My new friend: Hendrick’s Gin

I recently made a new and interesting friend, and during the course of various conversation, he had told me, upon the revelation of my preference for gin, about Hendrick’s Gin, 

I had the opportunity to have a gin & tonic with Hendrick’s Gin at Matador on Pine Street a couple Fridays ago, and it was wonderful–until I realised I couldn’t possibly drink any more lest things would turn horrible, considering I had about three and a half drinks prior to my lovely gin & tonic.  I wound up passing off to my friend Shani while my friend Jack ran and got me french fries from some sports bar nearby.

The morning after was pretty painful, to say the least.  But the gin was not to blame.

After a long recovery from that Friday night (Friday the 13th, no less), I went into Total Wine over on Colonial and Primrose to pick up a bottle of rum for Stardust, as it’s an ingredient I use in some of my cupcake-making (shhh!).  Out of curiosity, I popped over to the nearby gin aisle and, lo and behold, right next to my usual choice of Bombay Sapphire was a black bottle, sitting resplendent with a diamond label: Hendrick’s Gin.  At $22, I figured it was well-worth the cost, considering a small Bombay Sapphire Dry Gin was priced at $19.

I had a little of Hendrick’s Gin last night, coupled simply with club soda, and it was divine.  The bottle is interesting not only for its design, but also because what you assume would be a screw-top is actually a cork, which makes a satisfying sound upon opening.  What makes Hendrick’s so special is the additional ingredients used to infuse the alcohol: rose petal and cucumber.  The combination is ingenious, as the product shows.  The liquid itself, due to the rose-petal infusion, looks ever-so-slightly pink.  Plus, Hendrick’s is a product of Scotland, which makes it cooler somehow.

So, should you be an individual who enjoys the taste of a good gin, I would like to suggest having a sip of an excellent brand from Scotland: Hendrick’s.  Just don’t decide to give it a whirl after you’ve already had three or four drinks.

More about Hendrick’s on the web:

• The Bottle Gang: The Myth of the Scottish Picnic
• Tanqueray vs. Hendrick’s Gin posting on Chowhound
• Liquor Snob: Hendrick’s Gin Review

The Great Orlando Beer Festival

Man, I love beer. I can’t drink a lot of it in one sitting, but beer is what I choose to drink at a bar, and the bars I choose to drink at tend to have good beer. If they don’t, well, then I guess I’m drinking water.

So, imagine my excitement when I found out that on this Saturday, the first annual Great Orlando Beer Festival will be happening from 2 pm until 7 pm downtown in the lot for the Club at Firestone. At $25 a ticket for advance tickets, it’s not cheap, but there will be unlimited beer samples. UNLIMITED! Okay, really the limit is what you can intake which, in my case, might be around the $25 mark. Judging by the list of breweries participating at the event, it’ll be money well-spent. Flying Dog Brewery, for example, puts out excellent beer I’m well-acquainted with from bringing it over to friends’ houses. Our very own Orlando Brewing will also be involved, as well as Red Hook, Lagunitas, Otter Creek Brewing, Rogue and more. Food will be available for purchase, as well as a live band, but really, it’s all about the beer.

Sadly, I’ve asked around and it looks like a handful of my best beer-lovin’ friends will be working. If you’re lucky enough not to fall into that category, it’s $35 to enter the day of the event and $25 if you buy early, so if you think you’d like to attend, get your tickets Friday and save yourself ten bucks. If you’re the designated driver, you get in for $10, and can get free non-alcoholic beverages. You can buy the tickets online, or you can visit one of three locations where they will be selling tickets for the festival:

• Redlight Redlight - 535 W. New England Avenue, Winter Park (near Park Avenue)
• Underground Bluz - 12261 University Boulevard, Orlando (near UCF)
• Orlando Brewing - 1301 Atlanta Avenue, Orlando (near AMTRAK station)

If you’re seriously broke, but still want a piece of the action, you may still be able to volunteer to work at the festival. Some free schwag, like a t-shirt, may be your reward. If you happen to be pouring a beer for me, I don’t like that much head on mine, thanks.

For directions to this wonderful brouhaha (or… brewhaha?!), you can click here for a Mapquest map and some written directions, or simply GoogleMap “42 West Concord Street, Orlando 32801,” which can give you a good idea of the what and the where. Also, the website says you can park in the Courthouse parking lot, but there’s also parking on the street along Orange Avenue and along some of its side streets. The metered parking is waived during the weekends, unless there’s been a change in policy, so you should be good to go.

The event is meant to be “a celebration of craft beers,” which is a fantastic way to get people introduced to microbreweries across this great country, as well as a handful of popular tasty beers that people enjoy, such as Guinness and Blue Moon. A portion of the proceeds are earmarked to help out our local Habitat for Humanity, which goes to show: drinking good beer leads to good things.

You can ruminate on what drinking bad beer will get you on your own.

When is a glass of wine not a glass of wine?

I was poking around BBC News and came across this article: Doctors slam ’supersized’ drinks.  Per the title, I had thought the article dealt with the enormous soda cups, where a “small” is a miniature bucket, like the one I bought last week at the cinema–it was huge!  I couldn’t finish it all!

Actually, the article didn’t deal with soda, but rather the increasing trend of pubs and bars in the UK of offering larger glasses as the standard size for wine, and adding more liquor into mixed drinks than previously.  In the article, it explains “[t]he 125ml wine glass used to be the standard size but now just 16% of pubs and bars say it is their normal size.  Some 73% say 175ml is the new “standard” and 250ml the large.”

On one hand, you have the industry leaders professing they’re merely offering “value,” but the article states that 250 ml is equivalent to a third of a bottle of wine, which is a large amount in one sitting on its own for me, being the One Drink Wonder.  Couple that with two or three more glasses, and you have someone drinking at least a whole bottle on their own in only a few (huge) glasses and may not even realise it, counting glasses rather than the liquid amount.

Greg Mulholland, a Liberal Democrat, is proposing a bill in the House of Commons to standardise the 125 ml as “a glass,” and to make all restaurants, bars and pubs carry the size.  In this situation, I think that the restaurants can go ahead and offer the larger sizes for their customers should they so choose, provided the customers are well-informed.  In this earlier article on the wine glasses, I like the proposal that a reader by the name of Eddie in Edinburgh proposed:

I don’t like the idea of force, or compulsion. It might be a better idea to change the labelling, so instead of 250ml, it says Approx 3 Units - assuming a reasonable norm of about 12% by volume. I’ve noticed increasingly that more alcoholic beverages purchased in shops are doing this, maybe we could extend it to all drinks in pubs - how many units are in that pint you just quaffed…

Upon reading the rest of the reader comments, it was interesting to see a good many people support the legislation, whereas many others opposed it, likening the action to be that of a “Nanny State,” and telling people to “grow up” and the government to “stop dictating us.”

I can’t help but draw similarities to the wine consumption sizing issue to that of the sizing issues we have in the United States with food.  It’s well-known that portions have gotten larger in many restaurants, especially those national and regional chains, and there have been dietitians who have pointed out that the more on the plate, the more we eat.  It may also be true for alcohol for people; I know it’s true for me when I’m unable to measure the amount of, say, beer I’m drinking because rather than the standard bottles, I’m drinking from a large 1.5 litre bottle of La Chouffe.

Although I’m unsure if a blanket decree is in order for Britain’s wine glasses, I think it would be helpful, as suggested, to indicate the amount of units a patron would be drinking, and also to provide smaller glasses for those interested in merely whetting their whistle.

A Sweet Sting

I had previously written about different beer recipes in Casey’s Concoction and Other Fun with Beer, and was intrigued by the “bee sting,” which is a mixture of dark beer and orange juice.

So, sometime after work last week, I had a little time to kill before I watched a film with the Florida Film Festival, so I scooted by Stardust and asked Alli for a half glass of ACME Pale Ale, and a Clementine Izze. For those of you unfamiliar with Izze, it’s a “sparkling juice” beverage, much like carbonated soda, but juice and really tasty. I poured half of the bottle of Clementine Izze into my half-filled glass of ACME Pale Ale, and the result was delicious! It was a light and wonderful afternoon drink that ensured I wouldn’t be incapacitated to drive later, since I only had one (or only half a beer), and it was thoroughly refreshing. Since I’m a lightweight with alcohol, I wanted to have a bit of a beer, but not enough for me to feel unable to drive to the cinema later. This drink was ideal for that.

I’ve dubbed it the “sweet sting,” and it’s sure to be a Summer ‘08 hit for me, especially since summer in Florida has already begun to seep into our fleeting springtime days. If you’d like to recreate the drink, I would suggest any type of pale ale, heifeweizen or Czech pilsner as the beer. Izze can be purchased at Whole Foods and also at some Publixes, or you can have a go at it at Stardust like I did. If you can’t find Clementine Izze, be creative, and let me know what you come up with!

Bikes, Beans & Bordeaux

Earlier this evening, I went to Stardust with the intention to have dinner there, but with the parking lot full and the chairs loaded with people, I opted instead to check out a new place I had my eye on as it was opening.

The sign for Bikes, Beans & Bordeaux had intrigued me when I passed by the little strip mall the restaurant was nestled in, or rather, going to be nestled in. At the time I had noticed it, the cafe was still in the process of “coming soon!”, so I was sort of waiting until I had seen it was open for business. Sometimes, the time it takes for a restaurant to open can be lengthy, but it didn’t seem so with Bikes, Beans & Bordeaux. I believe it was sometime earlier this week or last week that I had seen its little “Open” sign alight above some curtains.

Since Stardust was crowded, and I wanted to try out the place anyway, I scooted on over to Bikes, Beans & Bordeaux. Now, when I think of people who ride bikes in Orlando, I’m more inclined to think of the group of youngish folks behind Orlando Critical Mass: the bike punks who work it with their cut-off jean shorts, longish hair, tattoos and a disdain for automobiles. I had fully expected for Bikes, Beans & Bordeaux to be a bike punk haven, but when I entered the small cafe and was met with light wood veneers, little tea candles and low lighting, “bike punk chic” was not what I had gotten.

The proprietors, a husband and wife, greeted me eagerly behind a couple and baby seated at a little bar area. The husband, who later introduced himself as Darrell, kindly directed me to the menus in a couple containers mounted on the wall near the entrance. “The Beer & Wine menu is two pages!” he informed me as I looked at the fixtures. I grabbed them, although I went with getting some organic English Breakfast tea in the end, but it should interest you to know that their house beers, served in bottles, include beer from Orlando Brewing, and there’s a bunch of wines I’m woefully unfamiliar with, because I’m not a wine person, but I’ll list some for you winey folks: Chateau Paradis Casseuil Blanc, Bordeaux, France; Moon Mountain, Cabernet Sauvignon, Sonoma Valley, California; Echelon, Pinot Grigio, Clarksburg, California; Chateau La Nerthe, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Rhone, France.

Although I was not interested in getting any beer or wine, I was very keen on getting some food, and was torn between the Tour Mediterraneen and the Caprese Panini. After a fevered deliberation at the cash register, I decided to go with my first instinct and ordered the Tour Mediterraneen: Smothered with hummus, this tasty creation is served up with lettuce, tomato, red onion, sprouts, olives, cucumber, feta cheese and drizzled with Greek dressing on Italian bread. Upon ordering the sandwich sans onions, I was told that they were out of the bread, but offered multigrain or honey wheat in its stead, of which I chose the latter.

When I got the sandwich, it came with a bag of Sun Chips (although you could also opt for carrot sticks), a pickle and, interestingly, a tiny bag of Jelly Belly jelly beans, which I later tucked away to eat in whenever I got in a candy mood, or to give away to someone, as I’m not particularly big on jelly beans. My sandwich was delicious. The only thing I would have liked to have made it perfect was to have had a fork to scoop up the stray tomatoes, olives and feta that would slip out from between the bread. I loved the flavor of the Greek dressing, and the cucumbers tasted so wonderfully fresh and crisp.

Ah, Sandwich Nirvana.

I had texted a few of my friends while I waited for my sandwich, because as I studied the menu, I could definitely see many of my friends liking the place. The food is both vegetarian and non, and in addition to beer and wine, they have a nice selection of different coffee drinks and organic teas, as well as smoothies. Plus, they’re open at 7 am every day for breakfast, except for Monday–they’re closed.

As I ate my sandwich, drank my tea and read a book I had brought along with me, the place began to fill up, and what struck me was how warmly the owners greeted these customers by name. There was a group of men who came in and grabbed some beers after handshakes and chit-chat with Darrell, and sat in the facing leather couches under a flat-screen television showing, from what I could tell from a few glances at the screen, the Cycling Network. Is there such a thing? There were a couple of guys who came in on their own, one of whom was visibly taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi in the cafe.

If you’d like to check out the menu to see if you’d like to make a visit to “B3,” you can visit their website: www.B3Cafe.com.

2008: The Return of the Green Fairy

For those of you who didn’t know, the ban on absinthe in the United States has become relaxed enough for a few distillers to start selling the drink on US shores. The United States now joins the European Union with a renewed look at an old and vilified drink. Per this article from the New York Times, “One reason legal barriers have fallen is that, as The New Yorker reported in 2006, the regulated chemical thujone, found in wormwood and once thought to have been the cause of absinthe’s lure and its dangers, did not show up in any significant quantities in analyses of historical absinthe. So these authentic replicas, despite containing wormwood, do not pose a legal challenge” (emphasis mine).

This revisit of the Green Fairy in the US can be attributed to an attorney by the name of Robert Lehrman, hired by Kübler of Switzerland, makers of… yep, absinthe. The inquiries began in 2000, and the regulations were only loosened late last year, so Lehrman had a seven-year fight on his hands. Granted, this is good for the Kübler distillery, but also good for other distilleries who are willing to be subjected to the rigorous approval process by the US government.

In Alameda, California, St George Spirits distillery has become the first in the United States to introduce American-made absinthe onto the market since 1912. At the moment, I’ve only been able to find information on only two other makers of absinthe who have been given the green light to sell in the US market aside from Kübler and St George: From France, Combier Distillery’s Lucid Absinthe Supérieure, imported by Viridian Spirits LLC, and a South American brand I haven’t been able to find further information on aside that it might be Brazilian in nationality. I found Absinto Camargo online, which is a possible candidate for this mystery. Any help in clarification would be greatly appreciated!

When Hao and I had initially found out about the loosening of the ban, we went to the nearest Total Wine (also known among friends as the Alco-Mall) to see if we could possibly procure a bottle. We roamed the aisles with no success, and upon asking a store employee, I found out why: it’s too new. Having done more research online, which I am now sharing with you, with only a small handful of distilled versions of absinthe being sold legally inside the US, there isn’t enough product to flood the market, or at least the shelves of our local Total Wine… yet. Perhaps within this year, as more absinthe producers apply to import into the US, or as more home-grown distilleries create some Yankee absinthe, we may see a bottle or two show up at Total Wine and ABC Liquors, along with other mom & pop liquor stores.

If you’re interested in consuming the Green Fairy, you will probably want to do a little research in order for you to figure out where you can purchase absinthe, as well as what brands to buy and what “Absente” to avoid. One of the websites I recommend is The Wormwood Society, which will explain to you the current US policy towards absinthe (10 mg of thujone per liter or less is acceptable for sale and consumption), and has recipes for absinthe cocktails, lists a review guide, showcases top-rated bottles (some made and packaged before the ban, making the bottles nearly a century old!) and a segment on “Absinthe Science,” dispelling the myths and hype of wormwood.

For more on absinthe, follow these links:

Websites

• The Virtual Absinthe Museum - Loaded with FAQs, absinthe history & lore, as well as a place to buy prints of absinthe posters and so forth, the Virtual Absinthe Museum is a wonderful primer for people wanting to learn more about this illustrious liquor.
• La Fee Verte - This website has a ton of information, especially notable for its Buyer’s Guide, which should steer you in the right direction as far as what absinthes may be right for you, and which ones you should avoid. There’s an exhaustive list of different brands from all over the world, and some of these have ratings and reviews. Very comprehensive!

News articles

• Reason The Green Fairy Gets a Green Card
• Wired Barely Legal: American Absinthe Passes the Taste Test
• The New York Times Absinthe Returns in a Glass Half Full of Mystique and Misery

Where to buy

• Absinthe Classics - Six ranges of absinthe are sold on this site, sent from the United Kingdom by courier to the United States and Canada, as well as other parts of the world. Prices are given in Pounds Sterling, so please use the online currency converter to figure out how much it will be in your nation’s currency.
• D&M Wines and Liquors - Currently selling Kübler and Lucid on its website.
• K&L Wine Merchants - Also currently selling Kübler and Lucid, as well as some liquors made without the grande wormwood, which would explain why the bottles are half the cost of the real absinthes.
• The Jug Shop - Selling Lucid and Kubler, but is also listed as a seller for US-made St George… but out of stock at the moment.
• HiTimeWine.net - Also selling Kubler and Lucing, with a listing for St George, which is also out of stock.

Please note I cannot personally vouch for any of these retailers online, having not yet purchased absinthe by any means at the present time. In other words, I’m providing this information for you to do as you like with. Don’t come crying to me if the shipping costs are painful, your booze gets lost, or it turns out you don’t like the flavour of absinthe after all.