If you are fortunate enough to be in Marfa this weekend, be sure to stop by the Blue Javelina to behold the mixological sorcery (more like forgery) of the Tipsy Texan. We will be whuppin' up fresh cocktails from 5-10 pm Friday and Saturday nights.

Also, I will be doing an interview with Tom Michael of Marfa Public Radio at about 3:30 this upcoming Friday afternoon. Listen to the live stream at their Web site.

Last year a colleague of ours started a fancy shoe company called Helm Handmade. I ordinarily do not set aside much in the way of a budget for shoes, but when Joshua Bingaman called me with this proposition, it was pretty much an offer I couldn't refuse.

JB: David, we're about to have a launch event for our shoe company and we'd like to have you make drinks for the party. How much will it cost?
DA: (Undisclosed sum)
JB: Will you work for trade?
DA: F--- yes I will work for shoes.

And that's how it played out. We worked, we got fitted for shoes, and they were very sexy. The first time I went out in public in my Helm Handmade shoes, I got a compliment the first place I stopped.

A few weeks ago I received the call I'd been waiting for: the launch of the new line of Helm shoes. New shoes = cocktails by me = new shoes. Tonight was the night. I worked and got paid in shoes. It was awesome. I wish more people would make offers like this. The event was at Stag, the men's clothing store on S. Congress. Stag is the type of place that should make every man feel sexy about being a man.

These are the shoes I got tonight. The are called the Dapper Dane. I'm not sure I can pull off this look but we'll give it a shot. I actually got to meet the Dapper Dane himself, who i believe is the gent who took these pictures

The cocktails I did tonight were ones that I'd created for various reasons but had not yet had the opportunity to serve in public (as opposed to my usual formula, which is to beat a drink into the ground until people say, "Harvest Punch, again?", for example). Two cocktails that showcase the spirit and flavors of fall:

Macintosh
2 Luxardo Marasca cherries, plus 1
barspoon of their syrup
¼ c. diced apple
2 oz. Maker's Mark 46
¾ oz. fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1 barspoon simple syrup
Dash Bitter Truth Creole Bitters
Apple slice for garnish
In the bottom of a mixing glass, muddle cherries, apples, and syrup. Add remaining ingredients. Shake vigorously with ice to chill. Fine-strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a slice of apple
*This cocktail appears in the current (Fall 2010) issue of Edible Austin magazine

Pear Noel
1.5 oz Tito’s vodka
1.5 oz Mathilde Pear liqueur
.75 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice
Barspoon St. Elizabeth’s Allspice Dram
Combine ingredients in a mixing glass and shake vigorously with ice to chill. Garnish with a slice of pear
*This cocktail was created for Tito's and ran in the trade publication In The Mix magazine last year. I was trying to do a fall/holiday drink featuring Tito's, but keeping it light and refreshing instead of playing in to some of the holiday drink stereotypes

In the Tipsy Tech seminars on Monday nights, we have been exploring topics in more detail that we only touch on cursorily in the Intro class. Last week we were talking Prohibition and speakeasies, and I couldn't think of a better place to host the talk than in an actual Prohibition-era speakeasy. Prohibition-era speakeasies being comparatively hard to come by, I was delighted when my colleague Nate Wales at La Condesa offered to allow us to use the space below the restaurant. Now in use as a private dining room/special event space, the cellar was once storage for the general store that now stands across the street, occupied by Lamberts. It was reportedly a speakeasy during the Noble Experiment, and on Monday night we toasted its bibulous past, albeit with laptops in hand and without risk of being busted by the authorities.

The main themes of the discussion were 1) Prohibition started a long time before the passage of the 18th Amendment; 2) Prohibition was a lot wetter than most people realize; and 3) Prohibition lasted a long time after the passage of the 21st Amendment, and persists to this day. Finished up with a case study of a project I'm working on in the Tyler, TX area today, which is one of the largest "dry" communities in the country. (By "dry", I mean that they consume millions of dollars a year in alcohol but you can't buy so much as a can of beer inside the city limits.)

We did a handful of Prohibition era cocktails including the Twelve Mile Limit (sourced from Ted Haigh's book); a gin Alexander (above) and the Mary Pickford.

David and Joe with Amanda Hesser

It was a sold-out crowd for the Essential New York Times Cookbook launch event at Rainlily Farm, sponsored by Edible Austin as part of the Texas Book Festival. The book harvests recipes from the history of the Times, and has a healthy selection (40 pages) of cocktails. We had the pleasure of presenting the drinks for this event, and we chose a selection from across the history of the Times: Rum Punch, the Astoria Cocktail, and the Delft Blue cocktail, excerpted below.

The event was full of local luminaries from the food and beverage scene: Paula and Paul from Paula's Texas Spirits; Dorsey Barger and Susan Hausman from Eastside Cafe/Hausbar Farms; Rebecca Rather from Rather Sweet in Fredericksburg; Gina Burchenal from Movable Feast; Kevin Stewart from Blue Javelina in Marfa. And many many more.

Joe Pours an Astoria while Zach makes a funny face. Thanks to Bacardi for providing the Bombay Gin and Noilly Prat vermouth for this cocktail.

Astoria Cocktail (p.18)
1 ounce gin
2 ounces dry vermouth, preferably French
2 dashes orange bitters
Fill a cocktail shaker with ice, add all the ingredients, and stir. Strain into a martini glass or similar glass.

OCTOBER 23, 1946: “NEWS OF FOOD: CLUB AND HOTEL COCKTAIL RECIPES SHOW AMERICANS’ PREDILECTION FOR MIXED DRINKS,” BY JANE NICKERSON. RECIPE ADAPTED FROM THE WALDORF-ASTORIA HOTEL IN NEW YORK CITY.
—1946

Joe is wearing a hat that once belonged to my grandfather, who drank more vodka than gin. He was a Swede so I've never held this against him.

Thanks to Bols for supplying the Genever for this cocktail; and thanks to Paula's Texas Spirits for the Limoncello

Delft Blue Cocktail (p.43)
For the Syrup
1 cup blueberries
2 tablespoons sugar
2 grinds black pepper

For the Cocktails
8 ounces genever (Holland gin), chilled
2 ounces limoncello (I recommend using Paula's Texas Lemon)
Angostura bitters
Fresh lemon juice, to taste
4 lemon twists

1. To make the syrup, combine the blueberries, sugar, and pepper in a small saucepan and cook, stirring, over medium heat until the berries collapse and release their juices, about 5 minutes. Force through a sieve into a metal bowl. Place the metal bowl in a bowl of ice and water to chill the mixture. This makes enough syrup for 4 drinks.
2. For each single drink, place 2 ounces genever in a cocktail shaker and add 2 tablespoons of the blueberry syrup, 1 tablespoon limoncello, a dash of bitters, and a few drops of lemon juice. Add ice, shake, and pour into a cocktail glass—serve straight up or on the rocks, with a twist.

SEPTEMBER 24, 2008: “MALTY AND COMPLEX, THE ORIGINAL GIN IS MAKING A COMEBACK,” BY FLORENCE FABRICANT.
—2008

Thanks to Bacardi for providing the rum for this cocktail

Rum Punch (p.24)
2 ounces medium-dark rum
Juice of 1⁄2 small lime
1 teaspoon raw sugar (such as Sugar in the Raw or Demerara)
Pour the rum, lime juice, and sugar over an ice cube in a tumbler. Stir to dissolve the sugar. (Note: instead of a tumbler, we used a big ass silver punch bowl!)

On Friday night we hosted some very special guests, Kendall and John Antonelli of Antonelli's Cheese Shop. This meeting has been trying to happen for several months. Quite some time ago I suggested to the Antonellis that we host a cocktail/cheese pairing event, but we could never figure out exactly how to pull it off. I actually wasn't even convinced that a cocktail/cheese pairing was a very good idea, but John and Kendall were hip to it. We batted around some ideas, and managed to synch our busy schedules for just one night, and so it happened that this weekend we made cocktails and they brought cheese, and cocktails and cheese happened.

As Joe and I cranked out the cocktails, Kendall and John started to make the rough pairings. Then we sat down and tasted them as a group. Some very obviously belonged together--before I even tasted it with the Fig Daiquiri, the Cabot Clothbound Cheddar had a distinctive rustic figiness. The "brown, bitter, and stirred" Prefect Cocktail was paired with the Caveman Blue from Rogue Creamery, because they are both big and bold in their own respective ways.

We started with ten drinks and ten cheeses, with the idea of narrowing it down to half of that, since nobody needs ten cocktails or ten cheeses (at least not at the same time). However, since we can't really help ourselves, we nudged it up to seven cocktails--two will be short portions and served simultaneously as two interpretations of the same drink, the other will be an "amuse" before we get started--and seven cheeses.

No date has been set yet for this event. Please email tex at this URL if you want more info, since the comment feature on this web site stopped working long ago :(

Thanks to my fabulous Tipsy Tech interns for the photos