Gin’s Revival
While
it’s true that the predominant low-end domestic segment,
that represents over 7O% of gin’s 11 million-case annual
total volume sales in the US, continues to be static and
largely disappointing, the upwardly mobile performances and
brand expansions in the high-end import tier is cause for
genuine celebration in this comparatively lack-luster
category, long badly needing some truly exciting news to
boost its morale.
But, believe it
or not, today’s indicators will show that the super-premium
import gin segment is offering more diversity in styles, a
greater range of proofs, and emphasizing more brand heritage
and compelling marketing spins than any other spirit. And
all this has been creating an unprecedented new interest in
the historically famous gin world, both off- and
on-premise.
“It’s a scenario
that’s ready-made for today’s more sophisticated,
experimental customer,” observes Scott Samos, the General
Manager of Martignetti Liquor stores. “For years we’ve been
seeing the craze going on for all the countless flavored
vodkas in the 25 to 35 age group. Until recently, gin was
‘Dad’s drink’, so forget about it – not anymore. I’m seeing
more and more younger drinkers embracing gin like never
before. Now, many of them are thinking, ‘It’s my drink’. In
general, the gin market is maturing. Customers are now
coming in and calling for specific top-end gin brands, not
just asking ‘where’s your gin aisle?’.”
Adding to its
portfolio of category-leading import heavyweights like
Beefeater, Bombay Original and Sapphire, Tanqueray Original
and No.1O, Martignetti carries the increasingly popular and
new light-styled Miller’s London Dry, also the Boodle’s
brand, and they’ve just added Damrak, an unusual
non-juniper-tasting Dutch newcomer that has been an instant
hit with several bartenders for its exceptionally versatile
mixability. Meanwhile, gin-savvy distributor M.S. Walker,
who’s been realizing dramatic success with two distinctively
different red-hot super-premium UK imports, Plymouth and
Hendrick’s, has just acquired a promising new spicy citrusy,
14-times-distilled, Dutch import, Zuidam, which appears to
have all the credentials and critical raves for another
major hit in Walker’s portfolio, and has already received a
coveted “Best White Spirit” award in the 2OO4 spirits
journal, as well as an astonishing tasting review rating of
1OO-plus-1O.
And let’s not
forget another quite remarkable emerging import in the
marketplace. This would be the Old Raj brand, produced by
none other than Springbank-owned Cadenhead in Scotland,
better known for some of the most sought-after single malt
scotch labels in the world. Apparently the owner decided he
wanted have his own gin, explains the brand’s US marketing
director, Steve Fox of California-based Preiss Imports, so
he came up with Old Raj. It’s a massive, powerful,
full-bodied London Dry style, loaded with herbs and spices
and juniper in the recipe. Another of Old Raj’s
singularities is an infused saffron, which gives a pale
yellowish tinge to the liquid. It’s also
11O-proof.
“When you make a
gin product too low in alcohol,” Fox points out, “the
character doesn’t come out so well. This is why all your
quality gins, in general, are higher proof spirits. Of
course, the higher the proof usually means the higher the
price point, and Old Raj sets a new unprecedented luxury
level bottle price standard in the gin category with an
average national $6O retail price for a 75Oml, making it by
the far the priciest gin in the US market.”
But is it
selling, we ask? “When we first introduced this in the
mid-‘9Os,” Fox admits, “we had some real doubts about this
price-level for any gin. Yet, we loved the product and
tested it out in California with some clubs and finer
retailers. There also were some wine merchants in the Napa
Valley who got their hands on it and absolutely loved it.
Soon after, it began getting great critical press write-ups
and was featured in magazines like playboy. We get almost no
marketing dollars for it, so, it’s pretty much been a
word-of-mouth hand-sell at the retail level, and a number of
bartenders and retailers have thrown great support behind
it. So, this is a brand that’s been able to build itself on
its own momentum in the retail sector.”
What all this
indicates to Martignetti’s Samos is that there are basically
two schools of thought that are driving the growth of
today’s gins. “Some gins are trying to become the ultimate
luxury premiums in the traditional, refined juniper and
botanical classic recipe style. Others are marketing
themselves as high-end mavericks with distinctive points of
taste differences. It’s now pretty obvious that both of
these product concepts and styles are viable in today’s
market.”
Present day
Metro Boston turns out to be one of America’s hottest and
most diversified markets for super-premium gin consumption,
and we also happen to have several on-premise establishments
and distinguished bartenders who are vigorously creating
imaginative gin drinks and promoting various gin products as
their ideal spirit of choice. I enlisted four of them to
share their views and philosophies about the category,
because there’s no better way to evaluate brand
performances, interesting drink concepts and consumer trends
than hanging in with expert mixologists who represent the
front line proving grounds of the drinks business where the
real excitement and definitive action is happening and the
rubber hits the road.
The first stop
was at one of Boston’s most enduring and upscale landmark
restaurant-cocktail lounge establishments, Locke-Ober,
that’s been a favorite destination for original gin martinis
and other gin drink classics for more than 1OO years.
Recently renovated, tastefully revitalized, but physically
preserved by new owner and internationally-renowned
celebrity chef, Lydia Shire, the bar scene here remains an
elegant link to Olde Boston’s cultural heritage. And no one
could be better-suited to serve behind the bar, here, than
veteran mixologist, Carah McLaughlin (the cover model for
this issue), who’s been a Boston bartending legend in her
own right for nearly 3O years. She calls this her “ultimate
dream job, a position anyone who’s serious about the
bartending profession would die for.”
“I feel
traditions are important,” Carah offers, “and one of the
things that pleases me as a bartender is seeing a resurgence
of interest in classic cocktails. Locke-Ober doesn’t have a
specialty drink menu. When customers ask me about specialty
drinks, I always tell them that our specialties are all the
classics. We do fresh lime cosmopolitans and margaritas. We
have a scotch and port list. We can serve vodka with just
about anything, if asked. But gin drinks speak for
themselves and are at the heart of the Locke-Ober tradition
from its very beginnings.”
Her most
elaborate gin drink is a Ramos Fizz. To make it the right
way, according to Carah, you combine a gin of your choice
with a couple of teaspoons of lemon juice, three teaspoons
of simple syrup, a good splash of cream, some egg white, and
a couple of drops of orange flower water. Vigorously shake
it and serve it straight up, topping it off with a little
soda.
She has one
older gentleman who comes in and claims to have tried Ramos
Fizzes all over the world. Locke-Ober’s version, he insists,
is the best he’s ever tasted anywhere. Carah enthuses, “It’s
just a pleasure to have customers coming in like this. They
represent a truly educated class of spirits consumer. I call
them high-end customers, who appreciate and are
knowledgeable about exactly what they’re ordering. These are
also the people who really know how to drink, and I’m seeing
more and more of them. I might add, that as a spirit of
choice, gin happens to have distinct popularity with this
kind of genuinely sophisticated drinking audience, which
certainly tells you something about relative merits of this
historic spirits category. And it also makes the current
craze for these so-called martinis, that put everything in
the world in a martini glass that are passed off as a
martini, seem absolutely absurd. There are generations of
Locke-Ober customers rolling around in their graves just
thinking about that. At my bar, a real martini is all about
gin, pure and simple.”
A Gin Blossom is
another standard classic she’s asked for. It’s very simple
and straight-forward – gin, orange juice and a splash of
orange flower water – and she has one regular customer who
drinks it all the time. But the Negroni is perhaps her most
popular signature cocktail and the one she takes particular
pride in. “My Negroni is equal parts of your choice of gin,
sweet vermouth and Campari. Some people like it heavier on
the Campari or the gin, and this is for the bartender to
ask. But the classic way is equal parts, shaken, and served
straight up in a martini glass with a burnt orange twist,
which you burn right in front of the customer for that
little added flair and the incredible citrus essence that
can surround the drink. It fills the whole glass and the
immediate bar seating area. This is what real flavor is all
about. There are such a bewildering number of flavored
products of every description out there today, but so many
of them are just bastard flavors, flavored pretenders. I can
always taste the artificial flavor and just can’t drink
them. I also can’t promote them to customers, which doesn’t
exactly endear me to a lot of product reps. But I insist on
being honest.”
Since coming to
Locke-Ober seven years ago, one of the nicest things about
her job, she says, is that now she has time to take great
care with everything she’s making at the bar. “I don’t have
to fluff through anything, and can now give my customers
quality time. And it’s such a luxury because it creates a
better hand-crafted cocktail that does justice to so many of
these hand-crafted super-premium spirits that I’m
serving.
“Let’s face it,”
she adds with a laugh, “I’ll never hold a Guinness Record
for bar volume, but this a bar where I can be an artist
rather than a machine. I’ve done my machine days, pumping it
out like there’s no tomorrow, flying at a
3O-cocktails-every-15-minutes kind of pace. It was all about
speed, and the stress could be unbelievable. Yes, it was
exciting and fun for awhile, and, yes, I was also young and
ready to take on all the challenges. But I’m not that person
anymore.”
One especially
positive trend in bar clientele that Carah sees is the
change taking place with younger consumers who are
developing more refined tastes. Carah adds, “I think more
and more young drinkers today are finding this important. In
fact, whether it be a resurgence of interest in classic
cocktails, high-end call brands and civilized drinking
habits, I’m seeing a lot more class, refinement and maturity
in this younger twenties consumer approach to alcohol today
than ever before. Now, they’re savoring it, rather than
slamming it. I find it a very encouraging trend, and it’s
such a treat for this old bartender here, who’s seen it
all.”
Among Carah’s
most favorite customers is her old friend, and now boss,
Lydia Shire herself. “She’s definitely my gin lady,” says
Carah with a hearty laugh, “and Bombay Original has always
been her brand. I’ve been making martinis for Lydia for 25
years now, going all the way back to my first bartending job
at PB Sharon’s, which no longer exists. This was about 1979,
during the very beginning of the single malt boom. Owner
Paul Sharon was such a connoisseur of alcoholic beverages
and he had a tremendous drinks menu, unusual wines, and a
remarkable inventory of fine scotches. This was also the
time when Lydia and her buddy Jasper White were becoming
chef celebrities at the nearby Bostonian Hotel. Jasper was
also a Bombay martini drinker. They’d frequently stop in at
my bar together, and we started a little joke. I’d always
ask them, “Are we calling Dr. Bombay, this evening?” The
answer was always, “Yeeees! Please call the
doctor.”
Carah’s gin
martini business today is huge, and, in fact, Locke-Ober may
be the very place where the so-called three-martini lunch
originated, she speculates. The martini glass was always
served in a chilled colander, and the martini itself came in
its own super-chilled container for refills. “That’s when a
martini was a martini. And it was made with gin,” Carah
emphasizes. “People didn’t even conceive of a vodka martini.
Vodka was something you mixed with tonic. And a Tom Collins
was also always a gin drink. You never had to ask a customer
whether gin or vodka? Now, you always have to. First of all,
is it a gin martini? OK, what kind of gin? Then, shaken or
stirred? Shaken is delicious and creates little ice crystals
on top of the martini glass. It’s the way Lydia likes hers.
I’m a shake-martini fan, myself, because it just makes the
drink so beautifully cold. Old-timers tend to like stirred,
however, because they believe it doesn’t break down the gin
and leaves less water in the cocktail. The less water, the
better, they think. You also have to ask about straight up
or on-the-rocks, and about twists or olives or maybe a
Gibson onion. All that kind of thing.
“More than any
other consumer, a gin drinker normally doesn’t drink any
other spirit but gin,” she contends. “They are creatures of
habit. But, besides the classic martini, the classic
gin-and-tonic, the classic Tom Collins, the Negroni, the
Ramos Fizz, there really aren’t a ton of gin drinks out
there. So, maybe this makes gin a tough-sell category in
today’s creative drinks market. But that’s not to say that
these classic gin drinks shouldn’t be considered among the
very best. However, there are still a lot of bad raps and
old wives’ tales hanging around from Prohibition days about
dissolute gin drinking, bootleggers, and illegal
terrible-tasting bath-tub gin products, which can continue
to scare off some people. It’s an unfortunate misperception
that has put the gin category in the back seat, although it
really belongs in the front seat. I keep reminding customers
that, historically, gin has been around forever, it seems,
and was considered the god of spirits for so long. It’s
about all I can do. But this is a problem that the category
marketers are still trying to overcome.”
Going from
classics to the very new, a visit with Michael Paquette, the
manager of spiffy modern Restaurant L on Berkeley Street in
Boston’s Back Bay, reveals some remarkably creative ideas
about not only exotic drink specialties, but also virtually
unknown food and drink ingredients that add a whole new
dimension to any gin usage discussions.
Restaurant L is
noted for creative Southeast Asian culinary specialties, and
the restaurant has been defined as Modern European with
Japanese fusion, which lends itself to a lots of eccentric
but beautiful flavor discoveries. “We have a small intimate
dining room and bar area that seats about 48,” says
Paquette, “and it represents an ideally thoughtful, quiet
and unhurried setting for really savoring and exploring
unusual dining and drinking experiences. We’re also
fortunate enough to have a genius chef, Pino Masseo, who’s
been able to integrate unusual food combinations and flavors
in an amazing variety of ways.”
It turns out
Chef Masseo just received one of food & wine magazine’s
prestigious ‘top 1O chefs in America’ awards recognitions,
having been with this restaurant for only about two years,
and Restaurant L just got its liquor license seven months
ago. “Obviously, with the extraordinary signature dishes he
produces in the kitchen,” Paquette emphasizes, “it goes
without saying that our drink selections have to measure up
to match these highest standards. Pino’s been a great
inspiration for me in this effort. We work closely together,
and he’s encouraged me to work with a lot of exotic
ingredients I would have never thought of, which we’ve been
able to incorporate in our cocktails, many of which are gin
creations.
“One example is
the Aloe Gin Mojito, an exceptionally refreshing summertime
drink, which incorporates juice squeezed from fresh aloe
cubes that we sweeten ourselves, some moscato dessert wine,
lime juice, fresh muddled mint, and I use Damrak from
Amsterdam that been in this market for about 1O months. It’s
a new gin import in the Remy-Martin product portfolio and
one of the cleanest gins I’ve ever encountered. I’m now
using it in many of my cocktails because it’s just a
beautiful mixing spirit when you want to highlight unusual
tastes. Aloe has an appealing luscious flavor, similar to a
muscato grape, but with some lychee fruit-like accents. We
also serve gelatinous aloe cubes with some of our desserts
and specialty food dishes.”
Another of
Paquette’s signature drinks is the Cucumber Gin Martini,
which is based on Hendrick’s gin from Scotland, with its
unique infusion of cucumbers and rose petals. Paquette
enhances it a step further with rose water and cucumber
puree, as well as a reduction of prickly pear. It’s shaken
and served as a martini. “The result has a remarkably
appealing and delicate herbal character, which is
distinctive, yet never overwhelming,” explains Paquette.
“However, you have to be careful about the rose water, which
is very strong and herbaceous and can easily dominate a
drink. So, at the bar, we actually use eye droppers when we
add it.”
One more that he
does, which is his personal favorite, is a Singapore Sling.
It’s based on an authentic recipe from Singapore that calls
for grenadine, cherry and pineapple juice, and a little
lemon juice. “My take on it,” explains Paquette, “is to use
Japanese mountain peaches, which are actually not peaches,
but small berries, and are used in Japan between sushi
courses as palate cleansers. They have a very bright and
acidic character, and also a notably sweet component.
Instead of cherry juice in the drink base, I’ve substituted
juice pressed from these peaches. I also add some
fresh-squeezed lemon and lime juices, a touch of cherry
juice and simple syrup. Before serving, I top it off with a
little soda water to give some carbonation. And one final
signature ingredient is in the special ice cubes we use when
we shake it up. They contain a Japanese herb called shiso,
which is sort of a mint-basil hybrid. I muddle up the shiso
and freeze it in ice cube trays, and I can only tell you
that the subtle combination of shiso and mountain peach
flavors is simply out of this world.”
Over in East
Cambridge, Patrick Sullivan, the bartender/owner of
highly-regarded, always busy B-Side Lounge on Hampshire
Street, turns out to be a passionate advocate of the gin
category, and harbors a deep interest in restoring some
historical respect for both the spirit, as well as the
stature the bartending profession enjoyed way back in what
he calls “the good old days”. This location was originally a
bar that dates back to around 1933 and the end of
Prohibition. There’s a sense of real tradition and history
to the setting and an old-style neighborhood restaurant pub
feeling about the whole place, which lends itself perfectly
to a classic approach to cocktails. Bartending colleagues
and chefs from all over the city come here regularly, as do
many nearby neighbors of all ages, a lot of the bio-tech
after-work crowd from Kendall Square, and a broad
cross-section of the ethnic and academic cultures that
Cambridge is noted for.
“This really
sets us apart from so many of the trendy cocktail bars
you’re seeing out there, now, with all the Watermelon
cordialtini so-called martini-kind of stuff that goes on and
on,” Patrick firmly declares. “We’re definitely nothing to
do with that. With our bar business, we’re not trying to
re-invent the wheel. But I have a great fondness for
tradition that’s shared by a large number of my Cambridge
customers. And I also have amassed quite a collection of
vintage cocktail books from way back, and like to pore
through these to rediscover some true classic drink ideas,
most of them based on gin. This is fortunate, because I’ve
always been a gin guy, and I always like to tell people that
gin makes you smarter. It gets you thinking more about what
you’re drinking.”
Gin is without a
doubt the quintessential mixing spirit behind the bar, he
contends. “Why? Because it’s got a good base that’s not too
complex to start with. It’s true that some gin brands can be
somewhat over-loaded with spice, and they become hot to
drink with almost too much going on. But Plymouth London Dry
has been the all-time favorite at B-Side since the first
night we opened our doors back in December 1998. It’s a
product that has a roundness of style and flavors that can
move in a lot of different directions. We’ve found, over the
years, that it suits our style and the taste of our
gin-drinking clientele better than any other
brand.”
He explains that
B-Side’s very first, and still one of his most popular
signature cocktails, came from an old recipe book. It’s a
gin drink called Aviation, and it represented a real
challenge at the start. It was virtually unknown to any
bartenders in the trade, calling for maraschino liqueur,
which was impossible to get around here even a few years
ago. You also had to have fresh-squeezed lemon juice, which
you almost never would find in any bar back then, he points
out. But he managed to hand-produce all the proper
ingredients himself and started serving Aviation as a B-Side
signature classic. “I just had to do,” he says, “because it
was a cocktail from 1OO years ago, and it said so much about
the direction I wanted B-Side to go. I use 1.5 ounces of
Plymouth, 3/4 of an ounce of Stock maraschino liqueur that’s
available in the marketplace today, 3/4 of an ounce of
fresh-squeezed lemon juice, and I garnish it with a cherry
in the bottom of the glass. The old books referred to this
as the ‘Prince of Cocktails’, and it was the first one on my
list.”
Another great
gin drink he found in a 193Os cocktail guide is called the
Bijou. Sullivan’s version is 1.5 ounces of Plymouth, 3/4 of
an ounce of green chartreuse, 3/4 of an ounce of sweet
vermouth, and a dash of our own orange bitters. “This one
again underscores the superiority of gin as a mixing
spirit,” he says. “I mean, when you try making this drink
with vodka, it’s just blah. There’s just not enough to it.
You’ve got to have the right amount of botanical seasoning
to match up and blend with the orange bitters. When this
drink is properly made, it has a flavor that’s indescribably
sublime and unique, and certainly something you’ll never
forget.
“Still another
one we do,” he continues, “is called the English Rose.
Again, I use Plymouth for this, a French dry vermouth, Marie
Brizard apricot liqueur, lemon juice, and our homemade
grenadine. The taste profile is sort of a ginny, apricoty,
lemony combination, which may sound peculiar, but turns out
to be a sensationally appealing flavor blend. And it’s not
as sweet as it might sound. In fact, our general drinks
philosophy avoids sweet as much as possible. You know, when
this whole recent ‘cocktail nation’ thing began to happen
with all the blueberry martinis stuff, a good part of it was
all about covering up the fact that people were drinking
booze. For a couple of reasons, we’ve never wanted to do
that. First of all, we like the taste of the booze, and want
to sort of highlight it. I mean, that should be the reason
you feature special spirits and cocktails on a bar menu,
isn’t it? You want to be showcasing the spirit in one way or
another. Secondly, we’ve found, through experience, that
folks who are slamming down all these fruity flavored-type
martinis, they’re the customers who tend to be the ones
causing you trouble at midnight. They just have no idea that
they’ve just consumed eight drinks. To them, it’s all like
candy and fancy soda pop.”
Aside from his
fondness for Plymouth, other gins he likes include
Hendrick’s. “We serve it pretty much unto itself,
highlighting its unusual rose-cucumber character. I find it
a very fine gin, however, it’s also an expensive bottle,
which makes it pretty hard to make an $8 cocktail to fit
into our standard bar drink price range. But I have created
a specialty drink with it, which we call the Skeeker Club.
The unusual name comes from what one of our bartenders found
when we first opened, written long ago on an old wall that
used to be right out back of this location. We never
discovered what it stood for, but I always wanted to use the
quirky name for an unusual cocktail. Hendrick’s had enough
eccentricities to fit the bill. So, our Skeeker Club is
basically a martini, which has 2 ounces of Hendrick’s and
1/2 ounce of Via – an unusual California boutique vermouth
with a much more intense and condensed flavor than any
standard vermouth. We then add maybe five healthy dashes of
our homemade orange bitters and serve it on the
rocks.”
Sullivan is also
a fan of high-priced Old Raj, which he calls “a true
high-end sipper”. This, too, is an unusually distinctive
gin, with its infused saffron and a pale yellow hue. “But
I’d never mix this with anything,” he emphasizes. “It’s
something you should only drink by itself, on-the-rocks,
which is the only way I ever consume an ultra-premium
specialty bourbon whiskey like a Booker’s. And even though
Old Raj is just about the most expensive gin there is, I’m
getting an increasing number of calls on it. It just goes to
show how willingly customers, in today’s marketplace, will
accept and pay for a luxury spirit item that they really
like.
“I’m also very
fond of the old standby, Beefeater,” he goes on, “which
might be considered a working man’s gin by super-premium
standards. But I feel it’s has a user-friendly mixability,
like Plymouth, and matches up well in a lot of drinks.
Beefeater is a little on the hot side, but nowhere near the
hotness of, say, a Tanqueray. If you use Tanqueray in some
of these cocktails, the gin just overpowers the blend. But
for a classic good old gin-and-tonic, which I still consider
one of the greatest drinks there is, Tanqueray is an
excellent choice. The fact is, a T&T (Tanqueray and
tonic) has been a popular call drink for decades and it’s
actually the drink that did so much to build the Tanqueray
brand.”
The truth,
though, he admits, is that he simply doesn’t get into that
many brands. “We like what we like and what our customers
like, but have kept it as simple as possible. We take
cocktails very seriously, but we’re straight ahead, if you
know what I mean. We’re not one of those places that infuse
everything, garnish everything with flowers. We’re basically
a no-frills quality bar for a broad cross-section of
ordinary people, and we also do a very high volume. So, we
just can’t get too esoteric, even if we wanted to. We’ve
always kept our cocktail business at a level where we can
produce, and we like to feel that what we do produce is as
good a drink as anything you’ll find anywhere.”
Jackson Cannon,
the manager at the ambitiously diverse and often crowded
Eastern Standard contemporary restaurant and bar in Kenmore
Square, may be the most visionary and whimsical gin
mixologist in the city. Another of Boston’s leading gin
drink advocates, he’s also come up with novel drink list
techniques to lure unsuspecting customers into the category
for the first time, and he talks about gin with almost
poetic reverence. “It’s not difficult to understand what
made it the dominant category in the early to middle part of
the 2Oth century,” he says. “For one thing, it’s always been
so well suited to the cocktail idea. It’s a clear spirit,
but based on grain, with so many opportunities for botanical
seasonings, that it retains its own character when mixed
with all the juices and mixes and cordials that go into some
of my favorite cocktails. By contrast, vodka is a blank
canvas, and it’s easy to throw all kinds of flavoring colors
against the wall. But it lacks any real depth of interest to
a serious mixologist, which I consider myself to
be.”
He explains
that, for his bar, he’s decided to take on the gin challenge
in a big way because of respect for what this spirit can be
at its higher quality levels. “Of course, people don’t want
to be told what to eat and what to drink, but, being a
crafts bartender, I do have the power of suggestion working
with my customers. And, as an admitted promoter of gin
drinks, I’ve gotten around the old gin stigma problem in the
way I’ve organized and titled our Eastern Standard cocktail
menu.”
He’s broken it
down into functional sub-categories like “refresh”,
“stimulate”, “challenge”, “advance”, and “sparkle”, with
descriptions underneath the names of specific drinks that
aren’t just the recipes listing proportions, which are so
common on most cocktail lists these days. He explains he
wants to focus more on both ingredients and where the drink
might have originated historically. “What this also does,”
he points out, “is to mask the fact that a majority of the
list here is gin-based cocktails, which have become hugely
successful in our bar business. It gets people talking more
about the tertiary ingredients in the drink, rather than
confronting them with the fact that they’re drinking gin.
But a bit later, somewhat after the fact, many people are
actually amazed to discover that not only have they been
drinking gin, but also how much they really love
it.”
|
à la à la Ramos Negroni à la Aloe Cucumber Singapore à la Aviation Bijou English Skeeker à la Alaska Monkey El |
In this
closely-knit Boston bartending fraternity, it turns out that
Jackson worked for his good friend Patrick Sullivan at
B-Side for several years before taking on this new Eastern
Standard position. And, so, not surprisingly, he’s also
favors Plymouth London Dry brand as an excellent mixing gin.
“But, as an ingredient on our drinks menu,” he points out,
“we refer to it simply as the Spirit of Plymouth without a
gin identification. Amazingly, few customers ever ask me
what Spirit of Plymouth actually is, and are surprised when
I later tell them that it’s the original London Dry gin
imported from Plymouth, England. And, sometimes, when a
customer will flatly declare, ‘Oh, I don’t like gin,’ all
our bartenders have been coached to come back immediately
with, ‘Well, maybe you’ve never had a well-balanced cocktail
made with gin. Why not give it a try?’ Most of the time,
they can be persuaded. And, after that, you’ve got them. I
couldn’t begin to count the number of our customers we’ve
already succeeded in bringing into the gin category with one
of our signature cocktails. You can convert them from, say,
a Cosmopolitan with ease. And this is something I’ve been
exploring a lot with gins from my front line on-premise
vantage point.”
One popular
signature gin cocktail is his Alaska, which is a classic gin
martini, made with Plymouth, with a slightly creative spin.
It’s 3-to-1 parts gin, and uses a yellow chartreuse for
vermouth with a dash of orange bitters. “This is drink in
the “Challenge” section of my list,” he explains, “where I’m
actually taking customers who may be a loyal followers of a
given brand of gin, and persuading them to try the Plymouth
brand and a different set-up than your familiar extra dry,
one-olive type of martini. With this kind of cocktail, I’m
not only targeting non-gin martini drinkers, but, even more,
encouraging an established gin-drinker to drink across the
category and try highly distinctive different styles and
brands.”
He’s been
recently experimenting with Damrak, the new super-premium
import from Holland. What especially intrigues him, he says,
is that it’s done in the London Dry-style and made from an
old recipe, dating back to the 17OOs, that was recently
discovered when they were knocking out the walls of an
ancient Amsterdam distillery. “I find it heavily accented
with citrus components, and although lacking any juniper
components, it clearly presents as a gin. It’s been on the
market maybe a year, but hasn’t received any substantial
promotional push. But we’ve found it to be just a great gin
style for mixology and a lot of bartenders have gotten
behind it, here.”
“I was trying to
explain Damrak’s difficult-to-describe unique taste profile
to someone, recently, and the term that somehow kept coming
to mind was ‘Battle of Waterloo’, which of course has
nothing to do with flavor, but is all about history. And
maybe this is appropriate, because, despite its Dutch
heritage, Damrak just has such a distinctive British
presence, with no resemblance to the sweeter and somewhat
heavier traditional gins from Holland. And what needs to be
remembered, here, is that both Dutch and British gins are
both traditions borne from a cross-influence between Holland
and England. There really isn’t any modern version of either
that doesn’t relate to this joint heritage that existed as
this category began developing in past centuries.
“This is one of
the fascinating things about trying to pin down historic gin
styles. There are all kinds of layers involved in the
history of these spirits, and, if you are a
seriously-committed crafts bar, it’s getting into this kind
of category history with customers that is one of the ways
you can successfully build your gin business. There are so
many social, cultural, and historical components to all
this. It’s far more than just talking about flavors. You
could call it mixology with an historical perspective, and
consumer education playing an important part. I mean, here
we are approaching the 2OOth anniversary of the cocktail,
so, knowing as much as I possibly can about the heritage of
cocktails is a major objective I want to share with
customers.”
Like Sullivan at
the B-Side Lounge, Jackson, too, has been playing around
quite a bit with this earlier American gin heritage. For
example, consider one odd-ball-sounding selection on his
drink list called The Monkey Gland. Jackson has to laugh
when explaining it. “It’s a cocktail from the Prohibition
era, when spirits had to go underground. Drinking became
sort of the punk rock symbol of that era and cocktails were
given some pretty unusual and often ribald names. This is
also listed in the ‘Challenge’ section of our drinks menu
and described as a ‘rebellious Prohibition creation’. Again,
we don’t mention it’s a gin drink. The name, itself, refers
to that quack medical procedure in the early 2Oth century,
when men were getting older and losing their sex drive, and
they were given implants of a monkey’s testicle. There was
even a popular song relating to this with ridiculous lyrics
that went something like, ‘I feel like a man of 83 without
much virility. But you’ve got to understand I’ve got me a
plan, and am getting myself a monkey gland’.
“Needless to
say, we’ve been having a lot of fun with this drink,”
Jackson goes on, “and it’s aroused considerable interest as
a whimsical conversation piece, depending on the audience
you’ve got. It’s also a very unusual gin concoction. Instead
of gin being the dominant ingredient, you have one part gin,
one part orange juice. You also add a dash of real grenadine
and then some Henri Bardouin pastis, which is the famously
traditional French anise liqueur like a pernod, with a taste
like absinthe, so favored by poets and lovers in the cafe
culture of France. We use the Bardouin for this because it’s
a little lighter and sweeter than other anise products.
Anyway, the cocktail result is a blush-red drink with an
orange flavor and a licorice after-taste. Also, the gin I
especially like for this one is Miller’s, but any good dry
London-style gin will give you a nice little juniper note
poking through as an added touch. And, let me tell you, if
you tried to make this drink with vodka, the vodka would
utterly disappear. It just wouldn’t work.”
One of his other
creative gin classics that’s doing very well is the El
Splendido, which is two parts gin to one part Chambord and
one part fresh lime juice. “This one comes out as an elegant
sipping cocktail, but also makes a great little toaster
where we’ll make one cocktail and pour it into three or four
small glasses for people to taste and toast with. It goes
down as this deliciously elegant crush of raspberry and
lime, complimented by the spicy gin notes. It’s just a
sensational combination, and I actually like a pretty sweet
gin for this one and sometimes will even use distinctively
sweeter Tanqueray. Again, this is one of those drinks that
people love, but probably would have never tried if they’d
known they were drinking gin beforehand. So, it’s a great
one to get customers sliding into the category from other
places.”
How would
Jackson summarize his fondness for gin, we ask? “Before we
opened,” he says, “the whole genesis of our drinks and gin
program was built upon trying to undo this model of
uninspired cocktail lists, in general, and the unsavory
misconceptions about gin, specifically. We kept trying to
think of evocative ways to get people interested. Here, at
this Kenmore location, adjacent to the Hotel Commonwealth,
we have a wide demographic of customers ranging from all
sorts of hotel guests, working professional regulars from
the neighborhood in their late 2Os and 3Os, students and
faculty from BU, a cross-section of Red Sox fans before and
after games, and a constant flow of out-of-town Boston
visitors, including baseball fans from other US cities and
Canada who want to make a trip to Fenway more than any other
baseball park in America. And the more I began focusing on
the categories that would make great attention-getting
signature cocktails for this broad assortment of clientele,
the more it became apparent that gin was the most promising
among them.”
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