At their cocktail supply store, Bull in China, Lucas Plant and Daniel Osborne evoke a bar nerd’s fantasy. Make your way to their shop in the back of North Portland’s Workshop Vintage, where you can snag the basics—jigger, strainer, shaker—and discover house-made, hand-blown mixing glasses, classic bartending tomes, and ornate stemware scoured from the deepest reaches of vintage Portland. Below, Plant and Osborne reveal their favorite finds.
Bull in China Lewis Bag and Ice Mallet The perfect mint julep or snowcapped tiki drink requires impeccable crushed ice: just stuff this durable, hand-sewn canvas bag with ice, and hulk-smash away with the hefty black walnut mallet. $100
Bull in China Mixing Glass Hand-blown in Northwest Portland, this hammered, pocked mixing glass went through rigorous testing at the city’s busiest bars—like Teardrop Lounge and Expatriate—before getting the B in C stamp of approval. $60
Vintage Punch Bowl In their rotating selection of found vintage glassware, the duo always keeps a punch bowl in stock. “The punch bowl symbolizes the great things in life: a gathering of friends, having fun, and sharing delicious cocktails,” says Plant. $25
“The David” Bar Knife “A lot of us bartenders tend to go for cheap knives behind the bar, most of which dull quickly,” explains Plant. These Portland-made Station Knives sport precise, four-and-a-half-inch blades ideal for carving citrus and trimming mint. $250
Commissary Syrups and Gommes Commissary mixologists Daniel Shoemaker and Sean Hoard craft some of the most labor-intensive and hard-to-find juices and syrups—from demerara sugar syrup and pineapple gomme to Bloody Mary mix and horchata—so that casual drinkers can whip up their own high-end cocktails at home. $14–20
Cocktails on Tap: The Art of Mixing Spirits and Beer by Jacob Grier This month, local beer-cocktail pioneer Jacob Grier releases his bible of more than 50 sudsy combinations, like the “Green Devil,” with Duvel pale ale, gin, and absinthe. “Jacob’s knowledge of the world of suds and cocktails is extensive,” Plant says. “We’ve been counting down the days until it’s released.” $24.95
Related to the Bloody Mary by name only, Chauncey Roach’s excellent forenoon delight (above) balances the bite of tequila and green chile with refreshing hits of celery bitters, lime, and kummel—a Dutch liqueur flavored with caraway, cumin, and fennel. It is strange, it is complex, and it is wonderful. $9
Crowned with a high-rising column of fizz, Dave Shenaut’s chosen cocktail is quintessential morning-after material. Hard-to-find Hayman’s sloe gin—a London dry gin steeped with wild sloe berries for a tart zing—commingles with heavy cream, lemon juice, egg whites, and seltzer for the most refined milkshake in all the land. $9
Still craving the bracing buzz of a mimosa? Opt for ISK’s inspired spin, with nary a drop of OJ in sight. Fresh grapefruit juice fills the citrus slot, with two Italian bitter liqueurs balancing the mix: Aperol, with notes of bitter orange and rhubarb; and Cynar, a deeply herbaceous, artichoke-fueled concoction. Finished with a splash of Prosecco, this effervescent sipper goes down quick. $11
Wine can capture only so much of a place. But throw in roots, barks, flowers, seeds, herbs, and spices, and you have a heady terroir—the true flavor of a landscape, stored in a bottle. That’s the big idea behind an emerging cluster of Oregonians tackling vermouth, the age-old European aperitif made of wine fortified with brandy and infused with botanicals.
“We took what we knew about the origins of vermouth, and lifted it from Italy to Oregon,” says Neil Kopplin, one of the founders of Imbue Cellars. “Our goal was to make something delicious, fresh, and well-balanced enough that everyone would be able to appreciate it.” Indeed, most casual American drinkers think of vermouth as that mysterious dusty bottle that does unknown things to a martini or a manhattan. But like the rest of Oregon’s vermouth pioneers, Imbue’s two offerings—the flagship Bittersweet Vermouth and the more assertively bitter, amaro-inspired Petal & Thorn—are designed to be just as enjoyable on the rocks as they are mixed in a fancy cocktail. Here, we offer a cocktail to get you started, plus a guide to Oregon’s current wave of craft vermouths.
Oregon Vermouth: A Drinking Guide
Ransom Dry Vermouth $20 for 500 mL, 18.4% ABV
With a base of pinot noir blanc, winemaker-distiller Tad Seestedt’s super-dry, summery potion boasts notes of bitter apple and heady spices.
Interrobang Sweet Vermouth $18 for 375 mL, 17.5% ABV
Inspired by an ancient German recipe, Karl Weichold’s sweet vermouth, fortified with Clear Creek Brandy, oozes fruity hits of woodsy blackberry, apricot, and cherry.
Cana’s Feast Chinato d’Erbetti $45 for 750 mL, 17.4% ABV
Winemaker Patrick Taylor’s Barolo-style Chinato drinks like a deeply spicy Italian wine, with earthy notes of raisins, black pepper, and sour cherry.
Hammer & Tongs Sac’Résine $35 for 750 mL, 17.5% ABV
Meaning “sacred resins,” Taylor’s side label of vermouths uses a formula that splits the difference between dry white and sweet red for a head-spinningly herbal and citrusy sip.
Make It!
The Gateway Cocktail:Vermouth & Tonic
“It’s like a light gin and tonic, with a tea-like quality,” says Kopplin. “All of the citrus rises to the top, with a real richness on the finish.”
2 oz Imbue Bittersweet Vermouth 2 oz tonic Orange twist Combine all ingredients over ice and serve.
— OR —
2 oz Imbue Petal & Thorn 2 oz tonic Squeeze of lime juice Combine all ingredients over ice and serve.
Tequila-fueled margaritas might be a summer classic, but Biwa’s Gabe Rosen has a better base for sun-soaked marathon sipping: shochu*, a slightly sweet, low-proof Japanese spirit that tastes a bit like sake or vodka with a fruity, toasty kick.
At the chef’s laid-back new ramen and juice bar, Noraneko, Rosen features nearly a dozen “chuhai” (shochu highballs), mixing the mellow spirit with fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice, fragrant oolong tea, cucumber, and other bright flavors to make seriously “sessionable” cocktails you can sip all day long. (They’re also a classy upgrade from the syrupy hard lemonades certain friends demand that you include in your home cooler.) “Shochu adds an X factor to casual drinks,” Rosen says. “And you can have four of them and still stumble home.”
MAKE IT!
At Noraneko, Rosen leans on Jinro 24, shochu’s Korean, sugar- and citric acid–spiked cousin, for chuhai. “It’s a truly magical beverage, the Bacardi of East Asia.” Swap Jinro out for higher-end Japanese shochu brands (see “Five to Try,” below) for more nuanced cocktails.
GRAPEFRUIT CHUHAI
Combine 2 oz Jinro soju, 1½ oz fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice, ½ oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice, and ½ oz simple syrup with ice in a 10 oz glass, and top with soda water or Fresca.
OOLONG CHUHAI
Pour 2 oz Jinro soju or Iichiko or Kakushigura shochu over ice in a 10 oz glass, and top with iced oolong tea.
CRANBERRY CHUHAI
Combine 2 oz Jinro soju, ½ oz Starvation Alley cranberry juice, and ½ oz simple syrup with ice in a 10 oz glass, and top with soda water.
*SHOCHU 101: This low-alcohol spirit (around 50 proof) is fermented with koji mold and distilled from a wide variety of foodstuffs, from rice, sweet potatoes, and barley to sesame seeds and carrots.
FIVE SHOCHUS TO TRY: Hakutake Like sake, this approachable brand’s base is rice—think crisp, clean, and slightly sweet. $32.85//Kurokame Made from sweet potato and black koji, it’s a love-it-or-hate-it sip with tones of acetone up front, followed by a toasty, fruit-leather finish. $34.30//Iichiko Smoother than Hakutake, this barley spirit “just screams strawberry and banana,” says Rosen. $29.90//Kakushigura A rich, blonde, barley outlier that’s aged in oak barrels for a “round, tutti-frutti” sweetness. $31.15//Jinro 24 Soju Shochu’s Korean “mixed grain” counterpart is one of the best-selling liquors in the world, thanks to South Korea’s inexhaustible thirst for the bright, punchy booze. $11. These brands are sold at many local liquor stores.
1) MARK BITTERMAN KNOWS MORE ABOUT BITTERS THAN ANYONE ON THE PLANET.
Surely, certainly, no human cares more, or writes more vividly, about bitters—the world’s most mysterious flavor extracts and soulful cocktail ingredient. We, mere bitters mortals, just shake a few drops of Angostura into a highball and call it good. Not Bitterman. Earlier this year, the Portlander taste-tested 500 varieties leached from every plant, seed, bark, herb, and flower, the eye-opening to the mouth-rolfing. He dropped tinctures on his tongue, swigged dashes in water or booze, gurgled amaro (the drinkable sister of bitters), concocted brews full of gentian root and lemon peels, and marched medicinal decoctions to a place they’ve rarely gone before: the kitchen.
The tasting notes, rating scales, and recipes that Bitterman forged in the aftermath are enlightening, hallucinogenic, and always entertaining. They’re also the backbone to Bitterman’s Field Guide to Bitters and Amari, due out October 27. It’s the first book to telegraph this growing force in America’s cocktail culture and argue a place for bitters at the food table. (Fernet flan, this is your moment.)
Bitterman, a boyish 48, is best known as a salt preacher. His first book, Salted: A Manifesto on the World’s Most Essential Mineral, With Recipes, nabbed James Beard gold in 2011. The Northwest PDX location of his salt shop, the Meadow, houses the country’s largest chocolate bar collection. But bitters are also a longtime preoccupation. And Bitterman has the rigor, the imagination, and, yes, the name for the job of chronicling their recent boom.
In his field guide, we meet the likes of Coffee Rye, Crunk Drops, Burlesque, Ms. Piggy Peppercorn Bacon, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, in which Bitterman detects notes of “pine, barley threshings, licorice stick, cereal, Ivory soap, and a bay seen in a rear view mirror.” He suggests we try it in a whiskey root beer float. Who could argue?
2) ALL DRINKS ARE BETTER WITH BITTERS.
That’s the gospel according to Mark. Without it, a cocktail has no balance. And not just a few drops of bitters, either. “That’s BS,” he says. “You want flavor. A generous dash (10 drops) delivers a serious bounce, lengthens liquor, cuts sweetness, and adds a bolt of bitter lightning.” Those qualities are on full display in Bitterman’s amaro- and vanilla bitters–laced martini spin (check out the recipe, below right.)
“Angostura is the ruler, the Yoda or the Darth Vader ... But as with any dominant force, talking solely about Angostura when you talk about bitters isn’t just limiting or wrong ... it’s missing the point.”—Mark Bitterman
3) BITTERS INSPIRE POETRY.
Forget wine notes and their tedious clichés. Bitterman’s tasting notes are inspired reading. Behold:
Tonic (The Bitter Truth) “Steve McQueen in a citrus racecar.”
Woodland (Portland Bitters Project) “Mountain pine trees, pine pollen, faint sage-chamomile forest floor; the air you breathe while dangling bare feet in a cold mountain stream.”
Bangkok Betty Thai Spice (Bitter Queens) “A sizzling food cart of Thai spices and Lipton onion soup mix, in a good way.”
Sambal (The Drunken Crane Bitters)“Redolent of a fish market after closing, then our boat was attacked by massive salty cold squid soup, onion, celery, and carrots.”
Orange Bitters (Cocktailpunk) “Standing at a roadside fruit stand in California, with Alice Waters peeling and eating strong, clean, cold oranges.”
Gangsta Lee’n (Bitters, Old Men)“Bootleg whiskey, smoldering cigarettes in an ashtray, Band-Aids.”
4) YOU, TOO, CAN BE A CRAZY BITTERS GENIUS.
Want to build your own collection? Start with the key flavor categories, from citrus to flat-out wacky. We asked Bitterman to get us started, with a must-have bottle from each.
”The best thing to happen to a martini since the invention of the ice cube, with notes of fresh bright orange, unused cedar cigar box, and a pheromone musk-ish quality. A great all-purpose bitter for orange complexity—bourbon drinks to custards.”
[spicy] The Bitter End’s Jamaican Jerk
”This will lift off the top of your head, then light a sagebrush fire in there. It’s ruthlessly spicy, a chile demon to dance in hot chocolate, hot buttered rum, Bloody Marys, or barbecue.”
[aromatic] Boker’s Bitters, by Dr. Adam Elmegirab
”A pre-Prohibition formula, it’s more modest and effective than the ubiquitous Angostura. If you love old-fashioneds or manhattans, it’s a must have: a regal construction of orange and orange blossom, with an ancestral medicinal background of black lemon powder, cardamom, and clove.”
[lavender] E. Smith Mercantile’s Lavender Bitters
”Lavender bitters suffuse food and drink in a floral and herbal breeze. This one mixes gracefully in gin cocktails, salad dressings, and zesty sauces. A few drops in tapioca pudding will permanently rearrange your expectations of dessert.”
[flat-out wacky] De-Ooievaar’s Groene Pommeranz
”I love [using] unexpected flavors. This one tastes like an old stone wall and all that grows on it and adds an impenetrable thicket of green herbs, sage, and lichen flavors to roasted squash, tabbouleh, and hamburger meat. I put it in a Pimm’s Cup and watch people freak out.”
5) YOU CAN COOK WITH BITTERS.
The book makes an impressive case that bitters belong in the kitchen—lifting salad dressings, deepening meats, sharpening chocolate, and rethinking butters. Bitterman drives that last point home here with a boozy, bittered root beer “float” to glaze winter’s finest tuber.
MAKE IT!
Baked Sweet Potatoes with Spiced Root Beer Butter
Rub 4 sweet potatoes with vegetable oil, sprinkle with coarse salt, and bake for around 45 minutes, or until tender, in a 450-degree oven. Meanwhile, combine ¼ cup golden rum and 1 cup root beer in a small saucepan. Boil over medium-high heat until the sauce has reduced to about ¼ cup. Remove from heat and season with¼ tsp salt, 4 dashes orange bitters, 4 dashes baking spice bitters, and 4 dashes chile bitters. Stir in 3 tbsp unsalted butter. When potatoes are fully cooked, split them in half lengthwise and pour root beer butter all over the flesh. Serve hot.
Ross Hunsinger is the first to admit that bartending isn’t, generally speaking, introspective. But as Aviary’s bar manager since the NE Alberta Street restaurant opened over three years ago, the 29-year-old has taken a philosophical approach to mixology. Hunsinger finds inspiration for drinks in literature, music, or, really, anywhere. Then he translates those abstractions into alcohol, with an artist’s insouciance. “I do it until it tastes good,” says Hunsinger, who never uses jiggers or measuring tools in the creation process. “The best ones make you say, oh yeah, that whole thing. That was a whole thing. That was this time of life, and this is what it tasted like.” We asked Hunsinger to explain his art using a drink on the menu, and one that’s still in progress.
On the Menu: & Yet & Yet
A vibrant green drink on ice: clean Hangar 1 vodka, Midori, Dolin Blanc vermouth, dill, lime
Inspiration: Do Make Say Think’s album & Yet & Yet
Hunsinger first heard this record in someone’s backyard in 2011. Girlfriends were around, as was beer. “This lifting of rain and cold and heaviness, and light coming,” Hunsinger recalls of the moment’s vibe. “Springtime is coming.”
Process: When he played the record at his bar, he and some coworkers discussed the music’s essential “springiness”—twinkly and pretty, with a hint of lingering winter gloom. Somehow, Midori’s bad rap entered the conversation, and a formula making use of the melony Japanese liqueur took shape. Hunsinger’s first attempt involved vodka, cilantro, and lemon, which “tasted like garbage.” Forays into cilantro-and-gin territory also proved disastrous. About a week and a half and five or six iterations later, the balance was perfected. “I kind of settled on the obvious thing of clean,” Hunsinger says. “Just make it clean and delicious.”
WORK IN PROGRESS: UNTITLED
A yet-to-be-determined brown liquor drink, always neat, in a rocks glass
Inspiration: Schroeder, the piano-playing intellect from Peanuts
“After the whole Peanuts shtick, Schroeder probably went to college, where he probably DJ’d parties or did college radio. He probably likes indie bands and podcasts. He certainly travels. He’s one of those aggrandizing hipsters, over everyone’s head and drinking something weird and not that good just for the sake of drinking it.”
Process: The trouble, according to Hunsinger, lies in the tension between presentation and flavor: while Schroeder might drink something pretentiously bad, the final cocktail needs to taste secretly good. Schroeder would be a cognac or rye guy, so Hunsinger has tried subbing those spirits into boulevardiers and negronis: “meh.” Though Hunsinger is still many experiments away from the finished product, the first page of his notebook, where he scrawls his drink ideas and notes, expresses his credo: “90 percent of what you do is garbage.”
This spring, the Driftwood Room at Hotel deLuxe expands their history of partnership with the city’s most celebrated culinary sensations by mixing up cocktails inspired by four local brands. The Mixed in PDX series features artisan producers Salt & Straw, Jacobsen Salt, Bee Local Honey, and Smith Teamaker—and it's delicious.
The Driftwood Room's lead bartender Mike Robertson was given free reign to create the swanky bar's summer cocktail menu and says he “really wanted to feature the quality ingredients” that he was tasked to work with for the special series. Here’s what he came up with:
Local Honey—Aria gin, Farigoule wild thyme liqueur, Bee Local honey, and fresh lemon juice
Ghost in the Machine—Volstead and Hot Monkey vodkas, Aperol, blood orange and grapefruit juices, fresh lemon juice, basil simple syrup, Jacobsen Smoked Ghost Chili Salt rim
Floating Straw—Deschutes Black Butte Porter and Salt & Straw Sea Salt Ice Cream with Caramel Ribbon
The Mixed in PDX cocktail series debuted on April 11 and will be available through the end of summer. I was lucky enough to sip each of these crave-worthy cocktails and can only hope that they’ll extend that end date...preferably indefinitely!
Want to sample some of these locally inspired drinks yourself? Head to the Hotel deLuxe, located at 729 SW 15th Ave. The Driftwood Room is open from 2 pm to 11:30 pm Sunday-Thursday and 2 pm to 12:30 am on Friday and Saturday. Happy sipping!
Oregon has a long affinity with whiskey. Even before Prohibition became national law, Oregon was considered a “dry state,” allowing an infrastructure of underground distilling to become well established by the time the Eighteenth Amendment rolled around.
(Luckily) Prohibition didn’t last forever, and almost immediately after the repeal, the legitimate business of Hood River Distilling opened in 1934, and went on to become one of the largest distributors, producers, and importers of distilled goods in the state.
82 years later, our love of whiskey hasn’t diminished a bit. Case in point: Portland's Luna Foundation will host its second annual charity event, Whiskeyfest NW, this weekend, May 9-10. The spirited party will take over Block 15 at NW 11th Ave & NW Overton St for two days of all things whiskey.
This year’s festival features over 150 labels, a “secret” VIP library presented by the Multnomah Whiskey Library, food from the likes of Pok Pok, Ataula, Bunk, Pacific Pie, and Olympic Provisions, live music from Boy & Bean the Freak Mountain Ramblers, and a mechanical bull named Tipsy. Saturday will also feature a cocktail competition pitting some of the greatest bartenders in the city against each other. Proceeds from the festival will go to benefit the Oregon Active Foundation, which provides Adventure Therapy for people with disabilities. We'll drink to that!
Leading up to the event, PDX Whiskey Week will feature whiskey tastings and pairing dinners around town:
May 3 – Hall Street Grill // Kentucky Bourbon Dinner Get Tix!
As anybody who has spend some time in front of Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s bar at Clyde Common (or, more recently, downstairs at Pepe Le Moko) can tell you: dude is exacting.
The local godfather of barrel-aged and bottled café cocktails has major opinions on everything from gum syrups to how to properly hold a jigger. All that booze geekiness finds a home in The Bar Book: Elements of Cocktail Technique, his stylish new manual with local cooking maven Martha Holmberg.
A guide to making good drinks all the better through careful procedures and house-made juices, infusions, and garnishes, it’s a useful and charming read, balanced by Alanna Hale’s crisp, “how to” style photography.
The book debuts June 3, but locals can pick it up early at the duo's Powell’s event Wednesday, May 28.
Here’s three quick, geeky things we learned from our first flip through the compact tome.
P. 36. The man is straight up obsessed with citrus and other juices. He devotes two whole pages to choosing the best juicer (hand, mechanical, and electric), and includes wonky charts detailing the optimal age at which to use fresh squeezed grapefruit juice (4 to 12 hours later) and whether rolling and refrigerating lemons impacts juice yield. It makes for oddly compelling reading for a cross-section of America's Test Kitchen subscribers, bar aficionados, and O.C.D. sufferers. Bonus: Morgenthaler even jury-rigged a special juice squeezing technique for pulpy fruit like apples and pineapples out of a piece of cheesecloth and a salad spinner. He calls it the MacGyver Centrifuge Method (see photo, above).
P. 123. Respect the strawberry margarita. Or, to be specific, infuse your nice reposado tequila with Oregon strawberries once they start popping up around the farmers markets next month in order to make the “best strawberry margarita you ever tried.” Nothing is considered too lowbrow or highbrow for Morgenthaler and Holmberg. For every reference to Murray Stenson and recipe for DIY bitters and tonic there’s a love note to a properly made daiquiri or a defense of the blender, which should please both well G&T guzzlers and people who own a bottle of Cynar.
P. 171. It’s possible to devote an entire chapter of a book to ice (Chapter 8) and not end up sounding annoying. Most of us don’t know our cloudy freezer burned clinkers from an artisan Clinebell cube, but the author endeavors to explain why bartenders around town give you dirty looks when you fail to properly appreciate their large format frozen water (it involves dilution rates). It’s not all Portlandia bluster: Essentially, “ice is to the bartender as fire is to the chef,” the bartender explains. From detailing how to properly freeze ice and break down block ice to crafting Bundt pan ice molds and crushing ice for perfect Mint Juleps, this is pretty much the ebullient Frozen of cocktail reading. Cheers.
MAKE IT: PEPE LE MOKO’S GRASSHOPPER
“One of the kinda cool things, I think, about The Bar Book is that we talk about how to properly use a blender,” says Pepe le Moko barman and author Jeffrey Morgenthaler. “There aren’t a lot of bartending books out there that dare to mention blenders, much less show you how to use them.”
Left: Portland's star bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler works his magic. Right: The Grasshopper: a sweet, mint-flavored drink blended with vanilla ice cream, a menthol edge of Fernet, and a touch of sea salt.
1 1/2 oz green crème de menthe 1 1/2 oz white crème de cacao 1 oz half-and-half 1 tsp Fernet-Branca Pinch of sea salt 8 oz crushed ice 4 oz vanilla ice cream
Combine ingredients in a blender, and blend on high speed until smooth. Serve in a tall, frozen glass, and garnish with a mint sprig.
The Bar Book debuts at local bookstores June 3. Pre-order on Powells.com. Jeffrey Morgenthaler and Martha Holmberg appear for a book event at Powell’s, 7:30 pm Wednesday, May 28. And look for PoMo’s Q&A with the barman in our upcoming June issue.
Most locals see walnut trees as neighborhood nuisances, scattering nuts across sidewalks and bombing the hoods of their cars. But every June, Italians see the trees as towering treasure troves of unripe, green nuts ready to infuse in spirits for nocino, a heady, spiced liqueur traditionally sipped straight and often cold during the winter months.
“Nocino is still kind of a surprise,” muses chef Cathy Whims, whose Italian kitchen Nostrana perfected its own nocino over the past five years. “It’s dark like coffee and has that Italian love of things that are unripe and bitter, but it’s sweet and round and soothing, too. It kind of blows people away.” The spirit takes six months to infuse, but this month is prime green-walnut time—so get picking. Your future self will thank you.
HOMEMADE NOCINO
(Makes 3 cups) Recipe courtesy former Nostrana bar manager Douglas Derrick
20 green walnuts, washed and quartered* 750 mL bottle of Everclear (190 proof) 1 cup water 1 cup fine sugar ½ vanilla bean, hulled and scraped 2 star anise 6 allspice berries 6 pink peppercorns Peels of 2 lemons and 2 oranges, chopped Large glass jar with lid Cheesecloth
1. Add walnuts to jar and cover with Everclear. Cap jar and let rest at room temperature.
SIX MONTHS LATER...
2. In the first week of December, strain out nuts and discard. Add vanilla bean, star anise, allspice, peppercorns, and chopped citrus peel. Cover and let liquid rest for a week, agitating occasionally.
3. Strain out spices through cheesecloth. Let liquid rest for another week in the jar, without shaking. Then, slowly pour the liquid into a mixing vessel, letting the sediment on the bottom stay in the jar. Discard sediment.
4. Whisk sugar and water into the mixture. Cover and let the flavors refine for one more week, then enjoy! Sip nocino straight; add sparingly (just a quarter or half ounce) to light, citrusy cocktails for a bold, spicy edge; or bottle for holiday gifts.
*Gather your own fallen green walnuts (discard nuts with black rot spots) or buy online or from local farmers and grocers while in season.
August Erickson was not a man to let a little deluge slow his business. So when the Willamette River’s “Great Flood” hit Portland 120 years ago this month, Erickson moored a houseboat in the middle of W Burnside Street. Patrons rowed up in little boats, homemade rafts, and even caulked packing crates for shots of whiskey and to meet ladies.
Established in the 1880s, the legendary Erickson’s occupied a block of Burnside between NW Second and Third Avenues. Erickson, a Swedish immigrant, envisioned a boozy destination to rival the fleshpots of San Francisco and great drinking halls of New York. As miners, loggers, sailors, and soldiers from Fort Vancouver streamed through his doors, legends of this giant saloon spread up and down the West Coast, and it picked up some nicknames: The Working Man’s Club. The Café. The Temple of 10,000 Delights.
“Not to have visited Erickson’s Café,” one guest gushed, “is to have missed one of the sights of Portland.”
Indeed, Erickson’s had everything a drinking man could need: a barbershop, an orchestra, a movie theater. Patrons could rent little rooms, or “cribs,” to sleep or to conduct other nocturnal transactions. The 684-foot bar, it was said, could serve 300 men at a time, who could choose from an astonishing 50 brands of whiskey. A giant schooner of Henry Weinhard’s beer cost a nickel, while bartenders in white vests and heavy gold chains concocted higher-end cocktails. Erickson’s offered “the Dainty Lunch,” a free buffet of salty sausages, roasts, and Scandinavian cheeses—perhaps the earliest version of the now ubiquitous charcuterie plate. One trend that hasn’t caught back on: a trough that ran along the foot of the bar, so a patron need not abandon his pilsner to relieve his bladder.
Erickson sold the bar in 1907, and Prohibition brought a disappointingly quiet end to the debauchery. The giant bar was cut up, the ornate fixtures sold off. Only tall tales survived—which will soon make room for a more respectable future. This month, Innovative Housing plans to begin transforming the former saloon building into 62 low-income housing units.
With his barrel-aged negronis, bottled café cocktails, and a chatty blog, Portland’s best-known bartender has made his mark on the global cocktail scene—training bartenders from Paris to Helsinki and landing a 2014 James Beard nomination for Outstanding Bar Program at Clyde Common. But the genial fellow from Monterey is still most comfortable right here in Portland, presiding over a bar. Recently, that bar has been Pepe le Moko (above), the swanky bomb shelter located underneath Clyde Common. His exacting new technique manual, The Bar Book, coauthored with Martha Holmberg, is a sharp, funny guide to the artful touches that vault a cocktail from a swig to an experience (things like his “MacGyver Centrifuge Method,” which turns a whole pineapple into puréed sunshine). In person, Morgenthaler rarely waxes poetic about his craft—he just wants to make you a drink.
MY FIRST BARTENDING JOB was in a real dive bar, the Tiny Tavern in Eugene. I was 24, studying architecture at the University of Oregon, and broke. And I was the worst bartender ever-ever-ever. It took me 15 minutes to get one table four beers. I thought bartending would be fun, a good way to meet girls. Little did I know there were no women at the Tiny Tavern. It was just drunk old men. But I dug the whole scene. I liked working at night. The regulars, all my grandparents’ age, would bring me cookies. And I really liked telling people I was a bartender.
IT WAS 1999 when I discovered Paul Harrington’s cocktail blog. I’d read it at work when I was supposed to be doing architecture. (I was still tending bar at night.) I started buying up old cocktail books and bar tools on eBay. Slowly, I rose in the bar business, and architecture started to fade away. Clyde Common offered me a job in 2008.
YOUR AVERAGE PERSON thinks of a bartender as somebody who makes gin and tonics for a living—Sam from Cheers. Which is pretty close. I do wash dishes and make drinks. Now there’s this modern bartender, which is like that Portlandia sketch: a dude with droppers and tinctures and all these weird potions. Granted, I think I helped contribute to that myth in some small way, but I don’t really like it.
THE SIDECARWAS the first drink that really made an impression on me. It was romantic, and from Paris...it had cognac in it! And it has these really beautiful proportions—something called the Golden Ratio of Cocktails: that’s two parts strong, one sweet, one sour. You really can make half the drinks in the world with that formula. In fact, the Bourbon Renewal, which is the biggest-selling drink at Clyde (it’s been on the menu for five years), is the exact same formula as the old sidecar, just sort of broken up a little bit.
MY DAD WAS A BANKER, his dad was a banker, my mom was a teacher. It was understood that I’d go into a white-collar field—architect, doctor, lawyer. In my head there’s something that says, “I’m a slacker, I should be working in an office somewhere.” So, I have always tried very hard to get as high up as possible in the business. I still haven’t hit that point where my shame level is satisfied.
TECHNIQUE IS MY THING.There are three things that make a great drink: the recipe that you choose, the ingredients, and the third, which nobody really talks about, is technique. Which is everything, and that’s what we talk about in the book: How do you juice your citrus? How do you make simple syrups? How do you cut ice? Store ice? Make ice? How do you shake? How do you garnish? All those little things. If you’re not paying attention to technique, your drink is not going to be as great.
I DID A LITTLE CASE STUDY all over Portland. I grabbed cocktail menus and printed out the ingredients. It’s crazy, they’re all the same: base spirit, weird amaro, bitters ... a lot of barrel-aged cachaça, and mescals. I was like, who drinks like this all the time? For Pepe le Moko,I told my bosses I wanted to make daiquiris, Long Island iced teas, amaretto sours, espresso martinis. Their first reaction, I could tell, was, “Morgenthaler’s finally gone off the deep end.” But then I made them the drinks. They’re really good. I’m not being kitschy. Some people get it. Some don’t. So...can I make you one?
Burning witches and getting riled up in mass hysteria is thirsty, stressful work. That’s why the cast and crew of Bag&Baggage’s production of Arthur Miller’s 1953 play The Crucible, ostensibly about the Salem witch trials but also an allegory for McCarthyism, have created a series of terror-suppressing cocktails inspired by some of Miller’s most iconic lines and phrases from the play.
“In all honesty, rehearsing The Crucible is both physically and emotionally demanding; there are only so many times you can accuse an innocent old women of magically murdering seven infants before you need a drink,” says artistic director Scott Palmer with his trademark wry (rye?) wit. “Cassie (Greer, the Assistant Director), Pete (Schuyler, who plays John Proctor), and I started laughing one rehearsal when Pete said ‘God’s icy wind will blow!’ and then paused and, with deadpan perfectness, said, ‘sounds like a cocktail.’”
The Crucible The Venetian Theatre Sept 4–28Greer, who is a member of the Bag&Baggage Resident Acting Company and a bartender at Bazi Brasserie in SE Portland, immediately started working on the recipe, but it didn’t stop there. Within a few days, the cast had picked out dozens of cocktail names drawn from the script.
The Crucible Cocktail Collection is a selection of the five tastiest concoctions out of a list of more than 20 possible cocktails. “It was difficult to pare it down,” says Schuyler. “I mean, how can you not include cocktails with names like ‘A Broken Minister’ or ‘A Two Inch Needle?’”
B&B was kind enough to share the recipes with PoMo, so now you can slake your thirst on “The Kept Poppet”—but try not to down too much of “God’s Icy Wind.”
Or you can join the cast and crew on Sunday, September 7 at Bazi Bierbrasserie from 7–10 pm and taste the cocktails straight from Greer's hands for a night of stiff drinks, food, and a screening of the 1996 film adaptation starring "the truly terrifyingly bad performances of Winona Ryder and the disgusting teeth of Daniel Day-Lewis" to benefit the production.
A Charm to Kill Goody Proctor
Act I, Scene I Abigail Williams is in love and Salem will burn for it. She has seduced John Proctor and wants nothing more than to be his wife. The only thing standing in her way—in her mind at least—is John's current wife, the saintly Elizabeth Proctor. Abigail tasks Tituba, her uncle's Barbadian slave, to conjure a blood charm to get Goody Proctor out of the way once and for all.
Betty: You drank blood Abby, you drank blood! Abigail: Betty you never say that again! You never... Betty: You did, you did! You drank a charm to kill John Proctor's wife! You drank a charm to kill Goody Proctor!
2 oz gin .5 oz Green Chartreuse .25 oz lemon juice .25 oz simple syrup 1 egg white
Shake thoroughly and serve up; float Chambord
A Hangin' Error
Act I, Scene I With the threat of witchcraft hanging over the village of Salem, the girls responsible for the uproar discuss what will become of them if the truth of what they did in the woods gets out. Weak-willed Mary Warren advocates that the girls come clear to avoid punishment.
Mary Warren: Abby we've got to tell! Witchery's a hangin' error, like they done in Boston two year ago!
2 oz bourbon .5 oz Brancamenta .5 oz Cynar .5 oz orange juice 3 dashes orange bitters
Shake and strain over fresh ice; garnish with orange zest
God’s Icy Wind
Act I, Scene II Abigail’s plot to remove Goody Proctor moves forward as Ezekiel Cheever appears to arrest her on the false charge of witchcraft. John Proctor vows to come to the court to clear her name, and he is going to use Mary Warren to do it—even if the truth of his affair with Abigail comes to light and costs him his life.
Proctor: Peace! It is a Providence and no great change. We are what we always were, but naked now. Aye, naked. And the wind, God’s icy wind, will blow.
2 oz vodka .75 oz Absinthe .75 oz cream 1 barspoon demerara syrup
Shake and serve up
A Proper Lawyer
Act II, Scene II In the Salem courthouse, local land baron Thomas Putnam has been accused of killing off his neighbors via accusations of witchcraft in order to take over their land. The outspoken farmer Giles Corey claims Putnam was overheard disclosing this truth to a neighbor, but desperation and tension mount as Corey refuses to name his source.
Corey: This is a hearing, you cannot clap me for contempt of a hearing! Danforth: Oh it is a proper lawyer! Do you wish me to declare the court in full session here—or will you give me good reply?
2 oz rye whiskey a light .25 oz Luxardo a heavy .25 oz blended scotch 5 dashes Scrappy's Russell's Reserve bitters
Stir and serve up; flame orange zest and discard
The Kept Poppet
Act II, Scene II Mary Warren made Goody Proctor a poppet, with a sinister purpose. Hidden inside is a needle that Abigail uses to charge witchcraft on Elizabeth, claiming she sent out her spirit to stab Abigail in the stomach. John Proctor goes to court to prove the lie, but cannot be heard over the suspicion and superstition of Salem’s Judge Hathorne.
Proctor: Your Honor, my wife never kept no poppets. Mary Warren swears it were her poppet.
2 oz rum .75 oz lime juice .5 oz passion fruit puree .5 oz simple syrup 3 dashes Tiki Bitters 6 mint leaves + garnish
Clap mint leaves and place in shaker; add liquids, shake, strain, and serve up; garnish with mint
Genevieve Brazelton has two babies: a 6-pound, 15-ounce boy named Dylan; and a 25-liter stainless steel tank filled with bourbon, bits of bark, black walnut leaves, and dried Bing cherries marked “Aromatic Bitters.” Both keep her awake at night.
Under the cheeky moniker “The Bitter Housewife,” Brazelton is on a mission to help home bartenders boost their ambitions. “I think of bitters as the spice rack for cocktails,” says the Corvallis-born restaurant and PR industry vet. “They can heighten certain flavors in booze and soften others. It’s like seasoning a soup.”
Local bartenders have been toying with their own arcane tinctures for years, and N Mississippi Avenue’s foodie boutique the Meadow stocks bitters in flavors from celery to Aztec chocolate. But Brazelton’s distinctly homey formulations are the first locally made bottled bitters available for sale. Less concentrated and, well, less bitter than mass-produced brands like Angostura, her spice cake–like blend of 15 ingredients—including fresh ginger, walnuts, nutmeg, and allspice sharpened with fruity Grains of Paradise peppercorns, barnyardy quassia chips, and acerbic gentian root—lend a lingering warmth and a satisfying depth to cold-weather quaffs.
The Bitter Housewife Old-Fashioned
Muddle 1 tsp Bitter Housewife aromatic bitters* and 1 tsp sugar with an orange wedge and a brandied cherry (see recipe below) in an old-fashioned glass. Add 1½ oz Eastside Distilling’s Burnside Bourbon and a generous splash of soda water to taste. Add ice, stir, and enjoy.
*Purchase Brazelton’s bitters at New Seasons or her website.
The Bitter Housewife’s Brandied Cherries
Recipe adapted from Imbibe magazine
1 pound Bing cherries, washed and pitted (I've tried Rainier, but like Bing the best) 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup water 1 cup brandy 2 tsp fresh squeezed lemon juice 1 tsp vanilla extract 1 stick cinnamon Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
For immediate gratification and short term storage: In a saucepan, combine all ingredients except the cherries and brandy and bring to a rolling boil. When sugar is dissolved, reduce heat to medium. Add cherries and simmer for 5–7 minutes. Remove from heat, add the brandy and let cool. Transfer cherries and liquid into clean jars and refrigerate, uncovered until cherries are cool to touch. Cover tightly and refrigerate for up to two weeks.
Want enough cherries to last the whole year? Double or triple the recipe and follow these directions: Wash and pit the cherries and pack in sterilized 5–8 oz glass canning jars. In a saucepan, combine all ingredients except the cherries and brandy and bring to a rolling boil. When sugar is dissolved remove from heat and add brandy. Pour hot liquid into jars packed with cherries, put on the lids and gently place in a large stockpot of boiling water for 10 minutes. Remove, let cool, and check that each jar sealed. They will stay good at least a year, but never seem to last that long.
Autumn lovers, surrender your woolen sweaters and decorative gourds. This is not a boozy offshoot of some precious pumpkin spice latte. Despite its lofty cream dome and freckled nutmeg shards, the fascinating “Pumpkin Pie” cocktail at SE Division Street’s American Local is round, light, melon-flavored, and decidedly un-dessertlike. Bar manager Brett Adamson says the trick is raw butternut squash: “It’s cleaner and fresher than a roasted purée.” Adamson juices a whole squash, mixes it with cinnamon-and-clove-spiced simple syrup, and spikes it with a pair of fruity and butterscotchy rums before shaking it all together with egg white and half-and-half. The result? A frothy stunner that celebrates the season without getting bogged down in eggnog clog. Take that, Starbucks.
American Local’s Pumpkin Pie Cocktail
(Makes one cocktail)
1 oz squash-spice simple syrup*
1½ oz dark rum (Adamson recommends Diplomatico Reserva Exclusiva)
⅛ oz Stroh 80 liqueur or Appleton 151
1 egg white
½ oz half-and-half
1 dash Angostura bitters
Nutmeg for garnish
COMBINE Add all ingredients in a cocktail shaker and shake “dry” (no ice) for a minute, or until frothy. Add a scoop of ice to the shaker and agitate a minute longer. Strain into coupe and top with fresh-grated nutmeg.
*Squash-Spice Simple Syrup
1 whole butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and juiced (or puréed in a blender and strained)
2 cups demerara sugar
2 cups water
1 cinnamon stick
5 cloves
½ whole nutmeg seed, grated
1 star anise
COMBINE Add everything but the squash juice and bring to a boil, then simmer for 5 minutes. Let syrup cool to room temperature and strain. Mix 4 parts butternut squash juice to 1 part spiced simple syrup. Simple syrup will keep for a week in the refrigerator.
