Join us for the Drink Me’s Grand Tasting Party – filled with spirits, beer, wine and fun hats.  There is NO better party going on next friday. WHERE: 111 Minna // WHEN: Friday, November 4th // HOW: www.DrinkMeGrandTasting.Eventbrite.com

The Blood and Sand is one of those all time classic cocktails that must be indulged in.  It was created in 1922 after Rudolph Valentino’s movie, “Blood and Sand”.  It can be made several ways, but when it was first published in The Savoy Cocktail Book it was printed as: ¼ Orange Juice ¼ Scotch Whisky ¼ Cherry Brandy (Cherry Herring) ¼ Italian Vermouth Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker, pour in cracked ice and shake.  I like to double strain this cocktail into a coupe glass since the traditional garnish is a flamed orange peel.  If there’s bit of cracked ice floating on top of the cocktail, the essential oils from the orange peel won’t rest on top and you may lose some aromatics. In regards to Scotch Whisky, blended is usually used, but you can use a single malt to try and add your own twist.  If [...]

Happy Friday, folks! Here’s a roundup of the most fun links we’ve come across this week. So cheers to you, reader, and have a great weekend. And don’t spill your drink on that new iPhone!

Personality A La Roy I first remember reading about “Hercules” when I got my original The Savoy Cocktail Book.  I was working my way through all of the pages and kept coming upon ingredients I had never heard of.  Hercules was one of those spirits and I was about to call it quits early on in the book.  I never thought I’d be able to make all these cocktails until…..Mr. Erik Ellestad had done some fabulous research on these great spirits.  He runs a fantastic blog on the book itself and he’s ran through the cocktails and has currently been doing Coolers.  He’s usually behind the stick at Alembic Bar on Haight Street in San Francisco on the last Sunday of every month…..he’ll definitely have surprises and goodies for you. In regards to the “Personality A La Roy”, the first known record of it is in The Savoy Cocktail Book.  [...]

If you’re a regular follower of the bizarre and wonderful world of YouTube, you probably remember this video that made the rounds a few years back, in which Dan Aykroyd pitches his very own diamond-filtered vodka brand, Crystal Head. Aykroyd is a self-proclaimed spiritualist with an interest in UFOs, and he wrote Ghostbusters because of a fascination with the occult. The video itself deals as much with these factors as it does with the booze, which is what makes it so oddly hilarious—no one really thinks of vodka when they think of ghosts, nor do they expect a legendary comedian to take either thing all that seriously. The Internet responded with the urge to buy crazy shit that the Internet tends to have, and Crystal Head became a relatively well-known brand—even John Hodgman took a glug for the sake of Web giggles. As part of SF Cocktail Week, of which [...]

The Last Word is one of those classic cocktails everyone should really put their lips to. It’s a delicious concoction of equal parts Gin, Maraschino Liqueur (no, not the sweet red stuff!), fresh lime juice and Green Chartreuse. It’s a prohibition creation, supposedly from the 1920’s at the Detroit Athletic Club. Whoever created it did a mighty fine job hiding all their booze from the police, cheers to you sir! Murray Stenson at the Zig Zag Café in Seattle is credited with reviving this classic and pushing it to the front lines again. As classics keep on surging back, the Last Word is one of those cocktails on the top of the list. I remember first enjoying mine at NOPA a few years back and now you can damn near get it anywhere in San Francisco. Just say you want a Last Word and any bartender worth their weight in [...]

It seems like it’s been a lifetime since I made my first visit to St. George Spirits in lovely Alameda, even though it’s actually been less than a year.  It was during that first visit when I first heard Pauly, the awesome tour guide, allude to Master Distiller Lance Winters’ love for terroir and fascination for expressing a sense of place and memory through spirits.  I was enthralled.  I waited intently, yet my chance to see this ballyhooed gin seemed to never come. Well, St. George’s fresh take on gin was finally made available to the public on Sep. 9th.  I got my first taste at the CUESA Farmer’s Market Happy Hour & SF Cocktail Week Preview Night at the Ferry Building on Aug 24th, then I went back for seconds at a cocktail event at Berkeley’s Acme Bar & Co. on Aug. 29th.  I was floored…it was all I [...]

While we may assume that the fancy infusions and quirky conglomerations on offer in craft cocktail bars are something new, it’s a tradition that goes back as far as formal fermentation. Even in the Iliad, Homer wrote of epic heroes drinking wine mixed with goat cheese and ground barley, which might make a Long Island Iced Tea not seem so bad. The current craze for carefully-constructed cocktails with fresh and exotic ingredients has its roots in a number of historical trends, so don’t be alarmed if a man wearing arm garters offers to make you a drink involving eight ingredients and six minutes to prepare; it’s all been done before. Nearing the end of the Middle Ages, the technology for distilling wine and beer into stronger spirits was carried around the world by explorers, and mixological innovation grew exponentially to combat the fierce assault of raw spirits on the palates [...]