 
 "Eating, drinking and carrying on..." -- Adelaide Brennan
If you live in Los Angeles you have official permission to skip my radio show tonight to listen to Barack. Hell, I'm gonna miss it -- I've put together a first hour of long live pieces from Jazzfest for anyone who might be out there, but me, I'll have the TV on at the radio station. Yes we can. Tales of the Cocktail: Liqueurs and Cordials. The world's pokiest event recapper here, with more details of Tales ... only 40 days after the fact. Hey, that's not bad for me. Next after the amari was a seminar with the slightly unwieldy title of "History of Liqueurs and Cordials, and Their Important Role in Cocktails Both Classic and Contemporary," with a panel consisting of Rob Cooper, whose family business is Jacquin et Cie and who founded Cooper Spirits International, makers of the fabulous St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur; Dr. Cocktail; Dave Wondrich and mixologist Chad Solomon of Cuff and Buttons. I thorougly enjoyed the session, but unfortunately am missing most of my notes from that one ... d'oh. One of the liqueurs prominently featured was the long-lost and elusive Crème Yvette, named for the French actress Yvette Gilbert around the turn of the 20th Century, which has been out of production for decades. It's a violet-based liqueur similar to crème de violette, but with the addition of vanilla and other spices to give it more complexity. There was some vintage Crème Yvette on hand to taste, as well as a new version that, we hope, will be hitting the market again in early 2009 and will give yet another great boost to the world of cocktails. I'm still a big fan of crème de violette -- it's a necessasry component in the original Aviation and several other cocktails -- but cannot WAIT for Yvette to make its return. We tasted a lab sample of the new stuff, and I found it to be a bit rounder and more balanced than the violette, fruitier and a bit less floral. (It'll be great to make Blue Moons with this.) It was grapey in the nose, with a definite fragrance of vanilla. On the palate it was citric, with fruit up front and the floral aspects of the violets in the finish. Lovely, lovely stuff. The early arrivers were also regaled with handmade versions of this infamous layered cocktail, made by Dave Wondrich himself! (I wasn't an early arriver, ended up way in the back, and didn't get one. Hrmph.)
We were also excited about the potential return of another long-lost classic liqueur, which was made by Jacquin, the company run by Rob Cooper's dad and grandfather since just after Prohibition. Forbidden Fruit is a brandy-based pommelo liqueur (a citrus fruit similar to grapefruit) sweetened with honey, and it's fabulous, fabulous stuff. 
There's a bottle of vintage Forbidden Fruit, with a fuzzy Rob Cooper in the background. (I have a tiny 1/10th pint size miniature that's still mostly full.) If the bottle looks familiar -- like the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch -- well, actually like a Chambord bottle -- it's because both liqueurs were made by Jacquin at the time. The Chambord brand was sold off to Brown-Forman many years ago, so when Forbidden Fruit returns it won't be in that iconic bottle. There's no timetable yet for its return -- we sampled a lab batch as well as the vintage, and the lab batch isn't quite there yet. We did get a cocktail, though, one of 26 Forbidden Fruit cocktails listed in CocktailDB and, I hope, the start of many more:
Here's one more recipe for a cocktail with a powerful liqueur as its modifying ingredient. If you've never had green Chartreuse before, find a good liquor store that has a good selection of miniatures and try it. It'll blow you away, and you may be unprepared for the depth and complexity of its flavor. (It's powerful stuff too, at 110 proof!) It looks to me to be a variation of the Last Word cocktail, one of my favorites, adjusting the proportions in favor of the gin and swapping out simple syrup for the maraschino.
Most of my pictures turned out to be crap, but I did get a shot of one of the interesting bottles Rob brought along: 
I love those old bottles containing four chambers with four liqueurs. Not terribly practical, but nifty anyway. Next seminar ... Gary Regan and LeNell Smothers, and American whiskies. (Boy, that one will be on fire.) [ Link to today's entries ]
Plucky Survivors 3 begins today! My good friends Mary and Rick are off on their third annual road trip across the backroads and byways of America. This year it's Savannah to Charleston to Myrtle Beach to Asheville to Knoxville to Lexington to Louisville to Chattanooga to Atlanta and everything in between, for the next 11 days. 
Mary says, "Join us as we blog daily about everything from the Scopes Monkey Trial Museum to the 52 hole Biblically themed mini-golf course, from the Martin Luther King memorial and grave site to the Col. Sanders museum, from Hillbilly Hot Dogs to the South Carolina State BBQ championships. And, of course, as we play Cow!, the best road trip game there is. It's daily food and road trip porn for those who like that sort of thing." We'll be posting daily updates from their road trip journals here. Stay tuned! Oh, crap. Well, isn't this just dandy, with the three-year Katrinaversary being on Friday? 
It's still way too early to tell, but some computer models have it landing either just east or just west of New Orleans at potential Category 4 strength. However, I'm hearing that Bob Breck, local N.O. weatherman and meteorologist with TONS of experience with hurricanes, seems to think that dotted-line path is the least likely one. In fact, he says:
Fingers crossed. Oh, but the really good news, that should fill us all with confidence, is that RayRay "Do Nothing" Nagin has decided to come back home from the Democratic Convention to "oversee preparation" for the hurricane. The comments section of NOLA.com, usually where you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy, provided the perfect response to this story, though, in the first comment posted: "I was hoping he would stay in Denver where he can do us less harm." This is on the heels of last Friday, when RayRay was given an award. The award-givers were called "The Excellence in Recovery Host Committee," which no one had ever heard of and which turns out was packed with RayRay's cronies, donors and supporters, and the award he was given, which no one had ever heard of either, was called "Award of Distinction for Recovery, Courage and Leadership." Several of the community leaders who were named to the committee that very week, including the president of the City Council, said they had no idea Nagin was to be honored; Council president Jackie Clarkson said she thought flood survivors were to be honored. The event was organized by RayRay's personal photographer, who's also become a self-appointed mayoral assistant and media relations czar, who's only known by the name ... Bernardo. The event, held at the Ritz-Carlton, was picketed by about 75 people out front, who carried signs saying, among other things, "NAGIN IS AN IDIOT." I am not making this up. [ Link to today's entries ]
Ron Matusalem Gran Reserva 15 Year Old Rum. There's been a new trend the last several months where cocktail bloggers have been offered review samples of products. "Hey, free booze!" you might say. Not so fast. A lot of these, as the bloggers who were the recipients of these offers will confirm, were crap trendy products completely uninteresting to them. (Shocking pink, impossibly sweet liqueurs, and the like.) A while back I started getting offered samples as well, and they were invariably vodka. I must confess to not having a lot of interest in vodka, preferring spirits that actually taste like something. Yes yes yes, I can get into lengthy argu-- er, discussions with vodka drinkers about the subtleties of flavor in a well-made vodka, and they're absolutely right. I just don't enjoy drinking plain vodka for the most part (unless it's Zubrówka), and it bores me. Not only that, I'm a believer in Audrey Saunders' adage that for the most part a vodka cocktail is a cocktail with a hole in it; any subtlety in a vodka's flavor pretty much disappears when it's mixed. Imagine my delight, then, when I was offered a sample of something that not only interested me but excited me. Now that the disclosure is out of the way, let's talk about a rum I've been curious about for a while but until recently had never tried until I got a bottle in the mail -- Ron Matusalem. Matusalem is a rum from the Dominican Republic, but they are quick to point out that they are a Cuban spirit. How does that work? In 1872 the Matusalem distillery was founded in Santiago de Cuba by two Spanish immigrants, Benjamin and Eduardo Camp, and their partner Evaristo Álvarez. They brought along the Solera system from Spain, used to make Spain's sherries and brandies, in which a series of barrels are used to age a wine or spirit. A portion from the last and oldest barrel is bottled, then that barrel is filled from the next-to-last barrel, etc. The aging process is reflected in the name they chose for their rum, which is Spanish for Methuselah, the old patriarch who according to biblical legend lived to an age of 969 (nine hundred four years of retirement -- golf, shuffleboard and getting in his wife's hair ... oy) and a nod to the old Spanish proverb, "Esto es màs viejo que Matusalem" -- "It's older than Methuselah." The beautifully crafted rum took off, and by the mid-1950s Matusalem had half of the Cuban rum market. Then we all know what happened in Cuba four years later ... The Álvarez family and their company were forced into exile, and the brand nose-dived. Fortunately, in the mid-1990s, Claudio Álvarez Salazar, great-grandson of Evaristo, won a court settlement granting the Matusalem brand back to him and his family. He took what was left of the company back to its roots, started making their rums the old way and ... voilà! Ron Matusalem was relaunched in 2002. Here's the stuff they sent me a few weeks ago: 
Ron Matusalem Gran Reserva, 15 years old. "The Cognac of Rums" was what it was called back in the day, according to the distiller. They describe it as a "super premium" rum but also call for its inclusion in cocktails. Well, let's give it a try, shall we? This is the first time I've ever evaluated a spirit for a review, even just as semi-formal one, but I want to do it right. Fortunately a month ago Wesly and I took a course at Tales of the Cocktail with Paul Pacult called "How to Taste Like A Professional," which comes in handy for this sort of thing. Our palates aren't nearly as educated as his, but we can certainly continue to train them by taking his advice, which is basically to smell and taste the spirit, do it properly, and let the spirit sit in the glass for several minutes to see what else it releases as it aerates. Sounds like fun. 
First off, it's pretty stuff; a beautiful amber/honey color in the glass. First sniff ... sugar cane. Then vanilla, and plenty of it. "Grandmother's attic," was one of Gregg's observations when he, Wes and I first tasted this a week or so ago, and he meant that in the best possible way. After a few minutes more vanilla, then a buttery aroma developed. Five to seven minutes in the glass, and I actually laughed in surprise -- I got the flavor of pecan pralines, right out of New Orleans. (Unsurprising, as the ingredients in pralines are sugar, butter, pecans and sometimes rum.) Really delightful. Now, let's have a taste ... a bit of alcohol up front, although it's bottled at 40%. It's pleasantly hot, though; I get that not so much on the tongue but on my lips. Despite that bit of heat it's very smooth. We all found that 5 to 8 minutes in the glass eliminated the burn. It's delicate and refined but wouldn't be easy to overpower. Very complex, with plenty of vanilla, butter, toasted pecans, a touch of cinnamon. More aeration also brought out more oak wood as well. It had a nice finish too; I could still taste it almost 15 minutes later. Hoo-boy. We poured some more. This is really terrific stuff. Not too sweet, with more of a brown sugar flavor that strong molasses, crisp, woody, buttery caramel, yet still dry enough. The first time we tasted this we also tasted an actual Cuban rum, Havana Club Añejo (um ... we teleported to Canada to do that ... yeah, that's it), and I have to say that Fidel's boys got their butts kicked. Clearly Matusalem was the superior product. Now, is this a rum I want to reserve for sipping only? I'm tempted, but I'm a believer in Gary Regan's adage of "Garbage In, Garbage Out" when it comes to cocktails, and I'm not shy about using the good stuff. I certainly will sip this on occasion, but what else shall we try? One of my favorite ways to evaluate a whiskey is to use it in an Old Fashioned, and I've been doing that with añejo tequila these days as well. So let's try one of those ... Wes did the honors. 
This made an absolutely gorgeous Old Fashioned. Wes went light on the syrup, as we didn't want to oversweeten. The lime makes a lovely garnish and would probably complement the flavor nicely, but we thought leaving the squeezing up to the individual would be a good idea if you're serving these. Okay, what else shall we do? I thought of a Daiquiri, and that'd be a great way to drink this stuff too; keeping it simple with lime and sugar. I wanted to try and see how it'd blend with other ingredients, though, and while thinking of something Daiquiri-like the lightbulb went off over my head. I went to our cocktail bookshelf and dug out Jeff "Beachbum" Berry's most recent and stupendously wonderful book, Sippin' Safari and flipped around until I found the recipe I was thinking about. This is a drink by the man who started the whole world of tiki cocktails and cuisine, a native of New Orleans named Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt, who later changed his name to Donn Beach, but was known the world 'round as Don the Beachcomber. Jeff says this drink "is a good example of how Donn had mastered the art of blending rums of different body, character and origin to create a flavor no one rum could approach on its own. Try this with 2 ounces of only one of the rums listed above, and you'll get a serviceable but utterly unexceptional Daiquiri." Don's original recipe called for Golden Stag rum; Jeff suggests substituting Appleton Special Gold from Jamaica, but I decided to let the Cuban spirit by way of the Dominican Republic take the forefront. The other two rums called for are a half-ounce each of "aged dark Jamaican rum" -- Jeff recommends Appleton Estate Extra, which I absolutely love (talk about the Cognac of rums, yeesh!) -- and Louisiana rum, for which I used Old New Orleans Dark 3 Year Old rum.
God ... what a gorgeous drink! This ain't no ordinary Daiquiri; blending those rums together creates a new and wonderful whole, and the Matusalem anchor works great. The dash of bitters helps to tie it all together, with the sweet and tart in balance. I'd say go ahead and mix Matusalem Gran Reserva with just about anything you care to (although if you do a Cuba Libre I'd go easy on the cola). Definitely sip this when you're in the mood for a sippin' rum, though. And the clincher? The distillery describes this as a "super premium" rum, but Beverage Warehouse carries this for $29.95! That's hardly a premium price, and at that price you can afford to go through this without too much worry about your wallet. And there you have it, my first review from an actual professional sample. That was fun! Let's do it again! The Cocktail Spirit, with Robert Hess. New episode up, with Robert helping you out if you were wondering what the heck you can do with that bottle of Fee's peach bitters you ended up with, besides a few dashes on top of a Bellini.
That looks like a lovely late summer drink. I think we might need one tonight. Poor misunderstood vermouth. I'll admit. I'll come clean. I ... I ... My name is Chuck, and I used to hate vermouth. "Hi, Chuck!" But as is the case with so many instances of hate, it really came down to fear. I was afraid of vermouth. I'm not sure why, but I think I have a good idea, and I think it's a similar story with a lot of people. I probably tasted some vermouth from my dad's bar way back when, and it was likely the same bottle of dry vermouth that had been in his bar since 1965. Vermouth is wine. It goes bad. It's fortified, so it doesn't go bad quite as fast as regular wines, but it's got a limited shelf life, should be used as quickly as possible and kept in the fridge after opening. Use that wine preserving gas, too. For those who still fear vermouth, I cannot encourage you enough to give it a go. After having my vermouth and Martini epiphany at the hands of Dale DeGroff ... well, use whatever clich´ you like -- the shackles fell from my wrists, the light shone down upon me on the road to Damascus, Cher slapped me in the face and yelled "Snap out of it!" A properly made "wet" Martini is a joy to behold, and don't even get me started on the joys of sweet vermouth, which is so good I'll drink it by itself. But don't just take my word for it, let's listen to a pro. My friend Paul Clarke takes a look at poor, misunderstood vermouth in a new article in the San Francisco Chronicle, examining the wholly unwarranted fear and loathing. As Dave Wondrich said in the article, "Bartenders are taught to treat (vermouth) like toxic waste." (This must stop!) Learn some history, how to store it properly, and some yummy drinks you can make with vermouth. Way cool! Scott Haefner flies kites. Not only that, he attaches his Canon digital camera to it, fitted with a fisheye lens, takes pictures, then converts them into really nifty Quicktime VR 360° panoramas. Check 'em out. [ Link to today's entries ]
An Olympic cocktail. Eric Felten has a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal about the history of drinking and cocktails in the Olympics (I love that Frank Sinatra wanted to start an Olympic Drinking Team). There's even a yummy-looking cocktail recipe, which I'll post here; read it soon, as the article will go away in a few days.
We had one last night. Very lovely. If any of y'all have an Olympic cocktail of your own, or are inspired to create one, please post it in the comments! Whiskies (and a Cognac) You've Never Tasted. The seminars continue at Tales of the Cocktail ... after thoroughly enjoying our first seminar with the renowned Paul Pacult, we decided to try another, the one of the above title. Actually it was just called "Whiskies You've Never Tasted" in the course description, but if you read the fine print they slipped a Cognac in there too. "Tasting will cover the differences in top-end bourbon, Irish, single malt and blended Scotch as a way of describing top quality in various expressions. Attendees will be among a select few to taste the rare, unparalleled whiskey expressions" of the spirits offered. Um ... sign me up. Wes and I managed to score front-row seats, and were greeted by a pretty sight:  
Oh my. Let's go through what we tasted:
All that for a $40 seminar ticket. Not bad. And no, I didn't spit any of it out, but I prepared myself for this that day, and wasn't planning to have Jeff Berry and Wayne Curtis kill me with kindness and volumes of rum later in the evening either. I was just following the lead of our teacher, who said, "I ain't spittin' any of this stuff out today!" 
Cocktail garnishes gone mad. I'm all for bringing up the cocktail experience to its best heights, primarily by having it taste wonderful and be served in an enjoyable setting. However, one bar in Sydney seems to have gone not so much over the top but off the edge of the flat Earth:
All right, I call bullshit on this. This consulting mixologist has apparently forgotten that drinking is supposed to be a social experience, not something to be done while blindfolded and wearing headphones. What this bar is doing is undoubtedly charging a premium price -- paying a waitress to stand there for 20 minutes spraying someone in the face with cigar-infused sugar syrup and suntan oil -- for what's essentially a dolled-up Piña Colada plus lots of wankery. Sheesh. [ Link to today's entries ]
Ní bheidh a leithéid arís ann. Ronnie Drew, Irish folk singer with a voice like whiskey and razor blades, and founding member of The Dubliners, passed away on Saturday from complications of throat cancer, at the age of 73. 
Ronnie was a tremendous figure in Irish music for nearly 50 years, and it's safe to say that Irish traditional and folk music as we know it today would be very different indeed, if it were around at all, without the influence of Ronnie, The Dubliners and the folk music resurgence they help launch in Dublin in the early 1960s. Although you may only be marginally familiar with him, or perhaps not at all, his passing is a huge loss for Ireland and Irish culture. From AJ O'Flaherty's blog in Ireland: "His loss is enormous. Thoughts and prayers go out to his family. It was like hearing a family member died. He epitomised wisdom, wit, joy for life, love and passion for music. The word legend is used a little loosely at times, but we truly have just lost a legend and he will be sorely missed." Here Joseph O'Connor remembers him in a lovely piece in the Irish Independent. 
Shane Macgowan of The Pogues said, "Everything we have done, the Dubliners have either done it or they could do it better!" Bono of U2 said, "Music to inspire, to console... an optimism that was contagious... that's what U2 took from The Dubliners. Ronnie has left his earthly tour for one of the heavens -- they need him up there, it's a little too quiet and pious. God is lonely for a voice louder than His own." I won't write a long history here; do some Googling on The Dubliners, and head over to iTunes or your local independent record store and buy a best-of compilation. Oh, and if you're already familiar with them, here are the lyrics of one of The Dubs' biggest hits, "Seven Drunken Nights", including the two final nights Ronnie was never allowed to sing on radio or TV. And it's a folk song, for feck's sake! Here's a very early performance, pre-Dubliners, when they were still called "The Ronnie Drew Group," doing "McAlpine's Fusiliers": Here's a later performance of "Finnegan's Wake": Just listen to this fantastic version of "Easy and Slow": And raise "The Parting Glass." Here's to you, Ronnie Drew. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam. When a bitter liqueur helps your palate mature ... That's amaro! (Okay, that was bad. Sorry. Here's hoping I won't be assaulted by the ghost of Dean Martin.) I'm usually not one to toot my own horn too much, but I think it's a credit to my stamina (and my liver) that my hangover on Friday morning, July 18, was not nearly as catastrophic as it could (or should) have been. Six Scotches, ten gins, four wee gin cocktails, nine brandies, three wee brandy cocktails, three wee cocktails, then five HUMU-HUMU-MONGOUS tropical cocktails at the Tiki dinner the night before; then as Wesly mentioned, after that I visited the Partida / Plymouth / St. Germain suite on the 9th floor, then my friend Eric Alperin of The Doheny handed me one more drink ... and that's when my brain shut down. The next day I marveled at Seamus' and Rick's excellent posts on the dinner, and especially wondered how Seamus was able to pull off such a great post right after the dinner. (I was more occupied with the daunting task of walking.) So, to continue with the pokiest and longest-running Tales of the Cocktail recaps of any cocktail blogger out there ... We slept through the media breakfast at Brennan's and managed to rouse our carcasses ("Quiet darling, your Auntie Mame is hung") to get to one of the most-anticipated seminars of my schedule: "Amore Amari: A Very Bitter History of Bitter Spirits in Apertif Service and Cocktails," presented by Averna, Campari and The Bitter Truth. Wesly and I have been mad for bitters for years, obsessively collecting as many varieties as we could (including our best score ever -- three pristine, full 18-ounce bottles of Abbott's Bitters), and over the past year or so have become amaro fanatics as well -- the bitterer the better.
Eric Seed of Haus Alpenz led the panel and began by talking about the history of bitters in cocktails, and how up until the beginning of the 19th century bitters were truly strictly medicinal, and medical miracles were attributed to their regular use. Our favorite of the historical ads that they showed were for Hostetter's Stomach Bitters, the makers of which exhorted you to "Renew Vigor and Make Life Worth Living!" Hostetter's also helped you "renew your life-giving blood currents" and took care of your dyspepsia, malaria, indigestion, fever and ague, nervousness, kidney, bladder and bowel disease, neuralgia, rheumatism, menstrual cramps and hysteria. While I can't vouch for most of those claims, bitters then and now are great for indigestion and overindulgence, and many of us have but a few teaspoons of Angostura in soda water to settle our tummies. Eric also reviewed several of the primary styles and components of bitter liqueurs. Wormwood-based bitters, in addition to absinthe, include relatively mild examples such as vermouth, which comes from wermut, the German word for wormwood, plus some massively and wonderfully bitter concoctions such as Gorki List from Serbia. (My good friend Dule, from Belgrade who now lives in Zurich, loves the stuff and always keeps a bottle on hand "to test the mettle of my guests." You'll be able to test your own mettle soon; Eric plans to bring Gorki List to the States later this year.) Gentian-based bitters, which have an almost horseradish-like bitterroot flavor without the burn, include Suze from France and Averna from Sicily, and gentian is also an ingredient in most aromatic cocktail bitters such as Angostura. Cinchona bark, from which we get quinine, is the bitter agent in tonic water as well as in quinquinas, aperitif wines like Lillet, Dubonnet and bitters such as Amer Picon. Citrus bitters are sought for their flavor, aroma and sweetness as well as the bitter components. They make very popular amari (Campari, to name the most popular, and it's "younger brother" Aperol), as well as beloved cocktail bitters such as the wealth of orange bitters we're able to enjoy now from Fee's, Regans', The Bitter Truth, Hermes and the wonderful new Angostura Orange Bitters. LeNell Smothers also spoke about her massive collection of bitters at her shop in Brooklyn (and I'm preparing a frighteningly large order for her), and Stephan Berg of the wonderful new bittersmakers The Bitter Truth came from Germany to speak of his products and also regale us with some wonderful history of Angostura and Abbott's Bitters. We also had three terrific cocktails:
This is a lovely Manhattan variation, and shows what can be achieved with just a small amount of an aromatic herbal liqueur, changing the character of the drink completely. Yellow Chartreuse plays with other ingredients a bit more readily than the green, which has such a unique and assertive flavor that it tends to dominate if not carefully balanced. The kirsch gives it a bit of cherry flavor while keeping it dry, and the orange bitters tie everything together beautifully.
This Negroni variation is heavier on the vermouth (we like the variation called the Cinnabar Negroni, which doubles the Campari), and a bit of dry apricot brandy (the lovely Marillien that Eric's Haus Alpenz imports) also adding fruit flavor without the potential of overly cloying sweetness from too much liqueur. This reminds me of a drier, more bitter Martinez.
A Daiquiri variation, again demonstrating that a little liqueur can go a long way flavorwise. Here we have only 1/4 ounce of Eric's new product, St. Elizabeth's Allspice Dram, and it lends great character and spice to the drink. The Averna gives it a lovely bitter component, with the sparkling wine lightening it all up. Funny name too, but you do get a sense of kola nut flavor (itself a very bitter ingredient, if you've ever tasted one on its own) in this mixture of flavors with the most well-known Sicilian amaro. As great as this all was, perhaps the best part was at the very end, when we were invited to come up if we were interested in tasting some of the myriad stash of bitters they'd brought, including ... vintage 19th century Boker's Bitters, the bitters used to make the first Manhattan cocktail. (If we're interested? Ya think?) Stephan placed one precious drop on my hand and I tasted ... and wow. Wow wow wow. Amazing body and spice and depth of flavor, baking spices like cinnamon and clove and ginger and all kinds of strange and wonderful things and YUM. It reminded me of Abbott's, but without the elements you get from the barrel aging in the latter. It still tasted terrific, and I wish Stephan had had enough to make us all Rittenhouse Manhattans with it. We got more tastes from LeNell and Eric, and as Jay Hepburn put it, "I have the wonderful aroma of 10 |
