Kocktails for Kettner's Kabaret

Left to right, Green Fairy, Herr Collins, Perfectly Marvellous and Wilkommen

Tomorrow sees a special event in London, a collaboration between myself and Kettner’s, a long-established restaurant in Soho. This establishment dates back to 1867 and in its time has been a favourite haunt of Oscar Wilde, Bing Crosby and Agatha Christie. It was also where Edward VII used to come for assignations with Lillie Langtry—allegedly there is still a secret tunnel from the Palace Theatre next door where she was performing!

In those days restaurants did a lot more private dining and Kettner’s has two floors of rather sumptuous rooms: for this occasion we are taking over the whole lot of them and putting on a 1920s-themed event, with different things going on in different rooms. Like the Candlelight Club there will be a live band and DJ playing period jazz, plus complimentary swing dance lessons, but in another room there will also be a bill of cabaret acts, plus a vintage photo studio in another room and an absinthe bar in yet another, dispensing samples from the house of Pernod. We also have Oli Hambling, a genius at close-up magic, drifting through the venue amazing and delighting all. And because Kettner’s is, of course, a restaurant, there is also a fine dining option, with a special Germanic five-course menu plus exclusive cabaret performances for diners.

Joel Grey in Bob Fosse's 1972 film version of Cabaret

In keeping with the cabaret element, we’re giving the whole thing a Weimar Berlin theme and calling it Herr Kettner’s Kabaret. Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome…

Of course there will be cocktails too, devised by Brendan, Kettner’s bar manager. I’ve got hold of the recipes, so I thought I would try them out at home and see what we can expect tomorrow. (I only have a list of ingredients and proportions so in terms of the actual presentation, I’m just guessing!)

Wilkommen
15ml St Germain elderflower liqueur
5ml Funkin raspberry purée
110ml Prosecco

I didn’t have any of the Funkin purée to hand so I just puréed some raspberries (which is why it looks a bit bitty in the photo). This is a delicately balanced drink, with the elderflower and raspberry flavours clear but subtle, and they complement each other perfectly, lending the Prosecco backdrop both a floral layer and a tangy fruit layer, without adding a cloying sweetness. In fact, coming back to this drink from the others I was struck by the earthiness of the combination. If I had to choose a favourite from this collection it would probably be this one—and I believe that this is the welcome cocktail that everyone gets free on arrival, so that is just as well.

Come and unleash your inner Dietrich

Perfectly Marvellous
35ml Plymouth gin
15ml Crème de fraise de bois
50ml passion fruit juice
25ml grapefruit juice

Like the last one, this is named after a song in Cabaret. And it also presents another unexpected pairing, with the intense florality of the passion fruit juice cut through by the bitterness of the grapefruit, plus the buzz of strawberry fruit. In fact it’s striking how much passion fruit and strawberry have in common—once the idea is put into your head you can almost smell strawberries before you add any of the liqueur to the passion fruit juice. The gin itself takes a back seat, providing the engine rather than asserting its character. Again, it’s not heavily sweet like many fruity cocktails, but refreshingly dry, probably helped by the crispness of the grapefruit.

The Green Fairy

10ml Pernod absinthe
10ml Cartron crème de pêche
110ml Prosecco

Elsewhere I’ve seen a recipe that specifies an absinthe-soaked sugar cube. I’ve tried it both ways and to my palate the sugar isn’t necessary, but then I don’t have a terribly sweet tooth. But, as with a classic Champagne Cocktail, it is fun having the sugar cube fizzing away at the bottom of the glass. This is another interesting combo, partnering peach flavours (as in the Bellini cocktail—peach and Prosecco) with absinthe, with its strong anise flavour plus the earthy wormwood and herbaceous fennel. An interesting discovery that works very well.

Herr Collins
40ml Bourbon
25ml lemon juice
15ml gomme syrup
100ml soda water

A classic bourbon Collins (also known as a Colonel Collins), essentially a whiskey sour lengthened with soda water. The muscular woodiness* of the bourbon stands shoulder to shoulder with that classic cocktail building block of lemon and sugar combined, adding an appetising sweet-and-sour body.

After I took the photo, I heard that an extra cocktail had been added, known as the Green Beast.

The Green Beast
1 part Pernod absinthe
1 part simple syrup (here given as equal parts sugar and water)
1 part freshly squeezed lime juice
4 parts water
Build in a glass in order. Add ice and garnish with four thin slices of cucumber.

As the name suggests it is another absinthe-infused potion, this time showcasing the combination of Pernod absinthe, lime and cucumber. Absinthe itself can be a pretty complex drink—twice now I’ve been lucky enough to be a judge on the Spirits Business Absinthe Masters panel, and some examples unfold almost like a walk through the woods, with rooty notes followed by meadow flowers, then moss, then citrus.** So making cocktails from absinthe can enable you to pull out any of these different elements. Here the lime highlights fruit notes and adds body from the tartness combined with sweetness from the sugar, while the cucumber gives a juicy, rather floral emphasis. Not really very bestial, though—actually quite refreshing.

* OK, so something can't logically be muscular and woody at the same time but you know what I mean.
** All right, I don’t know where this wood is that combines all these things…

Pash-ion for Vodka #13 - Absolut Mango

In August 2007, Absolut Vodka released the first in their series of city-themed vodkas*, which was inspired by New Orleans and flavoured with mango and black pepper. I actually have a bottle of this, but have never found a significantly special occasion upon which to open it and the more time that went by, the harder it was to drink, for fear that I’d be consuming some valuable antique!

Perhaps a good compromise will be to try some Absolut Mango. This is a mango flavoured vodka (no black pepper) that was also released in 2007.

The Taste

1) Room temperature
Nose: Quite strong a strong nose of fresh, fruity mango.
Taste: Smooth and quite sweet, this had substantial notes of mango and vanilla, with some bitterness at the end. Overall, I thought it was quite reasonable, but there was some burn at the end that detracted from it slightly.

2) From the freezer
The mango flavour became much fresher at a low temperature, tasting more like mango juice or puree. As at room temperature, there was some sweetness, as well as a touch of bitterness towards the end. OK, but I think it could be improved if the flavour was more intense and longer-lasting.

3) Martini
This was a rather weird combination: the dry vermouth certainly wasn’t the best match for the juicy mango.

4) Tonic
This really makes a rich and juicy mango drink with crisp bitterness towards the end. Really good.

Absolut Mango is available for around £21 for 70cl from The DrinkShop

Vintage Jubilee Cocktails

With the arrival of Her Majesty’s 60th year on the throne it seemed only fitting that the Candlelight Club should recognise this in some way. So, in keeping with our vintage credentials, we decided to celebrate with a party featuring cocktails created for the 1935 Jubilee (the closest one to the Prohibition period), honouring 25 years of George V on the throne.

By chance, just two years after the Jubilee, Bill Tarling, head bartender at London’s Café Royal and council member of the UK Bartenders Guild, itself formed only in 1933, published The Café Royal Cocktail Book. The UKBG had already published Approved Drinks, an attempt to lay down definitive recipes for standard and classic cocktails (as much as anything to prove to doubting customers that the drink was right and they were wrong). But Bill wanted to produce a book that included all kinds of other cocktail recipes he had encountered, and he wanted his book to be for consumers as well as the trade. Billed on the cover as the “Coronation Edition” (emerging in the year that George VI took the throne) it was actually the only edition produced. But coming when it did, just two years after George V’s Jubilee, it was ripe to gather up the explosion of mixological creativity that was deployed to honour His Majesty’s anniversary.

My thanks go to DBS who pre-empted me and dug out some likely recipes for a feature in the New Sheridan Club Newsletter. I took some of these, played around with the recipes and added a couple of our own, for the Candlelight Club party this Saturday, 9th June.

Jubileesha
2 shots gin
½ shot Lillet Blanc
½ shot Cocchi Americano
3 dashes orange bitters
Dash sugar syrup
Garnish: orange and lemon twist
Shake, strain and add a lemon and orange twist. Invented by Bert Penn, the original called for “Lillet”, which at the time (or until very recently) would have been sold as "Kina Lillet", flavoured with the bitter cinchona bark that gives tonic water its quinine and distinctive taste. Lillet later reformulated, producing the sweet, orange-flavoured Lillet Blanc that you can buy today.* Much agony has gone into speculating on the original Kina Lillet taste (which also features in James Bond’s Vesper Martini), and how it could be replicated with modern products. Here I used a half-and-half blend of Lillet Blanc and Cocchi Americano, considered by many to be a good simulacrum of Kina Lillet. I’ve no idea if this is true (Cocchi say they have been making Americano since 1891, which was 19 years after Kina Lillet came on the market so it could have been inspired by it), but it has a strong, fascinating and, I always think, rather gingery taste, with definite bitterness. By mixing it with Lillet Blanc and a dash of gomme, I think you get something that is approachable for the modern palate but also revealing of the complexity of the two aromatised wines in the mix.

Jubilee Ideal
2 shots bourbon
1 shot red vermouth
½ dry white vermouth
Dash lemon juice
Garnish: Maraschino cherry with a little of its syrup
Shake and strain. Add cherry with whatever syrup comes with it, or perhaps a dash of maraschino liqueur. Created by Harry Craddock of the American Bar in the Savoy, this is essentially a tweaked Manhattan. Manhattans are often categorised as “sweet”, using bourbon and sweet red vermouth, “dry”, with dry white vermouth, or “perfect” or “ideal”, with a blend of the two. So this is a Jubilee version of an Ideal Manhattan. The recipe actually calls for one part each of sweet and dry vermouth and two parts bourbon, though I think this makes for rather a dry drink, particularly after you add the “squeeze of lemon”, so I biased it in favour of the sweet vermouth. It’s nice with a maraschino cherry, particularly if you allow some of the cherry syrup in (or just add some maraschino liqueur), which helps to balance things up.

Harry Craddock, perhaps knocking up a Jubilee Ideal?

Jubilant
1½ shots gin
1½ shots orange juice
1 shot Benedictine
½ shot lemon juice
Dash Angostura Bitters
Garnish: orange slice
Shake and strain into an ice-filled highball. Invented by J. Perosino, who was a UKBG member, but I don’t know any more about him than that. The original would have required more like 2 shots of gin but only half a shot of orange juice. It’s nice that way but I wanted to make it a little longer, so I upped the OJ and used proportionally more Benedictine that gin, serving the result over ice. It’s a great way to showcase the complexity of the liqueur, in an approachable, fruity drink.

Drawing of Bill Tarling from the
Café Royal Cocktail Book

Coronation Variation
1½ shots sweet red vermouth
1½ shots dry white vermouth
1 shot Calvados
½ shot apricot brandy
Soda top
Shake and strain into ice-filled highball. Top with a splash of soda. The Café Royal Cocktail Book has a recipe called a Coronation that involves sherry, dry vermouth, maraschino and orange bitters: if you look online you will sometimes find this called a Coronation Variation. But this recipe, also called a Coronation Variation, is quite different. Its origins are obscure (DBS discovered it online too) but it’s nice to find a drink that puts vermouth so much to the fore, and this balances very well with the sweet apricot and the dry baked apple flavours of the Calvados. (I like it with Dubonnet for the red vermouth, which is a nice nod to HMQEII, as I believe she likes gin and Dubonnet.) I have suggested a splash of soda just to make it a comfortable long drink over ice.

Royal-Tea
1½ shots gin
1½ shots port
1½ shots Earl Grey tea
1 shot marmalade syrup
¼ shot amaretto
Garnish: lemon slice
Build in a highball. Garnish with a slice of lemon. Our own Will Sprunt invented this for the Royal Wedding last year and I wanted to give it another airing. I was a bit sceptical about the high level of syrup but it does seem to work out best this way; it’s still a sweetish cocktail but it balances with the tannin in the tea. (I experimented with adding lemon juice to balance the sweetness, but it just seemed to muddy the flavours.) The marmalade syrup was made from water, marmalade, sugar and honey, adapting various recipes I found online; the marmalade gives it s slight bitterness from the rind, so it’s not as sweet as you might think. The drink is at once complex and refreshing, and with an unusual breakfasty quality!

A Royal-Tea in all its glory

Noble Line
2 shots gin
1 shot Berentzen wild kirsch
½ shot Bärenjäger
Ouzo rinse
Rinse a cocktail glass with ouzo and pour it out. Shake remaining ingredients with ice and strain into the glass. I devised this in honour of the Queen's bloodline: the cherry and honey flavours of German kirsch and Bärenjäger for the house of Saxe-Coburg, transformed into the house of Windsor by the addition of English gin, with a dash of the Greek aniseed spirit ouzo as a nod to Prince Phillip. I think it actually works remarkably well: at first you’re struck by the cherry of the kirsch, then you realise you can taste the gin really clearly, the juniper notes floating up. Later it hits you that the honey of the Bärenjäger is coming through as well. The ouzo you mostly get on the initial nose.

* The Lillet website seems currently to be closed for repairs, but it's interesting to note that, although it is conventionally considered that the post-1986 Lillet has less quinine, the Wikipedia entry insists the quinine levels stayed the same but the sugar content was reduced. I certainly find it hard to detect much bitterness in modern Lillet Blanc.

Bringing back the Good Old Days of vodka

I've noticed a recent trend with Russian vodkas to evoke some sort of old-school official sanction. At the Distil trade fair the other day I came across Kremlin Award which, the laconic Russian girl told me, was the official vodka at Kremlin dinners. "It's very high quality, because if it were not good enough everyone would get fired." (I think she said "fired"—or did she mean "shot"?). Meanwhile Russian Standard is named after an 1894 decree by the Tsar to create an Imperial "standard" vodka.

Now we have Green Mark Vodka, which takes its name from a later decree, this time a Soviet one from the 1920s. From that decade until the 1950s the government body Glavspirttrest regulated the quality of Russian vodka and awarded its seal of excellence, the Green Mark, to those that passed muster. With the fall of the Soviet Union this sort of centralised specification fell away, presumably replaced by market forces. Then in 1998 the Russian Alcohol Group decided to revive this quality standard commercially: researching Glavspirttrest archives for information on production methods, and conducting consumer tests, both with younger consumers and older ones who remembered the vodka from the 1950s, they came up with something they felt was a faithful recreation of the style and quality of this era—an era about which many Russians evidently feel rather nostalgic these days.

They've clearly hit the mark, as in 2008 some 9 million 9-litre cases were sold in Russia and it is now that country's no.1 vodka in its category. It is also one of the top five selling vodkas worldwide.

The bottle with that unusual cap

Glavspirttrest records were apparently quite specific about the recipe and production process. The wheat had to be of the Moldavia 76 variety, which was found to be growing wild in the Volga region of Central Russia. Trickier, the recipe specified a natural yeast, whereas most modern production processes used a laboratory-grown strain. But a small family operation was found still producing yeast in the same way it had been doing since the 1940s. The water comes from a well 300 metres deep, where it is naturally filtered through the rock. After distillation the vodka is filtered using "silver filtration", a process that utillises carbon impregnated with silver as a catalyst.

There is something retro about the packing too. The shoulders of the bottle taper to a surprisingly narrow neck, giving a sort of rustic feel, and the stopper is a flat plastic cap reminiscent of the utilitarian metal crown caps you used to see on hardcore bottles of Russian vodka—clearly once those puppies were opened there was no notion that you might want to reseal it again. (In fact the Green Mark cap conveniently pops on and off, so you don't have to drink the whole bottle in one sitting!) The poster art channels a sort of Art Deco/Constructivism that again harks back to the über-cool 1920s (but then I would say that).

Sniff the open bottle and you get a light medicinal whiff; in the glass this 40% ABV vodka opens to a creamy, fruity nose, with a little vanilla sweetness nicely balanced by a pencil-lead edge. On the palate it is very smooth and drinkable, with no burn to speak of. Yet it is not water-light like some—it still has distinct body and character, with a slight hint of caraway. From the freezer it pretty much retains the same profile, and I don't think it particularly benefits from this way of serving, as some other vodkas do where the super-low temperature might mask a roughness or lack of backbone. I would be inclined to drink Green Mark neat or on the rocks. I also discovered it makes a cracking vodka Martini: using Noilly Prat and my favoured ratio of 4:1 you get a drink where the vodka's own character is still clear, while the vermouth actually gets to display its own particular flavour more distinctly than in most gin Martinis. In fact this would be quite a good showcase cocktail for high-end or unusual vermouths.

Tried alongside some other vodkas that I happen to have to hand, Green Mark emerges as ethereal and refined. Russian Standard has a heavier, more vegetal nose, like cooked peppers, plus a hint of coffee; on the palate it too is smooth but with a darker fruit, like blackcurrants. Adnams Longshore has a woody, toffee nose and a more peppery, minerally fierceness (it is 48% ABV). Heavy Water again has a bit of toffee and a sharp graphite spike on the tongue. Finally Krepkaya is, unsurprisingly, rather intense (it is 56% ABV), with a petrol/rubber element. Compared to all of these, Green Mark comes across as light and pure, yet with its own presence. A classy an highly quaffable vodka.

Green Mark is, or soon will be, available from Waitrose, Tesco, Morrisons, Asda, Co-op, Nisa and Costcutter for around £15 a bottle. Which makes it pretty good value in my opinion.

Sponsored Post

Cocktail in a Can—Finally a tasty ready-to-drink cocktail?

Everytime I write about premixes I mention how I’m curious about them and am always keen to find a hidden gem among a generally mediocre market-place.

Todays feature will look at the Authentic Cocktail Company and four of their flavours. The Authentic Cocktail Company is operated by the Manchester Drinks Company who make a variety of premixes and other ready-to-serve drinks as well as a Champagne alternative and their own fruit cup.

All of the cocktails are served in 250ml cans and “bottled” at 5% ABV.

Mojito
With the distinctive green-blue glow of bitter lemon, this was also quite fizzy. Sweet initially with some rum and then a relatively fresh mintiness with a slightly tart mint-sauce quality, although it sounds very fizzy when poured the extreme effervescent quickly subsides to a gently bubbling.

Pina Colada

Good strong buttery Bounty coconut smell. Very coconut flavour too then some rum and the pineapple juice. For my money maybe it’s a bit strong on the coconut but otherwise a perfectly pleasant, suppable still beverage.

On The Beach

Clearly a Sex on the Beach cocktail but with the offending word removed*.  This tastes pretty much like a Sex on the Beach (although it’s been a few weeks since I last had one!) Quite fruity with the peach coming through and pleasant fruit salad impression. This is refreshing and very easy to drink without any unpleasant cloying or sickly sweetness.

Cosmopolitan

A staple of the premix cocktails market but usually too sweet.

Very smooth and with little presence from the alcohol. This is very easy to drink with hint of strawberry and cranberry coming through and a tart citrus at the end. I actually thought this was quite pleasant and is easy to drink on it’s own chilled, or on the rocks.

In Conclusion
It is true that there is a lot of awful premix/ready-to-mixes out there that bear little to no resemblance to the cocktails they are looking to imitate but I have to hand it to the Authentic Cocktail company they have created a range of very respectable and affordable drinks (all four cost me less than £5) some are better than others but they are all very easy to drink and would appeal to a wide variety of people.

The panel’s unanimous favourite was: Cosmopolitan 


Authentic Cocktail Company Drinks are available for around £1.20 for a can from Asda.



*For a split second I thought “surely no-one has copyrighted ‘Sex on the Beach’” and then realised that was ludicrous idea. It just shows the nonsense I, and many others, have become accustomed to with cocktail trademarking. Looking in the direction of some rum and brandy/whisky cocktails…

Turbo Aged Gin (well Vodka)

I was given a small olive-wood egg cup at the weekend and I thought that it would make an amusing drinking vessel. So I due set about removing any flavour from the inside by leaving some vodka* in it for a few days to draw out any residual flavours.

But after 2 hours I realised that vodka had been absorbed through the wood and was starting to leak out. I then emptied the vodka into a glass to find that it was already coloured.

TurboAged Vodka and The Eggcup!

Now I don't know the finer points of the treatment of my olive wood egg cup although I know it is varnish and doesn't smell like it has been treated with anything but just be to be safe I only gave it a tiny (3ml) sip and I could perceive the effects of the ageing.

Now I'm not suggesting we should all start ageing spirit through egg cups but could you age a spirit by passing it through wood?

*Gin is great but has more flavour.

Pimm's in a Pudding?

Whilst wandering down the aisles of my local supermarché, I spied a little box containing "2 Spring into Summer Berry Puds with Pimm's". Given my love of Fruit Cup—and the fact that the desserts were on offer—I promptly purchased them from the shopkeeper.

The puddings contain:
Summer Berries (interpreted as: redcurrants, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackcurrants, orange and cucumber) infused with Pimm's and layers of Genoise sponge immersed in blackcurrant and raspberry syrup.

It was a nice, fruity pudding; moist and flavourful with a good sweet/tart berry mix, but can you taste the Pimm's? My lab assistant had no idea that it contained Fruit Cup and never mentioned it, even when prompted. Once I revealed that it contained Pimm's, she said, "But it doesn't taste like it at all!"

The pudding contains 4% Pimm's, but, with such strong flavours coming from the fruit, it needs to be more like 20%.

In order to correct this injustice, I added half a shot of Fruit Cup to the pudding, to spruce it up a little. This made a substantial, and positive, impact and the flavours of the Cup—citrus, gin and spice—went really well with the zingy dessert, making it altogether rather delightful.

Less of a "cheeky splash" and more of a cheap-o dribble!

In Conclusion
In itself, the pudding was really nice, but only tasted of Pimm's when I added some extra. In fairness, this is not the first food-stuff to bill itself as being flavoured with a liquor but which, upon tasting it, you discover that the desired flavour is nowhere to be found.

Given that they have such little flavour of the hooch, you wonder why people even bother to make these "booze flavoured" foods, whether that be Jack Daniels sauce, Sloe Gin and Duck Pate or Gu Pimm's Puds.

Gu Summer Pudding are available from Waitrose for around £3 for two.