A benefit for Lydia Tillman

Some readers of my blog may be aware that I have a friend who was brutally and sickeningly attacked on the 4th of July in Colorado. He tried to murder her, and it was only by the strength of her spirit that she was able to escape the fire he set in her apartment to erase the "evidence".

Lydia lived in NY prior to moving to Colorado, and was a sommelier and wine buyer at Casamono. She championed Spanish wines, especially sherry. Fittingly, then, there will be a Spanish wine tasting at Terroir Tribeca on Saturday, August 20th, from noon to 3pm. The minimum donation is $20 and all proceeds will benefit Lydia directly.

Lydia was without health insurance at the time of the attack. She was in the ICU for a full month and still remains in the hospital. She also lost all of her possessions in the fire.

Even if you are unable to make it to the benefit, please do consider donating. Her family has set up a Facebook page where you can donate via PayPal. Your donation will make Lydia's long and arduous recovery financially possible.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Sherry: From Spain to Japan

Jerez is the Spain of legend. It's the Spain of flamenco, of horses, of bullfights, of shellfish, of wine. Of sherry.

The name "Jerez" refers both to the region and its wine. It came originally from the Phoenecian "Seres". The Phoenecians settled in the southern-Spanish region around 1100 BC.

Jerez the city is in the region of Andalucia, in the province of Cadiz. The capital of the Cadiz province is the most ancient city still standing in western Europe-- older than Rome, older than Paris.

Cadiz the city is a narrow spit of land in the Mediterranean, whose white-washed buildings shore up to the sea, and whose winding streets transport one back to the time of the Moors, who ruled southern Spain for over 400 years, from 711 to 1492.

The Arabic name for Jerez was Sherish, which became Xeres, and then, finally, the Castilian Jerez.

Jerez the drink, known to us anglophones as sherry, possesses a flavor that speaks of the terroir, the history, and the drama of the region.

Sherry is a fortified wine: its alcohol content is between 15.5 and 22% (standard table wine is usually 12-14%). Sherries are also oxidized-- they are, in a controlled manner, exposed to oxygen to varying degrees, a process that contributes to a flavor unlike any other wine. This oxidation is what gives sherry its nuttiness and, in heavier sherries, its brown color.

Sherry comes in many different types. From the lightest and most dry, to the heaviest and sweetest, these are: manzanillo, fino, amontillado, palo cortado, oloroso, cream, and Pedro Ximenez (named for the grape). The making of sherry involves two major elements: flor, the strange and unpredictable yellow foam of yeasts that forms on the surface, and solera, the complex stacked-barrel method of aging where newer vintages are progressively combined with older vintages until you could end up drinking a sherry that could partially be over a hundred years old.

Lighter sherries develop a thicker flor and are thus less oxidized. Heavier sherries develop a thinner flor, or no flor at all (alternatively, their flor may be removed). Flor is unpredictable, and a sherry maker has no idea if the wine he is making, if left alone, will become a fino or an amontillado. This mystery adds a whole extra dimension of romantic drama to sherry.

I've been obsessed with sherry for a while, but have more recently become so with sherry-based cocktails. All of the things I adore about sherry-- its dryness, its nuttiness-- have made it, for me, a very difficult base to work with. A lot of cocktails I blend with sherry end up tasting flat.

A happy coincidence led to my perfect sherry cocktail. Through a friend (whose blog I HIGHLY recommend), I signed on to design a cocktail for a blog called RecipeRelay. The premise is to use an ingredient from the last week's recipe, incorporate local ingredients, and develop something brand new. The recipe before me incorporated green tea. It turned out that simple syrup infused with Gyokuro green tea provided a perfect balance to a cocktail I'd been working on. The result was The Spanish Jade (click that link to read more about the cocktail and my progress developing it.)

The first sherry cocktail I tasted (or, rather, remembered and cared about tasting) was a concoction called the Bamboo Cocktail, first developed in Japan in the 19th century. NY bartender extraordinaire Kelly Slagle whipped this baby up during a cocktail class at Astor Center. I fell hard and fast.

The Bamboo Cocktail has a lovely, semi-sweet taste, with a dry finish. It's great for wine drinkers and works well as an apertif.

Adapted from the wondrous David Wondrich's book Imbibe!, with input from Kelly (who recommended Lillet in place of vermouth), I present the Bamboo Cocktail:

1.5 oz. dry (fino or manzanillo, inexpensive) sherry

1.5 oz. Lillet or Cocchi Americano (I prefer the latter)

2 dashes orange bitters

2 drops angostura bitters

Stir and serve up in a cocktail glass

Garnish with a lemon twist

Close your eyes and dream of flamenco, bullfighters and the hot sun of a Spanish sky.

* Most of my wine knowledge comes from the glorious Karen MacNeil's Wine Bible. I cannot recommend this book enough.

White Bandol: Zest in a bottle

When I was 20, I ran around the south of France in glorified hotpants, subsisted entirely on banana and nutella crepes and took lots of pictures of window flowerboxes.

I had absolutely no concept of the utterly beautiful wine being produced in the region.

Located in Provence, Bandol is easily my favorite, and go-to, region in the summertime for rose wines. Take a bit of funky earth and combine it with a bit of strawberry and watermelon, make it pink and cold and you have happiness, right there in a bottle, at least for me.

Bandol is a small seaside fishing town, located between Marseille and Cannes. It's known mainly for the aforementioned ravishing roses, and even more so for its wild and leathery reds. The spicy and structured red mourvedre grape dominates the region, and must make up at least 50% of red Bandol wines by law. Other red grapes include grenache and cinsault, with a sprinkling of syrah and carignan. Roses from Bandol are produced via skin contact from these red grapes.

White wines from Bandol are lesser known. Produced from ugni blanc, clairette, bourboulenc and sometimes sauvignon blanc, these wines tend to be light and zesty, and pair well with artichokes, seafood and, apparently, veal brains.

Tonight I decided to give one of these unheralded white Bandols a try.

My darling friend Ilissa, who, by a happy twist of fate, works at my local natural wine store, Wine Therapy, helped me choose the 2009 Domaine Le Galantin ugni blanc and clairette blend.

A female winemaker is apparently at the helm of Domaine Le Galantin. She took over winemaking from her father. While Ilissa and I suspect lees contact, I couldn't find vinification specifics. Its website does indicate that grapes are grown on terraced vineyards with low yields, and the soils are a mixture of clay and limestone.

Translation: The grapes are probably hand-harvested, as terraced vineyards usually can't accommodate machine harvesters. Low yields generally translate into a wine with higher character and concentration of flavor. Clay and limestone soils typically produce grapes that are higher in acidity.

Here is what my palate told me:

• A nose of white pepper
• Lemon curd as the wine hits the palate
• A zestiness from high acidity
• Light in weight, though with a creaminess in the midpalate (perhaps from lees contact?)
• Juicy and crisp, with a short finish

This wine would be lovely on its own or as an apertif, and would be a fantastic accompaniment to seafood.

Now, who would like to come with me to Provence for some Bandol blanc and bouillebaisse?

Drink of the Day: The Vesper

The Vesper is the original Bond cocktail. With both its name and its relation to the mythical double agent, it evokes mystery, drama and eroticism.

Many a bartender resent the James Bond martini as it is popularly known, and would like nothing more than to let you know that the proper martini is neither made of vodka nor is it shaken. The Vesper, however, is far from just a big glass of vodka.

The Vesper, named for Bond's first love interest, was first seen in Ian Fleming's novel Casino Royale, in which the double agent ordered the following:

"A dry martini," [Bond] said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet."

"Oui, monsieur."

"Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's [gin], one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold*, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?"

Kina Lillet unfortunately no longer exists, but a good substitution comes via the recipe from Employee's Only, which combines Lillet Blanc with Angostura bitters to capture the quinine-tinged flavor of Kina Lillet. The recipe in full--one of my favorites for this particular cocktail-- is as follows:

2 ounces Charbay vodka (corn and rye based)

1 ounce Plymouth Navy Strength gin (which, according to their site, is at the strength at which it could be spilled on gunpowder and the gunpowder could still ignite...)

1/4 ounce Lillet Blanc

1 dash Angostura bitters

1 lemon twist, for garnish (I prefer a thin strip of the rind, as opposed to those fancy curly-q's, which defeat the purpose. The point is maximizing surface area to infuse your drink with the oils from the lemon skin.)

The drink should be shaken vigorously and strained into a cocktail glass, garnished with the aforementioned lemon twist.

The Vesper, by the way, was streamlined in the film version of the novel, thanks mainly to the advertising dollars of Smirnoff vodka. A "real" martini should be gin-based, with dry vermouth, and stirred, not shaken, served up in a cocktail glass. But, hey, I'm a snob-- enjoy your martini the way you like it. Just be sure to give this magnificent and fabled cocktail a try as well.

* Since this drink does not contain citrus or an egg white, according to bartender doctrine, it actually should still be shaken, not stirred, but, well, mais n'enculons pas des mouches.

Photo courtesy of CoffeeGeek, via Flickr.

The evolution of a wine snob

I certainly wasn't raised to be this way.

My parents didn't really drink much when my brothers and I were growing up. Every year during the holidays, my dad, a dentist, would receive liquor baskets from patients and colleagues that would sit untouched in the basement (they still managed to disappear over the years. I swear my house must have been haunted.)

In high school, we drank Bud Ice-- I think it had a higher ABV, though still shared the lovely flavor of watered-down piss with its uncle and cousin. In college, we would buy the plastic bottles of vodka and mix vats of "punch" in garbage cans.

After college, the means may have changed, though the end remained the same: I favored microbrews over Bud Ice, but I still drank to feel the effects instead of understand the process.

Then I started moonlighting at a friend's restaurant, hostessing, a couple of nights a week. Kristin, the owner and wine and beverage director, has won multiple awards of excellence from Wine Spectator. I loved the way it sounded when she said, "Chateauneuf du Pape," but never bothered to learn what it meant.

That lost opportunity wasn't to be found in Indianapolis. There, I worked at a fine-dining restaurant owned by a celebrity chef. The GM's prior relevant experience consisted of running the cafe at Nordstrom and the self-appointed "head waiter" conveniently combined "syrah" and "shiraz" into one handy word-- "shirah."

And then I came to New York. At the interview for my first job, as a bartender in Manhattan, I couldn't tell my interviewer what the base liquor was in a manhattan. I still managed to snag the job. I credit my red pants. And Pete.

I learned how to make cosmos and margaritas and the type of martini that is really just a big-ass glass of vodka, but my learning plateaued-- my benchmark being the Real Housewives of New York (Ramona sings the praises of Pinot Grigio. Enough said.)

And then I somehow stumbled my way into one of the best restaurants in the city (again, I credit Pete), with, more importantly, one of the best sommeliers in the city, whose taste in funky, earthy, sometimes dirty wine that remains balanced and elegant is right up my alley, along with one of the best mixologists in the city (the aforementioned Pete), whose skill at balancing unique flavors in a cocktail is matched by his creativity in incorporating seasonal ingredients.

Now, here I am, a snob. I am insufferable at times. My family, whose sweet tooth skews toward California cabs and pinots--not my glass of wine-- will attest. Sometimes I judge people who order grey goose cosmos as I sip on my negroni.

Really, this snobbery is the emblem of a newbie with much more to learn. And I intend to share that knowledge here, even if I'm the only one who reads it.

Welcome. I came. I drank. I conquered. Enjoy.