— No. 128 —

Caledonia Spirits

I don’t claim to be an expert on honey. Spir­its has always been my world. But recently, I had the dis­tinct plea­sure of meet­ing the Mary­land native and founder of Cale­do­nia Spir­its, Todd Hardie, who’s built his career at the inter­sec­tion of those two interests.

— No. 121 —

Strega

Halloween is just around the cor­ner, so what bet­ter liquor to fea­ture than Strega (Ital­ian for witch). Leg­end has it that the town of Ben­evento, where Strega has been made since 1860, was the meet­ing ground of all the witches of the world. I keep pic­tur­ing a gag­gle of witches sit­ting around a bub­bling caul­dron, cack­ling and stir­ring the 70 ghoul­ish ingre­di­ents that make up this liquor. Beyond the con­nec­tion to Hal­loween, You’ve got to love the tra­di­tion. Today Strega is …

— No. 120 —

Suze

Suze Gen­tiane Liqueur is a bit­ter aper­i­tif that’s been pro­duced in France since 1889. Although, I did hear this lat­est recipe has been toned down a bit for the mod­ern con­sumer. It’s cre­ator, Fer­nand Moureaux, cen­tered this liqueur around the fla­vor from yel­low gen­tian root. The wild gen­tian is har­vested from the moun­tains of the Jura and Auvergne regians. Gen­tian root is the main ingre­di­ent in bit­ters and is the main cul­prit for the bit­ter prop­er­ties. Other notable fla­vors are vanilla and …

— No. 118 —

Zucca

Zucca’s bit­ter­sweet fla­vor pro­file is some­where between Cam­pari and Amaro with a high­light of smokey, earthy, wood tones. So con­sider this when you are com­ing up with cock­tail recipes to uti­lize this liqueur in. When sip­ping you may detect the fla­vors of gen­tian, car­damom, vanilla, smoke and a hint of citrus.

— No. 99 —

Smith and Cross Rum

Smith and Cross has been fly­ing off my shelves lately. I must admit I’ve been join­ing my patrons in its con­sump­tion. And at the same time join­ing a his­toric tra­di­tion that traces its linage all the way back to 1788 as one of England’s old­est pro­duc­ers of sug­ars and spir­its. Thank you Hay­man Dis­tillers and David Won­drich for bring­ing back this mar­velous spirit. If you’re in the mar­ket for a new rum I highly rec­om­mend giv­ing Smith and Cross a …

— No. 97 —

Bittercube Bitters

This sum­mer I went out west on a cock­tail tour, which included Seat­tle and Port­land. I was sit­ting at the Tav­ern Law in Seat­tle and across the way I saw a guy that looked like one of the pro­duc­ers of Bit­ter­cube Bit­ters. I’ve always been a fan of this com­pany. Their unique bit­ters are qual­ity and their events are always intrigu­ing. Unfor­tu­nately, I do not live any­where near Mil­wau­kee. Nick is a dis­tinct char­ac­ter, so I moved down a couple …

— No. 95 —

La Distillerie Combier

I was lucky enough to meet the very per­son­able Curt Gold­man who is a part­ner of Cadre Noir, an importer of arti­sanal French liqueurs, crèmes and spir­its. I emailed Curt and he promptly came out to the Mary­land Club to pro­mote his prod­ucts. I’m glad he did. I was very pleased with the La Dis­til­lerie Com­bier prod­uct line, which is the old­est work­ing dis­tillery in France’s Loire Val­ley. The Com­bier web­site tells the story that began nearly 175 years ago at 48 Rue …

— No. 83 —

Bonal Gentiane Quina

Bonal Gen­tiane Quina shares many char­ac­ter­is­tics with ver­mouth, amari and char­treuse. That’s because it’s an infu­sion of gen­tian root, cin­chona (qui­nine) and herbs of the Grand Char­treuse moun­tains, all in a Mis­telle base (for­ti­fied wine). Mis­telle is the result of adding alco­hol (usu­ally brandy) to the juice of crushed grapes rather than fer­ment­ing them to pro­duce the alco­hol. This tech­nique offers a sweeter, fresh fruit tone since the fruc­tose hasn’t been con­verted to alcohol.

— No. 78 —

Aperol & Campari

& Campari">

Campari and Aperol are an acquired taste. I’m sure you know a few peo­ple who won’t touch the stuff and some that swear by it. I fall into the lat­ter cat­e­gory. I appre­ci­ate their sophis­ti­cated depth and find the bit­ter com­po­nent they bring to cock­tails absolutely essen­tial. If it wasn’t for Cam­pari we wouldn’t have the time-tested Negroni or Amer­i­cano. Both Aperol and Cam­pari are Ital­ian aper­i­tivos pro­duced by the Cam­pari Group. Cam­pari was cre­ated in 1860 by Gas­pare Cam­pari. Aperol was …

— No. 75 —

St. Germain

Spring is finally upon us. So lets kick it off with a bot­tle St. Ger­main Elder­flower Liqueur. If you go to the St. Ger­main web­site they’ll tell you the lovely story behind their art­fully com­plex liqueur. It all begins at the foothills of the Alps, dur­ing but a few fleet­ing days of spring. Locals will hand­pick wild elder­flower blos­soms and bike sacks of these blos­soms down the hill­side to mar­ket.  These sacks will be the entirety of what will become St. Ger­main Elder­flower Liqueur.