice and glassware. In thinking about how the Comal Swizzle had become so popular, it was clear that enough tropical fruit and crushed ice makes for an instant beach vacation, and people like vacations. That formula, however, seemed better suited for a sunny day on the back patio at Comal than inside what was once an auto body shop. Rather than concocting a tropical fruit smoothie, we chose to highlight the spirits and provide tiki accents without a lot of filler. I had used Banks’ 5-island Rum years earlier in a drink and remembered it having a distinct rosemary quality I thought would pair well with gin. When Anchor distillery brought us a sample of their sweeter-style Old Tom Gin I realized the connection and went to work creating a backbone. Lime, grapefruit and some spiced nut combination was a way to avoid tropical fruit while still conveying those flavors, the last proving the most difficult. After multiple failures at making pistachio orgeat we decided an about face was necessary and chose to infuse the toasted pistachios into Falernum, a liquor from Barbados made of sugar cane and clove.
It’s usually at this point in a drink’s development that I retreat back to Google and ask if it’s been done before. Upon entering ‘old tom swizzle’, up popped the Press Gang, circa 1838, from the good folks at Imbibe. The commonalities between the two recipes were eerie, but we had taken a different direction in both our choice of rum and ineptitude at making really good orgeat. The most interesting detail gleaned in my attempt to avoid plagiarism is the origin of the drink’s name: a press gang was a term for a captured sailor forced to work on a pirate ship - which sounds like the worst way to end your Carnival cruise to the Bahamas, unless they pay you in swizzles.
Matthew McKinley Campbell
Advocate Cocktail Series #2: Cool Runnings (On the Unintended Benefits of Good Fats)
Cocktails that wind up on our menu take shape in many ways, but they all begin as an idea, often a question: “would these two ingredients work together?” , “Can I make an alcoholic version of my favorite taco?”, or most often, ‘What do you think will happen when I do this?”. The element of uncertainty makes drink development around here really fun as we’re never completely sure what the end result of our curiosity will be, and how the finished product will ultimately taste. I’d love to say every hair-brained idea we’ve had was a home run, and that we “totally knew that was going to happen”; but in the end we’re just overly inquisitive, grown-up boy scouts playing with fire and knives, and booze.
I’ve never been sold on the idea of cocktail and food pairings, but believe drinks should be designed with consideration to the space they’re to be enjoyed in. An extensive back patio and beer garden, coupled with the three sunniest years I’ve seen in my lifetime, have influenced the style of cocktail I imagine when creating drinks for Comal. Bartending outdoors in a beautiful setting year-round can make it easy to endlessly crave a beach vacation in a glass full of crushed ice, bright colors and tropical flavors. When writing the opening menu for the Advocate, I had planned our rum cocktail to be another toes-in-the-sand, guilty pleasure concoction along similar lines. Yet after touring what was to become our new home during construction, I quickly realized a pint-sized glass of tiki didn’t make much sense given the setting. About the only things that has remained constant in the Cool Runnings from the first day of R&D to opening night are the predominant flavors: strawberry, coconut and lime: a timeless combination. Aside from reevaluating the format and size of the cocktail I had envisioned in my head months earlier, I knew the flavors would have to be introduced through more subtle means to accommodate a smaller format.
What make beach drinks so fun to create, and imbibe, is their almost infinite potential for incorporating multiple flavors given the size of the glass and promise of snow-cone-quick dilution. This is also the reason most island cocktails typically lack subtlety and can border on a Bourbon Street booze Slurpee. Once the decision was made to build the Cool Runnings as a traditional rum daiquiri rather than a swizzle, we knew coconut cream and strawberry puree had to go-there was simply not enough room in the glass.
Fresh strawberry-infused rum was a no-brainer substitution as it perfectly captured the flavor of local, peak-season strawberries and never goes bad, which offers us the advantage of being able to utilize summer flavors year-round. Making your own coconut rum is like attempting a homemade ballpark hot dog with fresh tomato ketchup: there’s a reason Oscar Meyer and Heinz are still in business. This batch was our third attempt in three years, and easily the most delicious. Toasted coconut flakes, plus wood-fired whole coconuts were infused into the best rum I’ve tasted in years: Hamilton’s Jamaican Gold, with the intention of creative a more savory finished product than the cotton candy-like liqueurs currently on the market. The end result was the exact flavor we had in mind, but we ran into the same old problem: do we skim the oil (coconut fat) that’s leeched into the rum or leave it? The path of least resistance turned out to be the missing puzzle piece in this super bright rum daiquiri: body and texture. When agitated enough, coconut oil mimics egg whites in its ability to produce froth, which is exactly what the Cool Runnings needed.
When drinks are left purposefully dry with a ton of citrus they can feel thin and out of balance, making the alcohol stand out above the accompanying flavors. The delightful side effect of our experimentation actually solidified the recipe for the Cool Runnings, while showing us a neat trick for making vegan whiskey sours.
Matthew McKinley Campbell
Advocate Cocktail Series #1: Dust Jacket (Old Books and Older Cocktails)
Months before moving into our new bar at the Advocate, the process had already begun to create an opening cocktail list, and one of the first questions that arose was “how do we incorporate classic cocktails?”. Many of the drinks that wound up on the menu are based on traditional recipes, and none more so than the Dust Jacket, our homage to the Negroni. Aside from being delicious, the Negroni is one of few well-known cocktails with a traceable and irrefutable origin. Dating back to 1921 in Florence, Italy, the Negroni is said to have been created at Caffe Casoni, not by a bartender but a patron, Count Camillo Negroni. Looking for a stronger drink than his usual Americano, he asked the bartender to substitute gin in place of soda water and stumbled upon one of the most perfectly balanced cocktails to date.
Riffing on classics can be like choosing to perform Stairway to Heaven at a karaoke bar: it’s a lot to live up to, and if it’s not at least as good as the original you’re probably wasting everyone’s time. We knew we didn’t want to mess with the proportions, as equal parts is the key to keeping a Negroni balanced and not too boozy, so we then focused on honing each of the three ingredients to create something unique yet reminiscent of the bitter, herbal flavors we love.
The first piece of the puzzle fell into place on an R&D trip to Trick Dog, when our good friend and encyclopedia of all things spiritous, Scott Baird, put a glass of Alessio Chinato in my hand and I met my new favorite sweet vermouth. Chinato is a style of fortified wine specific to Torino, Italy, traditionally made from nebiolo grapes and flavored with citrus peel and chinchona bark. Sweet and bitter at the same time, I realized it would soon become best friends with another Italian wine-based liqueur, Apertivo Cappelletti, a product I had been wanting to use at Comal, but never found a home for on the cocktail menu. When we got back to the lab and put the two together on ice we immediately realized two things: we could easily lose track of a lazy afternoon sipping this in the sun, and if it were to be the backbone of our Negroni-styled cocktail we would need more dry, bitter flavors from gin to cut the smoothness.
Our idea of creating botanical spirits from a neutral cane base originated at Comal by necessity. When limited to using agave spirits and rum in cocktails while needing them to act like gin or whiskey, you get creative and make your own. The botanicals in the first batch of Advocate ‘bathtub gin’ are locally grown or foraged from the East Bay. Young redwood shoots came from the Berkeley hills, while the fresh coriander was grown by chef Matt Gandin of Comal. Myrtle leaf was donated from the Advocate’s chef John Griffiths as he had a surplus at the time after wrapping and steaming fish, and local Meyer lemons were brought from the backyard trees of long-time Comal regulars. Fennel seed, juniper and cedar berries were added later to provide backbone to the ‘forest floor’ flavors we chose to highlight. The end result is an aromatic spirit that counterbalances the flavors of the Americano liqueur base we selected, and the flexibility of choosing botanical elements season to season allows us to offer variations on our favorite classic cocktail year-round, highlighting small production vermouths and apertivos with complimentary spirits to suit each pairings. That said, we’d love to make you a pitch perfect Negroni any time of year.
Matthew McKinley Campbell