May Martini Mixoff

Boise's 5th Annual May Martini Mixoff is soon underway. For those of you living out of the area, the Mixoff is a cocktail competition sponsored by Future Brands of Idaho. Bartenders from the downtown area invent drinks in specified categories using sponsor products, and present their drinks to a panel of judges 3 bars at a time, every Thursday in May. There's a final party to announce the winners around the first weekend in June.

The organizers and a few chirping advisers have broken the competition up into three categories this year: Savory, Dessert, and Classic Martini. There's some flexibility with the Classic category as vodka is allowed to compete (puhtooey) and the use of vermouth is optional, as it seems. It should also be noted that this is a promotional, sponsor-oriented event. While I tend to make it way more culinary and serious than it is, the point is to have fun and raise money for a charity in honor of our late downtown friend, Lisa Villano.

Here's how I define each category, and how Red Feather and Bittercreek bartenders are being instructed to compete:

Savory
If you might enhance the flavor of a drink with salt and pepper, it's probably savory. Drinks in this category should have strong herbal, spice, or salty tones. The use of cream, coffee, chocolate, nut, or fruit cordials or liqueurs is discouraged. Simple syrup should be limited to use in fresh citrus juice or be infused with herb or botanical extract. The finish should range from menthol (hot not sweet), grassy, spicey, aromatic, bitter or umami.

Dessert
This drink should contain cream, egg, chocolate, sweet spice, nut or coffee cordial, vanilla, or caramel or caramelized fruit syrup. It should be considered post-prandial in flavor and not digestif, although both are usually considered appropriate for dessert. The finish should be sugary, milky, or syrupy.

Classic
For our bars in this competition, the Classic guidelines are quite simple. Gin and aperitif wine in a ratio of no less than 1 part aperitif wine to 6 parts gin. Bitters are optional.

Oddly enough, the most commonly asked question seems to be Where does the Cosmo fit? or Where does the Lemon Drop fit?... Repuesta? They fit in a different competition. The criteria is wonderfully designed to eliminate drinks of such an obvious and plaaaaaayed model. (It's a good model, just played-out as all hell.)

I hope we see some new trends this year, like the use of housemade cordials and garnish, and local, seasonally appropriate ingredients. As we develop our drinks for Red Feather and Bittercreek, I'll post the recipes here. Until then, pick up tickets for Martini Mixoff 2008 at the:

Kick-Off Party on April 29th at 5:30 pm in the Mode Building, 8th Street at Idaho, Downtown.

Tickets are $50 and will buy you one cocktail at each of the nine participating bars (expiring June 30th,) a drink at the Kick-Off Party, and entry to the final party in June and a drink there as well. Ticket-holders are encouraged to have a liver examination sometime in July. You may also purchase tickets at all of the competing bars starting this Friday, April 25th.

50 miles

Has anyone every heard that eating local honey helps control seasonal allergies? This is a huuuuuge debate in my office lately, since I think it's hogwash, but I'm interested to know about the scientific backing, if there's actually any out there...


The point, though, is not seasonal allergies. Since mine are terrible this time of the year, the subject was at the front of my head... like, literally... when I told a bar patron last month that her cocktail, (made with vodka, rose cordial, sour apple juice, and honey,) was composed of ingredients sourced within a 50-mile radius. After I shot down her local honey shtick, we had a talk about locality that went basically like this:

"If you guys are all into fancy drinks, why don't you guys have raspberries or strawberries or anything? I like berries."

"Well, they're not quite in season yet. Not it this part of the West, anyway."

"You can get them at Win-Co."

"I know."

(awkward silence, which I really enjoy sometimes.)

"So you don't have anything on the menu that you can't get from like the Co-Op or something?"

"The goal is to feature things on the menu from our area that are in season because we're trying to develop a true Idaho-style of cocktail making, and because it's better for our city's economy."

Barring limitations with local liquor and citrus fruit, it is completely possible in Boise to work with ingredients that are mostly local. What happens when we do this is very multifaceted. We create a style of cuisine and drink that is truly regional, and we save fuel and money by working with purveyors that are close. Building relationships in a direct-source system is easier, too. Most suppliers will even agree to bringing products in reusable containers that can be taken and then refilled, thus reducing waste and saving money and resources.

The idea is not new. Cloverleaf Creamery in Idaho is now delivering milk to restaurants and grocery stores in reusable glass bottles, just like it happened before giant commercial dairies took over most of the cows and land. In feudal France, communities would trade and source all of their food within a day's walk. Everything that the home produced and was used in some way. (As an aside, I've always thought it strange that chefs trained in French techniques in modern-day America will put a pot of sauce on a natural gas burner and let it go for 12 hours as if they were cooking in a kettle over a fire of burning refuse, as in the origins of French cooking.)

As we build local community awareness of food systems through sustainability education, farmer's markets, and grocery co-ops, we should be watching the bar to follow suit. I am obviously not perfect at this; there are still plenty of components in my menus that could be traded out for something closer or omitted based on seasonality altogether... everything is a journey, and in a world obsessed with globalization, the jouney to a local food economy is a long one. Check out Farmer's Markets USA for information about a market in your area and to learn about community-based food systems.

Blogging Tales of the Cocktail

Tales of the Cocktail is a yearly celebration of drinking and drink-making. It happens in the summer in New Orleans (July 16-20 this year,) and proves to be a great time of networking, learning, oogling, and of course falling off bar stools. Last year, Mark and I even went on a late night scavenger hunt in the registration area of the Hotel Monteleone.... This was naturally the night before I took a tour of New Orleans with a terrible hang over, and actually had to make the tour pull over because I was so green-faced from Absinthe shots. (I will never learn.) If you're into the above-mentioned antics, I'd encourage you to go... unless of course you're a fun-hater.

With Tales 2008 approaching, a bunch of bloggers, including the guy who inspired me to start writing this blog, decided to get together and give the general public the inside scoop. Click the link above to find out what you should check out this year in New Orleans. I was not invited to participate, since I'm off the frickin' radar in the cocktail community, and since I update my content about as frequently as I go to church. My otheredness is not going to stop me from plugging the hell out of it, though.

UPDATE: 4-17
I'm getting involved!

The Martinez

There's a new Spring drink menu at Red Feather, and among the standard classics in the cannon this season stands the Martinez.


If you haven't tried a Martinez in your drinking career just yet, I suggest you do. It's a sublime, sweet drink that will shake up...er... stir up your ideas about what really makes a good cocktail. Not only is it robust and interesting to drink, but it's history served up. Here's the recipe we're using at Red Feather:

The Martinez
1 1/4 oz. Plymouth Gin
1 3/4 oz. Carpano Antica Formula
2 dashes Fee Brother's Orange Bitters
1 splash Maraschino

On the off chance that any of you are wondering if by "Maraschino" I mean that sticky, vapid red juice from those equally vapid red things in your garnish tray, think again. Maraschino Liquor is distilled directly from the Marasca cherry and takes on a hot, dry flavor. Maraschino also provides the interesting kick in the original daiquiri, but that's a different post.

On the note of ingredients in this drink, is anyone else in Boise using Carpano Antica Formula red vermouth yet? I'm sitting here trying to think of a single cocktail that contains vermouth that doesn't demand the highest possible quality, and I'm telling you that good vermouth is always important. This one happens to be the best I've ever tried, and in this application it is truly surreal.

The Martinez is widely considered the first stab at the gin martini by people who have done the research; the use of sweet vermouth being far more popular at the turn of the century, as well as the orange bitters. We've turned the Martini into something strange and nondescript in the last several years, taking both the vermouth and bitters out of the equation, sometimes completely, and often filling a cocktail glass full with cold vodka. I wish we would have stayed with the Martinez.

I take sick pleasure in subjecting my bar staff to drinks that no one will ever ask for on the off chance that we can develop a following for them. And so we spent about 20 minutes yesterday talking through the Martinez and its history. If you're a regular at Red Feather, don't be surprised next time you sit down if there's a Martinez in front of you before you have the chance to order. Here's what it looks like: