Your browser (Internet Explorer 7 or lower) is out of date. It has known security flaws and may not display all features of this and other websites. Learn how to update your browser.

X

Navigate / search

.

Booze Holiday Double Header

The only thing that a Tipsy Texan loves more than a Booze Holiday is two Booze Holidays – especially when they land on the same weekend, in what we might call a Double Header. Derby Day is always the first Saturday in May. This year it is followed immediately by Cinco de Mayo.

A Booze Holiday is something that is not easily defined, but can be identified by any combination of these characteristics:

  1. Lots of booze. Preferably being consumed liberally in the outdoors; public sidewalks and streets are a plus.
  2. It must be a holiday that is widely recognized by the general public
  3. It helps if the Booze Holiday has an official drink or drinks.
  4. Though it is not mandatory, the best booze holidays are the ones with religious, ethnic, or national significance that is either not known or is completely misunderstood by the celebrants. With such holidays, the booze is the reason for the season. Mardi Gras, St Patrick’s Day, and Bastille Day are perfect examples. Ask a tequila-swilling Texan why they are celebrating Cinco de Mayo, and most will wrongly answer that it is Mexican Independence Day.
  5. Lastly, you know it is a Booze Holiday when the major corporate liquor and beer companies create promotional materials and specials that have absolutely no connection to the holiday being celebrated, except for the fact that booze is involved. For example, you would expect to see Irish beer and whiskey flowing through the streets on St Patrick’s Day, but at this year’s Fado St Patrick’s Day tent in Austin, much of the beer was from the craftsmen at Anheuser Busch, and the booze being featured included: Smirnoff Rootbeer Float Vodka, Smirnoff Lite (LITE!!!!) Mango Sorbet Vodka, and for the Mexican leprechauns among us, a little Jose Cuervo. The only connection an artificially flavored American vodka has with St Patrick’s Day is the color green, as in, all the cash money that was paid for the placement.

Derby Day qualifies as a Booze Holiday because although there is a horse race involved, the main event lasts less than three minutes – but the party lasts all day. Many of the people swilling Mint Juleps till they stumble couldn’t tell you the difference between place and show, but at least they have their priorities straight. This is why we present to you the Tipsy Texan Guide to Derby Day.

Mint Julep

Forget for now the crushing of mint and pretty silver cups. That ritual finery is lovely for making onesey-twosey Mint Juleps for sipping on the veranda. Derby Day juleps are about quantity. You need to make a big ass batch of mint syrup — make a pot of simple syrup on the stove, and as soon as the syrup is hot enough for the sugar to dissolve fully, turn off the heat and submerge into the syrup a bunch of mint, a big handful of sprigs for each cup of syrup. Allow to infuse. I prefer to do it off the heat as I think it imparts a brighter mint flavor. Once the syrup tastes adequately minty, strain out the solids and allow to cool.

You will combine this syrup with good bourbon. You don’t have to use your finest pour, but don’t fuck it up and use some cheap blended whiskey or, godforbid, something from Canada. I generally prefer a ratio of about 4:1 Bourbon to mint syrup. It’s a southern drink and it’s served over crushed ice for dilution, don’t be afraid to make it on the sweeter side. Make this batch in big pitchers, or depending on the size of your gathering, a bucket with a spigot. For our Derby Day party, we use the juice dispensers like you might see on nice hotel brunch buffet. Don’t underestimate the capacity for people to drink Mint Juleps on Derby Day.

For service, have an abundant quantity of crushed ice. You can buy this from some icehouses, or occasionally from places like Sonic or Which Wich, depending on where you live. Store the ice in a colander over a bowl so that it will drain off. Fill your cup with crushed ice, pour the julep mix over it. Top with crushed ice and a sprig of mint. It should be cold, refreshing, and yes, boozy. Then followed shortly after by another.

Derby Day Menu

There are infinite resources on the Web for traditional Derby Day foods, here is what we serve:

  • Kentucky Hot Browns: sort of an open faced turkey sandwich. We take toasted bread, layer it with sliced turkey, cheesy Mornay sauce, crumbled bacon and tomato.
  • Benedictine sandwiches: not Benedictine like the French liqueur, which would make a great julep but would probably suck on a sandwich. For the Derby, Benedictine is a cream cheese/ cucumber spread served on white bread in small finger sandwiches.
  • Burgoo: a spicy stew that was traditionally made in KY and IN from whatever critters you could bring home. Nowadays we buy the ingredients at the store.
  • Bourbon Bread Pudding

Vintage Spirits Tasting, or, A Tipsy Stumble Down Memory Lane

Last night I had a chance to pursue one of my favorite pastimes, which is raiding old people’s liquor cabinets. Actually, the raid had occurred already and I was not the plunderer, but the net result was the same. Our friend Madelyn came over with a box of vintage liquor bottles, most appearing to date from the 1960s to early 70s, that she had recently inherited from a friend whose grandmother had passed.

Often times when people encounter Granny’s booze stash I suspect a lot of the specimens end up getting dumped down the drain, bottles in the trash or recycle bin. People assume that because there is little monetary value to these old bottles (with a few obvious exceptions), they must be useless. But there is so much to learn from these relics—the value is in the stories they tell, about the liquor industry, about popular tastes, about the drinkers who left them behind. While much of the liquid will not taste good, every once in a while you find a treasure, even if it is just the bottle itself. And I think it’s a much more fitting tribute to the deceased to gather ‘round and celebrate and ponder these old bottles, the bars they once sat on, the parties they lubricated so long ago. I will generously (!) offer my services to anyone who has uncovered a cache of old hooch and needs help disposing of it. In the very least, we’ll raise a final toast to old Uncle Tipsy and make sure his collection is given its due appreciation.

First of all, I would like dispel the oft-cited claim that liquor doesn’t change once in the bottle. While liquor does not age as dramatically (or as quickly) as beer or wine, it can change substantially in the bottle. Sometimes, as in the case of herbal spirits—especially absinthe—the transformation can be remarkable. A few years ago I had the pleasure of attending the Absinthe Festival in Boveresse, Switzerland. I got the opportunity to taste some absinthes from before the ban (19-aughts), as well as some 1950s Pernod Fils from the distillery in Tarragona (Spain). It is incredible what 50 or 100 years in a bottle did for that liquid. Mellow, incredibly powdery, floral, and complex. It is an experience that enthusiasts will chase to the end of the earth, and to the end of the wallet. Regrettably it is a habit I cannot afford, but those samples are out there and I would suggest making the expenditure at least once to see this effect for yourself.

Even a more modest adventurer can taste the aging effect on herbal spirits if you’ve ever encountered a vintage bottle of Chartreuse, for example (the bar Pouring Ribbons in NY offers an entire menu of these). I recently found some early-1980s bottles of Drambuie in a friend’s cupboard. I was impressed by how refined and well integrated the vintage samples tasted next to modern Drambuie. Of course the challenge with all of these comparisons is that it is difficult to know what flavor differences to attribute to age/maturation/rest in the bottle, versus changes that could have been made to the manufacturing process as these brands evolve, change ownership, etc.

Liquor can of course also change for the worse. Alcohol is the ultimate preservative, so it goes without saying that the higher the proof, the longer the spirit will stay relatively unchanged. Cordials and fortified wines tend to oxidize and take on that gamey sherry-like quality, which is not generally a good thing. (However, it can add another dimension to an otherwise noncomplex spirit, as we noticed when we made Grasshoppers with aged Crème de Menthe. I have also recently learned that there are some bartenders “cellaring” St Germain—anyone who has even seen a bottle of St G that sat around too long will know that it starts to change color, sediment precipitates out, and the flavor transforms. I had always thought of this as a defect and a reason to drink your St G while it was still “fresh”; now I’m realizing that the age transformation has positive attributes as well)

Even with higher proof spirits there is a change in the bottle, especially when the bottle is opened and exposed to air or sunlight. Spirits seem to lose their vigor—this effect is well known with barrel-aged spirits, as anyone who has let an open bottle of single malt sit around too long can attest. But as we noticed when pouring the 1960s Schenley Gin, oxygen exposure affects white spirits as well. We had an opened and unopened bottle of gin, and the opened one tasted essentially lifeless. The unopened bottle, while still flavorful enough, also seemed to have mellowed (of course having never tasted a “fresh” bottle, I can’t be certain of this). The prevailing wisdom on unopened bottles is that they don’t age. For most drinkers, who don’t sit on bottles for more than a few years, the prevailing wisdom will hold true, as any change in the bottle will be minute enough as to be insignificant. But when you look at that minute change over 40 or 50 years or more, it becomes more significant. Whether the change is for good or bad depends on the spirit and the circumstances, but the change is definitely present.

Here is a list of the things we tasted:

Modern Angostura bitters vs. vintage Angostura

Not sure of the vintage, but the label states that the distributor is Wuppermann Corp, “sole distributors for the USA, its possessions, Canada, Cuba, and Mexico.” So my guess is it dates from before the full Cuban embargo, since Wupperman was a US firm distributing it. The old bottle seemed more rounded, mellowed, and less syrupy than the newer one. In the glass, it also had a less “homogenized” look—more sediment, less filtered-looking. Like the difference between French press and filter coffee.

Anise spirits tasting

We had an unopened bottle of Pernod pastis that tasted nice. Lined it up with some other anise spirits for comparison.

Vintage Pernod pastis 1960s? 96 proof. From my understanding the modern Pernod products are made from essential oils, they are “compounded” not distilled from whole botanicals. But I don’t know when that change came about.

    • Vintage Herbsaint (ca 1958-1960 according to Jay Hendrickson)
    • Modern Herbsaint 90 proof
    • Modern Pernod absinthe (compounded)
    • Modern Vieux Pontarlier absinthe (distilled)

Dry Martini tasting

There was an unopened bottle of Martini & Rossi dry vermouth that we had high hopes for. It did not seem to weather the test of time, but we made a Martini with it and some similar vintage gin just so we could say we did it. There was also an open bottle of “Tribuno” dry vermouth. Though the newly opened M&R had a much better nose, it didn’t taste noticeably better than the long-opened Tribuno.

Vintage Negroni

Made with 1960s Schenley gin, a pre-70s bottle of Campari, and a pre-70s bottle of Dubonnet. The Dubonnet had been opened, but still tasted fairly pleasant in the cocktail. The color, it is worth mentioning, was fabulous. I attribute this to what I believe is naturally-colored Campari, which is a deep blood red as opposed to the modern artificially colored number. (Note: that is an orange garnish in the Negroni, not a lemon, despite it’s lemony appearance)

Grasshoppers Galore!

We made five different Grasshoppers using 3 vintage Crème de Menthes from the 1960s—Hiram Walker, Leroux, Arrow. The HW and Arrow were previously-unopened. The fourth was made with Marie Brizard CdM from ca 90s-early 2000s, the last made with current Tempus Fugit CdM. The latter is the only one not artificially colored to look like a cough medicine. For control, all used Marie Brizard Crème de Cacao and rich half & half from Milk King dairy. Surprisingly, the tasting panel all enjoyed the neon green Grasshoppers to the naturally-colored and –flavored Tempus Fugit version.