I unabashedly love cocktails, especially when perfectly made and served at exactly the right temp. They ease the ache that comes from being an adult all day long intimating a shimmery promise that for a few moments you can give yourself permission to step off from worry. Maybe it’s just the simple need for a good flirt with life. A shift of perspective made viscerally compelling when it comes at you in a beautiful place surrounded by people and music and the smell of food you are about to enjoy.
The rise of the artisan spirit movement along with the emergence of the alchemist bartender who freely collaborates with chefs and gardeners for inspiration and sourcing have all conspired to make this a wonderful time to create cocktails, especially when all these forces align. They do right now at Barndiva, where we have remarkable talent behind the bar. I cannot remember a seasonal drink menu more balanced, accessible, and exciting than this one aimed squarely at the run up to New Year’s Eve.
Just don’t call them specialty cocktails, please. It should always be special when you order a cocktail, but something else comes into play when a curious bartender references the season flowing all around you. That kind of cocktail marks time in a different way, putting it in a continuum you share with everyone around you who are also smack dab in the middle of a seasonal moment. We all need reminding: Drink the view, baby! Bespoke winter cocktails should have subtle spice, soft fragrant herbal aromas, a hint of wet meadows. If they also manage to reference history, something we seem to long for this time of the year, the more the better.
Tender Buttons; Fugitive Dust; The Monk Bites Back.
‘Fugitive Dust’ First scent of Alessandra’s creation is of entering a darkening forest, courtesy of a sprinkling of bay dust across the foamy pillow that floats atop this drink. Sipping through that foam is the first delight of a drink that opens up into a sensual blend of bourbon, Nonino Amaro and blood orange. We’ve all been watching “His Dark Materials” on HBO so the magic properties of ‘dust,’ had us at hello. Screw the Magisterium (if only for a few moments) and thank you Preston Farm for the bay leaves which Sandy dries and grinds into a fine, gold-dust weight powder.
‘Break the Night’ With Terra’s new drink, the name doesn’t reference anything but the ease in which it goes down. It’s a lovely champagne cocktail reminiscent of a French 75, but is decidedly more complex on the nose and the coyness of the flavors thank in great part to the use of Barr Hill Gin. This is a drink that doesn’t so much as open up inside the glass (see Fugitive Dust, above or The Monk Bites Back, below) as open the room up around you. The kind of drink you could stay with all evening and into the morning and be no worse for wear.
‘Tender Buttons’ Andrew is known to take on difficult fresh ingredients for his cocktails, in this case the unlovely cranberry that appears in abundance this time of year with a tendency to assault the mouth with an unrelenting astringency. Cranberries feel like they should be good for you yet from Thanksgiving through Christmas the inclination is to wrap them in sugar, which seems a shame. Andrew does lightly roll his frozen cranberries in powdered sugar as a garnish, but it’s an initial flavor that immediately gives way to his freshly made cranberry juice that balances tequila, a hint of black walnut bitters, and a bubbly finish of sparkling Roederer Estate. His creations never cease to delight. Like the Gertrude Stein poem it’s named after (which curiously does not have the word cranberries in it. Go Gertrude!)
‘The Monk Bites Back’ Montenegro Amaro was created in 1885 by Stanislao Cobianchi a young Italian who turned away from a life in a Monastic order to follow his hearts desire and travel the world. He spent the next decade collecting unusual seeds, flowers, fruits, citrus - you name it - from three continents, which he narrowed down to 12 ‘mother’ essences from which he created the ethereal elixir we have today, bitter yet herbaceous, spicy and floral, with notes of chocolate and caramel. The Montenegro Amaro in Isabel’s cocktail plays hide and seek with two other remarkable old world spirits, Cocchi Americano (1891) and Caperitif (1900, re-imagined in the early 20th century). All three are known to aid in digestion and lift the spirit, making this a perfect NYE cocktail to set you up for a night of revelry.
‘Beautiful Ghost’ Our last new cocktail on the winter list, also created by Alessandra, is her version of a White Negroni. Our story (and we are sticking to it) is that Ada Savage, mother of Count Camillo Negroni, preferred her son’s creation made with transparent distilled bitters, which is the way Fosco Scarselli, the original bartender at Caffè Casoni where the Negroni was (supposedly) invented, made them for her. She is the Beautiful Ghost we have named this drink after.
Pictured above: Break the Night; a winter version of Bitches of the Seizieme; Beautiful Ghost
