Featured Issues

— No. 144 —

The Bearcat

This cock­tail is a fiery lit­tle num­ber so it seemed fit­ting to call her “The Bearcat” — a 1920’s slang term for a feisty, hot-blood­­ed gal. The Bearcat has quick­ly become a favorite com­pan­ion dur­ing the sum­mer thun­der­storms, and I’m already look­ing for­ward to bring­ing her back out in the autumn and win­ter months. The veg­e­tal attrib­ut­es of Cynar, matched with the sweet heat of the Ancho Reyes Chili Liqueur, come togeth­er here for a unique and entic­ing fla­vor pro­file. The mez­cal rinse draws you …

— No. 143 —

Bargain Bourbons

If you’re like me, you’ve prob­a­bly won­dered what is the best bar­gain when select­ing a bour­bon that won’t break the bank. Well, we decid­ed to put that query to the test. We select­ed sev­en bour­bons that were all pur­chased for under $25 and blind taste test­ed them. The results were quite infor­ma­tive. Some results were pre­dictable. Some were eye open­ing.

— No. 142 —

Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve

Well, we were lucky enough to get our hands on a bot­tle of Pap­py Van Win­kle’s Fam­i­ly Reserve 15 year, which some say is the best of the prod­uct line. It was­n’t an easy task secur­ing a bot­tle that’s for sure. This line of wheat­ed bour­bon has a cult-like fol­low­ing. The craze got its start in 1998 when Van Win­kle 20 year was sub­mit­ted to the pres­ti­gious Bev­er­age Tast­ing Insti­tute. It received an unheard of rat­ing of 99 out of 100.

— No. 139 —

Willett Distillery

I recent­ly had the expe­ri­ence of fol­low­ing around the dis­tiller of my favorite dis­tillery with my bud­dies and some cam­era equip­ment. We were there when the dis­tiller opened the doors until he packed it up for the day. Wil­lett was nice enough to give us free rein of the grounds and we got to wit­ness each nuance of the process.

— No. 138 —

Les Paul

When the leaves start to fall I get a crav­ing for Cynar. It’s hard to explain, but Cynar has a veg­e­tal, har­vest-like attribute that calls to me. So I made a sim­ple recipe that’s a twist on the clas­sic Man­hat­tan recipe. I serve my fair share of Man­hat­tans and it’s nice to change it up for my guests every once in awhile. This cock­tail fits the bill. Get a bot­tle of Cynar and give it a shot. You won’t be dis­ap­point­ed. …

— No. 137 —

Corn ‘n Oil

Through all of my research I haven’t been able to iden­ti­fy the ori­gin of this fan­tas­ti­cal­ly sim­ple cock­tail. If you do your own dig­ging you’ll find a few infor­ma­tive arti­cles out there and most of them will list Cruzan Black­straps Rum as the base liquor. It’s this rum that gives the cock­tail it’s crude oil com­plex­ion and it’s fit­ting name. How­ev­er, I find that the Cruzan Black­strap Rum over pow­ers the sub­tleties of the faler­num, the real star of this recipe. …

— No. 136 —

Aperol Falernum

A while back I saw an arti­cle in “Art Culi­naire Mag­a­zine” with a few Aper­ol cock­tails and an Aper­ol faler­num recipe. The recipe came from Jane Lopez, Bev­er­age Direc­tor at The Cat­bird Seat, in Nashville, Ten­nessee. I thought this was a great idea and decid­ed to make my own twist. I used my go to faler­num recipe as a start­ing point, but omit­ted the fresh juice to help pro­long the liqueur’s shelf life. I also cut back on the cloves because my …

— No. 135 —

City Paper Cocktail

The Bal­ti­more City Paper con­tact­ed me about cre­at­ing a sum­mer cock­tail to fea­ture in their next issue. Click here for the arti­cle. They want­ed to inspire read­ers to get cre­ative and mix up sum­mer cock­tails that take full advan­tage of the sea­son’s plen­ti­ful herbs. I chose to fea­ture Thai basil and bol­ster its anise tones with the anise fla­vors in Gal­liano and Pey­chaud’s Bit­ters. Since we’re in the mid­dle of a hot sum­mer, I kept the recipe light and refresh­ing using …