Cracking the Bar Code

THE TOP 14 COCKTAIL-MAKING SECRETS BARTENDERS

FLY THE COUP

As cocktail king Dale DeCroff, pioneering bartender at New York City's Rainbow Room and author of The Craft of the Cocktail, has said, "the oversize martini glass has ruined many an evening." For more reasonable portion sizes and the option to try more than one kind of cocktail without getting soused, buy a set of 8.25-ounce Libbey Retro coupes (pictured, $44 for a set of 12, amazon.com).

STAY CLflSSIC

¦ In the bartending boom a new cocktail is born every minute (and usually involves impossible-to-find ingredients such as house-made sea-buckthorn tincture). But few can top the classics collected in Jerry Thomas's 1887 Bar-Tenders Guide. Handsome reprints are available for about $10.

DON'T WANT

YOU TO KNOW.

BUT WE GOT THE

BEST ONES

TO SPILL

CLOVER CLUB

Dev Johnson, head

bartender at New York

speakeasy Employees

Only, suggests you try

a flip, a classic cocktail

made delightfully

frothy with nothing

more fussy than an egg

white. Herewith, the

clover club...blowing

minds since 1911.

• 2 ounces gin

• ' j ounce fresh lemon

juice (about half a lemon)

• 'h ounce raspberry

syrup or grenadine

• '/i ounce simple syrup

' I egg white, vert fresh

Combine ingredi­ents and ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously for 10 seconds and strain into a martini glass. To give this drink some Playboy flair, cut a Rabbit Head stencil from a mar­garine lid and spritz Angostura bitters on \ top with a vermouth atomizer.

hile the state of the American cocktail is better than ever, you'd think you need an advanced degree in mixology to decipher the drinks menus at some of the more pretentious lounges. You know, places where olives are "spherified," eyedroppers are used and the bartenders take 15 minutes to mix your drink. We're going to let you in on a little secret: The old ways are the best ways and are easy enough for you to be your own bartender. To give you the essen­tial tips and tools that are the foundation of a good drink (principles that have remained relatively unchanged since the 19th century) we checked in with some of our favorite bartenders from around the country, people who know how to maximize a drink with minimal fuss.

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GET BITTER

• Bitters are one of the easiest cheats a bar­tender can use to add complexity to a drink. Mix classic Angostura with gin to make a pink gin, one of the simplest traditional cocktails around. And stock up on modern versions such

as Regans' No. 6 orange bitters to add citrus essence without sweet­ness or acid, and Bit-termens mole-flavored bitters for a chocolaty spin on a margarita.

Bittermens Xocolatl Mole bitters, $25, amazon.com

CHERRY ON TOP

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• No red dye no. 5 was

used in the making of

the real-deal Italian

maraschino cherries

from Luxardo. The

intense syrup is an

ingredient in its own

right Stir into a torn

collins for subtle

sweetness.

Luxardo cherries, $17, kegworks.com

STIR THINGS UP

*& James Bond was wrong; the rules of cocktail making are thus: Shake cocktails that include fruit juice (shaking blends the juice and alcohol better). Stir cocktails that are simply spirits over ice (e.g., a martini or a manhattan). For the latter category, this mixing glass from Japan is just the right size. Thirty revolutions with a stir-rer will blend and chill all the ingredients.

Yarai mixing glass, $39, cocktailkingdom.com

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PERFECT MANHATTAN

With equal parts sweet and dry vermouth, this is a drink for all tastes.

2 ounces rye or

bourbon

'h ounce sweet

vermouth

'/2 ounce dry

vermouth

Angostura or

orange bitters

maraschino cherry

Combine liquid ingredients over ice in a mixing glass. Stir 30 times. Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with maraschino cherry.

MAKE N-ICE

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• There's no easier way to ruin a glass of expensive liquor than to add a few shriveled ice cubes from your malodorous freezer. "Good ice is a crucial ingredient," says Craig Schoettler, the 26-year-old prodigy who launched the groundbreaking beverage program at

Aviary in Chicago. "Whatever you put into your drink is going to get con­sumed." Schoettler, who now runs a less high-concept setup at Drumbar in Chicago's Gold Coast neighbor­hood, recommends making ice with the best water possible and not storing it in the freezer for too long. You want the ice to taste pure, not like last month's leftovers.

Schoettler also gets creative with cubes: For the Cape Cod fizz he freezes organic cranberry juice into cubes and pours vodka and soda over them for a twist on the vodka cranberry.

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• If your tap water tastes off, skip the ice maker and freeze your own cubes using neutral-tasting water. "No one is going to be able to discern if you use Evian," Schoettler says. "Filtered water is just fine."

Tovolo ice cube tray, $7, cocktailhingdom.com

BARREL UP

II Hi When Jeffrey Morgen-|l ||l thaler, bartender at ^|\ ||jf Clyde Common in Port-^<£iir land, poured a negroni into an empty whiskey barrel on a lark, the

ultrasmooth result sparked a nationwide trend. "We barrel-age only cocktails that

have some sort of fortified wine in them, like J vermouth or sherry," Morgenthaler says. When a spirit-driven cocktail (read: no fresh ingredi­ents) sits in an oak barrel, the wine oxidizes and picks up notes of grass, citrus and mushroom. The aging also pulls out hints of vanilla, caramel and wood. And the process is remarkably simple: Just dump the ingredients into a barrel and wait.

Morgenthaler recom­mends using a one-liter Tuthilltown Spirits barrel ($60, tuthilltown.com).

11

BARREL-AGED BIJOU

'11 ounces Tanqueray

or Beefeater gin '11 ounces green

Chartreuse '11 ounces Cinzano

sweet vermouth ' 1 teaspoon orange bitters ' lemon peel

Soak barrel in warm water for 48 hours to swell the wood. Com-

bine liquid ingredients and pour into barrel us­ing a funnel. Seal barrel and let ingredients age for three weeks. Decant barrel through a double-mesh strainer into a large bottle or pitcher. Shake ingre­dients and strain into a martini glass. Garnish with lemon peel.

HUDDLE TffROUGH

• Muddling (a.k.a. smashing) fresh fruit and herbs in a glass infuses a drink with the flavors of the season (think lime- and mint-redolent mojito). Matthew Biancaniello, the L.A.-based mixologist who holds court at Cliffs Edge, uses his muddler as much as his cocktail shaker. To create the drink below, he mined a farmers' market for botanical inspiration. The result is spicy, sweet, herbaceous and bracing.

TAG bar muddler, $18, barsupplies.com

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IS

SAGE HEAVEN

3 sage leaves

5 raspberries

1 slice ginger root,

'/s inch thick

% ounce fresh

lemon juice

3/< ounce agave syrup

(1:1 ratio water

to agave)

2 ounces vodka or gin

4 blackberries

Muddle sage, raspberries, ginger root, lemon juice and agave syrup in a mixing glass. Add

vodka or gin and shake. Strain into a collins glass over ice. Garnish with blackberries.

THE BARTENDER'S BOTTLE

* Many spirits are designed to be smooth and sippable, but bartend­ers Dushan Zaric, Simon Ford and Jason Kosmas yearned for liquor that

would stand up for itself in a well-made cocktail. They tweaked recipes, upped the proof, designed an oversize yet ergonomic, bartender-friendly bottle and launched the 86 Co. We can attest that the resulting spirits make damn fine drinks. To achieve this, the partners consulted some of the best minds in the bartending world. Here's how they dialed in the design.

Tequila Cabeza, $43, Fords gin, $38,

Cana Brava rum, $35, and Aylesbury Duck

vodka (not pictured), $31, the86co.com

LOWER RING

ERIC ALPERIN

Hnrlniili'r. the

0 Bartending can get athletic. Alperin sug­gested a ridge on the

neck to keep fingers from slipping during

a two-bottled pour.

ERGONOMIC NECK

# Shine tested every version of the neck behind the bar and chose this one for

comfort and consis­tency of pours.

MIDDLE GRIP

LYNNETTE MARRERO

Co-founder, Speed

Rack, New York Cit\

- The one-liter bottle is wider than a standard bottle, so Marrero requested an indentation to accom­modate smaller hands.

MEASUREMENTS

JASON KOSMAS

Cocktail consultant.

# The ruler helps with inventory con­trol. It also allows you to use an empty bottle to premix cocktails for parties.

THE FORMULA

FRANCISCO J. FERNANDEZ

$ Fernandez mod­eled the Cana Brava rum recipe on Cuba's embargoed Havana Club rum, Heming­way's favorite.