Jeffrey Morgenthaler

One advantage I have in my career – and believe me, I thank my lucky stars every day for my good fortune in this regard – is that I travel a lot. And when I do travel, I get to visit the greatest bars in the world and spend time picking the brains of the world’s greatest bartenders.

The most recent drink to grace our cocktail list is the result of my travels.

Taking inspiration from many sources, my initial interest in bitter, sour and sweet with a distinctly tropical bent was taken directly from the ever-brilliant Giuseppe Gonzalez and his now-famous Trinidad Sour.

While I, and the rest of the world, was taken by the combination of bitter, herbal, sweet flavors, it never really struck me as a an extensible sort of drink style until I came across Andrew Bohrer’s amaro-based Mai Tai variation called the “Elena’s Virtue”. Now here was a drink with legs, and a hint of what was to come in the world of cocktails, in my humble opinion.

But what New York and Seattle do well, San Francisco often does better, and usually with a lot more Fernet Branca, and that’s the conversation I had with Josh Harris while competing in the Domaine de Canton finals in St. Maarten this spring. And after tasting his simple concoction of ginger liqueur, pineapple and Fernet Branca I knew it was time for me to get my feet wet and try my hand at the herbal tropical sour.

The result has been a smash hit at the bar, as it very much follows in the style of our restaurant bar, a reflection of the crafted European style of cooking that emerges from the kitchen on a nightly basis. In other words, earthy, sour, herbal flavors do very, very well where we work.

Put all of this together, throw in a desire to explore the dusty, neglected bottle of Drambuie, and an early morning racking one’s brain to come up with a drink name (the original intent was Brixton Club) and a star was born:

Kingston Club

1½ oz Drambuie
1½ oz pineapple juice
¾ oz lime juice
1 tsp Fernet Branca
3 dashes Angostura bitters

Shake ingredients with ice and finish with 1 oz soda water. Strain mix over fresh ice into a chilled collins glass and garnish with an orange twist.

Little did I know, after announcing that I’d be bringing a pitcher of sangria to the Tex-Mex dinner party last weekend, that every single person in attendance was recoiling in horror at the thought of having to choke down a big heaping glass of red syrup. But much to their surprise – and my relief – what I showed up to the party with was fruity, spicy, and dry enough to pair with food.

Sangria recipes are like censored old pairs of sneakers: everybody’s got one, and most of them stink. While sangria is nothing more than a lightly sweetened wine-based punch typically consumed during the summer in Portugal and Spain, the garbage you’re going to be served in the average Mexican-American restaurant is syrupy and spiced beyond belief in an attempt to cover up the rank of cheap red wine.

So in an attempt to help promote what can be a delicious summer or fall party beverage, I’m offering up a few tips, with a recipe to follow.

1. Do use an inexpensive, dry yet fruit-forward red wine in your sangria, preferably something from the Rioja region of Spain.

2. Do not think that spending $5 on a bottle of wine is going to yield delicious results.

3. Do use fresh fruit and fresh fruit juice in your sangria.

4. Do not use anything from a box, carton, jar or can in your sangria. If you don’t think you can spare the ten minutes to juice fresh oranges, pick up a six-pack of beer instead.

5. Do use decent-quality orange liqueur in your sangria. Remember, garbage in, garbage out.

6. Do not believe anyone who tells you that there is one specific recipe for sangria and that anything else isn’t real. The only requirement to making sangria is that it contains wine. Everything else is based on your personal preference.

7. Do try making your first batch with the following recipe. It’s a solid, basic recipe that you can then play with and make your own.

Sangria

1 750 ml bottle red wine
¾ cup Grand Marnier
1 cup freshly-squeezed orange juice
1 oz 2:1 simple syrup, or 1½ oz 1:1 simple syrup
1 tsp Angostura bitters

Mix ingredients together in a large pitcher. Add pieces of fresh seasonal fruit and serve in goblets over ice. Makes 8 five-ounce servings.

If there’s one thing I hate about living in the Pacific Northwest, it’s the stretch of time from late October until late June, when the sun makes only the most occasional of appearances. I typically pack on an extra 10-15 pounds during those rainy months, party due to over-consumption of wintertime drinks like dark beer, egg nog, hot-buttered-anything and wassail. I wanted a drink for the winter that I could add to my cocktail menu that was more like the light, café-style cocktails I typically gravitate to during the summer.

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Well, folks, it’s time of year again. I repost this recipe every year because I’m a man on a mission. You see, I love egg nog, but I can’t stand the thick, gelatinous goop they sell at the grocery store. Even if you were to cut it with alcohol, it’s still so overly-pasteurized and full of preservatives that it would be anything but enjoyable to slug down at a Christmas party. So a few years ago, I set about concocting the simplest, tastiest Egg Nog recipe I could, and after many trials and errors, here’s what I came up with.

In terms of cocktail history, Egg Nog is nothing more than a brandy or rum (or both) flip made with the addition of cream or milk. The 1862 Bar-Tender’s Guide by Jerry Thomas calls for a nog made up of a tablespoon of bar sugar, a tablespoon of water, a whole egg, cognac, rum and milk, shaken and strained, with some nutmeg grated on top. The problem I have with Thomas’ recipe is all the extra water that comes from the melting of the ice, not to mention that extra half ounce he calls for. Watery egg nog, anyone? Yeah, no thanks.

So I did a lot of research, in cookbooks and on the web, and tried a bunch of different recipes and methods. Some called for cooking the eggs into sort of a custard, but that’s a heck of a lot of work and results in something that can only be described as thick glop. Others required separating the eggs, beating them independently, and folding them together. But again, it’s too thick and I’m too lazy.

This is the recipe I devised. It can be made in just about any home or bar, since the ingredients are fairly simple. It can be done entirely in a blender, so there are no whisks or beaters or rubber spatulas or stovetops needed. It yields two healthy servings, so you can easily multiply it to serve more. It doesn’t use a ton of heavy cream, so it’s fairly light. In other words, it’s practically perfect.

2 large eggs
3 oz (by volume) granulated sugar
½ tsp freshly-grated nutmeg
2 oz brandy
2 oz spiced rum (I use Sailor Jerry’s)
6 oz whole milk
4 oz heavy cream

Beat eggs in blender for one minute on medium speed. Slowly add sugar and blend for one additional minute. With blender still running, add nutmeg, brandy, rum, milk and cream until combined. Chill thoroughly to allow flavors to combine and serve in chilled wine glasses or champagne coupes, grating additional nutmeg on top immediately before serving.

One note about blenders. This recipe works great in home blenders, but the commercial models are designed to heat whatever they’re blending, which can result in scrambled eggs by the time you get around to the sugar. If you’re using a Vita-Mix or similar commercial blender, cut that initial blend time down to a quarter minute or so.

Clyde Common Egg Nog

Our tequila-sherry egg nog at Clyde Common has been so overwhelmingly popular that I figured I’d share the recipe here. It’s based on my original egg nog recipe from years back, just slightly modified to incorporate the lower-alcohol sherry into the mix.

Añejo Tequila and Amontillado Sherry Egg Nog

12 large eggs
18 oz (by volume) granulated sugar
3 tsp freshly-grated nutmeg
12 oz anejo tequila
15 oz Amontillado sherry
36 oz whole milk
24 oz heavy cream

In a blender or stand mixer on low speed, beat eggs until smooth. Slowly add nutmeg, and sugar until incorporated and dissolved. Slowly add sherry, tequila, milk and cream. Refrigerate overnight and serve in small chilled cups. Dust with fresh nutmeg before serving.

Makes one gallon.

You may or may not have known this, but I like making cocktails out of wine. Or things that were once wine. Or things that were made from wine. However you want to say it, I like making cocktails out of wine. So when I saw that there was a cocktail competition coming up that called for the use of sherry (a type of wine made from white grapes grown around the town of Jerez, Spain and fortified with brandy), I was like, “I’m all over this.”

So I reached for the Morgenthaler Standby Formula book and grabbed this old chestnut. First, I bolstered the sherry with something bitter, put in a touch of something sweet, and finished it with something absinth-y. Then I dumped that one down the sink and tried about ten other combinations. The result is this cocktail, The Solera Club.

I like wine-based cocktails, because they don’t punch you in the face the way, say, a 94-proof gin-based cocktail is going to. This means these drinks are going to be more versatile, and drinkable on more occasions than a big spirit-driven monster. A lot of my customers like to end the night with one of these low-proof sippers, but I take a more European tack myself and delight in them during the late afternoon, noshing on Marcona almonds and watching the sidewalk traffic without getting falling-down drunk.

So in the spirit of early autumnal afternoon sipping and enjoying the sunshine while it still lingers, here’s the recipe:

2 oz sherry (cream for a sweeter, rounder drink, dry sherry such as an amontillado for a more drier, more austere drink)
1 oz Cynar
½ oz creme de peche
1 tsp absinthe

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. If you’re going the cream sherry route, I’d recommend garnishing with a lemon twist as I’ve done here. If you’re using the drier, nuttier sherries, try using an orange twist.

“Here, see if you can make me something with this”, the liquor rep taunted as he dropped a bottle of aquavit on the bar. If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I don’t really work that well under pressure. I try, but it literally takes me weeks to come up with a new drink that I’m happy with. Maybe I’m slow, maybe I’m a perfectionist, doesn’t matter: I hate it when I have to work under pressure.

So I was especially vexed when this particular wiseass handed me a bottle of aquavit. For those of you who don’t know, is a traditional Scandinavian liquor flavored with caraway and – typically – other herbs such as fennel and anise. It’s delicious, but it’s unique and isn’t known for its superb mixability.

However, I knew the liquor boob was insinuating that I might not be able to rise to the challenge, so I whipped this up (after about three false starts). A small handful of visitors to the bar at Clyde Common have suggested that it might be one of the best drinks I’ve come up with so far, but I’ll let you be the judge of that. I just think it tastes delicious.

1 oz aquavit
1 oz applejack
¾ oz sweet vermouth
¼ oz yellow Chartreuse
1 dash Angostura bitters

Stir ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail coupe. Garnish with a large twist of lemon peel and serve.

With my recent move to Portland and consequent adjustment to a new work environment, new living situation and new selection of great bars and restaurants to explore, I’ve been a little lax on the new drink recipes.

Fortunately I have my cruel taskmasters at Boca Loca Cachaça to keep me toiling away, day and night, churning out recipe after recipe using their incredible product.

If you haven’t experienced Boca Loca yet, I urge you to give it a try as I firmly feel it is the finest cachaça available on the market today. The spirit is light and fresh, and free from a lot of the oiliness and heavy smoke you’ll find in other – sometimes inferior – cachaças available out there. There is grassiness, big stone fruit, some white pepper and a very light honey finish. Boca Loca is a beautiful product and it’s a pleasure to work with.

So for the spring I set about creating a series of cocktails that showcased the cachaça in a different way. This is my first entry.

Inspired in part by a gorgeous cocktail created by my good friend Gonçalo de Souza Monteiro, the Comte de Sureau, I turned the drink around and twisted the proportions to highlight the cachaça, and then finished the whole thing with a little lemon oil. It’s simple, petite, and a beautiful thing to sip on.

1½ oz Boca Loca cachaça
¾ oz Aperol
½ oz St. Germain elderflower liqueur

Stir ingredients with cracked ice and strain into a small chilled cocktail coupe. Garnish with a generous twist of lemon.

This recipe is part two of my New Orleans Mixology Monday post. For the complete story behind this drink, please click here.

¾ oz Wild Turkey rye
¾ oz Clear Creek apple brandy
¾ oz Carpano Antica Formula vermouth
¼ oz Strega
2 dashes cinnamon tincture*
1 large strip orange peel

Stir ingredients over cracked ice. Strain into an ice-filled old fashioned glass and garnish with orange peel.

*To make cinnamon tincture, soak 4 ounces whole cinnamon sticks in 16 oz grain alcohol for three weeks. Strain solids and bottle.

And here’s a short video of the Autumn Leaves shot by Philip Beech: