Well, it's finally here. Treaty Oak Platinum Rum has started popping up on liquor store shelves in Austin in the last week, after months of anticipation. We tasted it first at the beginning of the summer when we met Bruce Graham, one half of the Graham Barnes Distilling partnership, at a celebration hosted by Paula of Paula's Texas Orange fame. We were impressed at how supple and smooth the rum was, for being a non-aged product.
Then we waited.
Every once in a while we would hear a rumor that it was coming out, and we would rush to the liqour store, only to be disappointed that we had been misinformed. Then to cope with the ensuing depression we would make frivolous purchases.
Finally, I asked my friend Mitch Mooney of Twin Liqour to just call me and let me know when it was out; on Friday I got the call.

In honor of the arrival of Treaty Oak Rum, a nice bouquet of zinnias and some tired limes

We began mixing tonight with the Treaty Oak. The boys who created it suggested that it can be sipped straight or mixed, and at $30 for a 750 they are aiming high. Perhaps they will find that small portion of the drinking market who drink premium spirits neat or on the rocks. I for one don't spend much time sipping spirits unless it is a good whiskey or scotch, or aged tequila. With rum I like to mix, and so tonight we made a classic Papa Doble, the Hemingway Daiquiri supposedly made the way the man himself ordered it at his beloved Floridita Bar in Havana, except he liked it frozen and we made it shaken and strained into a chilled cocktail glass. The Papa Doble is like a traditional daiquiri with the addition of a bit of grapefruit juice and maraschino liqueur.

This is not the usual color of a papa doble, not that you can tell the color in my crappy photo. It is yellowish because instead of simple syrup we usted Steen's 100% Pure Cane Syrup, which has a light molassesy color and flavor. We knew it would affect the flavor of the drink, and we thought it did so pleasantly. Actually I thought the drink tasted interestingly like apple cider.

The last six weeks has been the tipsiest period I can (almost) remember. The time since the last week of November seems like one continuous cocktail party. This is, I suppose, what you would call a "good problem."
First there was my birthday, number 30, which is as good a reason as any I can think of to start drinking. (Actually, a few days before my birthday was Thanksgiving; at about 11:00 on that day Joe's dad asked, while supervising the frying of the turkey, "Is it too early for a martini?", to which I responded with a hearty "No!", and headed for the wet bar. I suppose that was the first domino in the last month and a half of inebriation)
I historically have had low expectations when it comes to birthday presents, but Joe really knows how to shop for me. At Tales of the Cocktail last summer, we found out about a ton of cool new products, but the one that stood out the most was St-Germain, an elderflower liqueur made in France. Of course it is not available in Texas, and the little airplane minis that they handed out at the tasting seminar were only good for about one drink apiece. Even though I greedily pocketed as many as I could get my hands on, only a limited amount of satisfaction was possible from such a minimal quantity. Being a cheap bastard, I have not been able to bring myself to pony up the dough to have the stuff shipped. But on my birthday, my ship finally came in. Of the many wonderful presents that I received, this is one that stands out the most:

Joe got me not one but four bottles, wrapped up in a suitcase

In just a matter of seconds I went from having a memory of St-Germain to having a motherload. (Well, okay a case would have been the motherload, but four bottles was a surprise indeed). I have made a few drinks with it but the one I like the most so far is the St-Germain Cocktail, which was created I believe by Simon Difford:
St-Germain Cocktail
2 oz. Champagne or Dry White Wine
1 1/2 oz. St. Germain
2 oz. Club Soda
Stir ingredients in a tall Collins glass filled with big ice, mixing completely. Garnish with a lemon twist.

A week after my birthday, and a verrry long week before finals began, was graduation. If you graduate in the fall, the ceremony is before finals, which is a big tease, the last day of finals dangling in front of you like a martini on a stick as you cross the stage and collect your fake diploma. For all of the anxieties I had about graduating from college at the ripe age of 30, I realize that there are a handful of benefits, the most obvious of which being that at 30 most of us know how to party in a more sophisticated manner than we did at 22 (another being that at 30 we realize that life is too short for us to hang on to that tacky polyester cap and gown and that those must be discarded upon leaving the ceremony.) I was fortunate enough to have my party hosted by Paula Angerstein and her husband Paul, of Paula's Texas Spirits. If there is any place that would be ideal for throwing a party, a distiller's residence must be at the top of the list. Especially if the distiller has such fabulous taste as Paul and Paula. Perched on a hilltop overlooking the lake, their house is a beautiful place to celebrate, and they are incredibly gracious hosts. They made a great spread of snacketizers and mixed up several of their signature cocktails. Real Ale Brewing donated a keg of their Full Moon Pale Rye Ale, and I brought a bottle of St-Germain and a bottle of Lucid Absinthe to share with the guests.

We didn't have the equipment to properly "louche" the absinthe, but you can tell by the expression on my happy ass face that I didn't mind. It was fun partaking of the green fairy, and sharing the quality product with uninitiated friends and family who had either never had absinthe, or had only tasted the electric green mouthwash that they drank after dousing a flaming sugar cube in Prague, or what have you. I myself had never tasted the artisanal absinthe until I attended the lecture by Ted Breaux at Tales of the Cocktail last summer. Since then, I have been dying to get my hands on a bottle. Even though it has been legal for a while for exportation to the United States, there has been a shortage of supply of quality absinthe. Most of what is available is crap. In Texas, we just recently got Lucid, one of Mr. Breaux's formulations, a bottle of which I procured for this special occasion. Once I recovered from graduation weekend, I had just enough time to study for finals, after the last of which it was time to start getting tipsy all over again.

Tonight we decided to make a pot of chicken tortilla soup. This required a run to Central Market to pick up a chicken and a few other supplies. As is often the case, we got carried away in the beer department, and we left with about ten different bottles of specialty beers. Back at home we were reminded that our refrigeration capacity is not as grandiose as our beer-buying ambition. Something had to go from the fridge so we could make room for all this beer. Joe (Tipsy) grabbed the bottle of Stone's Original Green Ginger WIne, saying something to the effect of, "Let's get this out and try it, that way if it's nasty it won't be taking up valuable real estate."

We poured a glass first without reading the serving instructions. We were not in love with it served neat. Topped with a spritz of charged water, it was more drinkable.

The instructions in my home kitchen journal* said explicitly that after the chicken hits the pot, "Make a stout margarita. Or two." At that critical point in the recipe I was struck with an inspiration: I realized that the Stone's would fit in perfectly with this Texmexican feast. Tipsy set to work squeezing some tangerines that we got at the farmers market last weekend. I began gathering the liquid ingredients.

The Stone's Gingerita.
4 oz. Cuervo Tradicional or other 100% agave reposado tequila
2 oz. Paula's Texas Orange
2 oz. Stone's Ginger Wine
2 oz. fresh-squeezed tangerine juice
2 oz. fresh-squeezed lime juice
1 piece fresh ginger.
Measure ingredients into shaker. Using a ginger grater, grate fresh ginger into shaker, allowing the juicy pulp to get in, but keeping the stringy stuff behind. Shake vigorously. Strain over ice in 2-3 rocks glasses, or pour into a small carafe. Top cocktail with a floater of Stone's.

*We keep a detailed journal of what we cook or mix at the house. That way if something spectacular comes out of it, we will be able to recreate it. It is a tragedy when you spend all night tweaking a cocktail recipe, experience a victorious breakthrough in cocktail perfection, then forget it all given the intoxicating nature of your quest, and the drink is lost forever. On the other hand, it is important to keep track of things that really don't work. On Elvis's birthday I was determined to make a Pink Cadillac, and the notes next to my early drafts reflect my tasters' comments: "Kool Aid" "Cough Syrup" "Nope!"

This past weekend we went up to Dallas to pick up Jigger, our mascot/dog, from Tipsy's parents' house, where he had been staying for the week while we were on vacation. The date so happened to coincide with Tipsy's brother-in-law's 40th birthday, and being good catholics there was naturally a party where copious amounts of booze were being consumed. So festive was this particular soiree that they rented a margarita machine. I was offered a glass of the frosty liquid upon my arrival, and not wanting to seem inhospitable, I accepted. I am not generally a fan of the frozen margarita but since we live in what must be the frozen margarita capitol of the world, I have consumed my fair share. They are generally quite bad though In many restaurants they are passable, and occasionally even good. The "margarita" that came out of the machine on this particular evening did not register on the usual scale of terrible tipples. A whole new system had to be created to rate how bad this drink was. The heartburn, for one, was instantaneous, a swift rebuttal from a system seeking comfort after the long drive. The lime did not taste like lime so much as it tasted like lime Jell-O, or something else that is supposed to taste like lime but doesn't. The taste remaining in my mouth was as refreshing as a glass of water that has been poured from a soda gun that hasn't been flushed--unclean.

Paradise City? More like Cape Fear

The next morning I awoke on the sofa in the same room as the margarita machine. You would think that it would be difficult to sleep in the same room with a contraption demonic enough to have dispensed such a hideous libation, but since I found a few other things to drink after disposing of the malgarita, I slept fine. It was waking up that was hard to do. And the first thing I saw when I woke up was the machine in the corner with the sign reading "Paradise Margaritas." Paradise, I pondered. No, Paradise is not quite right. Incarcerated felons, I had to think, would expect a better beverage upon their release than the ones that came out of this machine.

Jus look at that ingredient list!

When I cleared my eyes I noticed that the jug of margarita mix was sitting near the machine. "Jus-Mix", by Jus-Made LP, Dallas, Texas. There is something that is jus not right about this product: HFCS, yellow #5, blue#1. 0% Fruit juice! Two different preservatives and "natural flavors"--where do those come from if there's no juice? Impossibly gross. It's truly amazing to me that people buy this crap. What would be the motivation? Isn't it disturbing that we have degenerated so far as a drinking culture that someone would look at a bottle with ingredients like this and say, "I want to invite everyone I know over for a special occasion, and celebrate with this!" I don't understand how the 'national drink of Texas' has become this endangered: at this and countless parties around the state, our unofficial official drink has been reduced to a simulacrum: instead of fresh juice we have 'natural flavors'. Instead of natural color, yellow #5. Instead of sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup. Triple Sec is only optional, and not in anything resembling the proper proportion. This margarita is, to put it in bushese, a threat to the security of our culinary heritage. And I think I was the only person who noticed.

Ball-Throated Grackle sighted in South Austin

Speaking of invasive species, there is something else that has been bothering me since I got back from vacation. There is this grackle that has been hopping around the yard that has a strange growth on its throat/neck that resembles a pair of testicles. Large ones, almost human in scale. And I have never seen such a thing. Could it be that this grackle got ahold of some of that carcinogenic Jus-Mix margarita? I'm not sure. I have a cousin who is an ornithologist but I haven't talked to her in a couple of years, and I feel awkward calling her up to ask her about this bird with the neck scrotum. I'll let you know if I get up the, ahem, gumption to call her.

Has anybody ever heard of Ojen? It is an anise liquor from Spain that I learned about a few weeks ago at the restaurant. One of my regular customers came in with a family friend of his who had told me about this absinthe-like product that she'd always picked up in New Orleans. I was not familiar with the product, so she said she'd bring the bottle with her on her next visit.

I asked the woman when she'd bought it last, and she said she picks it up every year when she goes to New Orleans. But one look at the bottle would tell you it was not likely from recent vintage. I was dubious and thought perhaps her memory had lapsed and her most recent trip was 10 years ago...

When I got home, I did a little digging, and found the (very sad) explanation in an article on NOLA.com. It turns out that Ojen, like king cake and CHOP-a-toul-as, has a unique and unexplainable relationship with the Crescent City. The spirit gained considerable popularity in New Orleans, and the Ojen Cocktail (recipe below) was the official Mardi Gras tipple of the Krewe of Rex. Apparently, however, the spirit's popularity declined so much in its native Spain that the manufacturer decided to cease production in the late 1980's. The proprietor of Martin Wine Cellar in New Orleans convinced the distiller to run one more batch, on the condition that Martin purchase all 6,000 bottles of the 500 case run. And so he did. And that stockpile lasted, apparently, until this summer when Martin sold its last retail bottle of Ojen. So my guest was right--that "new" bottle of Ojen was 20 years old!

Ojen Cocktail, how I hope to taste you again some day

Ojen Cocktail
2 oz Ojen
Dash Peychaud's bitters
Barspoon simple syrup
1/2 oz water
Stir with ice to chill, serve

What a bittersweet experience it was to discover Ojen, to learn about a product only to find out that I will never be able to get my hands on it! What's worse is I was there in July just before they sold that last bottle. It could have been me...

Maybe Ojen will become a pet project of some Paleomixologist like David Wondrich, or Eric Seed. In the mean time I guess I will be satisfied by the entire shelf full of other anise spirits we have at the bar...

This is the most exciting thrift store treasure that I have found recently (Mostly because Tipsy cut me off from thrift shopping, claiming that we had "too much stuff". How much is too much?) It is called the Mixie, and was made by Silex. As far as I can tell, this came with an immersion blender of some kind and was like the mixing carafe. I'm not sure.

What's cool about Mixie is that it has measurements up the side, so it is like a giant jigger or martini pitcher. But it is tall and slim so it functions as a mixing glass. It also has a red rubber stopper, so it can be used as a shaker too.

Don't you think "Mixie" would be a perfect name for a set of dolls for that aspiring little bartender in your family? Complete with a full host of miniature cocktail accoutrements. I would have much rather played with Mixie than f*ing Cabbage Patch Kids.
Imagine:
"Hey Jennie, do you want to come over and play Mixie?"
>"Um, I guess, what Mixies do you have?"
"Dude, check it out, my mom just got me Chain Wallet Mixie for my birthday!"
>"Yeah, whatevs, like, Chain Wallet Mixie is cool, but he's not quite as cool as Tramp Stamp Mixie..."
"Yeah, Tramp Stamp Mixie is pretty rad. So- I was hanging out with Trevor the other day and he has Cater Waiter Mixie!"
>"Ugh, he is such a gaytard!"
"Who, Trevor, or Cater Waiter Mixie?"
>"Hello, both!!"
"I know, riiight!"