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Posts Tagged ‘Peychaud’s’

What We’re Drinking: The Vieux Carré*

Posted in Tales of the Cocktail, Travel, Weekly Dig, tagged , , , , , on July 14, 2010| 2 Comments »

*Recent ruminations from LUPEC Boston, in case you missed ’em in this week’s Dig.

by Pink Lady

Tales of the Cocktail is just around the corner, and the rank and file of LUPEC are beside ourselves with anticipation. This marks one of our favorite weeks of the entire year, when we join thousands of like-minded liquor nerds in descending upon New Orleans for five days devoted to the celebration of all things cocktail—history, preservation, technique … even hospitality behind the bar.

We wish we could take all of you down to NOLA for a few fabulous days of booze-filled revelry; in lieu of a plane ticket, we’ll offer a vicarious trip through LUPEC’s eyes (we are a charitable organization, after all). We suggest you start getting in the mood now by mixing up a Vieux Carré, a potation invented by Walter Bergeron in 1938 while he was head bartender at the Hotel Monteleone, the site of all the action at Tales of the Cocktail.

The Monteleone was first christened in 1886, when Antonio Monteleone purchased a 64-room hotel on the corner of Bienville and Royal streets in the heart of the French Quarter, a section dubbed by French Colonials “the Vieux Carré.” An industrious Sicilian nobleman who operated a successful shoe factory in his home country, Monteleone moved to New Orleans to seek his fortune in the 1880s. His hotel grew and expanded via five major additions over the years and has always been a jewel of the French Quarter. After four generations, it’s still family owned and operated.

Within the hotel is the famous Carousel Bar, a gilded, rotating bar fashioned to look like its namesake, and it literally never stops turning. Since opening 61 years ago, the Carousel Bar has played host to many famous authors and musicians. Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote warmed barstools there, as have musicians like Etta James and Gregg Allman.

LUPEC spends many a morning, noon and evening at the Carousel Bar during the Tales of the Cocktail festivities. Won’t you join us vicariously by mixing up one of these?

VIEUX CARRÉ

1 oz rye whiskey

1 oz cognac

1 oz sweet vermouth

1 tsp Bénédictine D.O.M.

2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

2 dashes angostura bitters

Mix all ingredients in a double Old Fashioned glass over ice; stir. Garnish with a lemon twist.

TALES OF THE COCKTAIL IS JULY 21st-25th IN NEW ORLEANS. FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT TALESOFTHECOCKTAIL.COM.

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Crescent City Cooler: A Toast to Flo Woodard*

Posted in Tales of the Cocktail, Weekly Dig, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 7, 2010| 2 Comments »

*Recent ruminations from LUPEC, originally published in the Weekly Dig

by Pink Lady

In just 13 days the ladies of LUPEC Boston will descend upon the New Orleans along with roughly 10,000 other mixologists, brand ambassadors, cocktail writers, and die-hard cocktail enthusiasts. Its one of our favorite weeks of the year – and one of out drunkest – and we’ve already begun prepping our livers. We hope you’ll indulge us as we get into the spirit and raise a glass to one of New Orleans’, greatest bartending broads, the late Flo Woodard.

Woodard, also known as “Ms. Flo”, became a bartender at the Court of Two Sisters in the early 1970s and held court behind the stick there for over 30 years. At the time, the company was looking for “someone with integrity and longevity, someone that could make the customers want to always visit our business again for our total experience,” Flo told the New Orleans Time-Picayune in 2009. This former hostess was a perfect fit. Female bartenders were virtually unheard of in the Crescent City in those days and The Court of Two Sisters were ahead of the times.

Woodard was a self-taught bartender who learned her craft from the pages of bar books, but the special brand of hospitality she practiced was innate. Flo was revered by customers for more than what she put in their glass. Her affable personality and zest for sharing stories brought scores of loyal bar patrons, including celebrity fans, from Cesar Romero to Tyler Perry to the entire cast of “The Young and the Restless” (a favorite show of Ms. Flo’s) to John Wayne’s son, Patrick.

Ms. Flo’s talent for engaging guests was also her passion: “Bartending has allowed me the opportunity to talk to people from all over the world. Many of them have shared much of their lives and secrets with me. When they call me Mama or Auntie, I know that I am the lucky one. I get to share my work time with people that I love. That is very big. They are very special to me. I have been blessed. That little girl from Mississippi found the rest of her family,” said Flo in her 2009 interview with the New Orleans Time-Picayune.

Flo was a star mixologist in her own right, who believed a good drink depends on to top of the line liquor, the right mix of ingredients, a fresh twist, and perfect glassware. In 2007 her Crescent City Cooler placed Second in the Tales of the Cocktail annual drink competition. Her famous Hurricane recipe was also reknown.

Flo passed away on March 16, 2010, but her legend endures. In Ms. Flo’s words: “A good bartender must have the personality of an ambassador, the attitude of a leader and the ability to be a great listener. That is the winning combination. And, of course, you must love people and talking to them.”

Let’s raise one of these to Ms. Flo and those who tend bar in her tradition by lifting our spirits with a good drink.

Crescent City Cooler
By Flo Woodard

10 Cleaned mint leaves

1 Dash simple syrup

2 Dashes of Angostura bitters

2 Dashes of Peychaud’s bitters

Juice of 2 lime wedges

2 ounces Bacardi Light rum

2 ounces Ginger Ale

3/4 ounce Cranberry juice

Lime wheel

Place mint leaves into a frosted Collins glass. Add the simple syrup and both bitters and muddle for 10 seconds. Add the juice from 2 lime wedges, Bacardi Light and ginger ale. Fill the Collins glass with ice and stir with a bar spoon. Top with cranberry juice. Serve with a straw.

Garnish: Garnish with a lime wheel and mint sprig.

Cin-cin!

TALES OF THE COCKTAIL IS JULY 21st-25th IN NEW ORLEANS. FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT TALESOFTHECOCKTAIL.COM.

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What We’re Drinking: The Seelbach*

Posted in Weekly Dig, tagged , , , , , , , on January 20, 2010| 1 Comment »

*The latest ruminations from LUPEC Boston, in case you missed ‘em in the Dig.

by Pink Lady

There’s just something about The Great Gatsby: the gilded, glamorous, Jazz-era setting, the rich, drunk characters—as decadent as modern-day reality show stars. Plus, it’s a good book, a classic most people seem to have actually read, and one that LUPEC is very much looking forward to hearing again.

Not via book-on-tape, silly. At the American Repertory Theater’s latest show, GATZ, in which an employee at a low-rent business office finds a ragged old copy of The Great Gatsby in the clutter of his desk and starts to read it out loud—and doesn’t stop. It’s not a stage adaptation of The Great Gatsby, but a verbatim reading of the entire text. And it lasts six hours.

It sounds more like a “serious” episode of The Office than traditional theater, to be sure, but our faith in the A.R.T. has been sealed since they brought us Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, which transformed an abandoned elementary school into a 1930s-era set that featured a bar, an awesome band and authentic classic cocktails. And GATZ has received rave reviews in the eight countries it’s toured since its premiere in 2006.

What better way to usher in this exciting new show than with a 1920s-themed party at the A.R.T.’s restaurant partner, Upstairs on the Square? You have our word that the drinks will be the bee’s knees. LUPEC curated the list.

We suggest you come dressed to the nines tonight, and sip a Seelbach as you don your spats and flapper hats. The drink was created at the Seelbach Hotel circa 1917, a haunt of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s as he was writing The Great Gatsby. Its history is a Lazarus tale if there ever was one: The recipe was lost during Prohibition, not drunk again until a hotel manager rediscovered and revived it in 1995. Legend has it that Gatsby was modeled on a gangster Fitzgerald met at the Seelbach Bar, probably while knocking back many of these.

Fitzgerald himself was a party man, after all, notorious for drinking too much gin with his wife Zelda and jumping into the fountains at the Plaza Hotel, boiling party guests’ watches in tomato soup and stripping down to dance naked at parties. The Seelbach was probably right up his alley. To paraphrase LUPEC member emeritus Barbara West, “One Seelbach makes you feel like you’re at a lawn party in  West Egg; a few Seelbachs make you feel like you’re in a nightclub balancing glassware on your boobs.”

Look out, Daisy, here we come.

SEELBACH COCKTAIL

1 oz bourbon

0.5 oz Cointreau

7 dashes angostura bitters

7 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

5 oz chilled brut champagne

Build in a champagne flute, stir, add champagne, stir again and garnish with an orange twist.

CIN-CIN!

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What We’re Drinking: Old-school pharmaceuticals*

Posted in Tales of the Cocktail, Weekly Dig, tagged , , , on July 9, 2009| Leave a Comment »

*LUPEC Boston’s latest ruminations, in case you missed ’em in this week’s Dig.

by Pink Lady

Ever lie to your doctor about how many drinks you have each week? In the bright glare of the examination room, checking off the “7 or more” box may make you feel bashful. LUPEC suggests dispensing with the shame – after all, for centuries, alcohol and medicine have been closely intertwined.

Many ingredients of modern mixology trace their roots to the pursuit of good health: gin, digestif liqueurs, and of course bitters, the key ingredient in the “cocktail” which spawned a whole new era of drinking in the 19th century. Without bitters, we’d all still be drinking slings.

Without Peychaud’s bitters, we’d never have the Sazerac, the official cocktail of New Orleans. In the early 1800s, Creole apothecary Antoine Amadee Peychaud began bottling and selling his signature bitters as a “solution for what ailed one, irrespective of malady”. Though a pharmacist by trade, Peychaud became famous for this aromatic tincture, which he mixed with Sazerac de Forge et Fils brandy (the spirit du moment) and served to fellow masons after hours in the back of his shop.

The Sazerac has gone through many transformations in subsequent decades. Later generations added absinthe, then Herbsaint when absinthe was outlawed; rye took the place of cognac. Some bartenders even add a little Angostura bitters to their concoctions, but few would argue that without Peychaud’s, you can’t have a Sazerac.

As you read this, members of LUPEC Boston and thousands of other cocktail enthusiasts are descending upon the Crescent City for the annual Tales of the Cocktail conference, where we will drink many Sazeracs. Follow our hijinks through our “Live Blog” updates to the Weekly Dig’s website, making sure to take your medicine, as prescribed below.

SAZERAC
Adapted from The Essential Cocktail by Dale DeGroff

1 sugar cube
3-4 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
2 oz rye whiskey
splash of Absinthe, Pernod, or Herbsaint
Lemon peel

Take two rocks glasses and fill one with ice to chill for serving while preparing the drink in another glass. In the bottom of the prep glass, muddle the sugar cube and bitters until the sugar is dissolved; a splash of water can execute the process. Add the rye and several ice cubes, and stir to chill. Take the serving glass, toss out its ice, and add the splash of Absinthe, Pernod or Herbsaint. Swirl it around to coat the inside of the glass, and then pour out any liquid that remains. Strain the chilled cocktail into the prepared glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Cin-cin!

VISIT TALES OF THE COCKTAIL VICARIOUSLY THROUGH LUPEC AT WEEKLYDIG.COM, LUPECBOSTON.COM, OR BY FOLLOWING US ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER (twitter.com/lupecboston)

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What We’re Drinking: One Nation Under Dram*

Posted in Weekly Dig, tagged , , , , , , on July 2, 2009| 1 Comment »

Old Hickory Cocktail

Old Hickory Cocktail

*LUPEC Boston’s latest ruminations, in case you missed ’em in this week’s Dig…Special thanks to Pinky Gonzales who supplied this week’s suggested cocktail!

by Pink Lady

LUPEC dons our stars and stripes to celebrate the birth of our nation this week. We do so by raising a glass—after all, drinking is our national heritage.

Alcohol has been part of America since the arrival of the earliest colonists, with the tavern situated at the center of colonial life. Often one of the first permanent structures erected in some colonies, taverns were the only public buildings and doubled as a space for meetings, trials and even religious services. They played a key role in developing early business and commerce in young America.

This was the era of “dram drinking,” taking small amounts of alcohol throughout the day, all day, every day, starting with a pick-me-up in the morning and ending with a put-me-down at night. “Drinking on the job” was the norm: Craftsmen quaffed while they crafted, hired hands drank in the fields, sailors sipped at sea and so on. The commonly held belief that alcohol was medicinal and healthy, and water would only make you sick, further enabled our national bender.

In the decades after the Revolution, the spectacular bender raged on. Government figures from 1790 show annual per-capita alcohol consumption amounted to 34 gallons of beer and cider, five gallons of distilled spirits and one gallon of wine.

And early Americans were totally OK with that. In the words of a colonist from Georgia, “If I take a settler after my coffee, a cooler at nine, a bracer at 10, a whetter at 11, and two or three stiffners during the forenoon, who has any right to complain?”

Certainly not us. We toast that fierce independence with a drink famously tippled by Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson during the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.

OLD HICKORY COCKTAIL

1 small shot French vermouth

1 small shot Italian vermouth

1 dash orange bitters

2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

Pour the two vermouths into a bar glass and add the dash of orange bitters and the two shots of Peychaud bitters. Fill with cubes of ice and stir well. Strain into a serving glass. Twist a piece of lemon peel over, then drop it into the glass.

CIN-CIN!


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Monteleone Cocktail

Posted in Cocktail History, Tales of the Cocktail, tagged , , , , , , on May 18, 2009| Leave a Comment »

by Pink Lady

LUPEC loves our liquor but for many of us, it was the history, the lore, and the tales of the cocktail that inspired our enthusiasm for that great American invention. We are drinkers, yes, but we are also preservationists, and it tugged at many of our heartstrings to learn that the signature “Monteleone Cocktail” of the Carousel Bar at the storied Hotel Monteleone fell victim to the ravages of time.

On this, the 60th anniversary year of the Carousel Bar, the Hotel Monteleone will make those lemons into lemonade (or perhaps, a delicious sour?) and create a new Monteleone Cocktail. They’ve put the call out to mixologists everywhere. On behalf of LUPEC Boston, we offer the following contributions to the noble cause.

THE MONTELEONE COCKTAIL

1 oz Sazerac Rye
1 oz Brandy (If using VS Cognac, change the proportions to 1.5 oz Rye, .75 oz Cognac)
.5 oz Dubonnet Rouge
.25 oz Raspberry Syrup*
1 barspoon Orgeat

Dash Peychaud’s bitters

Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a flamed orange peel.

THE MONTELEONE COCKTAIL II

1.5 Sazerac Rye
.75 VSOP Cognac
.5 Dubonnet Rouge
.25 Raspberry Syrup*
.25 fresh orange juice
1 barspoon Orgeat
Dash Peychaud’s bitters
Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail class.  Garnish with a flamed orange peel.
RASPBERRY SYRUP:

3/4 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
Heat until sugar is dissolved, then let cool for 20 minutes
Add 1 cup fresh raspberries to warm syrup and mash until well broken up.  Let sit until syrup is completely cool, then strain out seeds.
Refrigerate in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.

Recipes will be judged by VIPs who will be at the Carousel Anniversary Celebration on May 21 – check back for updates on the winning recipe!

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