I was too busy drinking and socializing to take notes at Art of the Cocktail’s Grand Tasting, but here are some drinks I remember:

Brandy cream

St Remy recently released a brandy-based cream liqueur to compete with Irish (whiskey) cream liqueur. It seemed a bit more interesting than Bailey’s, maybe just because I’m bored of Bailey’s (I don’t know where to get rum cream in BC).

Punt e Mes & tonic

Cocktail geeks seem to really like Punt e Mes red vermouth, and it might be superior as an accent in dry drinks, but if I’m tasting mostly vermouth I’ll always take Cinzano. In particular, Punt e Mes is not sweet enough to stand up to the sourness of tonic water.

Fernet Branca & cola

Cocktail geeks also like Fernet Branca, but I suspect they just like the bragging rights of drinking the grossest bitter liqueu. For a while, when I was at a legendary bar in a new city I would challenge the bartender to make a cocktail with Fernet. I’ve had a few that were okay, but nothing I would order again: the menthol top-note just doesn’t get along with anything. I’d never had the classic combination of Fernet & cola before, so I tricked my friend into ordering one so I could try it – sorry Karen!

Chartreuse & champagne

I think Chartreuse is disgusting straight, but unlike Fernet I love it in cocktails. I didn’t actually get a chance to sample this combination, but apparently it was awesome.

Lapsang souchong syrup

This was in a gin-based cocktail that couldn’t hold up to the smoke, but I think this is one of the most interesting things I had at the tasting. In smaller amounts it could be used to get a controlled Islay whisky flavour.

Bourbon & canned peaches

Who would have thought these would go well together?! Still, they went really well together and didn’t taste at all like Southern Comfort. I’m curious about the different ways to make this combination: muddled fresh peaches, peach syrup, premium peach liqueur?

I went to a talk by Philip Duff on grain spirits at Victoria’s Art of the Cocktail festival. He presented the following history of distillation:

• invented by the Greeks and used on non-alcoholic substances
• adopted by the Muslims and brought into Spain
• used on wine to make brandy in Western Europe
• brought to Ireland by Spanish fishermen or the Normans and initially used on imported wine

Grapes can only be grown in some parts of Europe, so local beer (generic fermented grain) replaced wine in stills. Early fermenting and distillation produced a crude product, so two techniques were used to make it more drinkable:

• aging in wood barrels
• adding botanicals such as juniper

Originally, all grain spirits combined these two methods. But today, it’s only commercially produced in the Netherlands, called old genever (pronounced: jen-E-ver), which is difficult to find in Canada. In Ireland and Scotland, distillers concentrated on aging, eventually leaving the botanicals out and producing whisky. The British took genever and eliminated the aging, resulting in London dry gin.

The Phylloxera blight of the mid-19th century decimated brandy supply, leading to the rise in popularity of whisky and gin just as cocktails were becoming invented. As a result, I find brandy cocktails rather odd.

Genever is getting embraced by cocktail hipsters because of its complexity – it is literally the anti-vodka. Duff presented a sample of a prototype spirit based on an old Irish “whisky” recipe that was flavoured with some botanicals, not prominently juniper, and had light barrel aging. I think this kind of new-old genever is probably the next big thing.

Punch is the latest trend in the cocktail world. Partly it’s a continuation of the tiki trend that took off recently. David Wondrich is one of North Americas foremost experts on cocktails and he just published Punch: The Delights (And Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl. I haven’t read it, but I’ve read enough blog posts about it that I can summarize it:

Punch is the ideal party drink: the host premixes it so they can concentrate on hosting once the party has started. Cold punch is served with ice in the punch bowl, so drinks start out strong to get the party started and weaken as your guests do.

If I had to define “punch”, I’d call it watered-down cocktails. As 12 Bottle Bar discusses, punch has a master recipe: traditionally it is “1 part sour, 2 parts sweet, 3 parts strong, 4 parts weak“. Wonderich founds that ratio too sweet and too strong for modern palates and tolerance, so he adjusted it to 1:1:4:6. 12 Bottle Bar weakens that even further to 1:1:3:6. Hot punch is typically less sour and more sweet but the ratio is intended as a starting place, not an algorithm.

For example, Ingrid asked me to convert Jamie Oliver’s tequila-pomegranate shots into a punch; I am starting with this:

• 1 part pure pomegranate juice
• 1 part simple syrup
  (we’ve just made grenadine)
• 3 parts white tequila
• 6 parts club soda

I might try adding some lime juice, replacing the club soda with apple cider, and replacing some of the tequila with another spirit (blending spirits is common in punches).

Milk punches omit the sour by necessity. Eggnog is technically a “milk punch flip” (a “flip” cocktail has added egg), so here’s an example eggnog recipe:

• 1 part simple syrup
• 4 parts brown spirits (in historical order: brandy, rum, bourbon)
• 6 parts milk and cream (choose your percentage – I’d recommend 20%)
• egg to taste
• nutmeg

The old fashioned (often capitalized) is believed to be the first cocktail. The dry vodka martini is the most important cocktail of the late 20th century. Understanding the evolution from the old fashioned to the dry martini is History of Mixology 101.

I took a workshop on the martini from Solomon Siegel, bar manager at Veneto in Victoria. He covered from the martinez to martini, so I’m pretty confident about that. I’m fuzzier about getting to martinez (I really should read a book about this stuff), so there may be some missing links in this sequence:

1. old fashioned
2. Manhattan
3. martinez
4. “pre-prohibition” martini (Solomon’s term)
5. dry gin martini
6. dry vodka martini

For the lab portion of this course, students will mix minimal versions of each of these drinks: no absinthe, orange liqueur, orange bitters or maraschino, because none of these mutations made it from one species to the next in the lineage. Play around with different vermouth:spirit ratios and use of garnishes (approximately cherry to citrus to olive).

To get the crosslisted history credit for the course, the student must research why each step was taken. To get you started:

• 3 to 4 was part of a general trend toward less-sweet cocktails
• 4 to 5 was partially a consequence of the collapse of the bitters market during Prohibition
• 5 to 6 was accomplished by a massive advertising campaign by Smirnoff, including placement in James Bond films

Kyla pointed me to a website called 12 Bottle Bar that is taking a methodical and minimal approach to classic cocktails that’s very helpful to someone who wants to bring the artisan cocktail craze home. It’s centred around the idea of creating as many old school cocktails as possible using only 12 alcohols:

• gin
• New World whisky
• Old World whisky
• brandy
• dark rum
• absinthe
• sweet/red vermouth
• dry/white vermouth
• orange liqueur / triple sec / curaçao
• Angostura bitters
• Peychaud’s bitters
• genever

The author makes some good arguments for rye over bourbon and Irish whiskey over Scotch. Vermouths have a short shelf-life once opened and so they present a problem to the home bartender – Martini & Rosso sucks, but it’s available in 500 mL bottles (Cinzano is my favourite sweet vermouth: I sip it straight if I’ve got a bottle open). Although I like genever, a kind of proto-gin, it only makes the list for historical accuracy – I might replace the genever with maraschino. Peychaud’s bitters, which is rather similar to Angostura, is included because the author is obsessed with New Orleans – everyone else should choose a citrus bitter(s).

I could make the choices more regional by using gin and bitters from Victoria Spirits, absinthe and apple brandy from Okanagan Spirits and Alberta rye (the only rye whiskies in Canada actually made from rye grain). I believe the orange liqueurs and rums made in Canada are not very good, so I’d go with Havana Club because the Americans can’t.

The site’s drink recipes have good background information, for example explaining how an Old Fashioned evolved from slings, which evolved from punches. Ignore the author’s rants against high-fructose corn syrup.

I first went to Solomon’s because Solomon and I have mutual friends. To me it was “the only place in town where I will drink gin martinis”. (I don’t really like juniper so normally I order vodka martinis.)

After that I went probably more than anything else because my friend Dan lived upstairs. Around this stage of my life, Manhattans became my signature drink at bars that had things like vermouth. I drank a lot of Manhattans and Old Fashioned at Solomon’s, although I was usually too busy talking to notice the craftsmanship.

Solomon always sucked as promotion, particularly using social networking. Somehow I heard about an introduction to cocktails class. The class got cancelled for lack of interest but there was a martini class coming up: I went despite my distaste for gin.

The class was a lecture on the evolution of the martini from Manhattan through the martinez combined with a tasting of gin, vermouth and bitters. It created the abstract mental structures I needed to learn about other cocktails. Solomon says he’s going to focus on education in the future: I can’t wait for the next class.

Then I went to the Art of the Cocktail festival, where Solomon and his protege Katie competed in the mixing competition. I learned that Sean at Clives was “the other bartender” in town – he’s not quite as good as Solomon but knowing there were two made me think that artisan cocktails were a movement in Victoria.

Right after the festival I went on a trip to Portland and Seattle that included pilgrimages to some artisan bars: Teardrop, Zig Zag and Vessel. I got exposed to much more challenging cocktails than what I had been ordering at Solomon’s and chatted up bartenders to learn more about the artisan cocktail scene.

By this point, every time I went to Solomon’s I had a list of things I wanted to try. I don’t go out drinking very often and I don’t drink that much when I do, so it took me a long time to work things through. Most recently I came home from amazing service by David at West, eager to order some new experiences at Solomon’s.

It feels like a blow to Victoria to lose such a hip place. I blame city council for their overpriced liquor license addiction and the lack of population density near Herald Street. Solomon’s didn’t have great food or promotion, but I think the prices and the service time for drinks were reasonable for the care that went into them. My biggest regret is that I didn’t spend more time sitting at Solomon’s bar.