Last night's dogbite: Elan Vital
Chartreuse, Creme de Violette, Drinkage, Gin, Liqueurs, Vermouth August 5th, 2008
I have a problem with Imbibe!1 and, in a larger sense, fussy-buns cocktails that require a body to prepare anywhere from 2 days to 4 weeks in advance to make a drink. You see, I’m not a planner. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love the publication and think it’s gorgeous, brilliantly designed and edited, and I find you can rarely go wrong mixing up one of its drinks. But, therein lies the problem; I often can’t. This, from a guy with over 200 bottles of spirits and 30+ mixing supplements (bitters, syrups, infusions, etc.) at his disposal. I can’t imagine what a traditional reader faces what with the calls for tamarind syrup, algarrobina syrup, pinot grigio syrup, Ceylon black-tea infused silver tequila, pomegranate balsamic drizzle…I could go on and on, but I won’t. Suffice it to say that another blogger at TotC said it best when he said, “If I’m not able to reach for the bottles and mix it up, it gets a bit tiresome and fussy.”2 In other words, I’m in this to make drinks, people. And, I have a feeling this is why I go in for the classic and vintage cocktails so heartily; they simply require, for the most part, you have a well-stocked bar, some juices, and the gumption.
In going through my Tales of the Cocktail recipe cards I find so many obscure liquors and spirits I can’t come near to acquiring3 here (Rain Organics Honey Mango Melon Vodka? I mean, C’MON!)4 or esoteric and arcane ingredients such as Bauman’s unsweetened Spice and Sassafras Apple Butter that I just begin to throw my hands up at the byzantine morass I see ahead of me that would make drinking a slog and turn to a nice classic Attention or Jack Rose cocktail and call it a night.5 Maybe I can be accused of not being serious or devoted enough, I don’t know.
But, this is why I get so delighted when I see a drink such as the Elan Vital, by Daniel Shoemaker, featured towards the back of the magazine’s July/August 2008 issue. “Alas,” I say, “a drink I can make this very instant, and it looks divine.”
Elan Vital
- 2 oz Full-bodied Dutch-style gin
- 3/4 oz Yellow Chartreuse
- 1/2 oz Dry vermouth 6
- 1/4 oz Creme de Violette
- 1/4 oz orgeat
Fill a mixing glass halfway with ice. Add ingredients and stir well to chill. Strain liquid into a saucer and garnish with freshly grated orange peel.
I heard many wonderful things about Daniel Shoemaker and the Teardrop Lounge while in New Orleans and this drink definitely gives them some measure of credibility if it’s any indication of the quality of drink they’re producing there. I love all of these ingredients on their own but the 3/4 oz of Yellow Chartreuse made me skeptical that this drink would work given all of the floral and botanical flavors that would be vying for prominence. However, they came together extremely well. Joana and I both likened this to a deeply-honeyed herbal tea. Just delicious and well worth its cost in hard-to-find ingredients. This is a drink that’s sweeter than expected but welcome in its complexity. “Vital impetus” indeed.
My only issue is that the dry vermouth gets lost in the shuffle and deserves to be featured more, at least if you’re using Martini & Rossi as I did. Now that I have a bottle of Vya Extra Dry I’m curious how it will change the make-up of this drink and how much a homemade or higher-quality orgeat syrup would deepen it and subdue the sweetness a bit. However, it’s not the slightest bit tacky or cloying, so don’t get me wrong; it’s just on the sweeter side of the scale for an “up” cocktail.
T. Marshall Fawley III of Scofflaw’s Den jiggered up a variation of this he called the “Elan Witch” that replaced the grated orange peel with a drop of orange flower water and added Strega in place of the Yellow Chartreuse. It sounds like it would dry it out a touch and, by his reckoning, kick up the vermouth’s influence on the final product.7
If you have these ingredients handy, give this a shot. If not, turn to Imbibe! where…ummmmmm, well, maybe not.8
Elan Vitale Rating:
Note: To be fair to Imbibe!, the ratio of straight-forward to “fussy” drinks is about 2:1 and it seems, more often than not, to keep its mission in mind with the drinks it chooses to feature. So, please Hammer, don’t hurt ‘em.9
- Anita at MWD made a good point that Food & Wine may be a worse offender than Imbibe! about this. When a publication hunts out recipes and features bar/bartender’s “house ingredient” it becomes a barrier to entry to trying, and enjoying, it [↩]
- I’m paraphrasing, but it was refreshing to hear the same “Dammit, I want to be able to make the drinks I discover.” sentiment [↩]
- or wanting to acquire, how many damned specific types of vodka do you expect me to have or invest in, bastards? [↩]
- GOB of “Arrested Development” reference here… [↩]
- I understand the difference between having a bar where these ingredients can be made in large quantities and used to differentiate your cocktails and make them unique flavors not found elsewhere, that’s awesome stuff [↩]
- calls for Vya, I had to use Martini & Rossi [↩]
- this sentence edited to reflect Marshall’s comment and additional detail in the comments [↩]
- I’m trying not to be completely unfair to Imbibe as it’s an extremely good publication. It just gets frustrating to me at times and it’s the most visible example of this phenomena of fussy and labor-intensive cocktails-maybe I’m lazy or in the wrong part of the country, it remains to be seen [↩]
- also, I think Joana disagrees with me on this entire point which is usually a sign I’m deeply in the wrong [↩]
A quick addendum:
I don’t consider Swedish Punsch, Falernum, Pimento Dram, and other ‘have to make it yourself’ type ingredients to be in the fussy category because they are used for many many recipes and are long-established ingredients. I’m mainly angsty with one-off ingredients that I’m left sitting there staring at one drink I can make with it and 14oz of the stuff left whether the drink was worth a crap or not.
Just clarifying; I love it when making my own ingredient opens a door to whole other room full or class of cocktails.
I don’t even know where I’d go about getting Creme de Violette :-\
Is it generally 40-proof-or-lower, and thus can be ordered through the mail like wine? Ohio’s arcane liquor system seems to never distribute anything more out-there than Campari or Chartreuse.
Drago, the irony of the cocktail’s composite ingredients and the general subject of the post (frustrated about fussy ingredients) is not lost on me (I have to buy my Yellow Chartreuse AND Creme de Violette out-of-state and fly it home in my luggage).
That being said, Creme de Violette rests at 20% ABV (40 proof) and should be in the “Look ma, it’s not really drunk-making!!” category. Also, if you want to contact me privately and work out an arrangement for me to send you a bottle I’ll be glad to. It may take 4-6 weeks but it’s worth it to have and try.
Hey Gabriel! Thanks for the shout-out!
I simply substituted the Strega for the Yellow Chartreuse and kept the measurements the same. The Elan Vital is certainly a tasty tasty beverage indeed!
Cheers!
Note that Shoemaker creates a house dry vermouth at Teardrop Cocktail Lounge, so I’d be curious to know if the drink was created with that in mind or the Vya (which they also use).
Sudden thought: someone should do a Mixology Monday with the theme of orphaned bottles. I’ve got some Parfait Amour that’s waiting for a good reason to break it out now that I’ve tried the two drinks I bought it for…
On the Teardrop Lounge website the recipe is cited as using Vya, but yes, I’ve heard Teardrop Lounge uses an ungodly amount of house-made ingredients and the joke was made that you shouldn’t put it past Daniel to have a “House Gin” at some point in the future.
The best i’ll be able to do is use the Vya once I get the wherewithal to open and start the clock to it turning south. Great idea on the MxMo, btw!
If Daniel does a house gin, I’m buying plane tickets.
Someone propose that MxMo to Paul Clarke; Joe & I are already hosting September (19th century cocktails) so it can’t be us.
Mostly just wanted to say…
Hear hear!
(Though the bottle of horseradish vodka I made from Imbibe (the book)’s recipe has been worth it…and Food & Wine is MUCH worse I think – at least from their Summer 2008 drink book…)
SeanMike, that’s a point that Anita at marriedwithdinner.com also brought up, that F&W is a far worse offender when it comes to “one off” ingredients in cocktails and don’t necessarily pay off.
It looks like many recipes are submitted by bars/bartenders without regard for how accessible “house” ingredients are and a lot of effort is required of the reader to try just one drink that, again, may or may not pay off. Imbibe’s usually do but F&W may bat at a lower percentage.
I used to feel this way about Tiki drinks as well until I got enough resources that made cinnamon, honey, etc. syrups worth having around because there were multiple recipes using them and they were, almost without fail, damn well worth the effort.
Granted, I have a horse in this race, but if I may offer a note of perspective:
Let’s say that for an article, I have three recipes that I can include. As you note, it’s good to give people something that they can knock together using the contents of a reasonably well-stocked liquor cabinet without making any special effort. Many if not most readers are likely looking for that, so that’s an obvious deciding factor in a recipe. Bang, one recipe accounted for.
But it also butts up against a potential challenge: what defines “reasonably well-stocked”? Does it include Benedictine? Maraschino? Carpano Antica Formula? Dutch gin? Creme de Violette? or any of a number of other ingredients that are available in some places but not others? If you make all the recipes you include simple XYZ examples using only mass-distribution products, you’ve made many people happy but you’re really limiting your options for covering creative cocktails, considering how minimally stocked liquor stores are in many if not most places in the country, especially outside of a few major cities; plus, the more adventurous readers with access to these interesting ingredients will quickly grow bored with the options. Fine; for the second recipe, throw in something a little more unique, but that can still be obtained either online or in a well-stocked liquor store in many states (if your control state doesn’t bring it in, that’s between you and your local liquor board).
But then, as you and others have mentioned, you have the bartenders who offer you a recipe that requires a little work–say, macerating pineapple in gin and Campari for a couple of days (a tremendous drink, by the way), or mixing up a syrup using a relatively obscure ingredient. Why do they offer those? Not out of laziness (as some have suggested), I’d argue–actually, it’s the opposite, given the amount of work required to prepare some of these ingredients. Rather, it’s an opportunity to show your stuff: most bartenders spend their time cranking out drinks, and beyond an occasional “Mmm, that’s good!” nobody takes much notice. Well, here’s an opportunity to show something you’ve spent some time thinking about and working with, and you know it’s likely to be truly unique given that you’ve created one of the ingredients yourself.
Should we automatically eliminate those drinks from being covered, because they require an hour or so in the kitchen plus the delayed gratification that comes with waiting for an ingredient to soak? Well, if you’ve got the first, simple recipe, plus the second, somewhat more challenging recipe, I’d say absolutely not.
Granted, waiting 48 hours for a mixture to soak before mixing yourself a drink is onerous, and I certainly don’t do it if the project’s just for me; but if you’ve got people coming over — especially people who know you to be a bit of a cocktail geek, and are expecting to be dazzled by something they’ve never, ever had before — well, now you’ve got something to bust out. Same principal goes for most food magazines: are you really going to spend the time to cure your own gravlax or pick over several pounds of crab for your own Wednesday night dinner? Probably not (unless you’re Cameron and Anita, of course), but if you’ve got guests coming on Saturday and you want to show them something special and homemade, you’ve got a recipe to turn to.
So, the result is one drink for those who really want to go to town either out of curiosity or in order to make a memorable drink for a party; one drink for those who want to mildly geek out with a moderately obscure ingredient that readers in NYC, SF, Seattle & other major cities can obtain (or that can be picked up on a business trip to Denver); and another drink that most anybody can try whenever or wherever they like.
And since it was brought up in the accompanying Twitter string, I also make it a point to try every drink I publish if at all possible (those recipes that come in just minutes before deadline, or that have a seasonal ingredient that’s unobtainable at the time I’m writing the story, just have to get pushed out the door with a little prayer).
That’s my approach, anyway; I can’t speak for others. But I’ll close with one thought: you read magazines like Imbibe and books like F&W not only to discover new drink recipes, but to learn more about particular spirits and ingredients, and to get ideas on how to use them, correct? While the more elaborate preparations pose an additional challenge to readers, if I were to ignore those in favor of running exclusively drinks that are a breeze to make, I’d be neglecting an important part of the story.
Wow, Paul, thank you for the extremely thoughtful and considered response. I want to respond more fully (hell, this almost warrants its own post) but I want to clarify two things that may have been misconstrued between this post, the Twitter feed and its inherit limitations, and the comments above:
1: The comment about “laziness”, for my part, refers to the Food & Wine publication explicitly. I know that renowned bartenders, bar managers, and mixologists are solicited for recipes and I sincerely doubt the editor(s) is always thoughtful and thorough enough to try them for quality (as in the case of one drink from 2007 where the final version of the recipe wasn’t able to be included much to the bar manager’s chagrin) or considered for the general audience for which they’re presumably intended. And, for my money, if your guide is going to be distributed via Borders’ or Barnes & Noble’s shelves, then it better be geared towards the mass (Imbibe! is an exception here because it’s more of a “pull” medium where the reader is selecting it very specifically). This, for me, is where a rush to print may bring about the ‘laziness’. And laziness may be a poor word choice, but please understand I mean from the publication, and not the creator’s, submitter’s, or writer’s side.
2: And yes, while I definitely read and explore those publications to learn more about how to use various and often obscure ingredients, I also appreciate the fact that there’s plenty to be done with them without demanding I find Goji berries or stock myself with 13 different types of vodkas that would be costly and, possibly, good for only one or two style of drinks.
The pineapple-Campari thing from last month, by the way, sounds brilliant. But I haven’t gotten to it yet, I’m too busy making drinks.
Also, for the record Paul, in going through the past 6 issues of Imbibe for this post, I found your pieces were extremely accessible and even-handed in their approach to a novice-to-practiced cocktailian. Your pieces all provide in-roads to recreating things people in cocktail hinterlands may not have access to, something not everyone is recognizing. And, for my part, it’s deeply appreciated.
[...] read about this cocktail by Daniel Shoemaker at cocktailnerd’s blog (he found it in the July/August 2008 issue of Imbibe!) and thought it looked both tasty and mixable [...]
One personal trick I’ve found effective is making the drink as close as possible as written (especially for all the make your own bitters and fancy infusions); if I like the basic drink, then I’ll put the special ingredient on my list for whey I eventually get that fancy (or give in and start ordering stuff I can’t get here).
My problem is finding effective ways to bookmarks all those “some day” recipes so I find them again.
As an aside, a version of “Orphaned Bottles” (I called it the kitchen sink) was my backup suggestion for the
MxMo I’m hosting in October, but Paul liked my primary choice, which is “Guilty Pleasures.”
Would me like me to ask the Rain folks to send you a sample of that new flavor?
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, I think we just witnessed the most “Art of Verbal Judo” comment posted on cocktailnerd.com, well played ma’am.
Hmmmmmm, now how to answer that after my screed…errrrrrrm, yes please?
And in all seriousness, thank you for offering and I’m glad to see you here, Ann; you throw a helluva a party.
Thank you.
What is the mailing address for you?
Steve, one way to “bookmark” printed recipes is to take a quick snapshot (e.g. with a phone), post it to your Flickr stream (private if you like), and give it a distinctive tag & where it’s from. Photo only needs to be good enough to remind you of the gist so you can look it up.
Good idea, Dinah. I also use my RSS reader to “star” recipes I want to try and then can “View Starred Posts” in a single list to review what I have/have not tried. This only works for blogs though.
In other news, myself and a few other bloggers are working up a tool that will aggregate the recipes featured on blogs and events like TotC where users will be able to register and “bookmark” and print recipes in a printer-friendly format. So, there will be that as well.
I bookmark online recipes in delicious, tagging by “cocktails” and then the major liquor ingredients, which makes for a very easy way to go back and find them later, especially with the firefox plugin.
Apparently this causes endless amusement for a few folks who have some notifications of my bookmarks (including some work friends who see them on Plaxo).
The Elan Vital sounds good and I’ll give it a try. I notice on the Tear Drop website that the description specifies “Dry Fly Gin” for this drink. I’m not at all familiar with that one (but would love to try it). Is it a “Full-bodied Dutch-style gin” as you specify above? From your picture it looks like you used Damrak, which I do have (or at least can get easily).
Cheers,
Mike
In the Imbibe! issue it specifies a “Full-bodied Dutch-style Gin” which a Damrak, Bols, Boomsma or Olifant would fit the bill. I noticed the “Dry Fly” on the Teardrop’s website as well and went with the Dutch since I have about as much chance getting Dry Fly as I do a bottle of Creme Yvette.
Dry Fly Gin isn’t a dutch style; in their marketing they call it a “Washington Dry Gin.” It’s made in eastern Washington, around Spokane.
It’s got some interesting flavors, with some apple and mint. I must have liked it, because the one bottle I’ve bought went pretty quickly. I enjoyed in most in a martinez made with vya vermouth.
[...] late to this one, but with good reason: last year, when Rick and Gabriel (who otherwise typically detests complex ingredients — c’mon, you didn’t think I’d let that slip by, did you?) and everyone else [...]