Lucas Endres
Bowled over by a Boulevardier: a surpisingly harmonic combination of bourbon, Campari and vermouth.
I was gobsmacked. Stunned. Disbelieving. But deeply pleased. I could feel my body relaxing, my usual taciturn crankiness fading and a smile forming.
It was Aug. 23, 2013. I was with my wife and our dear friends Nancy and Julia at a regional cuisine restaurant outside of Portland, Oregon called Thistle. I was drinking my first ever Boulevardier.
For decades and decades I had been mostly a scotch and whiskey guy. Either neat or with a cube or two. Campari Soda with an orange twist in the summer was my idea of adventure.
That Boulevardier — made with 12-year-old Elijah Craig bourbon, Campari and Carpano Antica Formula vermouth — was a revelation. For the life of me I could not understand how two wildly disparate spirits like the bitter Campari and the rich bourbon could ever harmonize. But they did, thanks to a sweet Italian vermouth formula (with vanilla overtones) that dates to 1786.
This was my first cocktail revelation. I am not delusional as I tell you this. Others know the feeling.
Julie Bates, a server at Osteria Papavero, talks wistfully of being a young traveler drinking a Kir at a castle in the French countryside. “I remember thinking it was the most important drink that could ever be had.” Yes, Bates had a far-away look.
For wine distributor Jason Markgraf of Select Sellars, it was drinking a perfectly balanced Sazerac at Sardine mixed by the formidable Gabe Stulman, who would wind up in New York years later as the king of the West Village restaurant scene.
Weary Traveler mastermind Chris Berge remembers he and a buddy heading to the beachfront in Malibu after a bike race, where they drank delicately balanced citrus cocktails at a memorable restaurant and bar called Nobu Malibu.
For Maduro Cigar Bar owner Brian Haltinner, it was his discovery of good rye whiskey when he thought none existed. Haltinner was knocked on his keister on a Kentucky road trip in the mid-1990s with his Opera House bar crew when a Louisville bartender at the Brown Hotel challenged him to drink his rye Manhattan. Now Haltinner keeps a dozen ryes at home and stocks about 20 at Maduro. The 10-year-old Redemption rye is his favorite.
Thor Messer, beverage director for Merchant and Lucille, had his epiphany in 2011 when he and his best friend made the cocktail circuit in New York and had Manhattans at Little Branch in Greenwich Village. His mind was blown when he saw the bartender put in five splashes of Angostura bitters. He was dumbfounded at the high dose, “but it added so much complexity to the cocktail,” he says with the conviction of a convert.
Let the record also show that Messer loves making Boulevardiers and, like the drink makers at Thistle, prefers Elijah Craig as his bourbon ingredient.
Cocktail revelations usually share common traits.
Setting is really, really important. So often you’re traveling or sitting at a favorite haunt in town with close friends or a loved one. The protective armor of daily life begins to drop. You’re sharing confidences. Laughing. Eating. Gossiping. And of course drinking.
As Kingsley Amis, an English novelist who wrote in exacting if not loving detail about drinking, said: The human race has developed no better way of “breaking the ice” of companionship than to “cease to be totally sober at about the same rate in agreeable circumstances.” His lifelong observations can be found in the suitably named Everyday Drinking.
The first drink of the day is when a grump like me smiles. Life is hard, right? We worry too much. We get obsessed with work. And sadly we sometimes confuse the stimulus-response of social media with real friendship.
Lucas Endres
Thor Messer mixes up a Boulevardier at Merchant. He recommends using Elijah Craig, a high-end bourbon made in Kentucky.
Dear readers, put down your phones! Science says you should drink with your friends. Seriously. I have in my hand the printout of “Functional Benefits of (Modest) Alcohol Consumption” written by seven Oxford University researchers. They say that drinking with your buds at the local pub may be linked to an improved sense of well-being.
Okay, that’s not exactly a big surprise. But confirming the obvious is what college professors sometimes do. And I know you’re thinking what I’m thinking: Just how do I get a piece of this research money? But the investigators also found, according to Oxford publicists, “that people who have a [pub] that they visit regularly tend to feel more socially engaged and contented and are more likely to trust other members of their community” while those who don’t “had significantly smaller social networks and felt less engaged with, and trusting of, their local communities.”
Yes, it’s the fellowship (and sistership) of drink.
But enough with science. Let me tell you about something far more conclusively proved: the glory of fat-washed martinis. They are my second cocktail revelation! My wife and I were down in Austin last spring when we stopped at a South Congress Avenue restaurant called June’s. It was 4 p.m., I was cranky from insufficient sleep, and I knew I still had hours of clubbing ahead of me. (We went on to hear blues singer Lou Ann Barton at Antone’s and then caught guitar legend Jimmie Vaughan in a great organ trio at a little joint called C-Boy’s. Whew.)
I chose a restorative drink at June’s — the house favorite, a fat-washed gin martini made with Texas olive oil from Dripping Springs. Huh? What? Fat-washed? Please explain. Alex Holder, June’s assistant beverage manager, gave me a tutorial. You mix four parts gin (he uses Hayman’s London Dry) to one part olive oil. And then you stick it in the freezer overnight. The next morning you scrape off the congealed fat (known as “the puck”) at the top of the bottle, and you’re finished.
That’s it.
Well, I’ve never tasted anything like it before. Imagine the juniper sharp, chiseled taste of a chilled straight-up martini followed by a surprise roundness and rich mouth feel you might associate with a fine sauce. Once again I was amazed...and deeply pleased by Cocktail Revelation, Chapter II.
